The Life-Sized City Blog

On my recent trip to Zurich to speak at TEDxZurich I was arranging an interview with a journalist for the Swiss paper Tages Anzeiger . I had heard about the motorway tunnel built 20 years ago under the Central Station and asked him if we could visit it. He arranged it and, after a bicycle ride around the city to assess - and mock - the state of the city's bicycle culture, we headed underground, accompanied by two gents from Swiss railways. The tunnel isn't long. It was built two decades ago during the construction of the Museumstrasse line station. It wasn't even intended for immediate use. The plan was that it would eventually be used to connect the A3 and A1 - Allmend Brunau and Neugut motorway junction. I wanted to see the tunnel for two reasons. Firstly, it's just cool to see motorways and tunnels like this that have never been used. Never putrified with exhaust, its walls never shaken incessently by automobile traffic. I also wanted to visit it because I he...

Photo: Maximilien Brice, © CERN I like the simple contrast in this photo. A man working on the CERN Large Hadron Collider - one of the most impressive engineering projects in history with it's 27 km long circular tunnel that is 175 metres underground beneath France and Switzerland. It is built to carry out one of the boldest scientific experiments in history. And the man pedalled to work on that bicycle there on the left. Or as Evan, who sent us the link, puts it: "Seeing this photo of a fellow member of the world's scientific community, I can't decide if I'm more jealous of the trails he gets to ride or of the fantastic LHC he's repairing." Indeed. A propos nothing, CERN has quite a cool kids website with science games 'n stuff .

One of our readers in Geneva, Benoit, brought this new campaign from the city of Geneva to our attention. It is aimed at encouraging more people to choose 'soft' transport forms like walking and bicycling but also the bus and the tram. It is fantastic in it's simplicity. The poster above reads, roughly translated: "There is always a moment where you have to take the first step." Ahhh, l'amour... Then there is this poster, which is the payoff for the first. "By bicycle. On foot. By bus. By tram. A new step in [for] life" The slogan for the campaign is, in my interpretation: "Change is in the air!" It's a prime example of how to promote cycling positively as a normal, everyday transport option for regular citizens. Geneva, like so many other cities in Europe is seeing an increase in the number of cyclists. The metropolitan area hosts 812,000 citizens and since 2005 the number of people cycling has increased by 11% in the summer and 28% in...