The last bite of currywurst, Wolfsburg style, has only just been digested when the next debate is brewing around the corner: It’s about the subject of cargo bikes. The green budget politician Sven-Christian Kindler would like the federal government to support 1,000 privately used cargo bikes with a million euros each – or was it the other way around?
In any case, a billion euros would be spent in the end, and that’s enough to cause the greatest excitement. Christian Dürr, deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group, speaks of “clientele policy”.
“We will not save the world climate by subsidizing cargo bikes in Berlin-Kreuzberg,” says Dürr and only forgets to mention that the average Kreuzberg woman navigates her cargo bike through the city traffic while sipping a soy milk latte at the same time.
Left parliamentary group leader Amira Mohamed Ali tells the “world” that cargo bikes would “practically not help anyone” in rural regions. And CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak writes on Twitter that the Greens’ proposals are becoming “more and more absurd and unworldly”.
So unworldly is the idea that something similar has long been implemented. For example, in the area of responsibility of Ziemiak’s party colleague Peter Altmaier, namely by the Federal Ministry of Economics, which subsidizes investments in e-cargo bikes and e-cargo trailers for commercial use with up to 2500 euros per case. There are many other funding programs in the federal states and municipalities, some of which private individuals can also use.
That would not yet speak against using the topic for polarization in the election campaign. And yet the public interest is more likely due to the popcorn factor of the debate than that the cargo bike as such has real potential for excitement beyond Twitter.
Late on Sunday evening, Jan Fleischhauer, journalist, columnist and the proximity to the Greens for decades, tweeted reliably unsuspicious, a photo of himself as a driver of a cargo bike, smiling and relaxed.
His comment on this was probably not written to calm excited spirits: “Anyone who needs 1000 euros from the Greens to be there is a loser.” Craftsmen’s equipment than as an object of supposed cultural wars.
The reverse is also true: the problems of rural areas are far from being solved with a funding program for cargo bikes. But nobody said that either.
I am a technology author with 8 years of experience in journalism. My writing covers the latest technology advancements and trends, drawing on my expertise in news journalism and social media platforms. I have contributed to major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.
