Who is allowed to use this? City of Bonn causes confusion with cycle path marking
Bonn · Until recently, cyclists and pedestrians shared the pavement on Bendenweg in Bonn. Now it is apparently no longer usable for pedestrians. One thing, however, makes one wonder.
The situation is puzzling. The city has widened a cycle path along the tracks of line 18 in Dransdorf. On one side it is bordered by the tracks, on the other, towards the street, by a white line. Two bicycle pictograms on the ground leave no doubt as to who the path is for.
But of all places, where the cycle path meets the Bendenweg, a zebra crossing crosses the road. This leads the pedestrian onto the approximately 50-centimetre-wide area between the white marking of the cycle path and the kerb. "Is this strip now intended as a footpath?" is the first question that comes to the pedestrian's mind. Probably not, because there are lanterns on the strip at intervals of about 50 metres.
The new situation has also caused confusion for Jelena Lazarenko. Until recently, she sent her daughter to the nearby Kettelerschule via the path that was previously shared by cyclists and pedestrians. "There is no sign that says the path is open to pedestrians," she says. But then there is the zebra crossing.
But what concerns her much more: That her daughter and the other children from the neighbourhood now have to cross the busy Grootestraße twice on their way to school. There are two zebra crossings there. At one of them, parents organise a pilot service in the morning so that the children can get to school safely. There are no pilots for the second one yet.
And there probably won't be, says Christiane Henk. She is the chairperson of the school council and organises the pilot service. She says it is hard enough to get two people to look after a zebra crossing. "It can't be right that the children have to cross Grootestraße twice," says Henk about the new regulation that is now supposedly in place. Lazarenko agrees, saying, "It's not about the few extra steps, it's about the school route becoming more dangerous." The situation as it is at the moment is very misleading, the mother thinks - not only for children but also for adults.
The press office can help. In response to an enquiry from the General-Anzeiger, they say: "The area was planned as a joint walking and cycling path with a width of four metres. The narrow strip where the lampposts are located is not a footpath, but a safety strip 75 centimetres wide." The city has not yet given an answer as to how the shared use of the area is to be marked in the future.
The administration further explains: "The marking represents the safety separation strip between the shared footpath and cycle path and the carriageway. Safety dividing strips are not intended for use by walking and cycling traffic, but represent a safety space between non-motorised individual traffic and motorised individual traffic."
(Original text: Dennis Scherer; Translation: Mareike Graepel)
