Most cities in the world are still captured in the car-centric life. People drive ages in rolling thrones, moving only heir feet to hit the pedal and their mouth to say angry words about all the other car drivers clogging the streets.
But did you know there was a simple measure, one technique that could increase the throughput of a street from 1300 people in their cars to 5900 people while saving half of the space?
What can that method be, you ask? Simple: Do it like Copenhagen. Change the car city to a bike city.
In Copenhagen 62% of people use the bike daily, but only 9% their car. And contrary to car-centric cities there are not only white man in reflective vests biking, but also children, mothers in blazers, manager in suits and old woman with skirts.
I never was in Copenhagen. But I was in the Netherlands, a similar bike friendly country, and I can tell you there are droves of old ladies biking (not E-bikes) at a speed where the untrained youngster has problems following.
Also I loved how much space they saved in the car parking department.
Bike Friendly Infrastructure
But back to Copenhagen. Here they really thought about how to make it very very easy for bikers.
You not only have the typical wide bike lanes and even bike “highways”, but also an arrangement of little things that make the biking life just that tad easier.
The traffic lights are made to give the biker a green wave, but if you still have to stop, then it may be that you can rest your feet on specially placed footrests so you do not even have to get off your bike.
When the stop takes a bit longer and you eat your banana, you can throw the banana peel into a garbage can that is tilted slighty to make it easier to thrown something in from a bike.
And if you ever find yourself out of air (in your tires that is) you may use one of their air stations to fill it up again. “Air to go” as we Germans would Denglish. (Don’t ask. Really, don’t!)
But of course those things don’t come out of the air (ahaha! Bad pun alert!). You have to do a lot of work to find out what makes cycling easier and then use your findings to improve the infrastructure. Today Copenhagen has 400 km bike lane where the bikers are physically divided from both pedestrians and cars by curbstones, because that is the safest way.
But with every step you take, more people are getting on the bike. The saying is true: If you build for them, they come. May it be bikes or cars. Which one do you prefer?
And of course a city with more bikes then cars is more livable. Less noise, better air, friendlier people.
The Costs
Ah, the costs you ask? All that must be expensive, right? That is true. Turning the city into a bike friendly place has cost a lot. In the last 10 years Copenhagen invested 150 Million Euro into it.
But they also estimate that this will save them 230 Million Euro in the long run. And that does not include the lower health care costs. Because bikers are way more healthy then car drivers.
In fact they may be so healthy that they could survive two of the famous German “Bratwurst” I have mentioned earlier today.
As filmmaker Mikael Colville-Andersen says: “There is no excuse anymore”. Making your city bike friendly is best practice. So when is your city going to copenhagenize?
original German source: http://www.spektrum.de/news/radfahren-wie-eine-koenigin/1444695
Copenhagenize website: http://www.copenhagenize.com/