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Traffic turner: Belit Onay stood for the Hanoverian Greens in the 2019 mayoral election in place of preferred candidate Annalena Baerbock - and won with the promise of a car-free inner city
Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / picture alliance / dpa
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Onay, you became mayor of the car-friendly city of Hanover in 2019 with the promise of a car-free city.
And you started with a traffic light coalition in the Council.
Definitely tough, right?
Onay:
We have good support from society and a mandate for the mobility turnaround.
Especially since the 2021 local elections, with a clear majority for the Greens and SPD.
We want to set an example for many other cities, which can then see in Hanover: it works, the change is feasible, it brings something to the city.
This is a huge opportunity for us as a city to get a completely different face.
SPIEGEL:
From your office window in City Hall, we can still see a six-lane car lane and the city behind it.
Did you get used to it?
Onay:
I have to go over it regularly.
I hear the noise, I see the many cars.
This is a burden on the climate, the air, but above all we lose quality of life - and it is a clear intervention in the city structure.
SPIEGEL:
Isn't Hanover just like that – a place with traffic rushing through?
Onay:
The historical connections in Hanover were severed after the war due to such wide aisles.
Further down on the banks of the Leine there used to be an island with a very bustling, beautifully grown structure.
It's all gone.
There are also completely unnatural cuts within the city, such as Schmiedestraße, which separates the old town from the shopping district.
SPIEGEL:
Now you're presenting a city concept that doesn't look all that radical.
Traffic lights and parking lots gone, more green and beautiful squares, but cars can still get everywhere, the six lanes in front of your town hall door remain for the time being.
Have you promised too much with the word car-free, or perhaps scared drivers unnecessarily?
Onay:
I think it's crucial that you look at the pictures and see what we have in mind.
For me personally, but also for our city planners, it is not about banning anything.
That's always the accusation: We block roads.
But we don't lock them at all, we open them for other uses.
SPIEGEL:
That sentence sounds friendly, but it's a question of perspective, isn't it?
This creates disadvantages for some.
Onay:
In essence, the sentence sums up exactly what we do.
We don't just put in bollards and that's it.
We want people to linger there and use the space for themselves – including those who come by car.
Life is supposed to take place there and we see today that this is not the case.
Cultural institutions such as opera or theater are looking forward to being able to show what they have to offer outside of their buildings, for example with theater rehearsals on the street.
SPIEGEL:
But you want to abolish parking spaces at the side of the road to make room for this.
Do you understand that some are afraid of such changes?
Onay:
Moving around by bike, on foot or by public transport improves people's quality of life.
It protects the climate, it helps the wallet.
And now, when the weather is nice, going to work almost feels like a vacation.
However, there are legitimate questions: How do customers get to retail, how do logistics work, how do people who live outside the city with poor transport connections get into the city?
We now have good answers to all these questions, right down to shuttle services for the last mile from public transport to the front door, which we are introducing in the rural outskirts.
Something like this can decide whether you can do without your own car.
SPIEGEL:
But you continue to invite people to drive into the city: the multi-storey car parks and their driveways remain.
If you take the goal of a climate-neutral city region seriously by 2035, shouldn't you drastically reduce car traffic?
Onay:
We are only taking the first step with the more attractive inner city.
The total number of cars must decrease.
We have half a million cars in the Hanover region.
Almost every second person, including minors, has a car.
Every morning and every evening we see that this is too much.
That's too much even for drivers.
When it comes to cars, many people still think of freedom.
But then people are stuck in a traffic jam on Vahrenwalder Strasse and hear traffic reports, that's not freedom.
SPIEGEL:
Hanover has co-founded a city initiative for the right to introduce a 30 km/h speed limit at municipal level.
Do you have the feeling that something is going on in Berlin, or is the traffic light permanently yellow?
Onay:
For us, it's not just about 30 km/h everywhere, but about freedom of design: being able to develop and offer suitable solutions at the municipal level, where the mobility transition is taking place.
I have to argue with the state transport ministry about 50 meters of cycle path, that makes absolutely no sense.
As cities, we also need financial freedom.
We are now benefiting from several subsidy programs for the expensive investments in our city, but that is totally fragmented and ties up a lot of energy.
That's why we need a reorganization, which the coalition agreement at least gives as an impetus.
More and more municipalities are joining our initiative, and the City Council clearly supports this.
The Minister of Transport is now responsible for that.
SPIEGEL:
The city only makes up one percent of the city's area.
Then what happens outside of that?
Onay:
We will make the alternatives more attractive, but of course that has to be at the expense of car traffic.
We don't have endless space.
Car traffic will have to give up some - and it is already doing so, for example by expanding the bicycle routes.
With the resident parking in the districts, we show that the use of space has a price.
At the same time, we offer cheaper, better alternatives.
SPIEGEL:
New forms of mobility also require additional space: car sharing, e-scooters, electric cars with their charging stations.
Are you reserving space for this that you could also use for your urban redevelopment?
Onay:
There has to be electrification.
Hanover is currently number one when it comes to the density of the charging infrastructure in major German cities.
But the e-car is also a burden for the city because it occupies space.
In the city center we don't treat them any differently than combustion engines, there will be no separate entrances.
SPIEGEL:
In the city, people are more likely to stumble across e-scooters...
Onay:
Such micromobility is super attractive for many.
But even there: The freedom to park scooters anywhere does not work that way, at least not without conflict.
We are currently talking to the providers about fixed parking spaces.
The main focus in the city center remains pedestrian traffic.
This is the most climate-neutral, the healthiest, and the most fun.
There you can enjoy the city center and see what is there.
We don't want people to scurry through, we want them to stay.
SPIEGEL:
For a long time, Hanover was a place of pilgrimage for architects and urban planners who wanted to see a prime example of a car-friendly city.
Can you imagine that in a few decades people might come here to see how the car is giving up space?
Onay:
I hope it doesn't take a few decades.
There are already good reasons to be proud of traffic control.
But seriously: The car-friendly city, that was the development myth after the Second World War, when the car meant fashion and progress.
For many people that was it, on the way to freedom.
At the time, that was an urban planning masterpiece, and SPIEGEL also ran the headline: »The Miracle of Hanover«.
However, we see that it is completely out of date.
We have to turn the city inside out when it comes to traffic and mobility.
We'll do it as quickly as possible.
SPIEGEL:
In the SPIEGEL story from 1959 you can also read how ruthlessly your predecessors ignored protests.
You have now spent a year in dialogue about the City concept.
Do you sometimes wish you could make decisions faster?
Onay:
Times are different.
The city does not belong to one person, the mayor, but to all people.
With the mobility offers, we fully intervene in people's everyday lives.
That's nothing irrelevant.
With the inner-city dialogue, we try to take people with us, but also to make it clear where the journey is going and must go.
That's not easy.
It takes time, that's democracy.
But I think it works well in Hanover.
SPIEGEL:
And when will you reach your goal?
Onay:
My goal was and still is a car-free city center by 2030. But we need better mobility options much more.
In the next five or six years, the basic structure of the first dozen bike routes should be there.
SPIEGEL:
There is a concept for the city that is more than ten years old and that already contained all of these ideas;
even that the city ring road in front of the town hall door should be slimmed down by two lanes, which has not happened to this day.
Onay:
The concept was on the market at the time, but unfortunately it didn't win a majority.
It's different today from my point of view.
The need was already evident back then, but in the meantime people have come to terms with it, the discussions are very different today.
We can draw on that inspiration, we don't start over.
SPIEGEL:
But you still don't really dare to go to the city ring, do you?
Onay:
We want to free the city from this ring and connect it with the surrounding districts.
We're already doing this on a small scale, with better transitions.
There is a majority that goes along with it, that sees the positive.
But there are also forces in the political context... Do you know the story about the ship moat?
SPIEGEL:
The pop-up cycle path that the Lower Saxony state government wanted to close again?
Onay:
It's only about 50, 60 meters, not the big hit at all.
Actually, we focus on permanent bicycle structures.
At this point we thought that pop up makes sense, because with a bit of paint you can help to defuse an unsafe spot for cyclists and pedestrians and car traffic doesn't suffer as a result.
A little trick, everything sorted itself nicely.
That's where we approached the city ring for the first time, only scratched a bit.
But that caused some pain over at the Department of Transportation.
That was really heavy, I didn't think so.
But for them it was quite a shot in the oven.
There was a complete lack of understanding in the city as to why this shouldn't be possible.
Many stylize this as a question of faith, but this is about urban planning.