The Life-Sized City Blog

"Five o'clock Rush, by John Fischetti" Carlton Reid tweeted about these today. Travel sketches from the John Fischetti Manuscript Collection at Columbia College Chicago from the BibliOdyessy blog . In 1949, Mr Fischetti couldn't help but notice the five o'clock rush of bicycles in Copenhagen. This one is just odd... Loads more sketches from many places over at BibliOdyssey .

Sometimes it's easier to let the photos do the talking. As mentioned before, 80% of Copenhageners cycle through the winter. That number is surely lower when we have hard winters with snowstorm after snowstorm, but the numbers are still impressive. Impressive to me. Probably astounding to others. If you make the bicycle the fastest way to get from A to B in a city - what we call A2Bism for bicycles here at Copenhagenize - the strangest people will be spotted on bicycles. If you prioritize keeping your bicycle infrastructure clear of snow , people will ride. In most of these shots the temperature was well below zero. Much lower with the typical Copenhagen wind. And no bicycle studs were harmed in the making of this blogpost. I never see them here and wouldn't possibly know where to buy them. When you have as much urban cycling experience as the people of Copenhagen or a city like Amsterdam, you are pretty much trained to cycle in any weather. I'll just let my fellow ...

Copenhagen has motorways, just like anywhere else. Being the capital city and the main metropolis in the region, all roads and railways lead to Copenhagen. The geographical layout of the city located on the sea resembles an outstretched palm with five fingers of infrastructure all funnelling towards the spot on the wrist where the pulse is found. There are two main motorways leading to the city from afar. The E20 brings traffic from the rest of the nation and the rest of Europe to the south. It continues on over the bridge to Sweden and on to Stockholm. The E47 sweeps down from the north, where ferries arrive from Sweden. Then there is a network of motorways that slice through the urban sprawl, bringing commuters into Copenhagen from different directions. I rode out along the #16 Motorway the other day and the film, above, is the result. The #16 isn't that long. It starts about 30 km out, deep in surburbia near the town of Hillerød. From it's source it is already a funnel for ...

15 accidents per year in Copenhagen's most dangerous intersection has been reduced to just one. The results are quite concrete after Copenhagen City redesigned the intersection at Gyldenloevsgade and Soegade by The Lakes in inner Copenhagen a year ago. In Copenhagen, many intersections have both traffic lights for cars and separate ones for bikes . The solution was coordinating the bike traffic lights to change to green a couple of seconds before the cars. A simple solution. It is worth noting that the intersection is a major cycle artery for bike commuters. Over 25,000 cyclists a day on weekdays cross the intersection. If you calculate that there are 260 weekdays in a year, that means that 6,500,000 million bikes cross the intersection annually. With that in mind, 15 serious accidents is not a bad statistic. Reducing that to one is spectacular. The intersection in question: Via: DR P4

Above: You always meet people you know when commuting by bike. One distinct advantage over automotive pursuits. The country's second largest party - The Social Democrats - have announced a plan for improving Denmark's status as a leading cycle nation. "The bike is a multi-dimensional problem solver", says Rasmus Prehn, the Social Democrats bicycle spokesman. [Yes, our political parties actually have an MP who is desginated as bike spokesman/woman] The party aims to invest 1 billion Danish kroner - [135 million euros / 200 million dollars] - over ten years in our already well-established bike culture. The party points to several studies, including a Norwegian one that shows that national investment in cycling infrastructure and culture will earn the state three times as much as their intial investment. This profit comes from less money spent on roads and less money spent on health issues - the more the people ride, the less they suffer from "The American Illness...

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...