Skip to main content

GPS For Cyclists in Malmö, Sweden

Malmö Bike Culture

The city of Malmö, Sweden is no stranger to bicycle infrastructure. Just across the bridge from Copenhagen, Sweden's third-largest city has over 40 miles of bicycle lanes. Now those are Swedish miles, mind you, and a Swedish 'mil' equals 10 km so even I can figure out without a calculator that we're looking at 400 km of bicycle infrastructure. (The City of Copenhagen has about 350 km although Greater Copenhagen has over 1000 km of cycle tracks and bike lanes). The point being that Malmö, with a population of about 300,000 plus the metro area, is quite a brilliant cycle-friendly city.

Anyway... this is the GPS age. The City of Malmö decided that many bits of bicycle infrastructure should be given names so that they can be plotted into GPS gadgets.

It doesn't apply to cycle tracks that run along streets - those streets have names already - but the City has named a long list of bits and pieces of infrastructure that are separated from traffic. Paths that run down car-free streets or that cut through parks or short stretches from a train station to a neighbourhood, for example.

What a fun job! It's rare that you get to invent a whole bunch of new names in ancient cities.

It's a great initiative from one of the world's great cycling cities.

The Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan has a list of the new names. Like you care unless you live there or need to GPS yourself somewhere in the city.

Malmö Train Station Parking
The first sign of a bicycle-friendly city is what the bike racks look like outside the train station. Here's Malmö's.

The Bicycle Island
A couple of years ago they were doing renovations around the station and the massive question of where to put the bikes was solved by placing a temporary floating pontoon in the canal next door, for bike parking.

Seatbelt for Bicycles
I often take my bicycle when going to Malmö to shop (that's not my bicycle in the shot) but on the trains between Copenhagen and Malmö, in the bicycle/pram compartments, there are lovely seatbelts for holding your bicycle upright. How cool is that.

If Cycle Chic is your thang, we have set on Flickr of Malmö Cycle Chic.

Labels

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Driving Kills - Health Warnings

I think it's safe to say that we have a pressing need for marketing cycling positively if we're to encourage people to ride bicycles and begin the transformation of our cities into more liveable places. Instead of scare campaigns about cycling [a life-extending, healthy, sustainable transport form], wouldn't it be more appropriate to begin campaigns about the dangers of automobiles? Many people in car-centric countries no longer regard cars as dangerous. Maybe they realise it, but the car is such an ingrained part of the culture that the perception of danger rarely rises to the surface of peoples consciousness. Sure, there are scare campaigns for cars out there, but what if we just cut to the chase? Much like smoking. Only a couple of decades ago, cigarettes were an integral part of life, whether you smoked or not. That has changed radically. We think that we could borrow freely from the health warnings now found on cigarette packs around the world. In order to be tho...
Read more

Overcomplicating Winter Cycling - Why It's Bad

One of the main focuses of this blog has always been on how Copenhagen and other cities have succeeded in increasing cycling levels by approaching the subject using mainstream marketing techniques. Tried and tested marketing that has existed since homo sapiens first started selling or trading stuff to each other. Modern bicycle advocacy, by and large, is flawed. It is firmly inspired by environmentalism which, in turn, is the greatest marketing flop in the history of humankind. Four decades of sub-cultural finger-wagging, guilt trips and preaching have given few results among the general population. When sub-cultural groups start trying to indoctrinate and convert the public, it rarely ever succeeds. For the better part of a century, people all over the planet rode bicycles because they were quick, easy, convenient and enjoyable. In hilly cities. In hot cities. In snowy cities. After the bicycle largely disappeared from the urban landscape because urban planning s...
Read more

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...
Read more