Cycling through the centre of Berlin

[Ep. 1001] Riding a bicycle in the centre of Berlin, passing some of the city's important landmarks.
More information in the blog post: bicycledutch.w...

[@WeilBaumDing]

As a Berliner: sorry that you had to endure this infrastructure. There just so much bad or unsafe stuff around and I have no big hopes with the new gov that it will get better soon. It is just sad how carbrained Berlin is.

[@jakemaas2068]

Germany is highly invested in building cars.

[@annabelholland]

But UK is even worse

[@limbiateshitposter]

@@jakemaas2068car infrastructure* all countries build cars

[@MrAronymous]

I just returned from Berlin. The main takeaway I had is that... there's so much space. There really is no reason for it to be this bad lol.

[@catlerbatty]

Atleast Berlin has some cycling infrastructure! I have to ride next to double overtaking SUVs 😅

[@DonnieX6]

Nice to see my small hometown here ;) While it is not comparable to the Netherlands, I still enjoy doing all trips by bike, it definitely is possible. Love your channel, greetings from Kreuzberg!

[@R4rd]

Woah, that looks stressful compared to the Netherlands. All the commercial billboards trying to sell bicycles (2:11 or 4:52 for instance) strike me as cynical jokes.

[@SledgeOfHouseHammer]

German bike ad: "Buy ze bicycle. Maybe you get killed in ze traffic. Maybe you don't. Roll ze dice vit Deutchbikes!"

[@ratbert1]

Well that looked pretty unpleasant and frequently unsafe, lots of improvements needed.

[@kailahmann1823]

I am surprised how little traffic there was - especially compared to the crazy videos from Paris Active Towns currently has 😅 Sadly I haven't seen any part where they have really build a bike lane under current standards.

[@user-uyumo8g44x]

Looks like this video was recorded on a sunday morning

[@BicycleDutch]

Saturday morning actually, at around 11. It seems Berliners get up late...

[@Kkubey]

@@BicycleDutch Natives avoid the center and touristy places unless they have to pass through for work. There are some streets that get a lot of bike traffic outside of the weekend but there are also still many streets that have bike lanes that are barely used in the outer districts, which leads to people denying the demand.

[@passiskills96]

The bicycle infrastructure in Berlin (and Germany as a whole) can hardly be described as such because it is not safe. In Berlin alone, 7 cyclists have died in accidents so far this year. After the elections, politics in Berlin was taken over by the conservatives (CDU), who are even reversing planned and implemented cycle paths (I highly recommend the video of extra3 to this topic)... The situation will therefore not improve. In Germany, only the car as kind of transport has priority...When I want to experience good infrastructure I spend my holiday in the Nederlands.

[@Jojtek22]

There being so few protected bike paths is severely disappointing for the city of Berlin's status. And many access streets are needlessly wide for the amount of traffic they're carrying. They could use with narrowing and general traffic calming. Seems that motorist are still favoured by the city planners there.

[@kailahmann1823]

most of this streets are probably unchanged except for resurfacing and moving some lines since the 1950s… And that's the main issue in Germany: When a road is fully redesigned, the results aren't far behind the Dutch - but in most cases just nothing changes.

[@Mo-mu4er]

It'd be so simple to at least change the arrangement of the bike lane and parking; why is it protecting parked vehicles? Parked cars should be the buffer instead!

[@SenSe-oj5hb]

even if u want to build bicycle infrastructure as a planner u cant, because of laws and norms in Germany. Everything is regulated precisly. If you do not follow the norms and laws correctly, any one can drag u to court. So it is common, if a car lover is annoyed about new bicycle infrastructure, he tries to sue the council responsible. If the council did not follow the norms, they loose at court, and have to remove the new infrastructure. The planners are just following the norms (DIN, and BauGB etc) to avoid legal issues. The infrastructure u see there is bs, but is according to the norms. The norms are bs, but changing a tiny details costs many years. The people sueing the council are often wealthy powerful people like conservative boomer lawyers with big cars. The entire planning affair is stuck in a loophole of bureucracy, and every year new laws appear, regulating every shit u take on the road. In a councils planning department there are different people. Conservative people, people just doing their job, and bicylce lovers. The biclye planners cant do anything to change the bs they are planning because of the countless, laws, and they have to be very sensitive in planning, because once nimbys are activated they try to sue the council. There will be no bicylce pragmatic bike infrastructrure in 2100 in germany. Another point is, that streets are renovated every 30 years. Than they get new asphalt, new plumbing, and maybe a new bikelane. So new bikelanes are not build when they are needed, but only if a road segment gets renovated.

[@kailahmann1823]

​@@SenSe-oj5hbthat's plain nonsense. The design standards are "recommendations" just as in the Netherlands and Germany (like in this video) is full of bike lanes that don't follow the standards - either because they are older, because there is simply not enough space or sadly far to often because the city was lazy. And a car driver can't legally do anything against a bike lane - it's usually cyclists, who fight against being required to use specific bike lanes, but even then you just end with a non-mandatory one. Usually this happens, when you are required to use an (often far to narrow) shared path with pedestrians alongside a low-traffic road. The very long interval for real changes is in fact a problem and I'd call even 30 years to be very optimistic. My city switched from black asphalt to red pavement for bike lanes some time in the late 80s or early 90s and there are still a lot of the old ones that aren't even on the list for a redesign. The other issue is the 50 km/h standard for anything that counts even slightly as a through-route, even if the street is totally unfit for that - resulting in a lot of streets which are extremely stressful during morning rush hour.

[@user-uyumo8g44x]

I would love to see the same route during rush hour

[@vasek571]

Although a lot of people here write that they think it's dangerous. Actually, I find it to be pretty good quality and safe. But it's true that it's infrastructure that assumes knowledge of traffic laws and knowledge of driving in traffic (which should be must have).

[@thoreau527]

Só posso dizer que tenho inveja desse seu lindo país. Aqui no Brasil, não se tem um mínimo de respeito com o ciclista e com os pedestres no trânsito: o carro sempre tem prioridade, ele "passa por cima" se for preciso. Sem contar com os motociclistas que alteram os escapamentos das motos e as tornam demasiadamente barulhentas. Aqui a sensação geral é todos contra todos, uma terra sem lei. Seu país é lindo, espero um dia poder conchecê-lo.

[@Evandrosab]

brasil é um pais de selvagens, governado por selvagens que sao eleitos por selvagens. Nunca é tarde demais para ir embora.

[@HalfUtilitarianist]

Hey BicycleDutch it would be nice if you could include where do you start/end on a map of Berlin. Nice video!

[@BicycleDutch]

That map is in the blog post. bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2023/08/16/another-ride-in-berlin/

[@peter1062]

I have seen bicycle infrastructure like this in the Netherlands, but not since the 1970's.

[@jekker1000]

the cherry on top of the bad infrastructure is the aggressive driving of the car drivers with close passes and too much speed. They are all driving as if they are delivering a transplant for a heart surgery. If this is on a Sunday, it is nuts. There should be a ban on cars for Saturdays and Sundays in cities. Only required services allowed to use a car (i.e. ambulance and police etc.)

[@SandroAntonucci87]

where do you see those high speeds?

[@erikloupias7642]

Where are the bikes? Country with almost 80 mln people and you showed us one ,maybe two or three ,cyclist in the first half hour on dangerous roads!🤨

[@danielbum912]

Welcome to Berlin! Get a car, nerd!

[@christill]

They seem to have a lot of space to do something, which we tend not to have so much in the UK. And I assume they have more societal and political will for change than we do in general too. Since Germany takes green policies more seriously in the mainstream than Brits do. Or at least the British media. The actual working class British population probably do want change on balance, but we won’t get it. Berlin might.

[@damark2651]

I'm Italian. Compared to italian cities (especially south italian cities), Berlin is the safest city for cycling I have ever seen.

[@simonkraemer3725]

Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go, and the current government isn’t helping. Still the new bike infrastructure is quite wide and relatively comfortable and there’s a big bike culture in Berlin - there aren’t any cities this big with this much bike traffic I know of. I ride my bike here everywhere, not a thing I would do in every city. Still bike paths are narrow and not in the best shape, bikelanes are missing, people drive here not very cautiously and there’s a lot to do.

[@silsilsilly]

Now i seen this i understand why german people prefer to wear a helmet when they are bycicling.

[@guest_4416]

Ive cycled a lot in Berlin as a dutch person who lives in Berlin

[@KleineJoop]

There is enough space!

[@hondaryder3779]

15:40 What are those😮 moped cars? 1 seat soap boxes? Anyway/Wie auch immer, nicht schlecht. Saubere Straßen, guter Asphalt, es hat Potenzial.

[@meiermuellerschulze]

Search for "Hotrod Berlin" and you'll get the answer. They offer sightseeing tours with those "things".

[@jekker1000]

It is a tourist attraction, ride around berlin in hotrod styled gokarts. Have seen them in Hamburg too

[@webchimp]

First 90 seconds, 9 car rental brands.

[@Tom-bp6no]

Graffiti on a vehicle at 24:35, is that unusual? Certainly wouldn’t be a thing here, yet..

[@robertbutlin3708]

English isn’t an easy language and I’m sorry to say, you came across two of the nastier bits. Trough is pronounced “troff”. And the “th” sound is not common in Dutch. Hence the title should read “… through…”. Sorry!

[@BicycleDutch]

Haha I know that. But even if you do, you can still make a typo. Thanks for mentioning it. Corrected.

[@robertbutlin3708]

@@BicycleDutch Thanks.

[@flierfy]

Berlin is truly a lost cause.

[@coolnewpants]

They've got quite a mish-mash of different infrastructure types for biking. Still better than a lot of US cities