Roadway dividers made of glued curbstones for Party mile

Based on the 2022 Bicycle Progress Report published by the City of Berlin, the German capital, in recent years has initiated numerous measures for the promotion of bicycle traffic. Alone in 2022, 26.5 km of routes for bicycle traffic were newly built or upgraded. The most recent project is on Revaler Strasse in the Borough of Friedrichshain. In late 2023, a 600-m protected bicycle lane was laid. This lane, structurally separated from flowing motor-vehicle traffic, is separated by a special roadway dividing block made by the concrete plant Betonwerk Hermann Meudt.

Jessica Horne from the District Office of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg explained the measure: “In order to make bicycle traffic on Revaler Strasse safer in the future, we have installed new cycling infrastructure. The structural separation from flowing traffic was implemented by concrete roadway separation elements. Each element is provided with two reflecting glass balls. To improve visibility, the concrete elements are executed in Reflexin white – with the first element in all rows in red-white and with a red-white flexible bollard.”

Separation with glued roadway dividing blocks

The roadway dividing blocks were delivered by Betonwerk Hermann Meudt. Instead of ripping up the roadway and installing the curbstones conventionally with a concrete apron, they were simply glued onto the existing asphalt pavement. Previously, in the plant, they were cut to the desired height of 10 cm, as specified by the client. A great advantage of the adhesive gluing technique is that it allows cutting of all the flat curbstones to exactly the same height. This accordingly eliminated production-related tolerance problems in height, and calibrated the curbstones for gluing in this way and virtually eliminates violation of dimensional tolerances.

Best solution found: adhesive curbstone gluing technique

Jessica Horne was satisfied with this construction method: “This technique of installation, the durability, the visibility and also the aesthetics of the road dividing blocks have convinced us – especially since we had already gained good experience with the curbstone gluing technique for separating bicycle lanes in other sites in our district.”

Additional projects in the district are being planned. Sixty km of new bicycle lanes had been included in the Berliner Bicycle Traffic Plan for 2023. They, however, were not implemented. The reason for this is that the former Berlin’s Senator of Transportation Manja Schreiner had in mid-2023 re-assessed all bicycle traffic projects in Berlin. Although upgrading and development of the bicycle infrastructure was to be further pressed, the overall aim was, at the same time, “to maintain a generally functioning overall traffic mix for Berliners.”