Bicycle traffic in Hamburg part 1

One of the first impressions in Hamburg, was the large amount of cyclists on the streets. In general, traffic here is quite intense: on the streets and in the public transportation and rapid–transit system. Notwithstanding the fact, that public transit works like swiss (german) watch, there are many of those, who change place on a bicycle. Obviously that this had been done long time ago, and also it is evident, that many has been done in order to support this choice. Practically, each urban arterial street has bicycle lane within its «red lines» or rights of the way. From HAM-cyclists-01 Almost each intersection with crosswalk has special marking which designates bicycle lane.  From HAM-cyclists-01 Naturally, this cohabitation of cyclists and pedestrians does not means the dominance of the later. From HAM-cyclists-01 Thus, for example, in the image above, the man in a red coat desperately rang the bell while old lady in white in the foreground had not came down from the «red path». The bicycle path crosses bus stop here, and such occasions are ubiquitous in Hamburg. Last week I had a meeting with my ERASMUS Buddy — Kevin Vincent — american, studying Urban Planning at the Hafen City Universität in Hamburg. At the same time, he works at the local institution for transport planning. I shared my observations, he noted, that in the future, the situation will change.  In order to make bicyle traffic work more truly purposeful, it is necessary to make lanes on the carriage-way's account. Probably, thus it might be possible to reduce percentage of commute in a personal car and consequentially, reduce CO emission.        While in Riga bicycle lanes appear on the sidewalks, in Humburg they conquer the space of the automobile.