Iam from germany and I need your help?

*correct.

IM

Our topic was the road users, in particular cyclists and their part in traffic. We took this topic, because when we walked the line, we saw cyclists everywhere; cyclists with different stories. We were looking for the special characteristics of cyclists in different spaces and wanted to know how the traffic works with bicycle riders; as this was our question.

PROCESS

First we walked the line from Altona to Wartenau across St. Pauli, Rödingsmarkt, Rathaus and Mönckebergstraße. We concentrated on the pedestrians, buses, cars and cyclists because we saw them most in the pictures we took. Especially, in Altona where there were a lot of cyclists. We chose Altona as our investigation area. Therefore, we went there again, where we chose five different points (S-Bahn Altona, Schell-Pressen-Straße, the beginning and the end of the Große Rainstraße) and took ten minutes to take pictures with an interval of 15 seconds. But we also took pictures, without a time limit, which was interesting and for us. After this process we chose the most relevant pictures for our topic.

RESULTS

The life on the streets is like a film. Everywhere you can see an act which describes a situation. The picture below for example describes an act. The woman would like to go to the other side of the street, therefore she has to go across the bus lane. She communicates this with the bus driver. According to this the bus driver or the woman must stop so one of them can across the street. Of course, we have traffic rules and everybody has to follow them, but in some situations, where the traffic has priority, the traffic considers the pedestrians and cyclists. Referring to the cyclist: everywhere you can see bicycle lanes; but in some areas you don’t. Therefore, cyclists uses the same streets as the traffic does. We noticed that the bicycle usage is actually higher in densely populated urban districts- in districts where the leisure facilities, shopping facilities etc. are subordinate. The most likely reason is, that some roads in Altona are quite narrow and as Altona is a crowd district which means there is not enough parking and that’s why people prefer using bicycles.

END

After the Workshop in Istanbul, which was an interesting experience to see how different but also identical two cities can be. I can conclude that on the one hand, Istanbul is a big metropolis with a lot of people and large amounts of traffic and with less green places. On the other hand, Hamburg, which is also a metropolis, and where the focus is on green places and the local public transport. In general the commuting in the space of Hamburg is a lot easier than in Istanbul. The most important reason for this is that there are many traffic rules which all work.