Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - bologna.lab

City Cycling at HU Berlin

City Cycling Berlin takes place from 16.05. to 05.06.2025

Under Construction

 

 

From Friday 16 May to Thursday 5 June (World Climate Day!), HU Berlin will be taking part in City Cycling 2025. No matter how often, far or fast you cycle, we warmly welcome all cyclists and and every metre cycled together. You can either join the HU main team (Hauptteam) or one of the many sub-teams for academic subjects, institutions, departments, or status groups. You can register for the main HU team here: https://www.stadtradeln.de/index.php?id=171&L=0&team_preselect=7040 and can see the already established sub-teams here (we’re still missing an HU-International team!).

 

Polite request: If you form new sub-teams (always welcome!), please send me (wolfgang.deicke (at) hu-berlin.de) a short email with the direct link to your team so that I can add it here and include you in the captains' mailing list. At the end of 2024, we had 35 teams at HU with 789 active cyclists and, with 170,231 kilometres cycled together, we took first place among the universities and a respectable third place in the overall Berlin ranking - but there's still room for improvement this time! (The whole drama of 2024 can be read below - now also in English).

The picture shows a tiny part of the HU-Berlin team outside of Humboldt-Universität's main building at Unter den Linden 6 (after completion of the ADFC cycle rally).

HU 2025 teams (in alphabetical order - links will be added as soon as they are known)

You are very welcome to set up new sub-teams (but please have a look beforehand to see if there is already something for you). You can also access the sub-teams via the main HU team: Log in, select ‘Change team’ from the drop-down menu under ‘My team’, click on the team of your choice and you're in. You can then also see whether friends, acquaintances, fellow students or colleagues are already cycling in a team (team names are given in German here):

City cycling 2025 (the city cycling diary)

 

14.04.25 - welcome back to the new Semester! (31 days to go)

Welcome (back) to the new semester! You have 31 days left to get your bike road safe (or get a bike, if you have only just got here!), take your pick from the 30+ existing HU-teams or get together with a couple of friends to start your own team. Meanwhile, the warm-up to Stadtradeln looks promising already: over the weekend, team #SucheSicherenRadweg's headstart on #TeamPolizei shrank dramatically from 52 to 11, whereas we managed to maintain our waver-thin lead of 26 on Team Charité.

 

The screenshot shows the relative sizes of the main Berlin teams on Monday, 14.04.25 at lunchtime.

 

11.04.25 - combine the necessary with the urgent!

For those of you who haven't used your bicycles this season, there's an opportunity to turn your test ride into a protes ride. On Friday, 11.04. from 14:00, the Climate Strike Berlin is cycling from  Willy-Brandt-Haus (SPD HQ) to Konrad-Adenauer-Haus (CDU HQ) to protest against the abject lack of climate policy in the coalition agreements: https://fridaysforfuture.berlin/events/fahrraddemo-zum-globalen-klimastreik-am-11-4/

07.04.25 - 39 days until the start of City Cycling

...and so it begins: Sometime around 13:00, our colleagues from Team Blau (the Berlin police) overtook us and relegated us to second place. And the TU is also hot on our heels or brake lights - in addition to the 126 officially registered TU cyclists, I have spotted 11 TU-Berlin B!NErLe, 5 TU BANA FahrRad, 4 TUB Luftbau, one TU chemist, 1 BIFOLD and 1 Einstein Center Digital Futures // TU Berlin (i.e. +23 in total), undoubtedly to be merged at some future date. This puts them ahead of Team Charité.

 

The Screenshot shows the size of the biggest/fastest growing teams in Stadtradeln 2025 (on 7.4.25).

For those of you wondering who the ‘new player in the game’ - Team #SucheSicherenRadweg - is: The largest and fastest growing team in City Cycling 2025 ton date is an initiative by Changing Cities e.v., who rightly complain that eight (8!) years after the Berlin Mobility Act was passed, jonly 5% of the planned cycling network has been built: https://changing-cities.org/stadtradeln-aus-protest/

 

This also becomes very clear if you go to the pages on the planned cycle highways in Berlin: The planning has long been completed, but relatively little has been built - compared to the ambitious plans: https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/mobilitaet-und-verkehr/verkehrsplanung/radverkehr/radschnellverbindungen/

 

03.04.25 - The warm-up
City Cycling 2025 hasn't even started yet, but it's already underway! The teams are already busy recruiting. The largest team so far are newcomers in 2025 - Team #SucheSicherenRadweg with 212 cyclists, followed by Humboldt University with 151, Team Polizei with 119, TU Berlin (117), the Berlin Finance Administration (116) and Charité with 112 cyclists. Freie Universität is also well on the way with 57 cyclists for day 4 of registration.

 

The screenshot shows the relative team size of Berlin teams on day 3 of the warm-up phase (03.04.25).

 

Coming Soon - The city cycling chronicles (in English)

You can now read up on the whole drama of City Cycling 2024 (with a very happy ending!) here in a PDF:  The City Cycling Chronicles, Volume 1 (2024)

 

Tips and information

Since we are expecting a lot of newcomers this time, here are a few technical and organisational tips on the city cycling app (we still love it and hate it!) and on road (race) cycling at the HU.

Recording your journeys (practice and data protection):

  • Practice: With city cycling, only the kilometres that you record or register are counted. The most convenient way to do this is via the app: https://www.stadtradeln.de/app You download the app, install it on your phone and register with your Stadtradeln-Account. Before each journey, open the app and press ‘Start’ (‘Play’ symbol), at the end of the journey press ‘Stop’. Please note: The app is more of a spare time development; it takes quite a while to load and does not always respond to the first click. Be patient and check after the first 100 metres whether it is really recording.  As the app records your journeys in real time (starting point, route, speed, time, end point...) you can quickly recognise on the screen if there is a problem. Unfortunately, it sometimes stops in the middle (but this has become less common). I then help myself by closing the app, reopening it and starting a new tour. Ingo Fehrmann from Team PSE solved the mystery of the app 's self cancellation fault in 2024: The app is energy-intensive and doesn't like it when you run your mobile phone in power-saving mode, so you need to make sure that it runs on full power every time you use the app. No problem for the ‘short’ journey to work with a charging option, but for a trip around the Mauerweg (or anything more than 2-3 hours, it gets iffy.

 

  • Data protection: There is a good reason why the app records your data in real time - Stadtradeln is intended to help generate better data on cycle traffic in Berlin (so that, for example, traffic light phases on main routes can be adjusted or green arrows can be displayed for cyclists). If you don't want your data to be recorded (or if you cycle with another app), you can also enter your journeys manually in the app or via the web browser to save data. In this case, only your kilometres are saved, but not the when, how and where. It is important that you develop a routine here (i.e. at the end of each journey (annoying for very short distances), at the end of each day (something is quickly lost here) or at the end of each week (only recommended if you log all journeys differently (in writing) and have an overview). There is also the option to hide your kilometres from everyone else.
  • Chat: The app has a chat function, but it is very rudimentary (character limitation, difficult to enter on the mobile phone). I don't use it and only discover messages here by chance. For quick communication in your teams, I would recommend a secure messenger/chat app such as Signal, Discord or HU-Elements/Matrix. (Information on how to install/use Matrix/Element at HU Berlin, see here: https://www.cms.hu-berlin.de/en/dl-en/communication-services/matrix/matrix-element)

 

  • General information/Nerdy stuff

To avoid spamming you with mails, there will be an update once a week from now on. I will use this page to post more frequent updates, so please feel free to bookmark it a check in regularly. If you require more frequent information, you should bookmark the Stadtradeln Berlin page: https://www.stadtradeln.de/berlin. You need to scroll down a bit or click on "Auswertung" (Results). Up until 16.05., you can watch the teams grow in terms of cyclists registered. As soon as we start recording our rides, you the site will also give you stats on the live total of kilometres cycled, the number of rides logges and the average of kilometres cycled/person. The app will show you where the HU stands in comparison to the other Berlin teams (Kommune/Municipality) and also how many kilometres the individual HU teams have on the clock (Alle Teams/All Teams), where you stand in your team (My Team) and where you stand in the overall HU team (Alle Radelnden/All cyclists) (there are other comparison levels).

 

If you are planning joint rides or have other information about city cycling, write to me (wolfgang.deicke (at) hu-berlin.de) and I will try to post it here as soon as possible. As a reward, you can also follow my epic battle with HU-Plone here. (When texts just keep disappearing despite saving and caching...)

 

HU road cycling:

HU road cycling entusiasts will meet meet twice during Stadtradeln 2025 (see dates below). If anybody wants to organise additional meets around different locations, please contact me!

 

Cycling tours (not only for city cycling)

If you're looking for ideas for your own cycle tours with your own team or with friends (including other teams if necessary!), I can recommend the website ‘Beste Radtouren’ (Best cycle tours)  by Beatrice Poschenrieder (FU Berlin) for Berlin/Brandenburg and MeckPomm: 157 well-described and regularly updated tours of different lengths and for different weather conditions. I've cycled 15 of them so far and always found them good (ride descriptions in German only, data downloadable).
 
The HU's press and public relations department will be accompanying us on this year's City Cycle and would be delighted to receive photos of your activities. A short video appeal to take part is already available for further distribution here and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7Ot3lUN8Jn/?igsh=MXg5ZmN4bTR3dHdu (Here is the advert from 2024)

 

Dates 2025 (in progress)

 
Friday 16. May - Visit to Ute Bonde (Senator for Mobility, Traffic, Climate & Environment) Team #SucheSicherenRadweg invites all Berliners to start their working day (and Stadtradeln) with a visit to the offices of our Senator for Mobility, Traffic, Climate and Environment, Ute Bonde at Am Köllnischen Park 3 (Stadtmitte, nr. Märkisches Museum). Time to be confirmed.
 
Thursday 22. June - first HU road bike outing
or the duration of Stadtradeln, the HU Sports Center is opening its race cycling meetings for members of other HU-teams who are into road racing. The team meets fortnightly at 16:30 (sharp) - around 19:30 for a three hour tour into the surroundings of Berlin. Anybody interested, please contact Selina.Blatter (at) hu-berlin.de (captain of the Sports Center team) in advance. The meeting point is HU-Sporthalle in Adlershof (Rudower Straße 18, 12524 Berlin)
 
Friday 30. May- Critical Mass. Critical Mass ist a global cycling event in which cyclist take to the streets in their thousands in the evening of every last Friday of the month (Start 20:00, Mariannenplatz/Heinrichplatz) and in the afternoon of each first Sunday of the month (coincides with the ADFC bicycle rally in June, see below). Further information (German only):  https://criticalmass.berlin/

 

Sunday 01 June - The annual ADFC bicycle rally will take place on Sunday, 01 June 2025, i.e. towards the end of the three weeks of City Cycling Berlin. The rally is an established format of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrradclub (ADFC, German Bicycle Club) to demonstrate by bike for a bicycle-friendly Berlin and to demand the implementation of the Berlin Mobility Act of 2018. It's also a unique opportunity to legally ride your bike on the motorway (as long as it doesn't weigh more than 3.5 tonnes!). Last year, over 32.000 cyclists took part and converged on central Berlin via 27 different access routes. Info (in German only) here: https://berlin.adfc.de/sternfahrt

 

Thursday 05. June - second HU road bike outing
or the duration of Stadtradeln, the HU Sports Center is opening its race cycling meetings for members of other HU-teams who are into road racing. The team meets fortnightly at 16:30 (sharp) - around 19:30 for a three hour tour into the surroundings of Berlin. Anybody interested, please contact Selina.Blatter (at) hu-berlin.de (captain of the Sports Center team) in advance. The meeting point is HU-Sporthalle in Adlershof (Rudower Straße 18, 12524 Berlin).