Bicycle and traffic: professorship in Kassel advances sustainable mobility

The President of the University of Kassel, Prof. Dr. Reiner Finkeldey, congratulated: "With the professorship for "Cycling and Local Mobility", our university is expanding its profile with a highly topical sustainability issue. We expect research contributions that will be noticed nationwide and that will advance the traffic turnaround. My thanks go to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Carsten Sommer and his team for the successful project development. In teaching, our students will benefit through innovative and practice-relevant offerings."

The bicycle has a good image, it is being used more and more and should contribute even more to sustainable mobility in the future - at the same time, the number of cyclists who have accidents in traffic is increasing. In the future, a professorship at the University of Kassel will focus, among other things, on the planning of bike paths and the safety of cyclists and pedestrians. There are also local references to the city of Kassel: "Historically, urban and traffic planning in Kassel after the Second World War were strongly influenced by the guiding principle of the car-friendly city, which led to a systematic marginalization of bicycle traffic," explains Prof. Sommer. He is head of the department "Transport Planning and Transport Systems" and was in charge of the application.

"Recently, however, a rethinking has begun," Sommer says. "In the coming years, a substantial expansion of bicycle paths in Kassel and the surrounding area is on the agenda, to which this professorship will make valuable contributions in the form of scientific support and co-design." For its application, the university had therefore received great support from companies, public and civil society institutions and, last but not least, the city and district of Kassel.

Federal Minister Andreas Scheuer: "We want to make cycling even more attractive. That's why we are bringing the subject into the lecture halls. We will promote endowed professorships at seven universities. Cycling will become a university subject! The aim is to train specialists who will then bring their know-how to the field and implement it in the municipalities and cities. In this way, we will bring even more dynamism to cycling!"

Contact:

Beate Hentschel
University of Kassel
Tel.: 0561 804 1961
E-mail: beate.hentschel[at]uni-kassel[dot]de