Inspiration for the Copenhagenization the rest of the world
With the Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen remains very much in the news especially on the bike front. As a city with a dominate car culture until the 1970s, Copenhagen pulled back from the gasoline induced sprawl most of the Western world embraced and now has 37% of commuter trips and over 50% of other everyday trips taken by car.
In the last week, StreetFilms produced this video with of some of the latest bicycle infrastructure innovations in Copenhagen with Copenhagenize author Mikael Colville-Andersen.
Some of the improvements include:
- Counter of bike traffic for planning records and civic pride
- Double bike lanes on high bike traffic routes
- Separate stop lights for bikes allowing bike a 5-10 second head start before cars are allowed forward
- On-street bike lockers for cargo bikes
- LED lights embedded in the road warning drivers not to turn right when bikes are approaching in the inside lane
- And my favorite: Stop lights synchronized to the speed of bikes allowing bike movement without stops
Copenhagen is not letting up with a goal of 50% bicycle commuting by 2015. And lest you say “well, that’s Denmark, it will never work here”, the Practical Cyclist reminds us that these proposals met resistance from the public when first implemented. Danish urban planner Jan Gehl who is credited with spearheading the changes that made Copenhagen a cycling mecca says the initial response he got was “We Danes will never agree to this—Danish people won’t ride bikes.”
If the Danes can go from bikes being outside of the norm to a beacon of transportation cycling, than so can we. Couldn’t we all use a little more Copenhagenization?
on Feb 5th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I loved reading this piece on Copenhagen. I think the rules that they have implemented to make their city more bike-friendly are innovative and novel and I just hope that other cities, especially in the US, can follow their lead! Thanks for posting this.
on Oct 26th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
“Copenhagen remains very much in the news especially on the bike front. As a city with a dominate [dominant?] car culture until the 1970s, Copenhagen pulled back from the gasoline induced sprawl most of the Western world embraced and now has 37% of commuter trips and over 50% of other everyday trips taken by car.”
Interesting take, but isn’t it more like Bob Shanteau wrote:
“People who return from trips to Copenhagen and Amsterdam are overwhelmed by the number of cyclists they see in those cities and associate the numbers with bicycle facilities, totally ignoring the fact that bicyclists dominated the streets there until the 1960′s.
Perhaps we could make an argument that the right lane of multilane streets is a de facto bike lane that could attract the same hordes of bicyclists as existed in northern Europe. We would get opposition from both the motoring advocates and the bikeway advocates, but it is worth a shot, even if it is an irrational marketing approach
”
http://cycledallas.blogspot.com/2010/10/to-be-taken-seriously.html