traffic | Appeal for free bus lanes in Berlin

Anyone who parks in a bus lane must expect to be towed. Photo: imago/Schöning “Reliable bus transport is teamwork,” write the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG). By this they don't just mean their own employees, but they also want to bring Berlin's drivers into the team. Under the motto »We stand on bus lanes. You please don't” they should not only keep the approximately 120 kilometers of priority lanes on Berlin's streets clear, but also the bus stop areas and also not park in the second row. So behave as the road traffic regulations require.

To kick off the campaign, for which messages are to be attached to the rear of 1,700 buses, the state company is inviting people to the bus depot on Wilmersdorfer Cicerostraße on Monday morning and to the demonstration drive on Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstraße and back.

You have the material and you can start operating reliably. “And then we are on the line, and then comes the part that we have less influence on,” says BVG operations director Jenny Zeller-Grothe. The parked bus lanes or “stops that are only used quickly so that someone can get on and off.” Not only does this have a massive impact on punctuality, passengers also suffer. For example, if the buses can no longer approach the curb properly. A problem particularly for people with strollers, walkers or wheelchairs.

»Our bus routes are 13 or 15 kilometers long. In fact, there are several disruptions along the way that add up,” says Ronny Dethloff, head of BVG bus operations. “Sometimes 30 seconds are lost there, sometimes there – I’m already three minutes late,” he reports.

This not only annoys passengers and employees, it also costs money. The timetables have become increasingly stretched over the years, meaning that more and more buses and drivers are needed. The average pace is continually falling. In 2023, the BVG buses were still traveling at 17.82 kilometers per hour. In the first half of 2026 it was 17.73.

These and many other disruptions in road traffic also ensured that only 86.6 percent of bus trips were on time in 2025 - well below the rate of almost 89 percent stipulated in the transport contract. Since 2021, the proportion of on-time journeys has been falling steeply.

Mariendorfer Damm, Sonnenallee, Kurfürstendamm, Dominicusstraße and Hauptstraße. These are the Berlin hotspots for the parked bus lanes, reports Celso Covelo Ruente, team leader for bus lane clearance at BVG. His team has 40 employees who, since 2019, have only been concerned with illegal parking in the bus area and also on the tram.

The BVG counted 11,152 removals of incorrectly parked cars in 2025.

At that time, the BVG was given the authority by the state to punish traffic violations that hindered its operations. In the meantime, she even had her own tow trucks for this purpose. But there were too few for the many cases and the large Berlin urban area. So the BVG, like the police and public order offices, now has contracts with private towing companies.

»We have 1,600 processes per month. But not every process corresponds to a vehicle being towed,” says Covelo Ruente, as the bus makes pretty good progress on the Ku’damm bus lane. At one point, a driver uses the bus lane as an express lane to get past a traffic jam. “But at least he’s not parking in the lane,” says the expert.

If a driver reports a disability, Covelo Ruente's team sets off. »We do a lot of convincing. There's a lot of talking, talking, discussing back and forth," he reports about the cases where the driver is encountered.

After a towing process that cost 270 euros and a notification, “some people write lengthy contradictions using Chat-GPT,” reports Covelo Ruente, somewhat annoyed. The contradictions only have to be accepted in very few cases, "because we adhere to the law and document it precisely," says the team leader.

The bus then reaches the stop at Wittenbergplatz in front of KaDeWe. »We have our taxi drivers here. “It’s a difficult clientele for us because they simply don’t understand that it’s a bus lane or a bus stop,” says Covelo Ruente. At the bus stop on Invalidenstrasse in front of the main train station, the situation got so bad that the BVG threatened not to go to the bus stop anymore. “We have the taxi drivers, Uber drivers and so on who stand there again and again and don’t see it at all,” says the team leader. His people were on site every day for weeks. However, there was no learning effect.

The BVG bus lane team has its hands full, especially between 6 and 10 a.m. in the morning. “That’s where most of the cases are,” says Covelo Ruente. “In the evenings and at night it’s a lawless zone where cars park everywhere.”

The BVG counted 11,152 removals of incorrectly parked cars in 2025. The numbers are rising. In the first half of 2026 there were already 6,500 implementations. The reports from the field give little hope that the campaign will change the situation in the long term.

Other media have corporations or billionaires behind them. We have the nd.Genossenschaft and readers like you. That makes us independent and that’s exactly how we want to remain. But it also means: without you the calculation won't work. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year.

You can donate directly here, one-time or regularly, so that nd stays.