Mayor Jung wants “symbol politics”: outrage over cycle path plan on Leipziger Ring | Regional

Leipzig – In 15 years as mayor, Burkhard Jung (63, SPD) sometimes made decisions out of the gut, but with reason and a sense of reality. In the council meeting on Wednesday he has now left this path.

As BILD reported, Jung spoke out in favor of the ring between the town hall and the round corner being single-lane, with one of the two lanes each becoming an extra-wide cycle path.

That there is already a bicycle road a few meters away? Unimportant! That permanent traffic jams threaten? All the same!

In the beginning it was just a test: Now the cycle path is to take up an entire lane, the ring to the New Town Hall become a single lane

Photo: Rico Thumser

“It’s about the city’s symbolic yes to the traffic turnaround,” says Jung. “That is the deeper background of the decision.” And that will probably find a majority in the red-red-green city council! Civil parties and business are outraged!

► City Councilor Dr. Sabine Heymann (57, CDU): “We were not shown how this would affect other modes of transport.”

► City councilor Sven Morlok (59, FDP): “Nobody is against switching to bicycles, but city traffic must be considered as a whole. Individual solutions don’t get us any further. “

► IHK boss Dr. Thomas Hofmann (65): “It is gross nonsense to set up a double offer next to each other in parallel to a bicycle street that has been well designed for years and to restrict vehicle traffic for this. This can no longer be communicated. The improvement of the cycling infrastructure in the outskirts of the city is certainly better suited for symbolic politics. “

► Chamber of Crafts President Matthias Forßbohm (51): “The symbolic policy neither benefits the urban climate goals nor does it correspond to the urban development plan, which clearly prioritizes commercial traffic.” Here, the various road users are played off against each other.

► City Councilor Katharina Krefft (43, Greens), on the other hand, considers the debate to be absurd: “We are talking about a section that is extremely little used by individual traffic. The tracks are not used. “

The city’s traffic census, however, says the opposite: According to it, 31,700 cars drive between the town hall and Gottschedstrasse every day. That is more than at the opera or at Roßplatz.

Good for Mayor Jung: his way to work is not affected by the single-lane ring.

Map: City ring turns into a bicycle highway - infographic

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