Safe swimming lanes at the public pool Kreuzberg (Prinzenbad) thanks to clear speed limits

Swimming lanes are a scarce resource in Berlin. In most of the city's pools, fitness swimmers, casual recreational swimmers, and very slow swimmers, often doing breaststroke, share the same narrow lanes, with no speed separation at all. Swimmers going at a faster pace or doing front crawl regularly hit what feels like a wall when they run into an unexpected breaststroke swimmer. Dangerous, painful collisions from kicks, often to the face or ribs, are a daily occurrence, because front-crawl swimmers, who swim face down, often can't spot slower swimmers ahead of them in time. With such a large speed difference, this creates a sudden moment of surprise: in the better case it feels like hitting a wall, in the worse case it's a kick to the face. The necessary evasive move into the middle of the lane then creates hazardous oncoming traffic: faster swimmers regularly have to swim against the lane's actual direction to overtake, putting themselves and oncoming swimmers at risk of head-on collisions. These situations aren't just dangerous in themselves, they also constantly generate tension and arguments between swimmers. This problem exists fundamentally and urgently needs a solution, regardless of whether it's peak season or pools are closed.

Summer pools like Sommerbad Kreuzberg (Prinzenbad) show this at its most extreme. But they're simply the sharpest expression of a broader organizational problem across Berlin's pools, not an isolated case. Pool staff know the problem very well, but won't change anything about it without instructions from management.

The argument sometimes raised that speed separation would discriminate against slower swimmers is factually wrong: pools like Prinzenbad also have separate pools and wide, unstructured areas for free swimming. There's more than enough room for recreation. Long-established international standards show that everyone benefits from speed-based lane separation. Our demand isn't about taking lap-lane access away from slower swimmers. Quite the opposite: a three-tier system ("Slow Swimming," "Medium Pace," "Fast Swimming") still gives slower lap swimmers their own lane, just separated from significantly faster swimmers. Nobody loses access, everyone gains safety and order.

The situation is made worse in the summer months by the fact that Berlin's indoor pools close for the summer break, leaving fitness swimmers and triathletes across the city with even fewer training alternatives. This makes the problem especially acute in summer, but it exists year-round, including in some of the indoor pools.

We have already tried several times to resolve the problem directly: in conversation with staff on-site, in writing with pool management, and with the management of the Berliner Bäder-Betriebe (BBB). All of these attempts have so far been firmly rejected.

Pools like Stadtbad Tiergarten or SSE already show successfully that such separation works. We are therefore not asking for a one-off exception for a single pool, but for a binding, city-wide standard, so that the BBB finally takes responsibility for safe, organized swimming across the whole city.