Environment and traffic

General observation

For sure one of the biggest problems in Schwetzingen is the individual traffic. Schwetzingen is trying hard to get construction of the B 535 under way which is long overdue and intended to relieve the north-south axis. With the opening of the southern tangential trunk road a few years ago some of the non-resident traffic could be kept off the town centre. The L 599 also contributed to a reduction of traffic. But waiting for bypass roads to relieve the town centre is not enough to solve traffic problems in Schwetzingen. To reduce outward and homeward traffic and urban traffic in Schwetzingen as well supporting actions must be taken.

Traffic

Since 1994 the municipal administration has been particularly active in the field of public short distance passenger traffic. This year a town bus was introduced and the regional bus lines were integrated into the city bus system tariffwise. In 1999 the second loop followed as a further extension.

Further, we endeavour to get the ‘Rhine-Neckar suburban express trains’ to Schwetzingen earlier than originally scheduled. A traffic service similar to the suburban express trains has been in operation since December 2004. The term ‘suburban express train’, however, must not be used unless all interconnected railway stations offer entrance to trains at train level.

There has been a cycle track expert opinion of the ADFC since the year 2000. Some of it has already been realized. During the next few years some more will follow. Further, the traffic development plan resolved in 2005 as a guideline will be realized successively.

Environment

As a so-called counterpoint  to traffic,  Schwetzingen offers you one of the most noted nature and landscape preserves in South-West Germany, the ‘Schwetzingen meadows / Edinger reed’. The ‘Schwetzingen meadows’ lie in the southwest of the community of Brühl, and on a surface of almost 1,000 hectares these offer you a manifoldness of mead typical plants and animals marked by a permanent interplay of inundated and savannah type lowland.

A giant biotope of quite a different kind is the nature and landscape preserve Hirschacker-Dossenwald on the northern boundary. The ‘armed wood’, so called in common parlance, belongs to the fringes of a glacial inland dune belt. Extended sand fields show a marked wealth of dryness loving plants, so-called sand grasses which along with the respective insect species can only be found in very few places in our latitudes.

Whilst the wet meads are limited to the Schwetzingen meadows, sand grasses can also be found in some places outside the nature and landscape preserves. These have been integrated into the biotope network concept of the town of Schwetzingen and are successively safeguarded and furthered.