Who has to clear snow from the pavement in Berlin?

The Anlieger, which the Straßenreinigungsgesetz defines as the owner of the adjoining property, a holder of a heritable building right, a usufructuary, or anyone with a use right entered in the land register. BSR handles the carriageway, the cycle paths, the pedestrian crossings, the bus stops and a list of named squares and pedestrian zones, but not the pavement in front of your building. Owners may pass the work to a tenant in the lease, or hire a winter service and pass the cost on through the service charges.

How wide does the cleared path have to be?

At least 1 metre on an ordinary Berlin street, and at least 1.5 metres on the pavements of main roads and shopping streets, which the cleaning register lists as categories A1 and A2. A small number of special cases require 3 metres. The law also asks for whatever width the actual pedestrian traffic needs, so the figures are a floor and not a target. Across Berlin, about 19 percent of registered street sides carry the 1.5 metre duty and 81 percent the 1 metre one.

What time do I have to have the pavement cleared by?

Snow has to be cleared as soon as the snowfall stops, and repeatedly during a long snowfall. Ice is dealt with as soon as it forms. If the snowfall continues past 20:00, or snow or ice starts after that time, the path has to be clear by 07:00 the following morning, and by 09:00 on a Sunday or a public holiday. Separately, BSR asks that the way to your bins is clear to one bin's width by 06:00, or your collection can be missed.

Can I use salt on the pavement in Berlin?

No. Salt and every other de-icing agent are banned for residents in Berlin; the rule covers all Auftaumittel and not only salt. Only BSR may use them, and only in defined exceptional cases. Spread an abrasive instead: sand, grit or granulate, sold as Splitt in any hardware shop from October. In a hard frost, gritting on its own is not enough, because BSR's own instruction is to break the ice up, lift the pieces off, and only then grit. Once the thaw comes, sweep your grit into a pile and the normal street cleaning round takes it away.

I rent my flat. Do I have to shovel?

It depends on your lease, and both arrangements are common in Berlin. The duty starts with the owner. The owner can transfer the work to you in the lease, in which case you own the shovel and the 07:00 deadline, or hire a winter service and put the bill in your annual service charges, in which case you own a line item. Read the winter clause before the first snow, or ask your Hausverwaltung which of the two you are on. A Winterdienst charge, if there is one, shows up in the Nebenkostenabrechnung.

What is a cleaning class and how do I find mine?

Berlin's Straßenreinigungsverzeichnis puts every public street, square and path into directory A, B or C, and then into a class by how often it is swept: 10 times a week for class 1a down to once a week for class 4. That class decides both the street cleaning fee and the minimum width you have to clear in winter. It is not something you can guess from looking at the street. The Berlin Pavement Duty Map on this page holds all 89,141 registered street sides at their real coordinates, so you can search your street and read the class off it.

Are there streets where I also have to clear the road?

Yes. On category C streets, which the register lists as insufficiently built up, the Anlieger cleans the carriageway to the middle of the road all year, and carries an extended winter duty where the pavement continues across the junction. That is about 1,684 kilometres of Berlin, roughly 15 percent of the city's registered street sides, and it is heavily concentrated outside the ring: 32 percent of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, 27 percent of Treptow-Köpenick, 22 percent of Pankow and Spandau, against effectively none in Mitte, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.

What happens if I do not clear it?

The district Ordnungsamt is responsible for checking pavements. If an Anlieger does not act, the office can order a substitute clearance at that person's cost and open an administrative offence procedure, with a fine of up to 10,000 euros. If somebody is injured because of the ice, criminal proceedings and a compensation claim are possible on top. Delegating the work to a firm or a neighbour is allowed, but it does not move the responsibility, and it adds a duty to check the job was done.

Berlin Snow Clearing Rules: Which Pavement Is Yours and How Wide

Yusuf Ucuz

Sep 16

7 min read

The first real snow in Berlin almost always arrives on a weeknight. It stops around midnight, the city goes quiet and photogenic, and several hundred thousand people go to bed with a legal duty they do not know they have. The pavement in front of their building is theirs to clear, and the clock has already started running.

Most people who live here assume the city handles it. You see the orange BSR trucks out before dawn, you pay a street cleaning fee inside your rent, and the obvious conclusion is that somebody is coming. On the carriageway, somebody is. On the pavement, nobody is.

A snow covered residential street in Berlin-Friedenau at night, with parked cars and lit windows

Hertelstraße in Friedenau on the night of 5 January 2025. Every metre of pavement in this photograph belongs to whoever owns the building behind it.

What the Berlin snow clearing rules actually say

Berlin's street cleaning law splits the winter work in two, and the split is not where people expect it.

BSR takes the carriageway. It also takes the cycle paths, the pedestrian crossings, the bus stops and a list of named squares and pedestrian zones. That work starts before the morning rush, and it is the reason the roads look handled by the time you leave the house.

The pavement belongs to the Anlieger. In the law that means the owner of the property behind it, a holder of a heritable building right, a usufructuary, or anyone with a use right entered in the land register. Owners can pass the job to a tenant in the lease, or hire a firm and pass the cost on through the service charges. Berlin's own service page on the duty is blunt about who carries it.

Here is the part worth sitting with for a second. On most Berlin streets BSR already sweeps your pavement in normal weather, somewhere between once and ten times a week depending on the class of the street, and charges you for it through the quarterly street cleaning fee. The moment it snows, that same pavement is yours. The fee does not stretch to it and the trucks are not coming for it.

How wide a path you have to clear

The rule is written as a minimum, and the minimum depends on which cleaning class your street sits in.

1.5 metres on the pavements of main roads and shopping streets, which the register lists as categories A1 and A2.
1 metre on every other street.
3 metres in a small set of special cases.
More than the minimum wherever the pedestrian traffic actually needs it, which is the clause nobody quotes and a court would.

I measured the whole register to see how the city splits. Of roughly 11,400 kilometres of registered street sides in Berlin, 19 percent carry the 1.5 metre duty and 81 percent carry the 1 metre one. So the odds are you owe a metre. The problem is that a metre is wider than the path people actually tread, which is the path most people clear without thinking about it.

A wide Berlin pavement at night with a single narrow footpath trodden through fresh snow

Eisenzahnstraße in Wilmersdorf. That trodden line is maybe forty centimetres across. On a street like this the minimum is a full metre.

The duty also follows the shape of your plot, not just its front. It covers the pavement stretches that branch towards the building and the cut corners at junctions. A corner building has two pavements, and both of them count.

Find your own street in the register

Every public street, square and path in Berlin sits in a cleaning register, split into directories A, B and C and then into classes by how often it gets swept. That class is what decides your width, and it is not something you can guess from the look of the street.

The map below holds the whole thing, drawn from BSR's own open data: all 89,141 registered street sides at their real coordinates, coloured by the path you owe there. Type your street, then tap the stretch your building stands on.

One number from building it surprised me. Of Berlin's 11,377 named street entries, 2,564 change class partway along, which is a little under a quarter. Karl-Marx-Allee runs as class A1b at the Friedrichshain end and A2a further out. A long Hauptstraße can pass through four classes on its way across a borough. Your neighbour three doors down can genuinely owe a different width from you, and if you moved along the same street last year, your old answer may not be your new one.

The clock: 07:00 on a weekday, 09:00 on a Sunday

Snow has to be cleared as soon as the snowfall stops, and repeatedly during a long one. Ice gets dealt with as soon as it forms.

The times people remember are the fallback ones, for snow that falls late:

If the snowfall runs past 20:00, or starts after it, the path has to be clear by 07:00 the next morning.
On a Sunday or a public holiday, that becomes 09:00.

There is a second deadline almost nobody knows about, and it has nothing to do with pedestrians. BSR asks that the way to your bins is free of snow and ice by 06:00, at least one bin wide. Miss it and the collection can simply not happen, which turns one snowy night into a fortnight of overflowing bins.

A main road junction in Berlin-Wilmersdorf during snowfall, the carriageway partly cleared

Lentzeallee during the snowfall itself. The carriageway is BSR's job. The pavement on the left of the frame is somebody's private duty.

Grit, never salt, and why gritting alone fails

This is the rule that catches people who moved here from a country with different habits. Salt and every other de-icing agent are banned for residents in Berlin. Not discouraged, banned, and the wording covers every de-icing agent, not only salt. Only BSR may use them, and only in defined exceptional cases.

BSR spells this out on its own page. What you use instead is an abrasive: sand, grit or granulate. You can buy a sack of Splitt in any Berlin hardware shop from October onwards, and it costs a few euros.

In a hard frost, spreading grit on top of ice does not do the job on its own. BSR's own instruction is three steps and in this order: break the ice up, lift the pieces off, then grit. Waiting for it to thaw is not a strategy, and the shovel-shaped scraper that does the breaking is the tool most flats do not own.

One small piece of good news. Once the thaw comes and you sweep your grit into a pile, BSR takes it away with the normal street cleaning round.

If you rent, the answer is in your lease

This is where most people in Berlin actually sit, and the honest answer sits in a document, not in the law.

The duty starts with the owner. From there it can go two ways:

The lease transfers the work to you. Then you own the shovel, the grit and the 07:00 deadline.
The owner hires a winter service and puts the bill in your service charges. Then you own a line item, not a shovel.

Both are common in Berlin, and both are legal. The one thing that is not an option is assuming without looking. If you are about to read your annual bill anyway, checking the Nebenkostenabrechnung line by line is where a Winterdienst charge would appear, and it is worth knowing whether you are paying for the service or expected to perform it.

A snowy junction in Berlin-Wilmersdorf with 1920s apartment blocks and parked cars

Kahlstraße in Wilmersdorf. In a building this size the duty almost always sits with a Hausverwaltung, which is not the same as it being done.

Two more things that hold whichever way your lease reads. You can delegate the work to a firm or a neighbour, but the responsibility stays with you, along with a duty to check it was actually done. And the penalty is not theoretical: the fine goes up to 10,000 euros, and if somebody breaks a wrist on your stretch there is a compensation claim waiting behind the fine.

Where the duty is heaviest, and it is not the centre

There is one class in the register that changes the job completely. On category C streets, the ones the law calls insufficiently built up, the Anlieger does not just keep the pavement. They clean the carriageway to the middle of the road, all year, and in winter they carry an extended duty where the pavement continues across the junction.

That is 1,684 kilometres of Berlin street sides, about 15 percent of the city, and it is distributed in a way that is worth seeing on the map:

Marzahn-Hellersdorf: 32 percent of its street sides are category C.
Treptow-Köpenick: 27 percent. Pankow and Spandau: 22 percent. Reinickendorf: 21 percent.
Mitte, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf: effectively zero.

So the winter workload of a Berlin household is not evenly spread. A flat in Kreuzberg owes a metre of pavement. A house on a lane in Kaulsdorf owes a metre of pavement, the road to the centre line, and the junction. Nobody chooses a district for this reason, but if you are house hunting east or out towards the lakes, it belongs on the list next to the heating.

A broad tree lined Berlin street during snowfall at night, pavement uncleared in the foreground

Forckenbeckstraße in Schmargendorf. A street this wide usually sits in a higher cleaning class, so the minimum here is a metre and a half.

What to do about it this week

BSR's official winter service season runs from 1 November to 31 March, which as I write this is six weeks away. The duty itself is not tied to those dates. If snow lies or the pavement is icy on 20 October, it applies that morning.

Six weeks is enough time to get ahead of the Berlin snow clearing rules properly, and the three things that matter take about twenty minutes:

Look up your stretch in the map above and write the width down. A metre and a half is a different Saturday from a metre.
Read the winter clause in your lease, or ask your Hausverwaltung which of the two arrangements you are on. Do it now, not on the first snowy Monday.
Buy the grit and the scraper in October. Every hardware shop in Berlin sells out of both in the first week of real snow, and the 07:00 deadline does not move because the shop was empty.

If you want to know what else in the city shuts down or changes shape at the same time, what closes in Berlin in winter has the dates, and the heating season rules cover what your landlord owes you when the flat goes cold. For the other half of a Berlin winter morning, when the road actually freezes answers the tyre half of the same morning.

A snowy street corner in Berlin-Wilmersdorf at night with apartment blocks and tyre tracks

Wiesbadener Straße in Wilmersdorf. By morning this pavement is either cleared to a metre or it is somebody's problem.

I walk through the old centre most days of the week, and on the first icy morning of the year the difference between one building and the next is visible from fifty metres away. One stretch is grey and gritted and the next is a polished sheet. It is never about who owns the nicer building. It is about who read the rule before November.