Skip to main content

Surfer Friendly Bicycle Signage in Ubatuba

Update: 26 November 2013: New photos of Ubatuba bicycle parking added! Scroll down.


Denir, from the Books & Bicycles blog in Brazil sent us these shots from his holiday to the Brazilian town of Ubatuba. It's a surfing mecca and is even nicknamed 'Capital do Surf' so signage in the town is often surf-related.


Which also applies to the 'ciclofaixa' or bicycle lanes in the incredibly bicycle-friendly city. Painted lanes, sure, by they are nice and wide - see the red/yellow markings at bottom right in the first shot.

Having realised I'd stumbled upon a potential holiday paradise, I did a spot of googling. The name Ubatuba alone just sounds like a surfer paradise and could be worked into 50 different Beach Boy songs.

I found this article, in Portugese, about the city wherein it says that 80% of the students of this school ride bicycles to school each day. Impressive.

And staying at a little pousada like this one is about €70 a night - about the same as a crappy, two-star tourist hotel in Copenhagen. Nice.
Ubatuba, Brazil - Bicycle Paradise
Some recent photos from Zé from Transporte Ativo, the Brazilian mobility NGO, showing bicycle parking in Ubatuba.
Ubatuba, Brazil - Bicycle Paradise

What we need is a list of bicycle-friendly destinations to visit. Ubatuba, Barcelona, Seville, Ferrara, Bordeaux, San Sebastian, various Scandinavian/Dutch/German cities, etc. Preferably places uninfected by the Culture of Fear.

Signage influenced by local branding is great, too. There are often rigid design manuals to be adhered to, which is fair enough, but being able to tweak the rules a bit would offer up some interesting signage. The Dutch, for example, could just hang Gouda cheeses up from signposts with a bicycle pictogram carved through.

It would go well with their tulip island visible from space.

;-)

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