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26.02.2020

Walking the Talk: What Can We Learn from Germany’s New Pedestrian Policy Framework?

Combining a safe system approach with approaches to increase the attractiveness of city walking and cycling - an article in TheCityFix.

New protected pedestrian and cycle path in Berlin, Germany | © Soeren Schulz , Dreamstime.com

Walking, as simple as it is, is key to many current urban issues. As car ownership grows, people are walking less and becoming less physically active generally, especially adolescents, more than 80% of whom are insufficiently active.

Germany’s National Cycling Plan has proven effective in bringing together stakeholders from federal states, city governments and academia to implement the plan and make significant achievements, including a 12% increase in the number of bicycle trips, over 35% increase in kilometers cycled per day, and more than 30% reduction in cyclist fatalities since phase 1 of the plan was implemented.

Germany’s policy framework is an ambitious attempt yet to pull together the various land use, infrastructure, financial, legal and other instruments that national governments can bring to bear on the problem. It combines a safe system approach to reduce cyclist and pedestrian fatalalities with approaches to increase the attractiveness of city walking with the 'Avoid, Shift, Improve' approach. E.g., the framework sets the goals of reducing car ownership to 150 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in all cities with over 100,000 inhabitants. It also proposes reducing the average parking space area per person from 4.5 square meters to 3 in urban areas.

More: Full article at TheCityFix


erstellt von:
Claudia Adriazola-Steil and Alejandro Schwedhelm | TheCityFix


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