When you cycle in different cities in Germany this becomes immediately obvious. When the traffic is low, in some cities you’ll never have to wait because the traffic light immediately switches to green once you cycle near it.

In other cities, no matter how low the traffic, the traffic lights will still give an empty car lane 3 minutes before switching for 10 seconds to green for cyclists.

In some cities, you’ve got proper roundabouts and well designed traffic light systems so when your cycle path crosses multiple slip lanes and car lanes, you get green pretty much all at once and are protected by traffic lights all the way across the intersection.

In other cities, your bike path crosses an Autobahn onramp without traffic lights from a bad angle with a “caution” asking the cyclists to be cautious, not the motorists.

It’s so ridiculous considering even a 6km trip by bicycle takes me twice the time in Düsseldorf compared to Kiel, just because the traffic lights are designed in such a car-centric ways, bike paths are rarer and the roads that are safe to cycle on are badly maintained.