Sunday, November 5, 2023

20 Kilometers Per Hour Chatter

 In a couple of weeks....Frankfurt will be a German city that mandates a 20 kph limit in the center part of town (meaning no vehicle can go faster than 12.4 miles per hour).  In case you were interested....that's the average speed of a bicyclist on a flat open road.  

Part of town affected by the mandate?  The 'Wall-Street' part of town.

The general idea, if you review the commentary of the city council?  About every couple of months, they will enlarge the area....so it's not a four-city block thing.   It would probably encompass a square kilometer within two years, and grow from that point on.

The general idea?  Well...making the center of town 'car-unfriendly'.  In simple terms, people who work in this center section....would eventually realize a drive into town simply makes no sense....that it would add another 15 minutes of commuting to work.  So they'd adapt to car-parks along the S-Bahn/subway routes.

At the same, I would suggest....people would generally start to ask why they need to live in town....they might as well move 30 to 50 kilometers beyond the city limits.

Not affecting the ECB (the EU bank structure on the east part of town)?  Well....that is the curious thing.  At the pace of things....I doubt this 20 kph limit deal comes to the ECB 'neighborhood' for at least a decade.  This is designed to be a 'heart-of-Frankfurt' agenda.

On having a 5-star subway system?  Of the forty-odd metropolitan cities of Europe that I've been to...Frankfurt is one of the few cities that got it's public transportation plan into fifth gear back in the 1970s.  It's not that hard to sell the use of the U-Bahn/S-Bahn system for the city.

No comments: