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Car Free Sunday is celebrating a return to the cities. Schaffhausen also wants to free districts from traffic in the future.
By bicycle on the highway or on horseback through the city: there were unknown photographs that were traveling through Switzerland in November 1973, photographs of Sundays without cars. The Federal Council had previously ordered three of them in response to the gasoline shortage.
Since then, car-free Sundays have repeatedly been a political issue and various initiatives have been unsuccessful. At least in the cities, the wind now seems to be changing.
The latest example of this comes from Schaffhausen. The city parliament forwarded a postulate from the alternative list to the city council on Tuesday night. This now has to check how several car-free Sundays can be realized in Schaffhausen every year. The objective of the initiative is to block streets and squares of the districts to motorized traffic to allow the realization of festivals or events.
What is needed is an affordable and portable solution.
The initiative was criticized by the SVP. There are already enough places to host parties and the roads don’t have to be closed. Thanks to the majority of the center and left parties, the city council must now examine the matter. And the government is open. “What is needed is a sustainable and affordable solution,” said social affairs officer Christine Thommen. A test phase should now show if neighborhoods are interested in car-free Sundays.
The return to the cities
The demand for car-free Sundays is experiencing a renaissance in cities. Winterthur had already given the green light at the beginning of the year. The start will take place in September, the Technikumstrasse in the city center will be closed to traffic. Based on this experience, four car-free Sundays will be organized each year. “There are already ideas for these occasions,” Winterthur city councilor Katrin Cometta told the regional magazine Zurich Schaffhausen. “But they are not yet ready for a verdict.”
However, railings are put up in cities when car-free Sundays are organized. “The legal limits are strict,” says Cometta. Cantonal roads are under cantonal sovereignty and cannot be blocked by cities. Winterthur now wants to enter into talks with the canton of Zurich to be able to make large areas car-free.
Legend:
Car-free zone in Bern: the area around Effingerstrasse was closed to motorized traffic on September 22, 2019.
ZVG City of Bern
The city of Bern also knows car-free Sunday; cars in the capital have been idle one day a year for a long time. Due to poor finances, the event did not take place last year, but in September 2019 sun loungers and children’s pools still dominated the scene around Effingerstrasse, near the main train station.
Cantons are more skeptical
While car-free days are increasingly popular in cities, these lawsuits are having a hard time at the cantonal level. At the end of last year, for example, the canton of Solothurn canceled a popular mandate. The initiators demanded four car-free Sundays a year across the canton. And those demands also had no chance in the parliament of the canton of Basel.
One of the reasons for this may be that motivations have changed. Almost 50 years ago the gasoline shortage was decisive, today they are environmental considerations. And these are more pronounced in cities than in the countryside. Cities are aware that the impact on CO2 emissions is minimal with a car-free Sunday. It’s about raising awareness, say Schaffhausen and Winterthur.
