Our reader Georg Thorand says about the article “Each bollard costs 459.87 euros”:
I was stunned when I read that. Almost 500 euros for such a bollard and then the costs of painting the cycle paths red. So around a million euros for this campaign? Despite all my understanding of safe cycle paths, I am of the opinion that this is overshooting the mark. The coloring of additional cycle paths is still not finished and will cause further costs. It would be enough to just color the intersection areas red. You might think that the city of Aachen has enough money. But exactly the opposite is true. Nothing at all is being done for existing cycle paths. Example: Adenauerallee, Lintertstrasse, Hitfelder Strasse, where there has been a sign saying “Beware of cycle path damage” for what feels like 50 years. Many roads in Aachen are broken and you meander from pothole to pothole. Here too, little is being done. Nothing against bike paths, but some things are just overdone.
Ursula Cohnen writes about the same article including comments:
With the outcry about the supposedly disproportionately high price for the bollards and the subsequent call to “now the billing will be done,” all the facts about the costs are initially stated in an apparently factual manner. However, these then lead to the embedded comment: “Luxury cycle paths” are being built in Aachen, “natural cycle paths behind the existing green spaces” are also being built, the entire cycling facilities have only been wastefully installed for the “alleged, subjective safety gain”, the entire planning is a “misguided approach”, there is a lack of “sensible people in local politics in Aachen”, etc.
Nobody lists the insanely high costs of car transport that states and municipalities have to pay every year. Transport policy is expensive and serves the safety of ALL road users, but one-sidedly always focusing on the bicycle streets and making them dirty does exactly what Mr. Esser warns about and unfortunately does himself: it divides, polarizes and incites people against each other.
Eckehard Fiedler also deals with this topic:
High costs for bollards wouldn’t scare me if the expansion of the cycle path network showed any concept. Bollards are just one of the many types of cycle path expansion that are currently being tested in Aachen. Much more important than the activism of spilling as much red paint as possible would be to continuously expand routes to make them usable and safer for cyclists. Here and there a piece of disjointed cycle path, which ideally ends just before the intersection, isn’t of much use. I travel a lot by bike in Aachen, but so far the situation for cyclists has hardly improved. Cycling in Aachen is and remains life-threatening.
Dorette Christfreund says about Michael Ziemons, the CDU candidate for the mayoral election
Mr. Ziemons managed the corona crisis extremely well. That’s why I was a little conflicted about whether he could be a good choice for mayor. But your article from September 10th makes the decision much easier. The populist, meaningless platitudes that Mr. Ziemons formulates here do not encourage people to vote for him. So he would like to go back to the last 40 years before Keupen, where hardly any plans were implemented for fear of voter discontent. Because you wanted to take EVERYONE with you. Especially those who are unwilling to rethink despite clear, expensive signs of global warming. Super! The plans that Ms. Keupen is now finally daring to implement actually came about within the last 40 years in the committees BEFORE her term in office… Maybe an Aachen CDU can also arrive in the 20th century.
Regarding the proposal to rename Sedanstrasse, Norbert Strompen says:
I cannot understand why a group of Aachen citizens think that the street name “Sedanstrasse” is no longer appropriate. Of course, a battle in the Franco-German War took place in Sedan in September 1870 – the French defeat also marked the end of French imperial rule. Sedan became a symbol of German-French rivalry. For France, Sedan was a symbol of national shame, for Germany, a symbol of superiority that sparked an exaggerated national consciousness. This found expression in the annual Sedan celebrations in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. Today the German-French relationship is considerably better. Today, the name Sedanstrasse should no longer be seen as a victory for the Germans over France, but rather from the perspective of “avoiding senseless wars”. In this respect, I think it is right that the name Sedanstrasse remains.
Also read:
This is how much the bollards on the Wroclaw cycle path cost
Marcel Pelzer says, among other things, the idea of moving the red light district to the roof of the Horten House:
That reminds me of the – somewhat modified – advertising slogan from my youth, which I’m sure many “real people” still know: “Egg, egg, egg, waste – hoarding is the end of the matter.”
With this innovative idea for the hoarding house, I’ll call it “Puff for Life – the penthouse of curiosity”, someone has really given completely new ideas to the controversial topic. First of all, this should be viewed as positive, because new things are often better than the old ones. The fact is: A place for regulated prostitution should be a consensus in Aachen, otherwise forbidden and hidden prostitution would only continue to increase. But for me it is also a fact: no longer in the original location in a prime city center location. I therefore advocate for, I call it in memory of the “Sträßchen” “Antonius-Arkaden”, formerly Aachen-Arkaden, the empty shopping temple on Trierer Straße. Lots of space on the ground floor with shop windows, underground car park with hundreds of parking spaces including charging infrastructure with fast charging technology, existing connection to public transport. Let’s discuss…
The Aseag and the home games of Alemannia Aachen keep Manfred Spiertz busy:
Aseag should concentrate on its core business: transporting its “contract customers” for a corresponding fee. For a long time, Aseag has been breaching contracts with its customers several times a day. While on match days, as I personally experienced, the “Ömmesöns shuttles” fly into the Elisenbrunnen every minute, I waited almost 100 minutes for a further journey to Vaals. The lines out of town are also regularly affected on Saturdays (e.g. line 21). This also applies to the other days of the week. There appear to be no driver issues for the Tivoli shuttles. With professional software and hardware models, a regulated workflow (like in many other cities) should be able to be achieved. But it’s like most things: the fish stinks from the head.
