Five German Cities in Project for Cleaner Air – Better Public Transport and Bicycle Paths

The German government has presented, as part of the fight for cleaner air in German cities, a project to improve public transport – the project includes five cities: Essen, Bonn, Mannheim, Reutlingen, and Herrenberg, where it will be examined how improvements in public transport affect the reduction of air pollution, according to a statement from the Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.

The five cities will share 130 million euros allocated for improving the public transport network, increasing the fleet, new bicycle paths, and other measures aimed at increasing the number of people using public transport and reducing traffic and harmful gas emissions.

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The city of Bonn, among other things, plans to introduce an annual public transport ticket priced at 365 euros, which means one euro per day.

“This project will allow us to discover which measures truly impact the reduction of air pollution,” said Bonn’s mayor Ashok Sriharan to the dpa agency.

The European Commission has threatened Germany with a lawsuit before the European Court if the government does not take measures to reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide in cities.

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At the so-called Diesel Summit earlier this year, the government decided, together with the automotive industry, to invest one billion euros in a pollution reduction project.

However, the German government and the automotive industry still disagree on the issue of retrofitting outdated diesel engines, which face traffic bans in several German cities.

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While the automotive industry insists on software changes in engines, the German government advocates for mechanical modifications to diesel cars that do not meet the highest Euro 6 standard, which the industry rejects due to high costs.