These photo capture life in Freiburg following the November, 1944 Allied bombing of the city. The bombings killed an estimated 3,000 citizens and destroyed major sections of the city leaving 30% of the population homeless. Yet through this devastation, you can see that the culture of cycling and tram ridership persisted. We find this strong emphasis on biking and tram ridership in modern day Freiburg which continues to communicate and promote to its citizens this healthy and 'green' way of life

Freiburg is the city of bikes. With over 500 km of bike-protected roadways and trails, cycling accounts for about a third of all transportation in the City. To become this cycling Mecca, Freiburg has prioritized the communication, creation, and promotion of cycle-friendly city planning. In the photos above, you can see several examples of this approach spelled out. Freiburg's approach has focused on ensuring that cycling within the City is as safe, fast and convenient as possible.

First to ensure safety, Freiburg has worked extensively to protect cyclists on shared roadways, especially the most busy. This "Cycle-Priority-Network" places cyclists as the priority on roadways with well-designed bike lanes and right of way designations. This Network is further stregnthend by the special traffic incentives cyclists have in the City. Many of the main arteries of the City are designated fahrradstraße which require motorized vehicles to yield to cycling traffic. Cyclists in many areas of the city are also able to bike down one-way streets in both directions providing an additional incentive to cyclists.

Along with these incentives and safety measures, the visibility factor of cycling also plays into the City's ability to successfully communicate and promote its strong bike culture. Nearly everywhere you go in Freiburg, you will find dozens if not hundreds (as is the case in the photo above taken outside the Universtity's library) of parked bikes. On the streets adjacent to these bikes, you'll also see dozens more cycling on their way to and fro. Constantly being surrounded by bikes certainly helps to promote and communicate the cycling culture of Freiburg to citizens and tourists alike.

Trams and SC Freiburg

Like most other cities in Germany, soccer and support for the town club are heavily woven into the fabric of Freiburg. SC Freiburg, the local club, play in the top division of German soccer and fill every single one of the seats in their 20,000+ seat stadium for each home game. Very on theme with the rest of the city, few drive to the games with the majority of fans arriving via trams that arrive at the stadium every 2 minutes on game day. Besides being more convenient that driving to the game (and with less traffic), a major catalyst for the heavy reliance on trams is the deal the tram system has made with SC Freiburg. Each ticket to an SC Freiburg game also doubles as a ticket for the entire tram system for the day of the game. Suffice it to say, free transportation to SC Freiburg games is definitely a tool used by the tram system to promote ridership not only to the game, but for the fans attending the game to continue to use the system on non-game days.

Now to the million dollar question, how transferable are Freiburg's highly successful communication and promotion strategies to the complex web of public transportation in the Greater Philadelphia region? Looking first at the positives, there certainly are areas where SEPTA and the City of Philadelphia could implement strategies already employed in Freiburg. Specificially, the City of Philadelphia could look into creating the sort of cycling incentives we see in Freiburg, such as the ability of cyclists to pedal both ways on a one way street and the creation of Philadelphia's own system of fahrradstraße. Of course, any sort of modification would have to ensure that biker safety is still protected if not improved by the adjustment.

The case study of the Wiwilíbrücke could also serve a valuable lesson to the City in incentivizing cycling. Perhaps a similar sort of system could be installed along a bike lane in Center City that records the total number of bikes that pass through every day. In that way, cyclists and noncyclists alike could see how important bike lanes are in protecting all those people while also making the cyclist feel like they are contributing to something bigger than themselves.

Looking now at communicating and promoting SEPTA use, SEPTA could look into partnering with the Sports Complex in South Philadelphia that contains the stadiums for all the major sports teams in the City. Like in Freiburg, by offering free or discounted SEPTA fares with the purchase of a ticket to these games, SEPTA could increase its ridership not only to game day, but to the system overall as fans discover the usefullness of the transit system.

While these adjustments could help to improve both SEPTA ridership and cycling within Philadelphia, it does not mean we should also expect the City to transform into Freiburg anytime soon. The fact of the matter is Philadelphia has no where near the cycling or mass transit culture that exists in Freiburg. As much as SEPTA and the City work to improve its communication and incentivizing of cycling and mass transit, a larger cultural shift in the City will have to follow suit. Philadelphians love their cars and probably are not ready to ditch them in the way Freiburg citizen's have. While incentives and better communication to the public may help the City get closer to the 'Freiburg ideal' they will not be enough on their own. That is not to say, however, that they would not be a good first step for the city on this path.