HEIDELBERG, Germany – Eckart Würzner, a mayor on a mission to make his city emission-free, is not very impressed by the promises of General Motors, Ford and other major automakers to abandon fossil fuels.
Not that Würzner, the mayor of Heidelberg, is against electric cars. The perfect postcard city in southern Germany offers residents who buy a battery-powered vehicle a bonus of up to 1,000 euros, or $ 1,200. They receive another € 1,000 if they install a charging station.
But electric cars are low on the list of tools that Würzner is using to try to reduce Heidelberg’s impact on the climate, an effort that has given the city, which houses Germany’s oldest university and an 800-year-old ruined castle, one reputation as a pioneer in environmentally conscious urban planning.
Würzner’s goal is to reduce dependence on cars, no matter where they get their juice. Heidelberg is buying a fleet of hydrogen-powered buses, building a network of bicycle “superhighways” for the suburbs and designing neighborhoods to discourage all vehicles and encourage walking. Residents who give up their cars can use public transport free of charge for one year.
“If you need a car, use car sharing,” said Würzner in an interview at the Baroque-style city hall in Heidelberg, which was almost deserted because of the pandemic. “If you can’t use car sharing because you are living too far away and there is no public transportation, use the car, but only to the train station and not to the center.”
Heidelberg is at the forefront of a movement that is probably strongest in Europe, but is present in many communities around the world, including American cities like Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon. The pandemic has given many citizens a taste of what densely crowded urban areas would look like if there was not that much traffic, and they like it.
Assemblers’ fossil fuel abstinence votes last month, including GM, Ford Motor and Jaguar Land Rover, are a tacit admission that they will no longer be welcome in cities unless they radically resolve their actions. Even so, the tide of history may be against them, as city planners try to free up space now occupied by vehicles.
Dozens of cities in Europe, including Rome, London and Paris, plan to limit city center traffic to emission-free vehicles over the next decade. Some, like Stockholm and Stuttgart, the German home of Mercedes-Benz, already ban older diesel vehicles.
National governments are increasing the pressure. Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Slovenia say they will ban sales of internal combustion cars after 2030. Britain and Denmark say they will do so in 2035, allowing only hybrids after 2030, and Spain and France in 2040.
These statements of intent “certainly put pressure on vehicle manufacturers,” said Sandra Wappelhorst, a senior researcher at the International Council for Clean Transport in Berlin, who follows plans by companies and governments to eliminate internal combustion.
Heidelberg, a city of 160,000 on the banks of the River Neckar, which was threatening to overflow its banks this month after unusually heavy rains, gives an idea of what a city of the future might look like with car light.
Heidelberg is one of only six cities in Europe considered “innovative” by C40 Cities, an organization that promotes climate-friendly urban policies and whose president is Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York. (The others are Oslo, Copenhagen, Venice and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands.)
Among the city’s measures to make cars irrelevant is the construction of bridges that would allow cyclists to bypass congested areas or cross the Neckar without having to compete for road space with motor vehicles.
Buildings are also important. The city has cut the energy consumption of schools and other buildings in the city by 50 percent over the past decade, a feat not small when many of the structures are hundreds of years old.
Battery-powered vehicles do not pollute the air, but they take up as much space as gasoline models. Würzner complains that Heidelberg still suffers traffic jams during rush hour, although only about 20% of residents travel by car. The rest walk, ride a bicycle or take electric buses that run along the narrow cobbled streets of the old quarter of the city.
“Passengers are the main problem that we have not yet solved,” said Würzner. Traffic was intense on a recent weekday, despite the pandemic.
Electric cars are also expensive. At current prices, they are out of reach for low-income residents. Political leaders need to offer affordable alternatives, such as public transport or bicycle routes, said Wappelhorst, of the Clean Transport Council.
“It’s not just about cars after all,” she said. “You need the complete package.”
The pedestrian zone in Heidelberg, normally full of tourists, but recently empty due to the pandemic, is considered the longest in Germany. But the best showcase for the city’s emission-free ambitions is built on an old railway freight yard on the outskirts of the city.
In 2009, work began at Bahnstadt, or Rail City. The empty terrain, which needed to be cleared of three unexploded bombs from World War II, offered planners a blank slate to create a climate-neutral neighborhood.
The modern apartment buildings, architecturally opposite the baroque center of the city of Heidelberg, are so well insulated that they hardly require energy to heat. The heat they need comes from a plant outside the neighborhood that burns firewood.
Cars are not banned in the Bahnstadt, but there is almost no traffic. Most of the streets are dead ends. The apartment buildings are set around generous patios with playgrounds and connected by walkways. The only street that cuts through the triangular neighborhood has a speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour, or less than 20 miles per hour. Bicycles have priority.
Bahnstadt, with 5,600 residents and still growing, has its own kindergarten and primary school, a community center, two supermarkets, several bakeries and cafes, two bicycle shops and six car-sharing stations, each with two vehicles electrical. Heidelberg’s main train station and a tram stop are a short walk away, and a cycle path follows an old railway line into the city center.
Jobs also exist. Bahnstadt has several large office buildings whose tenants include the German subsidiary of Reckitt Benckiser, a manufacturer of consumer products such as Clearasil and Woolite.
“The idea is to return to the classic old town, where living and working are closely linked,” said Ralf Bermich, head of the Heidelberg Environmental Protection Office.
Dieter Bartmann, who in 2012 was one of the first people to move to Bahnstadt, owns a car, but estimates he drove about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, in January, mainly to go to the supermarket to stock up on foods that were too bulky for load your bicycle.
Bartmann, a former manager of SAP, a software company whose headquarters are located near Walldorf, was sitting on a bench along a boardwalk that borders one side of the Bahnstadt. The area is blocked from motorized traffic and overlooks agricultural fields. Runners, cyclists and people with inline skates slid.
It looked idyllic on a sunny winter day, but Bartmann, a former president of the Bahnstadt residents’ association, said there are still things that could be improved.
He would like to do more to keep the cars out, for example, by blocking what goes on in the street. Some buildings have underground garages, but they were not built with electric cars in mind and do not accommodate charging points easily. The paved walk is not wide enough, said Bartmann, leading to conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians.
But he added: “This is a high level complaint. You have to be realistic. “
Würzner, the mayor, said his goal was to make Heidelberg climate neutral by 2030, an ambitious goal. The city plans to generate its own wind and solar energy and is installing a hydrogen filling station for a fleet of 42 buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The city wanted to order hundreds of buses, but Würzner complained that bus manufacturers were slow to respond to the demand for emission-free transport.
“We can’t have enough,” he said. (Daimler, which makes buses in Neu-Ulm, about two and a half hours from Heidelberg, does not yet sell a city bus powered entirely by hydrogen.)
Würzner, who drives an experimental hydrogen-powered Mercedes, acknowledged that not all cities can afford to do all the things that made Heidelberg a showcase for environmentally sound planning. The University of Heidelberg, one of Germany’s most prestigious universities, has spawned several research institutes that provide a solid tax base. Residents tend to be well educated and wealthy.
“It is true that the city is in a very good financial position,” said Würzner.
But he said he always heard from mayors in Europe, the United States and Asia who wanted to emulate Heidelberg’s strategy.
“We all know that we have to go in that direction,” he said. “It’s just a matter of how fast.”