Bremen - GERMANY

Fact and figures about Bremen
The City of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany with approx. 550.000 inhabitants. The city has a long tradition to develop cycle-traffic. Even in the times of heavy increase in motorization bike lanes were built as well, whereas in other big cities in Germany existing bike-lanes were converted into lay bys for car-parking. Today, Bremen has 650 km of bike-lanes inside of streets, incl. stripes and advisory lanes, and the highest rate of bike-transport in cities over half a million inhabitants of Germany (28% modal split for cycling). More than 42.000 bike-trips a day are made into the city centre and one third of the trips in Bremen are longer than 6 km.

In the last years Bremen implemented a Masterplan for cycle traffic and guidelines how to integrate bike-traffic inside of streets as an important instrument to realize the measures of the Masterplan. A comprehensive infrastructure for cycle-traffic, and a dense and closed network of separate bike-lanes have led Bremen to become a “CHAMPION” city as for its cycling level.

Local activities in Bremen
The city of Bremen's motto within PRESTO is “Cycling Innovation and Large Scale Events”. The local activities planned during the project lifetime include following five actions:

1. Bicycle Parking Plan. Provide better bicycle parking conditions for big events like: fairs, concerts, football games (local football team is Werder Bremen), central areas. The action will cope with measures against theft, “wild parking“, peaks in public transport needs.

2. Promotion & campaigns for cycle-friendly lar ge-scale events. This action aims at promoting cycling to central places and events (e.g. soccer games, fairs, Ev. Kirchentag). The city of Bremen will improve the provision of flexible parking offers, additional bikes to rent, information and communication. A workshop with experts is planned in 2009.

3. Bremen Bicycle Festivals. The biggest open air event of ADFC (the German cycling federation) is the yearly bicycle festival with shows, games and a lot of information around cycling and cycles.

4. How many Cyclists we are! A bicycle counter with big display will be located at a central route with the scope to demonstrate the big number of cyclists using thier bike everyday in the streets of Bremen, to show the effects of cycling on carbon dioxide reduction, to make motivation to cycle stronger, to make less difficulties with “normal“ traffic census.

5. E-Bike presentation. During fairs and festivals in 2009 and 2010 electric bicycles and pedelecs will be presented to the larger public and tested on hilly parcours. The action aims at promoting e-bike for daily transport among a larger target group. The Bremen-Oldenburg region will run a pilot project on electric mobility (1 of 8 in Germany, supported by BMVBS).