Pedestrians are currently the only ones who can walk the Kettenhofweg in Frankfurt's Westend without any problems.

Since mid-October, the eastern section of the street, which represents an important east-west connection in the city for cyclists, has been transformed into a bicycle street.

Signs will probably be put up by the end of this week and white markings and red paint will be applied to the road.

As long as the work is in progress, there will be no traffic on this section.

Some of the cyclists, who are particularly agile, manage to bypass the barriers.

Mechthild Harting

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Cyclists will soon have “priority” on the first 850 meters of the Kettenhofweg between Bockenheimer Landstrasse and Mendelssohnstrasse.

You can then even drive next to each other, and the right-before-left rule that otherwise applies in the dense one-way street network of the west end is then abolished for the Kettenhofweg.

Motorists for whom the cyclists are too slow are forbidden from pushing and shoving - they have to submit to the two-wheelers.

Eleven streets will be redesigned

With the Kettenhofweg, which runs parallel to the Bockenheimer Landstraße through the southern Westend, the city has dedicated a third side street and made it a bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly connection.

In the resolution to become the "bicycle city of Frankfurt", which was adopted in August 2019 by the then coalition in the Frankfurt Römer, the city committed itself to redesigning a total of eleven streets in this way.

The suggestion and parts of the concept come from the “Radentscheid” that in the summer of 2018 called on the city to do more for cycling so that everyone – including children and the elderly – can cycle safely in Frankfurt.

40,000 Frankfurters supported this demand with their signatures.

Many who are used to the fact that transport projects take years to plan alone were amazed when the first redesign was tackled on the Oeder Weg in summer 2021.

Corresponding work on the Grüneburgweg began this summer - and now it is the Kettenhofweg's turn.

In its westward extension, the Robert-Mayer-Straße is to follow, onto which the traffic of the cycle expressway from the Vordertaunus is to flow one day.

In the foreseeable future, according to the mobility department, the Schweizer Straße and the Brückenstraße in Sachsenhausen should also follow.

The speed of the procedure has to do with the "Radentscheid" and the associated pressure from parts of the population.

But also with the fact that the current Roman coalition must push ahead with the traffic turnaround necessary for climate protection.

The legal requirements for air pollution control in the city make this necessary.

And something else is decisive for the high speed of this transport policy: Neither years of planning nor a high investment outlay is necessary for the conversion of a roadway into a bicycle lane or bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly streets.