Bremen hosted its third mobility management seminar for architects and planners on August 13th!
The field of architecture and urban planning demands a wide array of knowledge, yet mobility and transport planning are rarely emphasised in an architect’s education. However, every building let alone every real-estate development generates traffic, every user of a building comes with mobility needs that influence the building’s infrastructure, and whose mobility needs are shaped and effected by the infrastructure built.
In order to foster the creation of real-estate developments that inherently support the creation of sustainable mobility patterns, the City of Bremen is implementing its innovative parking regulation, the mobility bylaw. It prioritises integrating mobility management measures into new real-estate developments and, therefore calls for professionals to have a deeper understanding of sustainable transport options, user needs, and mobility behaviour.
That’s why the City of Bremen’s transport ministry has launched a collaboration with the local Chamber of Architects within the scope of the Interreg North Sea Region project SHARE-North Squared, offering a modular training programme in four parts. During the course of this programme, architects and planners will not only learn how to work with the bylaw, but also broaden their understanding of shared modes of transport, mobility services, user mobility behaviour and needs.
On August 13th, 2024, the City held the third seminar of the series, this time focussing on the Do’s and Don’ts of Cargo and Bicycle Parking.
Almost all bicycle riders have experienced the results of “not so user-friendly” planning of bicycle parking facilities. What looks good on a building plan often does not work well in real life and simply does not meet the practical needs of users with regard to parking their bicycles and cargo bikes. The result: bicycle parking facilities in new builds are difficult to access, unattractive for the designated users and stand empty most of the time as tenants and visitors look for more convenient locations to park their bikes, cargo bikes, strollers, trailers and more.
In order to address the most important and state of the art aspects of good cargo bike and bicycle parking, the City of Bremen was supported by the German Cycling Federation (Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrradclub; ADFC). The managing director of the ADFC Bremen, Sven Eckert, not only presented a broad range of bicycle types and good and bad examples of bicycle parking options, but also put an emphasis on the needs of different users: from children with small bikes and individuals with cargo bikes to people with special mobility needs (e.g. wheelchair-friendly bikes). Each bike has a different weight, spatial configuration and use.
Some of the Do’s in Cargo and Bicycle Parking
In order to create a good bicycle parking facility, four main purposes must be full-filled.
Bicycle parking facilities must
- Be user-friendly
- Secure the stability of the bicycles (prevent them from falling over)
- Ensure that they are parked in an orderly way and
- Protect against theft.
After a morning of bicycle parking in theory, the participants departed on an afternoon cycling excursion to view practical examples of good and not-so-good bike parking facilities in new builds in Bremen. This included: g
- the Gewoba’s “Green House” with its ground floor bike parking facility with automatic doors for easy access;
- the Weser Höfe with its rather cumbersome access to the bicycle parking room in the cellar (only accessible via lift, not suited for cargo bikes) and less than ideal ramp for accessing a rather generous space for parking various kinds of bikes;
- and the small city-owned Domshof bike parking facility that features easy access and secure options for parking a variety of bikes incl. lockers for storing purchases or bike bags.
During the excursion, participants were able to test a variety of cargo bikes in order to get a feeling for the amount of space required to manoeuvre, park and also ride different types of cargo bicycles. The overall outcome: a better understanding of what architects and planners need to consider in order to create high-quality bicycle parking facilities that meet the practical needs of a broad range of users with a broad range of bicycles and the approval of all authorities and users involved.
A bit of background
In 2022, the City of Bremen introduced one of the most progressive and innovative parking bylaws in Germany. The most common parking bylaws for new real-estate developments require a developer to plan and implement a specific number of car parking spaces (and perhaps some bicycle parking) for commercial as well as residential properties. This offer of car parking often encourages a higher car-ownership rate (offer-generated demand), high building costs for developers and limited possibilities for development sites that may be dedicated to promoting low-car lifestyles.
Bremen’s parking bylaw was converted into a mobility bylaw (the Mobilitäts-Bau-Ortsgesetz) which places the does not focus on the demand for car parking but on the demand for mobility. The most intriguing aspect of this new bylaw is that it primarily focuses on mandatory mobility management measures, fostering the integration of shared mobility and promoting active modes of transport, leaving the construction of car parking spaces a secondary, not the primary, requirement.
You can find more information in the Mobility Guide from Bremen.
Find it here.