Despite all the protests, the Kastanienallee in Berlin-Rosenthal is to be redesigned – for this to happen, at least 40 old trees must first be felled.
The Berlin Senate wants to push through the expansion of the road from autumn 2025 despite all the resistance from the district – the final plan for the first section has now been presented to the Pankow District Council (BVV).
In April, the BVV passed a resolution calling for a revision of the current plans. However, in a letter to the district office, the Senate administration has now stated that it sees “no need” for this, says district mayor Cordelia Koch (Greens).
Kastanienallee is a heavily used access road for industrial estates in Pankow and Reinickendorf. According to the traffic authorities, up to 40 trucks per hour drive along this road and on the neighboring Schönhauser Straße in some sections.
The plans call for redesigning Kastanienallee – many trees will be felled for this. This concerns the eastern section between Friedrich-Engels- and Dietzgenstraße, which was actually supposed to be rebuilt this year. The western section between Hauptstraße and Friedrich-Engels-Straße has already been redesigned, in particular to serve the heavy goods traffic from the surrounding industrial areas.
Pankow’s Green mayor sees accidents as “inevitable”
Residents who have joined together in the “Kastanienallee Citizens’ Initiative” protested against the project. They criticized the expansion plans as being against the rules, saying the street was too narrow and the planned cycle and pedestrian paths were too narrow. Among other things, the cycle lanes were only supposed to be 1.25 meters wide. The initiative also pointed out the great dangers posed to school children by truck traffic.
The Senate Transport Administration then announced that, as a “compromise”, the construction of a bicycle lane would be dispensed with in sections of the narrow avenue – instead, a bicycle street would be built next door on Nordendstrasse.
The Pankow Greens are not satisfied with this. “The plans for Kastanienallee in Rosenthal must be revised,” says a joint statement by Koch and the BVV faction of the Greens. The “half-baked ideas” should not be implemented.
“As things stand, the road would be renovated, but it would create a dangerous and oversized car and truck track with almost no trees – and that on a small village street,” criticizes Koch. Given the narrowness, “accidents are inevitable.”
The Senate Transport Administration sees things differently. They do not consider Kastanienallee to be a village or residential street, but rather an “important cross-connection” from the B 96a federal highway to the Pankow-Park and Flottenstraße commercial areas. At the end of July, the Senate Transport Administration therefore rejected a downgrade from the supra-local road network due to a “lack of alternatives,” the district office announced.
Tree felling from October 2025
The reconstruction between Friedrich-Engels-Straße and Eschenallee over a distance of around 500 meters is therefore scheduled to start in exactly one year – in October 2025. The construction period was given as 2.5 years, reports CDU MP Lars Bocian, who was present at the presentation of the plan in the BVV transport committee. The district office has announced the “felling of the 40 street trees from the growing season in October 2025” on the section.
The second section from Eschenallee to Dietzgenstraße is not yet finalized. Here the road is significantly narrower for about 700 meters – and the expansion planned so far would presumably violate the Berlin Mobility Act. According to Bocian, work could start here as of 2028, but they are currently still working “intensively” on adjustments: “What is certain, however, is that the road will be reduced to just one lane in each direction.” Bocian expects the entire Kastanienallee to be completed in 2030.
