The Life-Sized City Blog

This article has been updated and appears on Medium.com So what exactly happens when you're a major train operator and you suddenly make it free for passengers to take bikes on your trains? We know that some rail operators in various parts of the world would have you believe that chaos would ensue and that they would lose passengers. Numbers from Greater Copenhagen and Danish State Railways (DSB), however, seem to indicate that the opposite is true. The S-train network that serves Greater Copenhagen is arguably the most integral part of the public transport mix in the region. Buses, Metro and regional trains are vital parts of the network, but the red S-trains stretching out into Europe's third-largest urban sprawl are in many ways the backbone. The S-train network - with 2 Metro lines at bottom right. Bicycles were allowed on the trains for a fee, which was never prohibitive. Until 2010, that is. In that year, DSB announced that bicycles would be made free on all their...

Motorway 16, north of Copenhagen. Cycle tracks on either side. The discussion continues unabated, around the world, about whether the bicycle can perform as a transport mode at distances above 5 km and thus present itself as alternative for motorized vehicles. First, let's consider this quote: ”In the late 19th century, large numbers of women were already using bicycles to get to work, women office workers and shop assistants wending their way each weekday morning from the suburbs to the town. They found the bicycle a convenient form of transport for distances up to, say, ten miles”. Plucked from John Woodeforde's book ”The Story of the Bicycle”, 1970 So the bicycle as an effective performer at longer distances is nothing new. Nevertheless, we're relearning the bicycle story. A published peer-reviewed conference paper (full version here - on google docs ), based on my Masters’ degree thesis in Environmental Engineering (specializing in Urban Planning), incl...

Here's a brief reportage from a short R&R trip I made to Sweden earlier this week. The details of which you can read over at Cycle Chic - great getaway hotel if you're in Copenhagen or Sweden or are cycling touring in the Skåne area. I took the Øresunds train from Copenhagen Central to Bromölla and from there it was a 7 km ride to the design hotel on the coast. I've written previously about even small towns in Sweden have excellent cycle tracks and even keep them cleared of snow in the winter . I've also briefly covered infrastructure between small towns in Denmark as well as the infrastructure connecting cities all over the land . While Denmark features over 10,000 km of national bicycle infrastructure connecting much of the nation , it is worth highlighting that Southern Sweden does just fine as well. The trains all have roomy bicycle compartments and I always get a kick out of the seatbelts for bicycles that are provided. My Crescent bicycle from 19...