The Life-Sized City Blog

Copenhagen is going to the be the first large city in Scandinavia to install intelligent traffic lights at all intersections. The old lights and system are 35 years old so it is high time to modernise. The primary focus is on getting bicycle traffic and public transport to flow better, but the system will also benefit last century technology like cars. The City of Copenhagen has invested in 380 new, intelligent traffic signals. It is estimated that bus passengers will save between 5 and 20% on their travel time. Cyclists can look forward to a 10% improvement in theirs. The traffic signals will be online and allow for better green waves and a general improvement in controlling the traffic in Copenhagen. The signals are a part of a 47 millioner kroner (€6.2 million) package aimed at making Copenhagen's traffic system more digital and intelligent. All the main arteries leading to the city centre have green waves for bicycles - ride 20 km/h and you don't have to put your foot...

Where cities put their bicycles. Above ground. On street level. Woven into the urban fabric. Well...  not ALL cities. I meet amazing, inspiring people when I travel the world with my work. I see a lot of things. Many of the things are good. Many are, however, strange and frustrating. Especially regarding infrastructure. It boggles my mind every time I - or worse, ride on - bike lanes on the wrong side of parked cars in between the door zone of primarily single-occupant vehicles and moving traffic in North American cities and I thumb my nose at every sharrow I see. That fakest of all fake bicycle infrastructure. That sheep in wolf's clothing. Despite a century of Best Practice in bicycle infrastructure and tried and tested networks occupied by tens of thousands of daily cyclists in cities that "get it", there are still so many mistakes being made elsewhere. I see stuff slapped lazily into place by engineers and planners who don't ride bicycles in their city and w...

The City of Copenhagen established the first Green Wave for cyclists back in 2007 on Nørrebrogade and, since then, the concept has spread to other major arteries in the city. The idea is simple. Coordinate the traffic lights for cyclists so that if they ride at a speed of 20 km/h, they will hit green lights all the way into the city in the morning rush hour. The wave is reversed in the afternoon so bicycle users can flow smoothly home, too. 20 km/h was decided upon as the speed in order to improve the traffic flow of bicycles. The average speed of bicycle users in Copenhagen is about 16 km/h. A wave of 20 km/h encourges some to go a bit faster but it also encourages the faster cyclists to slow down in order to benefit from the green lights. The rush hour on the cycle tracks is intense in Copenhagen and speed demons do more harm than good regarding safety and, almost more importantly, perception of safety. As it is now, the Green Wave is in place on Nørrebrogade, Amagerbrogade, p...

Ole Kassow from Purpose Makers - and brainchild behind the Cycling Without Age movement - gave us this great shot from a street in the Østerbro neighbourhood of Copenhagen. The City has a new thing they're doing. Replacing the old, bumpy cobblestones on certain streets with smooth ones. Just a strip, like down the middle on this one-way street - to make it a smoother ride for bicycle users. The city keeps a number of streets cobblestoned because of aesthetics and historical reasons. History can be a bumpy ride, though. We like how the new cobblestones are elegantly woven into the existing ones. On a street in the centre of Copenhagen, there are now smoother strips along the curbs for bicycle users to use. Above is a delegation from the City of Groningen, who we took on a Bicycle Urbanism tour of the city a few weeks ago. Apart from their fascination with the curb-separated cycle tracks (they filmed them in order to convince their engineers that they work... yes, they're...

In early 2013, Mikael Colville-Andersen developed a design for on-street cargo bike parking that creates space and accessibility for citizens that use cargo bikes on a daily basis.  After this otherwise great prototype for on-street cargo bike parking was removed due to political decisions in Copenhagen, Mikael started thinking about how to design a solution that would improve parking conditions. After almost three years of working with the EU project Cyclelogistics , cargo bikes have become a main focus of Mikael's work. He has two cargo bikes himself and parking is a primary challenge. When you use a cargo bike everyday, you want to have it handy. In many cities, like Copenhagen or Frederiksberg, you find yourself pushing it into the back courtyard because of a lack of secure parking on the street. Cargo bikes are objets de désir for thieves and, unlike regular bicycles, the theft of them is often organised. Most Danish brands are good quality and keep a fair chunk o...

An American-style shopping centre on the outskirts of Copenhagen - Fields - has now created specific bicycle parking for cargo bikes. With 40,000 cargo bikes in Copenhagen, it really is a no brainer. Architect Lasse Schelde, head of the Bicycle Innovation Lab and environmental NGO Miljøpunkt Amager was responsible for this little pocket of visionaryness. I know that's not a word. Well, maybe it is now. Great to see cargo bikes prioritised, not least because so many people use them. And a sensible solution, too, with railings to lock your bike to. Copenhagenize Consulting is working on similar projects with our Cyclelogistics EU project .

You'd be excused for not having a clue what you're looking at right now. Innovation sometimes goes wrong, but at least the thought was a good, noble one. Bicycle racks outside Hedehusene Station, west of Copenhagen. I know about them and have seen them from the train to Roskilde countless times. There aren't many places that still have these bicycle racks anymore so when I rode to Roskilde for christmas (previous post) I stopped to take some photos. A rather overcomplicated attempt to provide covered parking for bicycles to protect them from the rain. I've never actually seen them in use, so I was suprised to see that four or five bicycles were parked underneath the plastic fantastic contraptions. A good idea that never fit in with the Danish desire for ease-of-use and convenience. If anyone knows when these racks were developed, please let us know in the comments.

Photo: Theis Mortensen for Copenhagenize.com The City of Copenhagen in collaboration with Atkins Denmark have started testing Flex Parking zones in Copenhagen. Starting with the street outside Ingrid Jespersen's High School in Ndr. Frihavnsgade (that's a street name). We recieved info about the project from Niels Hoe-Svendsen from Atkins, formally in charge of the City of Copenhagen's bicycle parking. The primary goal is to create a safe environment for cycling to school. Many schools built at the turn of the last century in Copenhagen have space problems regarding bicycle parking in the school yards or on the street. Thus this new pilot project called Flex Parking. Flex Parking lets cycling citizens and motorists share street space. During school hours the street space is reserved for bicycles - from 07:00-17:00. The rest of the time it is reserved for car parking Instead of removing car parking spots and turning them into bicycle racks, the idea is to exploit t...

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 do...