The cyclists of the annual bicycle rally through Berlin have started. The organizers, the ADFC cycling club, were expecting at least ten thousand participants. The motto of the campaign is: “Get on your bike – implement the traffic turnaround now”. The demonstrators want to fight for better conditions for cycling. Motorists have to accept major detours. On Twitter, many complained that many media reported about “road closures” even though so many people were out there, just on bikes and exceptionally not in cars.

Since early Sunday morning, people have been cycling from Brandenburg and from the outskirts of Berlin to the city center on 18 routes to the Großer Stern, where there will be a final rally and a street festival in the afternoon. Participants can join anywhere, even in between. There is a shorter children’s route for children and parents.

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Some drivers even started on Saturday evening: A feeder tour is coming from Stettin in Poland, which drove through the night.

At 5.15 a.m., a dozen cyclists set off from the Zoo train station – first by train to Frankfurt (Oder).

There the road bike tour to Berlin began at 6.45 a.m., an express route with a speed of 25 kilometers per hour.

A night tour started in Leipzig at 12:45 a.m. In Dessau it started at 3.45 a.m.

The routes coming from all directions come together in Berlin to form two main strands. One leads via the Avus from Kreuz Zehlendorf to City-West, the other via the A100 from Neukölln and Tempelhof.

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Both strands come together at Dreieck Funkturm and follow the city motorway to the Kaiserdamm exit. This means a significantly longer passage on the A100 compared to previous years – and compensation for the ban on driving through the Britzer Tunnel. It was one of the highlights of the tour for years, until the police banned the route in 2021 due to safety concerns. In the event of a panic, there were not enough escape routes, so that “a large number of injuries” was to be feared, was the reasoning.