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posted by CoolHand on Sunday August 02 2015, @04:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the deutchlanders-being-cool dept.

Munich wants to extend the thrill of the open highway to cyclists with a network of bike lanes running through the city and into the suburbs, in a bid to encourage car-free commuting.

The ambitious plan calls for a network of 14 two-way bike paths, each 13 feet wide and fully segregated from automobile traffic, that would spread out over an area of about 400 square miles. No crossroads, no traffic lights. It's an autobahn for cyclists, or, as the Germans obviously call it, a Radschnellverbindungen.
...
The planned routes would connect Munich with small city centers, universities, and employment centers. They would be built over a combination of what's now open land, small streets, and conventional size bike lanes.
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Building the Radschnellverbindungen's not a done deal yet. Local authorities must approve the project before construction starts, and it won't be cheap. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung pegs the estimate at $1.75 million per mile.

Ausgezeichnet!


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  • (Score: 2) by jcross on Sunday August 02 2015, @02:59PM

    by jcross (4009) on Sunday August 02 2015, @02:59PM (#217012)

    I've commuted and got around by bike a fair bit, and I can tell you that there's a huge difference between biking with cars versus on a separated bikeway. Biking with cars is more stressful and slower, because you have to deal with traffic lights. Travelling on a bikeway feels fast and fun, and with some level of fitness it would not be hard to cover that in an hour. And actually if you look at the actual traffic speeds in dense U.S. cities like New York, San Francisco and D.C, 30kph or 18mph is about the speed you're looking at if you were driving:

    http://infinitemonkeycorps.net/projects/cityspeed/ [infinitemonkeycorps.net]

    Now that's why you'd probably be taking the subway in those cities, but a bikeway also gives you some of the flexibility of driving, plus fresh air and exercise if you're into that. I think this is an awesome idea.

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