Three months ago, my partner and I spent a couple of nights in the German capital of Berlin; our first time there. While Berlin is highly regarded for an extensive network of trams and trains, it also does cycling fairly well too, with about 18% of trips in the city made by bike.
We made use of the Lime Bikes available there to explore some of the districts around where we were staying; later I also went for a wander to see more interesting features locally.
Cycling around the city is a mix of both separated cycleways and on-road cycle lanes; given the busy traffic in places, the latter can occasionally be a little daunting.
Signalised crossings certainly help to get riders safely across some of the busier intersections (as mentioned a few weeks ago); we noticed many of those around the city.
Hook turns were another common feature, allowing riders to safely do a left-turn (our right-turn) movement at intersections.
In some locations, lower speed limits are also in force, which certainly improves the take-up of people cycling.
Likewise, there are some “shared streets” or Fahrradstrassen where the low traffic volumes make it much friendlier to bike there.
Away from the streets, off-road paths were regularly used by riders too, although there was often some advice about how to share them with pedestrians.
Here are a few other pictures I took while there:
While perhaps not having the utopian feel of a few other top European cycling cities, Berlin has done a pretty good job so far of providing a reasonable network of cycling routes around the city. However, it still has a bit of work to go though, with only about 1/10th of the planned priority network having been implemented so far and current Government policies there threatening further expansion…
Have you cycled in Berlin? What were your impressions?