Berlin's Upcoming Bike Revolution

When Berlin unveiled its plans last week to become a more bike- and pedestrian-friendly city, it was almost immediately hailed as a revolution. Assembled by the Green Party (part of the city’s ruling coalition), the draft of a new law calls for at least 100 kilometers (62 miles) of cycle superhighways threaded across the city—and that’s just the start of it.

By 2025, the city will also create 100,000 new bike parking spots, some of them in three multi-floor parking garages located at key commuter hubs. Meanwhile, the city’s existing bike-lane network—already extensive, but not always well segregated from car traffic—will be more rigorously protected by bollards. This more modest network of roadside lanes (as opposed to long-discussed specially constructed superhighways) will also be expanded to cover one-third of all city streets, a considerable expansion on its current total of 18 percent. Viewed from cities where it’s a struggle to introduce even basic bike infrastructure, Berlin’s plans seem inspiring, even utopian.