Germany trialling suspended wooden highways for cyclists

STUTTGART: Germany is hoping to make cross-city bike trips more inviting with a new kind of heated bike path made from wood and suspended above the ground.

Local officials have announced that bike traffic in parts of the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg is to be raised 5 metres above roads, creating room for parking spaces, wider pavements or park areas underneath.

Assembled like the plug-in system of a toy car racetrack, the Bike Highways from Swiss start-up Urb-X are built from prefabricated modules made of local wood with two lanes designed to allow cyclists to keep a steady pace without pausing for traffic lights.

Officials say they want to build 20 such cycle highways - each 20 to 30 kilometres long - for a cost of about half a billion euros by by 2030, and hope this bike lane could both protect cyclists from cars and free up needed space underneath the cycle lanes.

Baden-Württemberg State Transport Minister Winfried Hermann said in April that the technology would initially be used for at least a 1-kilometre cycle path in the region around the city of Stuttgart in order "to show what is possible."

"Intersections ruin every fast cycle path," said Hermann. "If we go up in height, the problem would be solved."

The bike highways have two lanes in each direction and a non-slip surface. Because the surface is heated in winter, the elevated highway can also be used all year round without the risk of snow or ice, Klaus Kirchmayr from the Urb-X company says.

Running alongside either side of the track are lampposts and a fence to prevent cyclists from falling off.

"This is exactly the kind of thing we need," State Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann said. "We have huge congestion problems in Stuttgart, for example. We can only get away from that if we implement innovative ideas like this."

Hermann admitted that building a bridge is always more expensive than continuing on the ground, but said where there is no space left, these wooden elevated roads would be an option.

The bike paths are also sustainable, Hermann said, as the modular design from local wood allows for quick construction and easy maintenance.

The project is still in the early stages and Hermann said that his experts were concerned that the wood might mould and then have to be torn down after 30 years. Nevertheless, he hopes that the first wooden highway will be passable by 2026.