Why so Many People Bike Here.

What do you think are the most exciting biking cities in Europe? Münster? Amsterdam? How about … Konstanz?!

Yes, the southern German has just pledged $25M toward the continued development of cycling over the next two years, which builds upon a long history of serious investment in biking as a means of transport.

But the question is how? At a time when bike advocates are struggling in so many cities to win investments from political leaders, how has this small city known more as a tourist hub managed to become more than just a destination for German holidaygoers? The question it seems, has a surprising answer. Watch for more!

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A great resource for determining the state of biking infrastructure in Germany. ADFC Bike Report Card:
https://fahrradklima-test.adfc.de/ergebnisse#c5487

If you are interested in learning more about how Konstanz is planning to further improve its network, this is a great source! https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/fb91e593ed30480eabf29b6f37fce1af

The mode share is crazy, seriously check out the link above.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction (A surprising success!)
1:00 Konstanz Bike Ranking (ADFC Report)
1:42 Arriving in Konstanz (Bike Trail in Petershausen)
2:49 Waterfront Infrastructure
4:09 City Infrastructure
5:46 Intersections and Bridges
7:16 Why Konstanz is a Great Biking City
7:48 Using Tourism for Better Infrastructure
8:02 Two Types of Cycling
10:09 Final Thoughts and Community Announcement

What if there were a town with views like this a small but dense Urban core and oh yeah what if that town also happened to have some of the best cycling infrastructure in all of Germany well this hypothetical in fact exists in the small German city of constant when

My wife and I visited for the first time this summer we fell in love with it laidback promenades a Charming Old City cool water Pleasant breezes mountains in the distance and a laid-back atmosphere that exists eternally on holiday and above all that I discovered probably the best cycling infrastructure that I’ve

Personally experienced but don’t take my word for it Upon returning home after that first weekend I discovered that adfa members ranked the city as the fourth best city with between 50 and 100,000 residents in all of Germany so they’re clearly doing something right but first a reminder to stick around to

The end for an announcement about the community which I’m launching during my first visit to the city I decided just to enjoy my time and didn’t film anything Upon returning home and doing some research I realized that I had to return the ADF or the AL minus deut far

Club basically the bike Lobby runs an annual survey of its members to rank their cities on various topics using the German GPA system which is inverted from the US meaning a 1.0 is the best score and a 4.0 is the worst looking at the ranking of constant despite it and most

Cities in Germany being between a 3 and a four constant has for example a 3.3 overall it still stands out as being better than the rest so a few weeks before my bonard 100 expired I loaded up the bike and set off on the very long 3

And 1 half hour train trip from heidleberg down to the city of constant located here on the Swiss border upon arriving in constant on this second trip I decided to begin in the same location as my first trip rather than exiting the train at the Central Station I El

Lighted just outside at Peta hen this part of the city was much more pleasant than Google Maps had led me to believe what looked like an industrial park from above was actually modern and bright with old buildings and good cycling infrastructure sprinkled in while the choice had been random the first time I

Realized that a massive bike trail parallels this section of double track for quite a long ways it is super useful for those who commute with onor train and bikes to reach destinations which are perhaps located between two of the stops it serves as a main artery for

Entering the city from the North or west by bike or by rail at many points it is also possible to turn off the main trail to reach local destinations or to take a bridge over the tracks and this was only the beginning although we will return to

These surprising areas I first want to show you where I felt that the infrastructure was the best and where I enjoyed being the most in a city largely visited by tourists but also populated by students it is important to have access to Waterfront Leisure destinations while many tourists that

Visit the region go to the beaches sprinkled around the lake which are also reachable by bike I realize that most students and locals spend their time at a few parks and promenades where the rine exits Lake constant it isn’t somewhere you’d normally visit if you were traveling to get here but my wife

And I had a great time spending hours by and in the water for the first time in my life I covered in New Freedom biking directly to the Waterfront my bathing suit and jumping right in then afterwards sitting on a bench and reading a book the infrastructure to

Take you to these places is a mixture of race cycle tracks and trails as well as the cycling bridge over the rine and if you decide you want to move to a different swimming spot it’s super easy to do so as many trails parallel the river even being mixed use another great

Thing about constant’s Waterfront are the cafes and restaurants we found with with direct biking access this was super useful when my wife and I wanted to get pizza without going all the way into the city or leaving our spot to watch the sunset but as we saw earlier it isn’t

Just the waterfront that’s great the biking is also great on many residential and water parallel streets I saw people biking to and fro of all ages young and old seem to feel comfortable getting around the city in this way both times that I’ve been in constants I’ve had to

Bike to either the supermarket or to pick up food and found it incredibly easy to do so when you leave the dedicated bike trails off of the water you enter raised cycle tracks that line most of the major streets off of the water and if you need to go down a

Residential street it is likely to be some sort of farasa bike street or two-way biking on a one-way Street the first time that I was in constant my wife and I stayed overnight at a budget hotel on the outskirts of the city I was worried about getting into the city from there

But we had dedicated cycle tra tracks and bridges the whole way not only that but reaching the hotel from the train station also in the outskirts was made easy as the biking trail had an exit right where we needed which connected to the raised cycle tracks the entire way

To the hotel and the hotel actually had dedicated bike parking underground which was super great for a peace of mind I also noticed that the adjacent Industrial Park were well linked to the cycling Network which is something Germany does not traditionally do very well and this is not just me

Cherry-picking a few good examples in my two trips to the city I would just find a destination on Google Maps and be able to easily reach it without leaving some sort of intentional infrastructure it could of course be better but the locals would have to tell you specifically

About how despite having many types of good infrastructure including raised cycle tracks separated bike trails biking streets and more what impressed me most were the intersections and the bridges this is usually where a city especially especially a smaller one like constants will struggle because it is expensive to retrofit or custom build

Bridges my opinion on Bridges is that when you want to deconflict a major road without angering motorists and therefore generating push back they are the best way to do so but constant does this better than any other city of the size that I’ve ever seen or researched

Outside of the Netherlands of course in the city center whenever possible cyclists and pedestrians cross over or under streets using Bridges and the design design is such to allow bike traffic flow to continue at speed with little Interruption this also makes Crossing safer for cyclists and vehicles although pedestrians will need to be

Careful when using the same underpasses that said the underpasses have well-marked Junctions of their own and facilitate a large volume of users and it isn’t just the repurposing of existing bridges that I found interesting there are also a large number of dedicated Bridges just for cyclists and pedestrians the prime

Example is this one over the r built in the 1990s but there are so many more which show that the city is really trying to get this right and although I didn’t witness so many of them personally there are quite a few well-designed intersections in the city as well which complement the bridges

When you can’t or don’t need an expensive overpass this point about the bridges and intersections brings me to the core of why constant is a truly great biking City it strives to deconflict different modes of transportation from one another and seems to have Push pushed through improvements without getting blocked as

Seems to be an issue in so many cities around the world it makes me wonder if the increased number of leisure cyclists and constant’s focus on tourism has actually helped gain good infrastructure for tourists and locals alike this leads to my second point that tourism can be co-opted to make things better for

Locals as well great infrastructure ideas do not matter if you can’t make them happen so using tourism or something else super important to the local local economy is not always a bad idea and here I think that it’s also important to highlight a difference between two similar concepts with

Similar but different needs cycling for sport or Leisure versus cycling to reach sport or Leisure while you may think that both are the same cycling for sport or Leisure is what most people think of when they think of the term cycling these are your road cyclists mountain

Bikers and kids biking in some sort of loop they end most Journeys where they begin and are less concerned with how good the infrastructure is as they are often not biking unless the weather is good or when they don’t need to get somewhere Road cyclists will often have

More speed and engage in vehicular cycling while mountain bikers and kids are less likely to conflict with roadways by Design on the other hand cycling to reach a sport or Leisure destination means that a cyclist is substituting a vehicle trip to reach somewhere like a beach or a gym and this

Type of cycling has much in common with bike commuting in that it benefits from good deconfliction from vehicle traffic if towns only consider cycling for leisure in building their infrastructure they will focus on lwh hanging fruit like cheros or painted bike Cutters I mean Lanes or bike trails which take you

Outside of the city or in a very indirect route although constants has this it also has so much more what I learned in constants is that while you’d think the infrastructure is geared towards those cycling for leisure or sport it is actually intended to help tourists and locals reach Sport and

Leisure destinations with most spots on the lake or river being well connected and reachable by bike making good infrastructure to reach Leisure destinations has been an excuse to make the infrastructure better overall this type of cycling has the added benefit of reducing single vehicle traffic as well

And I’m sure that most of us have visited lakes or National Forest in the summer only to spend hours in traffic I don’t know about you but that’s not how I’d like to begin or end my holidays thank you for sticking around to the end

Of the video I’m sure that I’ll get a lot of push back from locals about being too positive but I think it’s important to realize and to congratulate them on what they’ve managed to do thus far and if you stayed around this far in the video this message is probably addressed

To you recently I’ve launched a patreon and I’m looking for interested viewers like yourself to join I’m trying to build a Community not asking for support I want a movement of people in small towns who are interested in building good urbanism cycling infrastructure and Transit so if you’d like to join me and

Join this movement check out the link to my patreon in the description below bye for now