Back in 2019....the city of Frankfurt decided to conduct an experiment. There's a street on the north bank of the Main River (splits the city in half). The street....Mainkal....runs about 700 meters (more or less). The experiment was....to halt all car-traffic entirely for a summer period, and see if it improved 'things' (don't ask what).
So it wrapped up and there were results. Some people used the street a good bit for access to get from the west-end to the east-end. They weren't happy about the halt to traffic.
Bike-riders were happy because they were still allowed access.
Residents along the street were super happy.
Residents along alternate paths....were NOT happy because they got double the traffic.
So I noticed in HR (public TV for the region) the topic coming up, and that Frankfurt had approved the experiment for a second time. There's the hint that they might make this a permanent situation.
To some degree, if you hang around the city enough.....you start to notice that a fair sum of people want Frankfurt's 'heartland' (the inner-inner-city) to be zero access to cars. It'd just be small electric vehicles....subway stations....bicycles, and people walking.
When I lived around Frankfurt in 1978....one of the commentaries from a German in the shop (older guy in his 50s).....on 'beauty'....Frankfurt was one of the least landscaped cities in Germany to visit. In his mind, you came to Frankfurt to watch soccer, get drunk in Sachsenhausen's bars, visit the red-light district, or attend university. That was it.
In some ways, it's advanced (I think).
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