[ad_1]
HEIDELBERG, Germany – Eckart Würzner, a mayor on a mission to make his city emissions-free, is not too impressed by promises from General Motors, Ford and other major automakers to forgo fossil fuels.
Not that Mr. Würzner, the mayor of Heidelberg, is against electric cars. The postcard-perfect city in southern Germany is offering residents who buy a battery-powered vehicle a bonus of up to $ 1,000, or $ 1,200. They receive an additional € 1,000 if they install a charging station.
But electric cars are low on the list of tools Mr Würzner uses to try to reduce Heidelberg’s impact on the climate, an effort that has given the city, which is home to Germany’s oldest university and an 800-year-old castle ruin, a reputation as a pioneer in environmentally conscious urban planning.
Mr Würzner’s goal is to reduce dependence on cars, no matter where they get their juice. Heidelberg buys a fleet of hydrogen-powered buses, builds a network of cycle highways to the suburbs and designs neighborhoods to discourage all vehicles and encourage walking. Residents who abandon their car can use public transport free of charge for one year.
“If you need a car, use carpooling,” Würzner said in an interview with Heidelberg’s baroque-style town hall, which was almost deserted due to the pandemic. “If you can’t carpool because you live too far outside and there is no public transport, use the car, but just for the station and not for the city center.
Heidelberg is at the forefront of a movement which is arguably the strongest in Europe, but which is present in many communities around the world, including American cities like Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon. The pandemic has given many citizens a taste of what crowded urban areas would be like without so much traffic, and they love it.
Vows of abstinence from fossil fuels by automakers last month, including GM, Ford Motor and Jaguar Land Rover, are an unspoken admission that they will no longer be welcome in cities at all unless they are radically clean up their acts. Even then, the tide of history may be against them, as city planners attempt to free up space now occupied by vehicles.
Dozens of cities in Europe, including Rome, London and Paris, plan to limit downtown traffic to zero-emission vehicles over the next decade. Some, like Stockholm and Stuttgart, the German house of Mercedes-Benz, already ban older diesel vehicles.
National governments are adding to the pressure. Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Slovenia say they will ban sales of internal combustion cars after 2030. Britain and Denmark say they will do so in 2035, only allowing hybrids after 2030 , and Spain and France in 2040.
Such statements of intent “certainly push car makers,” said Sandra Wappelhorst, senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transport in Berlin, which follows corporate and government plans to phase out internal combustion.
Heidelberg, a city of 160,000 people on the Neckar River that threatened to overflow its shores this month after unusually heavy rains, provides a glimpse of what a light automotive city of the future could look like.
Heidelberg is one of only six cities in Europe considered “innovative” by C40 Cities, an organization that promotes climate-friendly urban policies and chaired by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. (The others are Oslo, Copenhagen, Venice and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands.)
Among the measures taken by the city to make cars irrelevant is the construction of bridges that would allow cyclists to bypass congested areas or cross the Neckar without having to compete for road space with motor vehicles. .
Buildings are also important. The city has reduced the energy use of schools and other buildings in the city by 50 percent over the past decade, which is no small feat as many structures are hundreds of years old.
Battery-powered vehicles do not pollute the air, but they take up as much space as gasoline models. Mr Würzner complains that Heidelberg still suffers from traffic jams during rush hour, even though only around 20% of residents travel by car. The rest on foot, by bike or in the electric buses that crisscross the narrow cobbled streets of the old quarter of the city.
“Commuters are the biggest problem that we haven’t solved yet,” Würzner said. Traffic was heavy on a recent weekday, despite the pandemic.
Electric cars are also expensive. At current prices, they are beyond the reach of low-income residents. Political leaders need to come up with affordable alternatives like public transport or bicycle lanes, said Ms Wappelhorst of the Council on Clean Transportation.
“It’s not just about the cars at the end of it,” she says. “You need the whole package.”
The kilometer-long Heidelberg pedestrian zone, usually packed with tourists but almost empty recently due to the pandemic, is said to be the longest in Germany. But the best showcase for the city’s emission-free ambitions is built on top of a former rail freight station on the outskirts of the city.
In 2009, work began on the Bahnstadt, or Rail City. The vacant plot, which had to be cleared of three unexploded WWII bombs, offered planners a blank slate with which to create a climate neutral neighborhood.
Modern apartment buildings, the architectural contrast to Heidelberg’s baroque city center, are so well insulated that they require almost no energy for heating. The heat they need comes from a factory just outside the neighborhood that burns waste wood.
Cars are not prohibited on the Bahnstadt, but there is almost no traffic. Most of the streets are dead ends. The apartment buildings are arranged around large courtyards with playgrounds and connected by walkways. The only street that crosses the triangular neighborhood has a speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour, or less than 20 miles per hour. Bicycles have priority.
The Bahnstadt, with 5,600 inhabitants and still growing, has its own kindergarten and elementary school, a community center, two supermarkets, several bakeries and cafes, two bicycle shops and six car-sharing stations, each with two electric vehicles. Heidelberg’s main train station and a tram stop are a short walk away, and a cycle path follows the route of an old railway line into the city center.
There are also jobs. The Bahnstadt has several large office buildings whose tenants include the German subsidiary of Reckitt Benckiser, maker of consumer products like Clearasil and Woolite.
“The idea is to go back to the classic old city, where life and work are closely linked,” said Ralf Bermich, director of the environmental protection office in Heidelberg.
Dieter Bartmann, who in 2012 was one of the first people to settle in the Bahnstadt, owns a car but believes he drove it about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, in January, mainly to the supermarket for stock up on commodities that are too bulky. to carry his bicycle.
Mr Bartmann, former director of SAP, the software company headquartered near Walldorf, sat on a bench along a promenade that borders one side of the Bahnstadt. The area is blocked off to motorized traffic and overlooks farmland. Runners, cyclists and people on inline skates passed.
It looked idyllic on a sunny winter day, but Mr Bartmann, former chairman of the Bahnstadt residents’ association, said there were still things that could be improved.
He would like to do more to prevent cars from entering, for example by blocking the crossing of the street. Some buildings have underground garages, but these weren’t built with electric cars in mind and don’t easily accept charging stations. The paved promenade is not wide enough, Bartmann said, leading to conflict between cyclists and pedestrians.
But he added: “This is a high level complaint. We have to be realistic. “
Mr Würzner, the mayor, said his goal was to make Heidelberg climate neutral by 2030, an ambitious goal. The city plans to produce its own wind and solar power and is installing a hydrogen filling station for a fleet of 42 buses powered by hydrogen cells. The city wanted to order hundreds of buses, but Mr Würzner complained that bus manufacturers were slow to meet demand for emission-free transport.
“We can’t have enough,” he said. (Daimler, which makes buses in Neu-Ulm, about two and a half hours from Heidelberg, does not yet sell a city bus that runs only on hydrogen.)
Mr Würzner, who drives an experimental Mercedes running on hydrogen, admitted that not all cities could afford to do everything that made Heidelberg a showcase for green planning. The University of Heidelberg, one of the most prestigious universities in Germany, has spawned many research institutes which provide a solid tax base. Residents tend to be well educated and affluent.
“It is true that the city is in a fairly good financial position,” said Mr Würzner.
But he said he often heard from mayors in Europe, the United States and Asia who wanted to emulate Heidelberg’s strategy.
“We all know we have to go in this direction,” he said. “It’s just a matter of speed.”
[ad_2]
Source link