Having wide streets where you can set side space for bicycle lanes also helps. After WW2, Berlin was in ruins, and the city was never built up to the density of many other European cities. The Soviets, in particular, were particularly fond of wide, open spaces. (The earlier Prussian kings also liked wide avenues they could march their soldiers through.) Berlin is definitely a great city to bike in.
The major factor here is Berlin's street width, which was chosen to be 22m by law in 1862 for fire safety reasons, much wider than other german cities. Consequently during WW2, Berlin proved to be a problem for allied incendiary bombs. At some point they were even building a to scale model city in the desert (Dugway Proving Ground) for testing various methods of igniting fire storms.
> Berlin, however, would “prove more difficult than most other German cities”, the leading incendiary expert Horatio Bond avowed before the national commission for armament research of the USA. “The building quality is higher, and the single blocks are better separated from each other.” As the tests at the Dugway Proving Ground showed, is “was hardly to be expected that the flames would jump unhindered from one building to the next”.[1]
Berlin Actually survived the war relatively intact, compared to, for example, Cologne.
Even in places where every second house was destroyed, street layouts remained unchanged. Mitte, Kreuzberg. Neukölln, Wedding: all These suburbs are mostly unchanged. Karl-Marx-Street was renamed twice, but was originally build at today’s width.
One of the problems with biking in Berlin are actually the cobblestone roads in many residential areas.
