Initiative wants a tram-free Basel city centre
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Initiative wants a tram-free Basel city centre
A non-partisan committee made up of people from politics and business wants a Basel city centre without trams. It launched an initiative under the name "Go Basel Go!" on Monday. It is calling for alternative tram routes outside the city centre.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The canton should take the necessary measures to ensure that no public transport runs on the central city centre axis between Barfüsserplatz and Schifflände and that it is free of tram tracks, according to the text of the initiative. However, the public transport connection via Steinenberg, Kohlenberg and Schifflände must remain guaranteed.
The Marktplatz stop should be the only stop to be cancelled, the initiative committee wrote. Tram traffic could be routed via Petersgraben, Kohlenberg, Schifflände and bridges other than the Mittlere Brücke. This should make the tram network more reliable, as it will no longer come to a standstill so easily during demonstrations and events.
+ Two trams collide at Zurich Paradeplatz
Trees and fountains instead of tracks
The canton must transform the city centre axis into a “public space”, the text of the initiative continues. There should be space for trees, fountains and unpaved surfaces. The canton should build “concentrated bicycle parking facilities” so as not to impair the recreational area.
The committee proposes a car park at Barfüsserplatz, for example. Access should remain regulated for emergency services, delivery traffic and people with limited mobility.
The initiative committee is broadly supported. The board of the “Go Basel Go!” association of the same name includes parliamentarian Sibel Arslan, the architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the entrepreneur Moritz Suter, politician Franz-Xaver Leonhardt and Mathias Böhm, managing director of Stadtkonzept Basel.
More
The soapy secrets behind Basel’s first film
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
External Content
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.