Where do cyclists need to ride here? I'm Dutch, but sometimes I visit the German city of Gronau (Köningsstrasse pictured here). So I'm not very familiar with German road design.

Intuitively this design looks made for the cyclists to go on the red path (sorry, it's just vaguely red in this picture). In my country, cycle paths are also red. It also seems the safer option. So why did they paint a bicycle on the car lane?

by gabrielo0

14 comments

  1. For me as a Dutch person it even suggests that cars wouldn’t be allowed there. It feels so weird to drive there.

  2. It seems those bike markings on the road are pretty fresh, on Google Maps you can see the workers painting them on. What you don’t see on google maps is a sign inditcating it’s a “Fahrradstrasse” which is a shared bike-car road with priority for bikes. Either they plan to change it to that or some other reason. My guess is, the old bike path on the walkway (red bricks) has been moved to the street to make more room for pedestrians and also force the cars to drive slowly and carefully. I guess it’s not always been a 30kph road either. (Or all the dutchies with their bikes where to much for the regular bikepath to handle /s)

  4. It is weird af. I would suspect, given that the marking on the street seems to be fresher, that they redid part of the street and for some reason put the biking lane from the red path, onto the street.

    I have no idea why though, maybe they want to rebuild the entire bike path and the marking on the street is only the first step, before rebuilding the other part. Maybe the official bike path has some damage somewhere, and therefore the one on the street is just a replacement. Or the workers doing that just had no idea what they are doing either.

    Personaly i would use the red bike path, as you already said, it seems to be safer.

    edit: another possible reason: iirc the bike path width got adjusted some time ago. maybe, the red bike path is to small now, so they had to draw the new one on the street, to adhere to the new law, even if it is a little non-sensical

  5. The markings on the road have no legal significance. Sometimes, “sharrows” are used to remind everyone that cars and bicycles share the street. Using a separate bike path next to the road is not mandatory unless indicated by the round blue bicycle sign.

    So here, bicyclists have a choice where they want to ride. Some might prefer the separate path (feels safer because there are no cars behind you), others might prefer the shared road (statistically safer because you’re more visible to cars at intersections, often better road surface).

  6. A lot of places are switching from bicycle paths on the sidewalk to allow cycling on the road. That’s a pretty big shift because the doctrine has always been “cyclist should never ever use the road” before

    This is an example of that. Now they paint bicycle symbols onto the road to signal that cyclist are allowed to use the road. The old cycle lanes can still be used and a lot of people who aren’t used to cycle on the road are happy about it.

    They will probably get rid of the old cycle lane once the road will be renewed at some point. Until then you can choose which one you want to use.

  7. It’s been like this for at least several months, so if it’s work in progress, they’re doing it very slow.

  8. The obvious solution here is for cyclists to use the pedestrian sidewalk /s

  10. r/StVO would be the place to ask.
    Anyway, bike paths only need to be used if any of the three blue signs with a white bike on them is installed next to them. If not you may also use the “car lane”. You can do so also if the bike lane is unusable (glass, ice etc.).

  11. The cycle path you’re seeing here is a so called “Angebotsradweg”. It’s a cycle path intended as an “offer/option” to cyclists who do not want to use the road. Since there’s no sign for it (blue circle with white bicycle) the cyclists can either use the road or the cyclepath here.

    The bike painted on the road has no legal implications, I assume it’s there to visualize to the drivers that bicyclists are allowed to use the road despite there being a cycle path.

  12. > So why did they paint a bicycle on the car lane?

    The old bike path doesn’t meet the legal requirements for being marked with the “blue lollipop” sign that would make it make it a mandatory bike path. The bike on the street is there to remind drivers that cyclists may choose to ride there and have every right to do so.

    As a cyclist, I would use the bike path when going slowly or when riding with children, but when I actually want to get somewhere, the street is probably better because the surface is much superior and I actually have enough space to overtake slower cyclists.

  13. i know that area and cycle there quite often. The elevated path used to be for bikes and pedestrians (sign VZ 241). Some 2 years ago Gronau replaced the sign for VZ 239 meaning that the elevated path is for pedestrians only. It seems that Gronau wants cyclists on the street. Drivers however do not really like bikes on the street there (after all these years, they really dont expect cyclists on the street), so I (and most other cyclists) usually just use the footpath.

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