Heidelberg, Germany

ECKART Würzner, a mayor on a mission to make his city emission-free, is not terribly impressed by promises from General Motors (GM), Ford and other big automakers to swear off fossil fuels.

Not that he, the mayor of Heidelberg, is against electric cars. The southern German city gives residents who buy a battery-powered vehicle a bonus of up to 1,000 euros (S$1,597), and another 1,000 euros if they install a charging station.

But electric cars are low on the list of tools that Mr Würzner is using to try to cut Heidelberg's impact on the climate, an effort that has given the city a reputation as a pioneer in environmentally conscious urban planning.

His goal is to reduce dependence on cars, no matter where they get their juice. Heidelberg is buying a fleet of hydrogen-powered buses, building a network of bicycle "superhighways" to the suburbs and designing neighbourhoods to discourage all vehicles and encourage walking. Residents who give up their cars get to ride public transportation free for a year.

"If you need a car, use car-sharing," Mr Würzner said in an interview at Heidelberg's Baroque-style City Hall. "If you can't use car-sharing because you're living too far outside and there is no mass transportation, use the car, but just to the train station and not to downtown."

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Heidelberg is at the forefront of a movement that is probably strongest in Europe, but has a presence in plenty of communities around the world, including US cities like Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon. The pandemic has given many citizens a taste of what densely packed urban areas would be like without so much traffic, and they like it.

Vows of fossil fuel abstinence by carmakers recently, including GM, Ford Motor and Jaguar Land Rover, are a tacit admission that they will be ostracised in cities unless they radically clean up their acts. Even then, the tide of history may be against them as urban planners try to free up space now occupied by vehicles.

Clean vehicles only

Dozens of cities in Europe, including Rome, London and Paris, plan to limit city-centre traffic to emission-free vehicles during the next decade. Some, like Stockholm and Stuttgart, the German home of Mercedes-Benz, already ban older diesel vehicles.

National governments are adding to the pressure. Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Slovenia say they will ban sales of internal combustion cars after 2030. Britain and Denmark say they will do so in 2035, allowing only hybrids after 2030, and Spain and France in 2040.

Such declarations of intent "certainly push vehicle manufacturers", said Sandra Wappelhorst, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation in Berlin who tracks plans by companies and governments to phase out internal combustion.

Heidelberg, a city of 160,000 people, provides a glimpse of how an automobile-light city of the future may look. It is one of only six cities in Europe considered "innovators" by C40 Cities, an organisation that promotes climate-friendly urban policies and whose chair is Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. (The others are Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Venice, Italy; and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands.)

Among the city's measures to make cars irrelevant are building bridges that would allow cyclists to bypass congested areas or cross the Neckar without having to compete for road space with motor vehicles.

Buildings are also important. The city has cut power consumption in schools and city buildings by half in the last decade - no small feat when many buildings are hundreds of years old.

Battery-powered vehicles do not pollute the air, but they take up just as much space as gasoline models. Mr Würzner complains that Heidelberg still suffers rush-hour traffic jams, even though only about a fifth of residents get around by car. The rest walk, bicycle or take the electric buses that ply the narrow, cobbled streets of the city's old quarter.

"Commuters are the main problem we haven't solved yet," Mr Würzner said. Traffic was heavy on a recent weekday, pandemic notwithstanding.

Electric cars are also expensive and out of the reach of lower-income residents. Political leaders need to offer affordable alternatives like public transportation or bicycle routes, Ms Wappelhorst of the Council on Clean Transportation said. "It's not only about cars in the end," she said. "You need the whole package."

Heidelberg's pedestrian zone, usually thronged with tourists but nearly empty recently because of the pandemic, is said to be Germany's longest, at 1.6 km. But the best showcase for the city's emission-free ambitions is built atop a former rail freight yard on the edge of town. In 2009, work began on the Bahnstadt, or Rail City. The vacant parcel, which had to be cleared of three unexploded bombs from World War II, offered planners a blank slate with which to create a climate-neutral neighbourhood.

The modern apartment buildings, architecturally the opposite of Heidelberg's Baroque city centre, are so well insulated that they require almost no energy to heat. What warmth they do require comes from a plant just outside the neighbourhood that burns waste wood.

Cars are not banned from the Bahnstadt, but there is almost no traffic. Most streets are dead ends. Apartment buildings are arranged around generous courtyards with playgrounds and connected by walkways. The one street that cuts through the neighbourhood has a speed limit of 30 kmh. Bicycles have the right of way.

The Bahnstadt, with 5,600 residents and still growing, has its own kindergarten and elementary school, a community centre, two supermarkets, several bakeries and cafes, two bicycle shops and six car-sharing stations, each with two electric vehicles. Heidelberg's main train station and a tram stop are a short walk away, and a bicycle path follows the route of an old rail line to the city centre.

There are also jobs. The Bahnstadt has large office buildings where tenants include the German subsidiary of Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of consumer products like Clearasil and Woolite.

"The idea is to get back to the classic early city, where living and working are closely intertwined," said Ralf Bermich, head of Heidelberg's Office for Environmental Protection.

Too little, too late?

Some complain that Heidelberg is not as green or as bicycle-friendly as its reputation would have it. Paul Baur, an American who has lived in the city since 2007 and commutes to a job out of town by bicycle, said his route forces him to ride between parked cars and a tram line.

"You can decide if you want to die by tram or car door," he said in an e-mail. "Cars rule here," he said. "Yes, the city is making progress, but I think it is too little and almost too late."

Mr Würzner, the mayor, said his goal was to make Heidelberg climate neutral by 2030, an ambitious target. The city plans to generate its own wind and solar power and is installing a hydrogen filling station for a fleet of 42 buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The city wanted to order hundreds of the buses, but the mayor complained that the bus-makers had been slow to respond to demand for emission-free transportation.

(Daimler, which makes buses in Neu-Ulm, about 21/2 hours from Heidelberg, does not yet sell a city bus powered solely by hydrogen.)

Mr Würzner, who drives an experimental hydrogen-powered Mercedes, acknowledged that not every city can afford to do all the things that had made Heidelberg a showcase for environmentally friendly planning. The University of Heidelberg has spawned numerous research institutes that provide a solid tax base. The residents tend to be well educated and affluent.

"It's true the city is in a quite a good financial situation," Mr Würzner said, adding that he often hears from mayors in Europe, the US and Asia who wanted to emulate Heidelberg's strategy. "We all know we have to go in this direction," he said. "It's just a question of how fast." NYTIMES

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