Admiring the view

If you go by bike you can always stop and have a look at your surroundings. I am living at the edge of town, so I’m quite close to nature.


I took this photo last summer, about 5 miles away from my home.

Another trap for cyclists

Today it dawned on me that the intersection above can be quite dangerous if you happen to be there at the wrong time (like me today). You can see that bikes have their own light which is still green (red arrow), while the pedestrian light has already turned red and even the yellow warning light (green arrow) has already stopped flashing. So if an inattentive right-turning driver has already passed his green light and not noticed the green bike light, he will probably turn right without thinking about cyclists, because the only light he can see is red (leading the driver to believe that there will be no one crossing the road). In my opinion there should be an additional bike light on the other side of the road – or at least the yellow warning light (which is supposed to let drivers know that there are pedestrians crossing) should continue flashing until the bike light is red, too.
Sorry for the big orange blotch, but I didn’t want to show the ugly advertisement on my blog.

German commuting statistics for 2008

The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has published the commuting statistics for 2008. In Germany 60 % of the commuters used a car to get to work in 2008. That’s the same percentage as 1996. Only 13 % used public transport. 8.3 % went by bike (only 0.9 % more than 1996) and 9.5 % walked to work.
If you look at the short distances under 10 km (6.2 miles) however, there is a little change visible. 17 % used their bike, far more than the 13.5 % of 1996.
Destatis concludes that overall German commuters don’t show much change in behaviour – despite rising petrol prices and climate change discussions. Most people are still driving, and that’s why the commuters are spending more and more time on the road.

They offer an English summary and a detailed German version on the web.

Bike gallery

Another one of those affordable De Vries bikes, this time a cream-coloured version. Probably not as durable as real Dutch bikes, but they are looking good.

Another improvement

One problem at bus stops is that there are many people waiting and standing on the bike path, especially during rush hour. Our city has now painted bright white lines at some bus stops to make it unmistakeably clear that cyclists are allowed and supposed to ride there. They have also put up some wooden posts to prevent cars from parking and taking dangerous shortcuts. Of course this measure doesn’t mean that from now on nobody will stand on the bike path anymore, but I am happy that something has been done. Hopefully more pedestrians will take the bike path seriously now (and look around before stepping on it).

Hopefully a step forward

A few days ago there was an article in our newspaper that I really liked. An engineering office had examined the traffic situation by order of our city and the article was about the results of this study. The engineers found our modal share for cycling to be far too low compared to other cities and rated this as “not satisfactory” – an opinion that I strongly agree with, by the way. They also advised the city to invest at least 3 Euro ($ 4.50) per citizen and per year in bicycle traffic. That’s much more than the current amount. The experts recommended to improve the situation for cyclists and pedestrians in the different parts of the city and to intensify public relations to provoke more people to make trips by bike instead of by car. They said their hopes are mainly pinned on the bicycle.
Another conclusion was that our bus traffic works exemplary, so there is not much room for improvement on the public transport sector.

In my opinion there has been rather much useless whitewashing going on in our town, so I was very happy to see a newspaper article that finally adresses the real problems instead of beating about the bush.