The Life-Sized City Blog

Last time I was in Helsinki I took this photo of this century old railway corridor that was used for freight trains. I can heard that it was being converted to a pedestrian and bicycle path and it turns out that it has opened recently. Photo via HBL.fi by Tor Wennström . Martti Tulenheimo from the European Cyclist’s Federation and designer and bicycle user, Arto Sivonen   Helsinki's new "Low Line" (as opposed to NYC's High Line ) opened on June 12, 2012, providing pedestrians and cyclists with a 1.3 km long connector between the Western Harbour area to Kamppi and Töölö Bay. It's called the Baana. It runs through the city centre, providing a safe bicycle route to many points in the city. There four ramps along the way to get back to surface level, as well as entry points at each end. On average, the Baana is 15 m wide, with 34 m the widest point. There are also facilities along the way like basketball, table tennis and petanque and lights and benches hav...

When I was in Helsinki to give a talk a couple of months ago I also had a meeting with the City's bicycle planners and urban planners at their offices. They are keen to transform the city into a more bicycle-friendly area. There is a network of bicycle infrastructure but most of it is hopelessly out of date and not designed particularly well. There is a respectable number of cyclists using it, especially now what with the renaissance of the bicycle. But challenges lay ahead. I was interested to hear that the city used to have a fine network of bicycle infrastructure back in the day. My colleagues at the City's bicycle office sent me these two maps, both dating from 1937. The map above shows the bicycle infrastructure marked in red. A lot of it mirroring Copenhagen's cycle tracks, like this stretch in 1955 . Tracks on either side of the street along the main arteries. This map shows a bicycle count done in 1937. It's not clear from looking at the map, but the City's ...