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Bike Infrastructure Building Boom in Denmark


Photo: Joan Karlsen/jv.dk

Pretty much everywhere you go in the countryside there are dedicated bicycle lanes running parallel to the roads, enabling cyclists to ride from town to town with the same accessibility as motorists.

There are, however, black spots on the map that lack high-quality separated infrastructure. The national government's financial boost for bicycles from last year [launched on my birthday, actually] has now transformed into projects that are actually being built. 1 billion kroner [$200 million] was offered up for bicycle projects and it resulted in a storm of applications from towns, cities and orgs wanting funds for a variety of things.

Above is a bicycle lane being built between two towns in Jutland. The article from the provincial newspaper jv.dk is about how it ended up being 800,000 kroner [$160,000] cheaper because the costs for archeological digs was less than planned and lower labour costs than expected. It's part of a 5 or 6 km stretch connecting two towns, Brørup and Foldingbro.

There's a link on the page of the article to a related article about another bike track being built. By all accounts there is massive investment in bicycle infrastructure all across Denmark.

I posted last October about a call for building bicycle infrastructure to aid growth in times of financial instablity and in February 2010 the Danish minister of Finance encouraged Danes to buy bicycles as a boost to the economy for the same reasons.

Bad times for global finances. Massive good times for bicycle infrastructure in Denmark.
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