Bike traffic in Bonn Bikers now have right of way on Breite Straße

Bonn · If you see big pictures of bikes painted on the street, this is a sign that bikers have the right of way and motorists must yield. Breite Straße has become a bikers’ road.

Breite Straße in the Altstadt (old town) was declared a bikers’ road yesterday with the lanes now officially bike lanes. Big bike pictures have been marked on the street and this shows that bikers have the right of way before motorists. The German bicycling club, ADFC is happy about the move, and the club headquarters are right on Breite Straße. “We are generally very pleased that we now have a continuous biking road right outside our front door,” said Werner Böttcher of ADFC. But the club hopes for more: priority rights for bikers on biking roads, more speed controls and making motorists aware of how these biking streets work. Many don’t know what biking roads are.

Böttcher also wants to see a network of biking roads created. Currently, there are 25 individual biking roads but he would like to see a network big enough to make a substantial reduction on the number of cars in the city. City spokesperson, Stefanie Zießnitz says, “26 more will follow in this year.”

According to Zießnitz, “Altogether, 107 biking streets with a total length of 50 kilometers should be marked before 2020.” The total cost of the planned biking streets is expected to run around a million euro, with Cologne district government paying around 70 percent of that sum.

Some motorists and bikers are not totally convinced by the concept. “I don’t think much will change with some markings and pictures, when the police don’t perform stronger controls,” said one bicyclist. A motorist comments, “The pictures are very small and through the markings, I wouldn’t immediately get it.”

Specific monitoring of biking streets by police is not in the cards due to a shortage of personnel. “We will control them as part of our overall monitoring,” said Simon Rott, spokesperson for the Bonn police. “In the course of that, we won’t lose sight of Breite Straße.” (Orig. text: Dennis Sennekamp)

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