The Berlin Senate stops bollard projects – this is pure eyewash

Car-free Friedrichstrasse? Abandoned. New bike lanes? Scrapped. 30 km/h speed limit on main roads? Reversed. And now, the bollard projects in the Mitte district are also being scrapped. What sounds a bit like "mission accomplished" is the result of two years of Berlin's transport policy, or more precisely, CDU-led transport policy.

With remarkable consistency, the CDU has worked on the transport policy handwriting of the Red-Green coalition – and wrested the Greens’ heartfelt department in order to systematically dismantle what had begun under the slogan “transport turnaround”.

It was precisely this transport policy, among other things, that brought the CDU its surprising election victory two years ago. The Green Party, led by its frontwoman and then-Transport Senator Bettina Jarasch, seemed to have turned half the city against them by daring to be more 'Bullerbü'. In the end, the polarization benefited Kai Wegner in particular. Now, Wegner's CDU's anti-Green election campaign is being implemented piecemeal in Berlin's traffic.

The fact that the party risks a conflict with its coalition partner, the SPD, which once supported Pollerbü, will be manageable. So far, Wegner and his colleagues have worked together much more smoothly and without incident than the SPD, the Greens, and the Left once did.

Bollards in Berlin: CDU pursues politics for the shop window

But upon closer inspection, many of these traffic stops are more symbolic. Anyone who thinks all bollards will disappear is mistaken. To make it clear again: the current resolution on bollards only concerns the Mitte district, and only the bollards that have already been installed there as part of a project. This means: not a single one of these red and white posts will be removed – neither in Mitte nor anywhere else. And it also means that every district can continue to finance so-called neighborhood blocks to reduce through traffic through residential areas or even more extensive, comprehensive traffic calming measures, if there is a majority there for it. The Senate has no say in this.

But one thing is completely missing: an idea from the CDU on how they want to organize traffic in Berlin. Take Friedrichstadt, for example: Of course, there were good reasons to end the traffic experiment with the bicycle race track in the middle. The seemingly arbitrarily chosen exclusion zone always remained an alien element that caused more annoyance than it stimulated the desire to stroll. Friedrichstraße is simply too unattractive for that at the moment. Even back then, Hackescher Markt would have been a much better place for a true pedestrian zone – and it still is today. But nothing has happened there yet.

And where is the "consistent transport policy" promised at the same time as the reopening of Friedrichstrasse, the solution for the historic center around the renovated Gendarmenmarkt? All measures taken so far do not do justice to this prime location. Incidentally, this also applies to Checkpoint Charlie, still one of the top destinations for Berlin tourists. There is no transport plan for it.

Berlin traffic: No solution for absurdly cheap parking vignettes

The same applies to the new fee structure for resident parking. Kai Wegner, among others, has long recognized that the current €10.20 per year – or about 2.8 cents per day – is absurdly low, and that the enforcement costs alone are significantly higher. The fact that there is still no plan for a "one-size-fits-all" parking concept is a disgrace.

But one thing is definitely missing: At the beginning of the coalition, the CDU promised a de-ideologized transport policy, and Kai Wegner, too, says at every opportunity to this day that he wants to create a transport policy that takes "all road users" into account. What remains of that? Constantly saying no to the measures of previous leaders is definitely not enough. And constantly accusing others of ideology inevitably backfires on oneself at some point.