While other European cities are reducing cars and boosting bicycles, Berlin is driving in the opposite direction. The city’s dominant CDU party wants to reverse to a time when cars ruled the roads. But are they speeding to an election crash?
When Berlin’s transport senator recently increased the speed limit on many major roads, she framed it as a sign of success. The CDU’s Ute Bonde boosted the limit from 30 to 50km/h in September, saying the lower limit was no longer needed. It was introduced in 2017 to improve air quality and comply with European Union targets, which had now been met.
Since faster cars pump out more particles, it’s only a matter of time before pollution again exceeds the legal level. According to the Clean Cities Campaign, pedestrians are eight times more likely to die if hit by a car at 50km/h than 30km/h. But the move wasn’t driven by logic or safety: it’s the latest ideological victory for the pro-car party.
Berlin was once celebrated for its low car ownership and extensive public transport system. Now, under Mayor Kai Wegner’s CDU-led coalition, it’s systematically championing a car-first agenda, prioritising drivers over pedestrians, cyclists and the environment. After winning the 2023 election on a pro-motorist vision, the CDU continues to placate its voter base, most of whom are located in Berlin’s Grenzbezirke, or outer districts.
Along with reversing speed restrictions, the Berlin Senate has slashed the 2026 budget for cycling infrastructure by €1.75 million. Spending on pedestrian safety has been more than halved, plummeting from €5.4 to €2.6 million. But the price for an annual resident parking permit has barely moved; at just €10.20 a year, it’s less than the cost of a day pass on public transport.
Meanwhile, a utopian proposal by the Volksentscheid Berlin Autofrei initiative to ban most private car traffic inside the Ringbahn was rejected by the Berlin city-state parliament in early November, after being opposed by all parties for being too far-reaching. The organisers plan to push on and collect signatures to trigger a referendum.
The €720 Million Road to Nowhere
No road seems more pointless than Berlin’s never-ending A100. The 16th and latest 3.2km segment of the inner-city highway opened in August between Neukölln and Treptow at a cost of €720 million, or €225,000 per metre: more than double the estimate. With so much spent, one might assume that traffic should be running smoothly. But police recorded 31 accidents on the new Autobahn in the first month alone: triple the crash rate of other roads in the same area in the previous year.
Despite this fiasco, the CDU isn’t slowing down its enthusiasm for the A100. Bonde wants the federal government to soon publish a feasibility study into building the 17th segment of the highway. It would cross the Spree and carve through Friedrichshain towards Storkower Straße, decimating dozens of clubs and buildings in its path, and costing at least €1.1 billion.
The plan is “stuck in the past”, according to Ragnhild Sørensen from Changing Cities e.V. “No developed nation has destroyed buildings to construct their motorways in over 20 years,” Sørensen told The Berliner.
While the A100 reveals the CDU’s ambition to abandon the 21st century, the planned redevelopment of Torstraße shows its determination to please outer-district drivers at the cost of inner-city livability. The Mitte thoroughfare is currently a two-lane road lined with trees and generous pavements hosting cafes, restaurants and bars.
But it’s set to be transformed into a four-lane traffic artery. Pavements will shrink, trees will be felled and cyclists pushed off the road onto the narrowed pavements – a recipe for conflict. Sørensen tells us that the Torstraße redevelopment plan “is an old-fashioned way of designing streets”. It also ignores Berlin’s Mobilitätsgesetz, a 2018 law which “stipulates a protected bike lane on Berlin streets”. Such bike lanes are missing from the Senate’s plans.
The cost? An estimated €10.1 million. The reason? Not clear. Data from environmental lobby group BUND shows that car traffic on Torstraße has decreased by 13% between 2019 and 2023. The Senate Department for Transport states that about 16,000 cars pass Torstraße on an average day. However, a four-lane street only becomes necessary for traffic volumes of over 30,000 cars a day, according to Sørensen. At a time of budget cuts, the Senate is choosing to spend over €10 million to expand a street, even while traffic is decreasing.
The Torstraße plans expose the Senate’s inconsistent messaging: it has committed to plant one million trees by 2040 but is felling them to build a four-lane road. It also chops away at the chances of Berlin achieving its own target to become carbon neutral by 2045. Citizens are being locked into an expensive, inefficient mode of transport that most people haven’t asked for and don’t want.
Steering Against the Traffic
Berlin’s car-forward policies are especially confounding when considering the direction being taken by many other major European cities. The CDU seems to want to travel back to the 20th century, when metropoles like London and Paris built their ring roads. Both cities have since moved on to a progressive urban mobility agenda, establishing low-emission zones, pedestrianising parts of their centres and investing in public transport.
Paris is transforming its roundabouts into urban forests. Amsterdam plans to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2030 from its city centre. Copenhagen has built bicycle highways connecting the city to nearby suburbs. But Berlin is pouring concrete over the future in the hope of paving a way back to the past.
Being aggressively pro-car might have helped the CDU come first in the last election, but it’s not clear if it will help win the next one, due in September 2026. The latest opinion polls show the CDU’s vote share has slipped from 28% then to 22% now. Meanwhile Die Linke, which is against the A100 extension, has risen from 12% to 19%.
The automobile agenda isn’t the only factor at play, but the poll dip shows that being pro-car isn’t the easy vote-winner it was five years ago. That makes sense, considering that about two-thirds of Berliners don’t own a car. There’s a natural limit to how many people will vote with their wheels.
The CDU’s transport spokesperson Johannes Kraft declared “the car belongs in Berlin”, and said his party was “making sure the city functions”. But if you build more lanes and roads, it usually creates more congestion. Traffic experts have a term for this: induced demand. The next election will show if the CDU has already hit maximum demand for its ‘make cars great again’ message.
