For those who are interested in what keeps us busy – here is one thing: Local politics and in particular Berlin traffic planning.
If you are able to endure german subscripts you might watch our attempt to convince people that their ideas of traffic load removal may have the opposite effect of what they think.
If not -Tim had only very few hours to work on the music but you might just enjoy his lofty kind of ambient electronica.
Tempelhof got it’s name from the Templars. “Hof” means court/yard. That is some Templars – after they had been expelled from Jerusalem – settled there. Wikipedia writes:
“The centre of the settlement, consisting of the church and the original estate, was fortified and originally completely surrounded by water. The Templars were joined by fifteen families of landless farmers’ sons from the Rhine, who could not inherit any estate from their parents because of over-fragmentation of those estates. Legates of the Templars offered them fertile soil and the protection of Tempelhove’s stronghold. “
it maybe important to have a good highway to bring in help from outside fast:
Yes, but before that you have to empty the highways first :)
1970: One more lane will fix it.
1980: One more lane will fix it.
1990: One more lane will fix it.
2000: One more lane will fix it.
2010: One more lane will fix it.
2020: ?
Since you seem to understand german – did you see the video of Mario Czaja and Christian Gräff? They explain how this “Lückenschluss TVO” helps to overcome major traffic problems in that area. I think the conflict is that Mr. Gräff is an enemy of the people here on this blog and thus in particular of Nad. She described here, how he was co-responsible for the destruction of a pub, which apparently Nad tried to help to keep running.
The conflict here is that I fear that the intended function of the TVO, namely to take away traffic load and pressure, may not work out as intended and that in particular there will be higher traffic load for Marzahn and Biesdorf-Nord.
The TVO is mainly intended to take away pressure from Biesdorf-Süd (southern Biesdorf).
Enemy is a strong word. I hope he is not an enemy.
We had a discussion with him about the TVO already very long time ago (roughly around 2011 or so). Back then he had set up a neighbour meeting on the street for discussing planting of trees and similar items. Already back then I pointed out to him, what we think is the problem with the TVO and that we think that the planning should be revised.
Regarding the pub:
As I wrote in the blog post about the destruction of the Bahnhofsgaststätte, there were a couple of parties involved in its destruction. And Mr. Gräff was here -in this process- not openly “adversarial” in the strong sense, but rather not supportive. As a political decider he decided that there should be “shops for old ladies” (as the developper had apparently originally planned and as Mr. Gräff said in the townhall meeting) and that the “money for support could be better used for preschools and schools”.
As a matter of fact the two “shops” which are there now are used for gastronomy again.
(One holds a kind of small TV-bar and the other a Kebap shop. The bigger party room and the beergarden of the former “Gaststätte” are now a parking lot – which is by the way almost never used, because it is far away from the supermarket.)
So with not supporting the pub he made a political decision, which I – and others- disapproved, but as said, he was not strongly adversarial towards me with this decision. The “damage” that was inflicted on my life due to this decision was -at least up to now- certainly not life threatening. One has though to point out that (see Wikipedia article) the Gaststätte was in critical times used as a “Suppenküche”. That means a kind of temporary shelter, where bombed out people could warm up and get food. Since the “party room” (which was also used for exhibitions and meetings) isn’t there anymore, the function of a “warm up hall” or “bigger meeting room” isn’t there anymore.
My interest in saving the pub was also nurtured by the fact that I am kind of a descendant of a dynasty of Berlin pub owners and my greatgrandmother Grete, who more or less co-raised me as a small child (while taking me to pubs of colleagues…) had also sort of lost her pub under considerably violent circumstances.
Regarding enmity:
Well, another thing was his reaction after this above mentioned townhall meeting, where he was insulting my husband and me.
As I wrote here, Tim and me discussed with him the socalled “Masterplan 10-82G”. That discussion happened after the townhall meeting, because during the meeting I wasn’t allowed to ask any further questions. The “Masterplan 10-82G” – as we understood it- basically says that if the plan is invigorated, there must not be any shops, which do not cover “essential needs” in this area of the Bahnhofsgaststätte. Exempt are already existing shops.
His fierce reaction against my husband and me came unexpected and felt threatening. I hope he just had a bad day or so, but of course, since he is in a power position in Berlin politics – a looming enmity has to be taken serious.
Regarding the TVO simulation:
It was a lot of work. It was in particular hard for me, since I already worked with simulations (of another type though) in my day job back then. MATSIM is an open source software written to a great extend by volunteers. It is though a fully professional simulation software. As written in the appendix we got support from people at TU, most notably from Dr. Ihab Kaddoura and support from the company Simunto which provides the visualisation software Via for MATSIM. At Simunto we were in direct correspondence with the CEO, Dr. Marcel Rieser.
We were working on it the simulation on and off, it was mostly me who worked on it and I squeezed this into my spare time. I had in this year 3 days of “real summer vacation”, where I went to Budapest with my daugher, I wanted in particular to visit the Rudas bath.
In this year I had also bought me better computer equipment, not only for that purpose, but I took the simulation as an “occasion” to do so.
On Nov. 6, 2018 Dr. Marcel Rieser provided me, actually quite unexpected, with the opportunity to use a full version of Via for two weeks. It was only with this oppprtunity that I could run a full simulation with enough traffic agents. Two weeks sounds a lot, but alone running one simulation takes a couple of hours and thus I usually launched MATSIM overnight. One mistake in the settings and you can rerun the whole thing.
In short – I was under quite some pressure to manage to get enough features visualized in this short time span. For the simulation in the video I had no information about the plans for the traffic node at B1 and since I had anyways no more time for highway modelling, I made the bold assumption of a through traffic, which needs of course to be reworked. As I was told there exists basically no information about transit loads (2018). And of course future transit traffic is an unknown for which one would need to run a couple of possible scenarios. I had certainly no time for these.
At this point – for personal reasons- I won’t put any more ressources into oppposing the current TVO plans.
OK. I looked into the Simulationfiles and appended a quantitative Info to the video on youtube. If I understood the description of the Berlin Scenario correctly then the “traffic injection” in the video is about 20% of the current traffic on “Berliner Ring”:
Here the appended text in german:
Die geplanten neuen Teilstücke für die Märkische Allee (Tangentiale Verbindung Ost TVO) erlauben eine wesentlich kürzere Durchquerung Berlins auf einer Hauptstraße, als z.B. über den Berliner Ring, was zu einem größeren Transitverkehr führen kann.
Die exemplarischen MATSIM Simulationen (www.matsim.org) in diesem Video erhärten diesen Verdacht.
Nachtrag 27. Nov. 2021: Aufgrund einer Nachfrage, hier eine noch eine quantitative Information zur Simulation.
In der Simulation wird der Beschreibung in https://svn.vsp.tu-berlin.de/repos/public-svn/publications/vspwp/2017/17-12/ZiemkeNagel2017BerlinScenario.pdf folgend die Bevölkerung um einen Faktor 10 skaliert, dementsprechend nehmen wir an, dass alles, also auch der Verkehr, mit einem Faktor 10 skaliert wird.
In der Simulation lassen wir insgesamt 1300 Fahrzeug-Agenten (die salopp “Laster” genannt werden) den Tag über starten. Es startet jeweils alle 20 Sekunden ein Fahrzeug, an der A11 Höhe Tiefer Bugsin See in Richtung Cottbus. Wir lassen die Fahrzeuge dann, per Simulation, mit dem üblichen Berlin Verkehr “kollidieren”. 1300 Fahrzeuge in der Simulation entsprächen also mit dem obigen Faktor rund 13000 zusätzlichen Fahrzeugen pro Tag (in der Simulation nur aus Richtung der A11/Berliner Ring A10). Laut BAST: https://www.bast.de/DE/Verkehrstechnik/Fachthemen/v2-verkehrszaehlung/Daten/2017_1/Jawe2017.html?nn=1819490 findet man 2017 an der Zählstelle der A11 bei Birkholz 50791 Kfz/Tag und 4573 Schwerverkehr/Tag, also knapp 55 000 Fahrzeuge/Tag. An der A10 zählt man bei Lindenberg 62235 Fahrzeuge/Tag. Auf der B158 bei Ahrensfelde werden hier 22795 Fahrzeuge/Tag gezählt.
Da 13000/62235= 0,208 ist, würde also bei dieser Rechnung, über den Daumen geschätzt, rund 20% mehr Verkehr (Transit, Routenumentscheider z.B. Hamburg-Dresden etc.), aus Richtung A11/auf westlicher A10 bzw. B158 und östliche A10, zu dem obigen Stauverhalten auf der Märkischen Allee führen.
Disclaimer: Für die Simulation wurde uns eine Vollversion der Visualisierungssoftware Via (https://simunto.com/via/) für 14 Tage kostenlos zur Verfügung gestellt.
Wir hatten die Simulation zwar mit einer kostenlosen “Kleinversion” vorbereitet, aber 14 Tage war für uns doch recht knapp, da wir das Video in unserer Freitzeit erstellten. So konnte auch aus diesem zeitlichen Grund, kein Test mehr durchgeführt werden, bei welcher Fahrzeuganzahl das Stauverhalten auf der Märkischen Allee beginnt.
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December 13th, 2018 at 8:38 am
Wow -there is a black hole in the center of Berlin
December 13th, 2018 at 9:26 am
The big dark “hole” in the above screenshot of Berlin is Tempelhof airport.
December 13th, 2018 at 9:56 am
Tempelhof? is this the former Berlin temple district?
December 13th, 2018 at 10:07 am
Tempelhof got it’s name from the Templars. “Hof” means court/yard. That is some Templars – after they had been expelled from Jerusalem – settled there. Wikipedia writes:
September 15th, 2019 at 9:13 am
If the Berlin city structure is under such a pressure that people demand a “Zuzugsstopp” then it maybe important to have a good highway to bring in help from outside fast:
https://www.mos.ru/news/item/62143073/ (film of the “parad gorodskoi tekhniki” (parade of city tech))
November 7th, 2019 at 10:05 am
@Pferdegetschirr
Yes, but before that you have to empty the highways first :)
1970: One more lane will fix it.
1980: One more lane will fix it.
1990: One more lane will fix it.
2000: One more lane will fix it.
2010: One more lane will fix it.
2020: ?
https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/1191295205187686400
November 17th, 2021 at 2:42 pm
I think the video is a bit monotone. Not clear -what is the conflict here? How long did you work on the film? Maybe ask an animation expert.
November 22nd, 2021 at 7:48 am
@Clarence C.
Since you seem to understand german – did you see the video of Mario Czaja and Christian Gräff? They explain how this “Lückenschluss TVO” helps to overcome major traffic problems in that area. I think the conflict is that Mr. Gräff is an enemy of the people here on this blog and thus in particular of Nad. She described here, how he was co-responsible for the destruction of a pub, which apparently Nad tried to help to keep running.
November 25th, 2021 at 1:14 pm
@Clarence C. and @Knusperkräuschen
The conflict here is that I fear that the intended function of the TVO, namely to take away traffic load and pressure, may not work out as intended and that in particular there will be higher traffic load for Marzahn and Biesdorf-Nord.
The TVO is mainly intended to take away pressure from Biesdorf-Süd (southern Biesdorf).
Regarding Mr. Christian Gräff:
Enemy is a strong word. I hope he is not an enemy.
We had a discussion with him about the TVO already very long time ago (roughly around 2011 or so). Back then he had set up a neighbour meeting on the street for discussing planting of trees and similar items. Already back then I pointed out to him, what we think is the problem with the TVO and that we think that the planning should be revised.
Regarding the pub:
As I wrote in the blog post about the destruction of the Bahnhofsgaststätte, there were a couple of parties involved in its destruction. And Mr. Gräff was here -in this process- not openly “adversarial” in the strong sense, but rather not supportive. As a political decider he decided that there should be “shops for old ladies” (as the developper had apparently originally planned and as Mr. Gräff said in the townhall meeting) and that the “money for support could be better used for preschools and schools”.
As a matter of fact the two “shops” which are there now are used for gastronomy again.
(One holds a kind of small TV-bar and the other a Kebap shop. The bigger party room and the beergarden of the former “Gaststätte” are now a parking lot – which is by the way almost never used, because it is far away from the supermarket.)
So with not supporting the pub he made a political decision, which I – and others- disapproved, but as said, he was not strongly adversarial towards me with this decision. The “damage” that was inflicted on my life due to this decision was -at least up to now- certainly not life threatening. One has though to point out that (see Wikipedia article) the Gaststätte was in critical times used as a “Suppenküche”. That means a kind of temporary shelter, where bombed out people could warm up and get food. Since the “party room” (which was also used for exhibitions and meetings) isn’t there anymore, the function of a “warm up hall” or “bigger meeting room” isn’t there anymore.
My interest in saving the pub was also nurtured by the fact that I am kind of a descendant of a dynasty of Berlin pub owners and my greatgrandmother Grete, who more or less co-raised me as a small child (while taking me to pubs of colleagues…) had also sort of lost her pub under considerably violent circumstances.
Regarding enmity:
Well, another thing was his reaction after this above mentioned townhall meeting, where he was insulting my husband and me.
As I wrote here, Tim and me discussed with him the socalled “Masterplan 10-82G”. That discussion happened after the townhall meeting, because during the meeting I wasn’t allowed to ask any further questions. The “Masterplan 10-82G” – as we understood it- basically says that if the plan is invigorated, there must not be any shops, which do not cover “essential needs” in this area of the Bahnhofsgaststätte. Exempt are already existing shops.
His fierce reaction against my husband and me came unexpected and felt threatening. I hope he just had a bad day or so, but of course, since he is in a power position in Berlin politics – a looming enmity has to be taken serious.
Regarding the TVO simulation:
It was a lot of work. It was in particular hard for me, since I already worked with simulations (of another type though) in my day job back then. MATSIM is an open source software written to a great extend by volunteers. It is though a fully professional simulation software. As written in the appendix we got support from people at TU, most notably from Dr. Ihab Kaddoura and support from the company Simunto which provides the visualisation software Via for MATSIM. At Simunto we were in direct correspondence with the CEO, Dr. Marcel Rieser.
We were working on it the simulation on and off, it was mostly me who worked on it and I squeezed this into my spare time. I had in this year 3 days of “real summer vacation”, where I went to Budapest with my daugher, I wanted in particular to visit the Rudas bath.
In this year I had also bought me better computer equipment, not only for that purpose, but I took the simulation as an “occasion” to do so.
On Nov. 6, 2018 Dr. Marcel Rieser provided me, actually quite unexpected, with the opportunity to use a full version of Via for two weeks. It was only with this oppprtunity that I could run a full simulation with enough traffic agents. Two weeks sounds a lot, but alone running one simulation takes a couple of hours and thus I usually launched MATSIM overnight. One mistake in the settings and you can rerun the whole thing.
In short – I was under quite some pressure to manage to get enough features visualized in this short time span. For the simulation in the video I had no information about the plans for the traffic node at B1 and since I had anyways no more time for highway modelling, I made the bold assumption of a through traffic, which needs of course to be reworked. As I was told there exists basically no information about transit loads (2018). And of course future transit traffic is an unknown for which one would need to run a couple of possible scenarios. I had certainly no time for these.
At this point – for personal reasons- I won’t put any more ressources into oppposing the current TVO plans.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:12 am
OK. I looked into the Simulationfiles and appended a quantitative Info to the video on youtube. If I understood the description of the Berlin Scenario correctly then the “traffic injection” in the video is about 20% of the current traffic on “Berliner Ring”:
Here the appended text in german:
Die geplanten neuen Teilstücke für die Märkische Allee (Tangentiale Verbindung Ost TVO) erlauben eine wesentlich kürzere Durchquerung Berlins auf einer Hauptstraße, als z.B. über den Berliner Ring, was zu einem größeren Transitverkehr führen kann.
Die exemplarischen MATSIM Simulationen (www.matsim.org) in diesem Video erhärten diesen Verdacht.
Nachtrag 27. Nov. 2021: Aufgrund einer Nachfrage, hier eine noch eine quantitative Information zur Simulation.
In der Simulation wird der Beschreibung in https://svn.vsp.tu-berlin.de/repos/public-svn/publications/vspwp/2017/17-12/ZiemkeNagel2017BerlinScenario.pdf folgend die Bevölkerung um einen Faktor 10 skaliert, dementsprechend nehmen wir an, dass alles, also auch der Verkehr, mit einem Faktor 10 skaliert wird.
In der Simulation lassen wir insgesamt 1300 Fahrzeug-Agenten (die salopp “Laster” genannt werden) den Tag über starten. Es startet jeweils alle 20 Sekunden ein Fahrzeug, an der A11 Höhe Tiefer Bugsin See in Richtung Cottbus. Wir lassen die Fahrzeuge dann, per Simulation, mit dem üblichen Berlin Verkehr “kollidieren”. 1300 Fahrzeuge in der Simulation entsprächen also mit dem obigen Faktor rund 13000 zusätzlichen Fahrzeugen pro Tag (in der Simulation nur aus Richtung der A11/Berliner Ring A10). Laut BAST: https://www.bast.de/DE/Verkehrstechnik/Fachthemen/v2-verkehrszaehlung/Daten/2017_1/Jawe2017.html?nn=1819490 findet man 2017 an der Zählstelle der A11 bei Birkholz 50791 Kfz/Tag und 4573 Schwerverkehr/Tag, also knapp 55 000 Fahrzeuge/Tag. An der A10 zählt man bei Lindenberg 62235 Fahrzeuge/Tag. Auf der B158 bei Ahrensfelde werden hier 22795 Fahrzeuge/Tag gezählt.
Da 13000/62235= 0,208 ist, würde also bei dieser Rechnung, über den Daumen geschätzt, rund 20% mehr Verkehr (Transit, Routenumentscheider z.B. Hamburg-Dresden etc.), aus Richtung A11/auf westlicher A10 bzw. B158 und östliche A10, zu dem obigen Stauverhalten auf der Märkischen Allee führen.
Disclaimer: Für die Simulation wurde uns eine Vollversion der Visualisierungssoftware Via (https://simunto.com/via/) für 14 Tage kostenlos zur Verfügung gestellt.
Wir hatten die Simulation zwar mit einer kostenlosen “Kleinversion” vorbereitet, aber 14 Tage war für uns doch recht knapp, da wir das Video in unserer Freitzeit erstellten. So konnte auch aus diesem zeitlichen Grund, kein Test mehr durchgeführt werden, bei welcher Fahrzeuganzahl das Stauverhalten auf der Märkischen Allee beginnt.