INSANE! I rode from the Berlin airport to the city center
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- Опубликовано: 23 май 2023
- After the Velo-city Conference, I had one day in Berlin to explore, so naturally, I rode my bike from the airport to the city center and back again, while meeting up with Mark Wagenbuur, aka @BicycleDutch for dinner.
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- My Airport Ride Video: • Connect that network t...
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Background:
Hi Everyone! My name is John Simmerman, and I’m a health promotion and public health professional with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization in how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.
Since 2010, I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be while striving to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."
The Active Towns Channel features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.
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Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2023
I want to add a small point that should not be overlooked: A lot of the roads in Germany, especially in the east, were designed much wider to allow tanks and other heavy military equipment to be deployed quickly. 40 years of cold war thinking, and the fear of an uprising in the east, made its mark in our cities. Of course, that happend on top on the fantasy that the car will be the traffic solution for everyone.
Yes, that is an excellent point. And cars have an insidious way of filling up whatever space you provide to them.😉 Thanks so much for watching. I hope you are enjoying the Channel. Cheers! John
This was true of German/Prussian planning well before 1949. Also the distance from Schönefeld (now BER) to the fromer West Berlin is not all that far.
Pity I missed the premiere. That is quite the ride! Mind you, this was not the shortest route to where we met! I do hope you didn't take the same way back. The way back could be much shorter!
Yes, correct. The way back was much shorter and, in several ways, much more pleasant. Plus, I was riding into that beautiful sunset too. Thanks again for meeting with me for dinner, that was definitely the highlight of the day for sure. Cheers! John
Indeed, few people arrive at an airport by bike, but thesignal situation could nevertheless be much better
For sure! Thanks for tuning in. Cheers!
It's not so much about the travellers, but about the staff working on an airport. Of the 66k staff and crew working on and around Amsterdam Schiphol airport 4000 come by bike to work. (though along noisy highways ..). And Schiphol wants to lift that to 7-10k (for 'environment' , health and reduced traffic congestion around the place).
And the same with a good rail connection. The Schiphol intercity railway station (along the track A'dam to Rotterdam/The Hague) has 99k passengers daily. Of both the travellers (plm 140k) and workers (66k) , a great deal use the train .
for being a very very new area which has more than enough delays the infra is really a bit disappointing - especially that one bridge that had just nothing.
@@lws7394 Yeah, I typically the rare traveller on the airport cycle paths, but I see many people riding to and from work at the airport and nearby businesses. 😀
Great.
The old airport was 30min and the very old airport in Berlin was 10min from the Center. Both are now parks and great for biking.
If you are next time in Berlin I can show you a more loveable way from the airport to the center. I have follow you on google maps and you was so near to so beautiful places and missed them 😩
Still a great tour!
Cool! I definitely will. Thanks so much. Cheers! John
I came last week back from a bicycle holiday in Germany and where you ride is the best part they have.
Even that part isn't that popular, because it isn't pleasant to ride your bike.
I thought i was riding a nice bicycle road and then i noticed that i had to turn around. I couldn't get further on the road, because it was straight up.
People avoided the bicycle road, because even from the other way, it is so dangerous to go down, that people choose to ride on a 4 lane road with cars passing over 100km/h.
An other thing i have every year as i ride in Germany, i need to check my bike almost every day if i didn't loose any bolds and nuts.
In cities i ride on the road. Cars don't like it, but it is way better and strange enough, way safer.
It isn't pleasant to ride on the bike lanes, so many Germans ride on the road.
Next time as you are in Germany, watch the cars pass cyclists. You will notice 2 things, The bigger the car, the less space they give and people wearing a helmet get no space ad all. You notice it even better as you put on a helmet and try it. You will trow the helmet away, very soon.
For cars it is also not great. The highway is great, but other than that, the road quality is terrible.
But the people are great, so even with the incredibly bad infrastructure, i will go back to Germany next year.
Also the prices are lower and i am Dutch so low prices are always good.
Yeah, it definitely wasn't working that well for anyone, but they seemed all to be getting along just fine. Totally agree, the people were great. Cheers! John
It's like your were riding there forever so smooth you take those cycle lanes! I would be a bit scared i think because of the lack of clear direction and the sometimes dangerous obstacles you find on your way. Your a pro!! Thanks for the interesting ride!! 👋
You are quite welcome! Yeah, I have a lot of experience riding and filming in interesting, challenging places. hehe 🤣 Thanks so much for watching. Cheers! John
Good job navigating in Berlin, John. I'm wondering if I have the necessary reflexes to handle some of the tighter configurations for bicycles. Cheers.
You'd probably be fine, but it was a long trip.
Yep, cars are king in Germany...
Yes, it is quite an interesting balancing act they are up against since cars kill cities. Leipzig seems committed to finding a more healthy balance, only time will tell. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
Depends on the location. Berlin is huge, and BER is not in Berlin
@@ActiveTowns i don't believe in that sadly, germany still subsidizes gas and the gas you use for cooking and other things, they still have an addiction to building single family housing and i'm not seeing that change anytime soon.
i honestly think people will start to really push for change when the world's at it's worst.
@@miles5600 please stay with the facts.
For fuel the (very high) tax was reduced for three month last year due to a very high market price. During the same time public transit was basically free (9€ per month) and is now limited to 49€ per month. The other one is a price limit on gas for heating (!), which is set at about double the average just one year prior.
@@kailahmann1823 so it that supposed to mean that germany if moving away from cars and coal? cause i ain't heard nothing about them getting greener which doesn't make me care about the gas prices. just build the damn nuclear plant and move to green energy already...
I never cycled in Berlin, but I see a lot of things I know from 15 years ago in northern Germany when I cycled from Groningen to Odense (Denmark). I liked the German cycling infrastructure in the rural areas but in the city you were constantly confronted with cycle paths close to the road, not wide enough to overtake another cyclist. And on a lot of places the left side of the sidewalk was concidered a cycle lane without a clear distinction from the pedestrian side. In Denmark the cities were a lot better to cycle, but the danish rural roads back then felt less safe than in Germany.
That sounds like a fascinating trip. Thanks so much for watching. Cheers! John
Wow, nice long trip… Being to narrow is probably the number one issue with German cycle lanes. This is often the reason for painted bike lanes: There might be another one on the sidewalk, but that's probably just 1 meter or even less.
Back in the days small towns and villages also often required you to cycle on anything that barely resembled a sidewalk. These are now mostly gone or at least no longer enforced, as it's clearly illegal to require cyclists on something where they can't cycle. Also in rural areas you have to plan your trip ahead, because there are still many roads with just no bike infrastructure but 100 km/h traffic - however there is almost always an alternative, sometimes less obvious and planned more for it's landscape than it's speed.
@@kailahmann1823 yeah, i did the trip with my wife, we got married only a few months before the trip. Great way to really learn to know each other. We had a day trip from Bad Bederkesa to Cuxhaven and back. It got dark, and somehow the cycle path along the road just ended where another county started. So we had to cycle on the 100 km/h road for 5 kilometers or so… to make things worse. My head light broke of and because I couldn’t see to much I bumbed on a stone on a cycle path so I broke two spokes in my front wheel just two kilometers from our campsite. Had a fun time the next day trying to communicate with a German bike shop owner, my German wasn’t good and his English neither… but we found out which bike parts he could sell me.
Oh mz god! I live in Berlinnn
Yay! I had a good one day visit and had to fly out the next day. Cheers! John
Where did you park your bicycle at the airport? I am thinking of riding there as I'm only taking a backpack, but I can't find any information on google or on the BER site! Thank you.
I actually took the train from Leipzig to BER and checked into the airport hotel because I have a very early flight home to Austin the next morning. Once my luggage was stored in the hotel room, I did the ride from BER to the city center and back again.
I can't say I saw any significant bike parking areas/structures there but I did see some workers riding in, so there must be some bike racks somewhere.
Great ride! Very eye opening. I know that I have said it before, but it bears repeating, even with the shortcomings and inconsistencies along the way, I would give my eyeteeth to have that here in Yakima, Wa. Thanks for sharing, John.
This is an essential comment. The level and quality of bike infra is not absolute, but differs for each situation and country. From my Dutch point of view I see an incredible number of possible improvements, but overall this is (much) better than in perhaps 95 per cent of urban area all across the world.
I hear ya! Keep pushing. It's too important not to. Cheers! John
Yes, Rene. Also, that is a very good point.
@@reneolthof6811 it's really just the number of those details, that's very typical here in Germany. After almost every trip I could hand the city a list of easy 50 things, where they just need to fix a sign, resettle a dislodged brick or add some paint marking to make cycling more safe, convenient and less confusing.
Just wondering if the 3 lanes roads with big apartments on right wasn't a reminiscence of old east-Germany building style, brutalist liked those big roads for sure.
Yeah, that sounds about right to me. The good news is they have the space to do some pretty cool stuff. Cheers! John
People often say traffic in Berlin is an absolute disaster and chaos, but this wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. The car share in Berlin is a lot lower than in other German or Dutch cities, while the bike share is pretty average for a major German city. The king in Berlin is really the public transit. The roads however feel like completely overbuild: three lanes with rarely a car on them - but maybe during rush hour hell breaks out and they need this?
For the bike infra, that's mostly typical for Germany, including some "what the hell did they think at this intersection?" and the 1 meter paved bike lanes on the sidewalk. What's unusual are these bollards everywhere and you should really not combine those with an undersized bike lane. A painted unprotected bike lane on a multi-lane road is also not a good solution - let's hope, that's only temporal.
Yeah, I was really impressed by the number of buses I saw. Thanks for watching. Cheers!
You enter Berlin at the 17:30 mark. It is a pity that there appears to be no bicycle infrastructure between the current new terminals at SXF/BER and the former main terminal, now Terminal 5 (which is mothballed owing to COVID). If there was, you could have accessed Waltersdorfer Chausee which would have given you a pleasant and more direct path to your final destination. I suppose the authorities would rather you take the S-Bahn over to the north side of the airfield now. But at least we see all the infrastructure that has been built in the 33 years in the former East, since the two Berlins and what is now Brandenburg have had divisions removed.
Ah cool! Thanks for the info. Cheers!
There is a very good cycle path between Terminal 5 and Terminal 1.
@@marsdaake Good to know. I was worried that the removal of the runway between T1/2 and T5 had resulted in there bending no infrastructure
most north german cities are a lot better than this tbh
Yeah, first in this region. Probably the best German city for a bike friendly environment I’ve explored is Münster, but that was way back in 2015. Clearly there a lot potential there in Berlin. People want to ride. Thanks so much for watching!
Berlin is by fat the best city for every transport/traffic, due to the masses of wide streets (also for pedestrians etc. - most are done by the prussions - and with aleys) which give always a lof of options. most other cities (in general in europe) have not those options, because it is difficult to restructures smaller streets (irrelevant if it is a huge part of london or paris which have more narrow streets - or mid size cities). and Muenster is (apart from being a different kind of city) NOT better (and has far less options)
@@publicminx Thanks so much for watching and for your contribution to the conversation. It is much appreciated and I hope you are enjoying the Channel. Cheers! John