Daily Bike Traffic Volume in Copenhagen

Okay, okay, maybe all these stats are a bit boring... but I find them interesting. But remember you can always pop over to the Cycle Chic for a little respite from the stats.

The map of Greater Copenhagen is from the Bicycle Audit 2006 [Cykelregnskab 2006] from Copenhagen City Council. It shows how many bikes are on the bike lanes and streets each day between 06:00 and 18:00. The thickest red lines show that over 20,000 bikes are using the infrastructure on those routes.

Indeed, rush hour on bikes is something you see on weekdays. 100+ bikes lined up at traffic lights on the bike lanes, waiting to move towards or away from work or school.

For reference, there are over 500,000 cyclists on the streets every day. 36% of 1.7 million citizens.

Not for nothing are city councils around the world talking (dreaming) of "copenhagenizing" their cities by planning (hopefully) bike lanes and bike infrastructure.

For more info, stats and inspiration, see the Blog Categories links on the right column.

7550 New Bike Parking Spots at Copenhagen Central Station

For all of Copenhagen's badassness as a bicycle city, there remains one thing that the City still completely sucks at. Bicycle parking at train stations. At Copenhagen Central Station there are only about 1000 bike parking spots. Danish State Railways can't even tell us how many spots they have. They're not sure. Even in Basel they have 800+. In Antwerp they have this . Don't even get me started on the Dutch. 12,500 bike parking spots are on the way in some place called Utrecht . Amsterdam has a multi-story bike parking facility, floating bicycle barges round the back and are planning 7000 more spots underwater . Even at the nation's busiest train station, Nørreport, the recent and fancy redesign failed miserably in providing parking that is adequate for the demand . Architects once again failing to respond to actual urban needs. It is time to remedy that. Here is my design for 7550 bike parking spots behind Copenhagen Central Station. Steve C. Montebello i...

The New Question for 21st Century Cities

It's all so simple if we want it to be. For almost a century we have been asking the same question in our cities. "How many cars can we move down a street?" It's time to change the question. If you ask "How many PEOPLE can we move down a street?", the answer becomes much more modern and visionary. And simple. Oh, and cheaper. Let alone the fact that the model at the top can move 10 times more people down a street than the model at the bottom. When I travel with my Bicycle Urbanism by Design keynote , I often step on the toes of traffic engineers all around the world. Not all of them, however. I am always approached by engineers who are grateful that someone is questioning the unchanged nature of traffic engineering and the unmerited emphasis placed on it. I find it brilliant that individual traffic engineers in six different nations have all said the same thing to me: "We're problem solvers. But we're only ever asked to solve the sam...

Desire Line Analysis in Copenhagen's City Centre

Continuing in our series of Desire Line Analyses, we decided to cast our critical and curious eyes on yet another Copenhagen intersection, this time where Bremerholm meets Holmens Kanal. We decided to be more specific and focus on one part of the intersection - a location that we know well and one with a specific congestion problem in rush hour. We filmed for one hour from 08:15-09:15. Behaviour vs Design With the massive numbers of bicycle users in the mornings in Copenhagen, bottlenecks occur at a number of locations, particularly where many bicycle users need to turn left. This is something that all of us at the company experience each morning so we decided to study it. It was a November morning and it was party-cloudly, dry and 6 degrees C. The focus was to determine how bicycle users react to the sub-standard design of this location. How they react to having to battle with motorised traffic - something that is unusual in the city. Yep, even in Copenhagen, The Arroganc...

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