White 'ghost bikes' are dotted around Berlin at spots in which cyclists have perished
and flowers are piled up around a white-painted bike on the side of the road. This is a memorial to an eight-year-old boy who died after being hit by a truck while cycling with his mother to school. These white “ghost bikes” are dotted around Berlin at spots where cyclists have perished. In 2018 nearly one cyclist a month died on the roads of Germany’s capital.
Berlin’s state government, a three-way Social-Democrat, Green and Left Party coalition, is promising a “transport revolution” to reduce the number of road deaths to zero. Last year 45 people died in traffic accidents in Berlin, 11 of them on bikes. . In June Berlin passed a law to make driving less attractive. The aim is to turn the city into a sea of Lycra. “Privileging cars has to stop,” says Matthias Tang of Berlin’s department for transport and the environment.
But progress has been slow. Berlin’s current government was formed more than two years ago, and promised better bike infrastructure from the start. But the first new wider cycle lanes have only just been built. Opposition conservatives oppose the law, so unless the pedallers’ paradise is built quickly, the “revolution” could be reversed by a change of government in less than three years.
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