Temporarily, some of the capital's side streets are to be closed to traffic during the coming warm months. This is to create more space for the community - and at the same time make a big contribution to environmental and health protection.
After the much-discussed case of the car-free Friedrichstraße, Berlin is once again working on establishing car-free zones in the capital's neighbourhoods. According to an announcement by the Senate Department for Mobility, several side streets are to be transformed into "car-free summer streets". From May to October, these are to say goodbye to car traffic and offer Berliners space to play or linger. The closed sections are to be a maximum of 50 to 100 metres long and, because of the time constraints, will initially be separated from the parts of the street with continuing traffic only by plant beds, for example.
According to the spokeswoman of the senate administration, this is the first time that a project for car-free streets will take place in this form - with a seasonal time limit and on a voluntary basis by the districts. And many districts have already declared themselves ready and open to joining in since the project was presented last September. The neighbourhoods of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Mitte, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Tempelhof-Schöneberg, among others, have expressed interest in setting up summer streets. With neighbourhood initiatives, they are to bring new events and life to the streets of the capital.
However, the importance of the project does not end with its social value for the neighbourhood and the quality of life of the citizenry. The environment, as well as the health of residents, could only benefit in that vehicles will disappear from certain routes and neighbourhoods in certain months. For although it is a temporary ban on cars, reduced traffic emissions are likely to have a positive effect on Berlin in the medium term as well. And who knows, if the summer street project proves successful, it could return every warm season - or make way for new permanent car-free zones. After all, cities like Paris and Bordeaux have already been successfully organising such a project for years - on the first Sunday of every month, parts of the cities become completely car-free. With better planning and implementation than the Friedrichstraße, the car-free summer streets could also be a success in Berlin and thus complement the existing green environmental zone as a kind of temporary summer environmental zone.