Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
berliners.jpg

In a report for CBSnews.com on Berlin, Germany's booming bike culture, Christine Lagorio expresses shock at the sheer number of bikes she saw in Berlin and the way in which motorists and cyclists share the road "gracefully." This, she says, is something she has never experienced in her home town of New York City.

In this city where less than half of residents own a car, bicycles are not only in vogue; over the past two decades it has become downright common to ride one every day. They are chained to every pole or knob on every major thoroughfare. They crowd apartment building lobbies. They dominate the flow of traffic in intersections. Bicyclists have power in numbers; a major fantasy of U.S. cyclists has come to pass in Berlin: cars yield to bikes.

Lagorio, who rides a bike in Brooklyn, thinks of Manhattan as a "death trap" for cyclists. She wonders what exactly makes Berlin and New York so different:

"The biggest difference riding in Berlin is that the drivers know what to look out for. There's no right on red here, so the drivers wait for the pedestrians and the bicyclists to pass at every intersection before going, " says Wolf Schroen, an avid cyclist and expat who moved to Germany seven years ago from bike-friendly Austin, Texas.

“Some are just shocked at the amount of other bikers on the roads – that riding is so casual here,” he said.

In Berlin, the city has taken action and its philosophy seems to be "build it and they will come." Two years ago, city officials pledged to work toward bikes comprising 15 percent of the city's traffic by the year 2010. After devoting 2.5 million Euros last year to expanding on the bike lane system, the goal isn't far off. The city already has 80 kilometers of bike lanes in the streets and 50 kilometers of lanes on sidewalks. Recent numbers showed that cycling has doubled in the past decade, and now the city's 400,000 riders each day account for 12 percent of total street traffic, according to the green-living blog Treehugger.

Photo: bisschenbissig/Flickr

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

And the Winner Is…: Streetsblog’s New Video Team Honored with Deadline Club Award

Streetsblog's social media team, led by Engagement Editor Emily Lipstein, received the Deadline Club's award for digital video reporting on Thursday night.

Friday Video: The ‘Clear’ Benefits of Daylighting

The doyen of daylighting is back with a new video.

May 16, 2025

How One Anti-Gov’t Republican Signed onto a Street Safety Bill to Rein in Reckless Drivers

State Sen. Anthony Palumbo went from "government overreach" to reaching across the aisle in a single day.

May 16, 2025

‘All in the Family’: NYPD Commissioner and Power-Broker Mom Are Both Crusading Against E-Bikes

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has justified her criminal crackdown on cycling by saying that complaints about cyclists are the most frequent concerns she hears. Such complaints could be coming from inside the house.

May 16, 2025

Puddles Plague Hudson River Greenway As Rain Batters NYC

Greenway cyclists face dangerous conditions when it rains — as Streetsblog observed this week in Manhattan.

May 16, 2025
See all posts