The Life-Sized City Blog

So this was a nice surprise. I had an early morning meeting in the City Centre and discovered that Vestergade is now a Bicycle Street (cykelgade in Danish). The Dutch call them Fietsstraat, I believe. We have one in a quiet neighbourhood already and they have one in Aarhus, but this is the first decent one in Copenhagen. Basically, as the sign says, there is only slow driving allowed on this street and the cyclists decide the flow and tempo. It is one way for cars but cyclists are free to ride in both directions. The idea is nothing new. Rest assured, there has been a lot of effort to implement these Bicycle Streets for a long while but the Copenhagen police - like with so many other bicycle-related issues - have refused to allow it . Bizarrely, they can veto things they don't understand, without being obliged to say why or refer to any evidence. Now we see that a Bicycle Street is in place, if only for a test period. But it'll work, so I'm counting on it being m...

Robert Doisneau - running pedestrians in Paris We recently covered the disturbing and archaeic 85th percentile method and how it is applied for (and by) vehicles. If you thought THAT was fun, you might also enjoy The 15th Percentile. It is frequently used to determine the time between the WALK and DON'T WALK crossing signals -  in other words, how much time the engineers computer models allow for human beings to cross streets. It's not as rooted as a standard as The 85th Percentile, but it is still widespread. In a nutshell, we should be paying more attention to pedestrian crossings, when you consider statistics that say that " 40% of accidents involving pedestrians occur at these intersections ". In Europe, one in four pedestrians die on a crossing . What seems to be the problem? In the U.S., the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) establishes a “normal” pedestrian speed at 1.2 metres per second (m/s), so traffic signal times are set according...