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Thousands Sign Citizen's Initiative to Ban Private Cars in Central Berlin

A petition signed by over 50,000 people from Berlin wants to ban private car use within a massive area around the center of Germany's capital city. The idea is a citizen's initiative started under the Autofrei Berlin (car-free Berlin in German) name.
Person holding sign that writes "#ENDCARS" at a protest in Berlin 38 photos
Photo: autofreiberlin.de
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Their goal is to get authorities to ban private car use in a zone that is surrounded by the S-Bahn ring train route. The result would be the world's largest car-free urban area in the world. The surface that would be private car-free has an area of 34 square miles (88 square kilometers).

If you need to put 34 square miles into perspective, think of Manhattan, then enlarge it by about 30 percent. For even more context, you can think of an area as big as Disney World in Florida, or half of Washington D.C., or one-fourth of Detroit.

When the initiative had already received 50,000 signatures, out of which 20,000 were required to provide enough quorum to enable the next phase of the legal process that such changes need to go through to grow from initiatives to laws, the people behind the idea deposited those signatures at the country's Senate.

After this step, Germany's Senate has five months to examine the initiative's legislative proposal, and then it can make a recommendation to the country's House of Representatives. The proposal can be stopped by the latter institution or by the Senate if its legality is under question.

If it does not pass the House of Representatives, German media reports that those who started the initiative want to raise at least 175,000 signatures to trigger a referendum, which would mean that Berlin residents would have to vote on the matter. The said vote would take place in 2023, and the initiative would need to pass just like any other referendum, so even more votes would need to be cast.

If Germany's House of Representatives refuses the proposal, and does not pass the referendum, that would be the end of the Berlin Autofrei private initiative.

Unlike other bans, this would not focus on internal combustion engines alone, as it would also ban electric vehicles or hydrogen-powered vehicles. The group behind the ban considers that these categories of vehicles still pose similar issues to conventional vehicles, as they can pollute the air through tire wear.

However, do not think that such a large area in Berlin would become entirely car-free. Instead, it would be free of private cars, except for those used by delivery drivers or people with restricted mobility. Furthermore, the ban would also allow twelve renter car journeys per year in the area, which are supposed to cover one extraordinary situation per month, presumably.

The area would not be free of commercial vehicles making deliveries, emergency services vehicles, or even taxis. Any private individual who wanted to drive a vehicle in the said area would be affected if the ban were to be set in place. The worst-affected people will be those who live in that area and own vehicles, as they might effectively not be able to drive their cars home anymore.
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Editor's note: Photo gallery shows images of bicycles and other human-powered vehicles for illustration purposes.
Photo copyright for the opening image of this story goes to autofreiberlin.de

About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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