25,000 cyclist closes highway in climate protest in Frankfurt

On the first day of the International Auto Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, about 25 thousand people closed the highways with their bicycles.

In protests held on Saturday, cycling activists demanded that fossil-fuel vehicles be banned from city centers immediately and that the impact of traffic on the climate should be reset by 2035.

Environmentalists also demanded that public transport and train lines be expanded by changing transport habits, and that more space should be given to pedestrians and cyclists in traffic.

Participants in the demonstrations emphasized that the increasing trend towards cars with large engine volumes, such as off-road vehicles, is destroying the benefits of fuel efficiency achieved by the development of technology.

One of the protesters, Green Party Parliamentary Group Chairman Anton Hofreiter criticized the electric cars that came to the traffic as an alternative to fossil fuel vehicles because they were fed from an unsustainable source such as lignite.

Some activists reached Frankfurt by bike from cities such as Darmstadt and Mannheim.