Radbahn funding and network support.

Urban Advance

Berlin

Radbahn is a citizen initiative that aims to transform the space underneath Berlin’s overground into a bike lane and innovation corridor, connecting the East and West of the city.

We supported the visionaries behind this idea by connecting them with the decision-makers and helping them secure the funding needed to get a pilot up and running.

Where it started

Reallabor Radbahn is a citizen initiative with a big idea: transform the underused space beneath one of Berlin's main elevated U-Bahn lines into a 9-kilometre hybrid bike lane, innovation corridor, and public park connecting Kreuzberg to Friedrichshain.

The inspiration came from New York's High Line, the globally celebrated project that turned a disused elevated railway into one of the city's most loved public spaces, triggering a wave of urban regeneration around it. Radbahn set out to bring that same approach to Berlin: take underused urban infrastructure, reimagine it as a public asset, and use it to connect communities, attract innovation, and improve urban life. The vision was compelling. Turning it into a real city project was another matter. The team needed political support, a funding strategy, and the right partners to move from an idea to implementation.

Urban Impact had worked with the Radbahn team before. When the moment came to push the project from vision to funded pilot, the relationship was already there.

Our role

Building the coalition

Major city infrastructure projects don't get funded through single applications, they get funded when the right coalition of stakeholders believes in them at the same time. We leveraged Urban Impact's network to create that coalition: bringing together the right combination of public funders, city officials, and civic stakeholders to give the project the backing it needed. This was strategic positioning, helping the Radbahn team understand which relationships mattered, what each stakeholder needed to see before committing, and how to present the project in a way that made the funding case irresistible.

Securing the funding

We supported the development of a funding strategy aligned with Nationale Projekte des Städtebaus, Germany's federal programme for urban development projects of national significance. The application combined a clear project vision with broad stakeholder support. The result was €3.3 million in federal funding and approval for the first pilot section of the Radbahn.

From vision to testbed

Today, the first pilot section is in operation. Alongside cycling infrastructure, it serves as a real-world testbed for urban technologies, including innovative pavement materials, smart lighting and signalling, bicycle guidance systems, biodiversity measures, and public space innovations. Several technologies from Urban Impact's network have also been deployed there, including Airly's air quality sensors.

The Radbahn is, in practice, a piece of city infrastructure that Urban Impact helped build, and that continues to generate real-world outcomes for the urban tech ecosystem.

Urban Impact has supported us with hands-on advice and networking on how to push Berlin's Radbahn project forward. Thanks to their support, we now can count ourselves lucky to have been awarded funding from the German federal government — bringing the actual implementation of Radbahn significantly closer to reality.

Matthias Heskamp,

1st Chairman, paper planes e.V.

Where they are now

€3.3M raised. Pilot segment operational. Active testbed for multiple urban technologies. City approval secured. 9km master plan in progress from Bahnhof Zoo to Oberbrücke.