‘Embrace the maze’
A how-to ride guide from train station to city center (and other way round) of capital Luxembourg for use during closure of ‘Al Bréck’ and the works for the tram line on Avenue de la Liberté in 2019.
Riding a bicycle from a capital’s train station to its historic center should in the year 2018 be a straightforward thing, especially in a country that claims to be cycling-friendly. A police control fining 35 bikers riding the sidewalk on Avenue de la Gare in City mid June very clearly showed us that it still not is.
When national news got a hold on that story, it became clear after a few days that the local City Council seems unable to figure out and foremost agree on a clear solution for daily +900 bike commuters.
Avenue de la Gare has no biking infrastructure at all and the one on Avenue de la Liberté is a joke. Everybody knows this for years. In local elections 2017, challenger Serge Wilmes even campaigned against Sam Tanson, the then in charge politician of mobility, by specifically mentioning how dangerous several streets and avenues were. Now that Wilmes is in charge of urbanism, nothing happened, no short term measure improving safety for biking people was brought up by him. The plans already proposed by Sam Tanson and by biking advocacy association LVI are stuck as far as the public can judge.
The ongoing works in 2018 and 2019 do require a specific biking detour solution
It is known that the building of the tram line on Avenue de la Liberté will bring as a sidekick a truly separated bike path. But that won’t be the case until Spring of the year 2020. To complicate things even more, there will soon be works on the ‘Al Breck’ (also known as ‘Viaduc’ or ‘Passerelle’) to enlarge it. During 2019, cyclists will have to rely solely on the Pont Adolphe cycling underpass to go from the train station to the city center.
Different temporary detours have been suggested for use during the year 2019: pushing the bicycle on the sidewalks of Avenue de la Gare, taking a detour via rue du Fort Neipperg or another one using rue Sainte-Zithe, and another one using boulevard de la Pétrusse.
Anyone taking the time to have a closer look at the map of quarter Gare, will obviously see immediately the straight lines formed by Avenue de la Liberté (leading to ‘Pont Adolphe’ bridge) and Avenue de la Gare (leading to ‘Viaduc’ bridge). For our 2019 works detour, we can’t rely on them. Avenue de la Liberté will have works for tram line building and Avenue de la Gare is precisely the one to avoid completely. Looking further on the map, we see a maze of side streets, among them many for one direction use only.
“There’s no easy way out. There’s no shortcut home” — Lyrics of the smash hit by Robert Tepper on ‘Rocky IV’ movie soundtrack (1985)
Some guiding principles for defining suitable detours
To propose a practicable detour during the year 2019 for people riding from train station to city center or the other way round, it seemed useful to agree on some guiding principles:
1) There should be as few traffic lights as possible to avoid breaking the riding flow.
2) Streets with less lanes would be favoured.
3) As quarter Gare is in fact rather small when using a bike, focus would not necessarily be on shortest possible itinerary (not available anyway as described earlier).
4) The safest possible access to train station area, as well as entry of Pont Adolphe cycling path — the only bridge accessible during year 2019 — must be given.
5) It should be easily possible for City of Luxembourg to officially recommend that itinerary, without having to modify a lot of things. Adding signs would of course be appreciated.
To this principles, a last one should be added: the itinerary from the train station to the city center must not necessarily be the same then the one from the city center to the train station. This is an immediate consequence of the many one-way streets in quarter Gare, sensibly limiting options for itineraries that can be ridden both ways.
From train station to city center
The above principles all having been explained, here would be the itinerary from train station to city center (map further down):
- train station, start at traffic light near taxi stop (check this place on Google Streetview). The worst is here probably at the beginning, sneak carefully over the intersection when the pedestrians get green to cross. If you are unsure, cross as a pedestrian with your bike!
- (turn right and immediately position yourself into furthest left lane, with care for traffic)
- rue Joseph Junck
(right turn at the end)
- rue du Fort Wedell (short part)
- (left turn)
- rue de Strasbourg
- (the only traffic light)
- (2nd right turn)
- rue Adolphe Fischer (officially a street with traffic calming measures, take care of right hand traffic)
- (right turn, just before reaching boulevard de la Pétrusse)
- rue Goethe (traffic calmed street)
- (2nd left turn)
- rue Sainte-Zithe
- (right turn)
- Boulevard de la Pétrusse (short part)
- (left turn)
- entry of Pont Adolphe bike path
From city center to train station
The itinerary city center to train station would be slightly different, because of the one-way streets and because of principle 4 requiring safest possible access on a bike to train station.
Boulevard de la Pétrusse has a 30km/h speed limit. When going downhill, it is easily possible for a biker to reach that speed limit. You can then confidently ride in the middle of the lane. Should a driver then dare to honk at you or try to overtake you (very likely), give him “The Look”(tm) and point at the 30 sign painted on the street. Here is the route (map further down):
- exit of Pont Adolphe bike path
- (right turn)
- boulevard de la Pétrusse
- (continuing straight)
- rue des Etats-Unis
- (left turn)
- rue de Strasbourg
- (2nd right)
- rue du commerce
- (left turn)
- rue du Fort Wedell
- (right turn)
- rue d’Epernay
- (continuing straight until traffic light facing train station; that traffic light is a benefit, as it stops traffic on place de la Gare for you to allow safe crossing, check this place on Google Streetview. When you arrive at that traffic light at the end of rue d’Epernay, stick to the middle: when the traffic light turns green, cars will have to go left or right. With your bike, roll carefully over the intersection and change smoothly into pedestrian mode.)
- train station (You have the train station main entry on your left and an mBox for safe bike parking further on your right.)
As a bonus, here is now a different option for the 1st route.
From train station to city center without riding Pont Adolphe
As a bonus for more sporty and adventurous cyclists (greeting p.wal and all the others who will recognise themselves), here is a greener, but hillier version without Pont Adolphe on the itinerary from train station to city center. It starts the same way than the one above, but you leave rue Adolphe Fischer earlier for Vallée de la Pétrusse:
- [A] train station, start at traffic light near taxi stop
- (turn right and immediately position yourself into furthest left lane, with care for traffic)
- rue Joseph Junck
- (right turn at the end)
- rue du Fort Wedell (short part)
- (left turn)
- rue de Strasbourg
- (the only traffic light)
- (2nd right turn)
- rue Adolphe Fischer (officially a street with traffic calming measures)
- (1st left turn)
- rue d’Anvers
- (beware the crossing, on which you go straight)
- rue d’Anvers continued
- (right turn)
- rue de la Semois (uphill)
- (turn right on T-junction)
- rue de la Semois (until you are nearly under Pont Adolphe, very scenic ride!)
- (take the serpentines uphill on the left, leading to [B] Pont Adolphe bike path exit)
Closing words
Those 3 suggested itineraries are not as intuitive as riding a straight avenue, but they are for sure worth a closer look for those doing that commute ride often. Even if those itineraries are a bit longer than the avenues, they have virtually no traffic lights, no mixing with pedestrians, no really dangerous intersections, while taking you away from the notorious traffic jams on the main avenues.
They are of course not perfect, and you might nevertheless encounter stupid drivers. It is agreed that the short segments going through rue de Strasbourg are far from traffic free. But if you stick to these itineraries, they will bring you in a surprisingly efficient way to your destination.
Having of course done a few test rides of the proposed routes, I sincerely suggest to install an automated speed trap on boulevard de la Pétrusse to enforce 30km/h limit. So if anyone in charge reads this, it is in your hands!
As a navigation help, until you have memorized the routes, you might program your GPS, use a cheat sheet or hope that City of Luxembourg will install signs during the works recommending that itinerary.
Oh, a last thing: burn after reading, under no circumstances do share this information on Waze with you car commuting friends. Anyway, these route proposals will not be of use anymore the moment the new Avenue de la Liberté bike path becomes available in 2020.
Disclaimer & end credits
Thanks to @malgravajhoj for pointing with one of his tweets my attention to the Openrouteservice Maps as a useful way to present the itineraries. Thanks to @p.wal for occasionally bringing the community down to Earth and reminding us that a detour (‘rallonge’) is not the end of the world. No cars or drivers were harmed in the making of this post (and I experienced just one close pass). Yes, this is full old school vehicular cycling. I did not find a way to build a separated bike path using Twitter/Medium. If I had you would have known first. Use this information at your own risk! Respect Code de la Route. Don’t surprise and don’t be surprised. Use your left or right arm to indicate the direction to other traffic participants when you are turning. Don’t buy drugs around the rue de Strasbourg, they don’t work. Rue de Strasbourg is always very busy. Be very careful in case you would want to overtake a traffic jam, don’t if you don’t know what you do. Conveniently, there is a police station nearby in case you have the need to report a misbehaving driver. No, Adolphe Fischer is not the name giver for Pont Adolphe, try harder.
Good ride!
@luxembourgize is a cycling advocate on Twitter. Explore the following hash tags for more background information and news updates: #AvenuedelaGareLux #LuxAvenueLibertéVelo #PontAdolphe #PasserelleLux
