Bavaria gets a bicycle law

Driven by the broad coalition for the Radentscheid Bayern petition, which had gathered over 100,000 signatures for better cycling infrastructure but recently failed at the Bavarian Constitutional Court, the parliamentary majority of CSU and Free Voters has passed its own cycling law for Bavaria. Against the backdrop of the state elections in October, the law was quickly drafted and pushed through the state parliament without the usual and promised association hearings that took place, for example, with the cycling decisions in Berlin and NRW.

The government under Prime Minister Markus Söder has set unambitious goals. The only concrete one: 1,500 kilometers of new bike paths are to be created by 2030, which, when calculated down, would mean just 91 meters per municipality per year, as criticized by Bernadette Felsch, spokesperson for the Radentscheid alliance and chairwoman of ADFC Bavaria. The cycling law is a law in "Söderstyle".

"To pick up moods from the population to quickly and without the involvement of experts, draft a stripped-down own law, even if it means changing one's opinion by 180 degrees, that's #söderstyle. This is certainly not how the founders of the Bavarian Constitution envisioned direct democracy."

In terms of content, the alliance considers the law insufficient to make cycling in Bavaria safer. Felsch points to 84 cyclists killed and over 18,000 injured in Bavaria alone in 2022.

"At this snail's pace, Bavaria would only have a cycling network by 2160. This means we are even lagging behind the goals of the Bavarian Cycling Program 2025," Felsch complained.

The Radentscheid movement remains open to constructive dialogue and will continue to advocate for improvements in the cycling law and real cycling conditions.