The Life-Sized City Blog

Photo by Jaime Dieppa from Citibici.es This sign is currently positioned along the City Hall in Copenhagen. It's from the City's DoT and Bicycle Office and uses the behavourial communcation template Copenhagenize Consulting developed a few years back. It reads: " Hi, Cyclist! Soon you'll be able to ride safe and secure along the City Hall Garden on a 2.80 metre wide cycle track with a curb. " This stretch along the City Hall is one of the few stretches of main streets left that doesn't have a separated cycle track. It's been a painted lane next to a bus lane, which is next to six lanes of traffic. So now it's getting redone so it adheres to the Best Practice in the rest of the city. And that 2.80 metre width is one way, of course. There are about 20,000 cyclists - in both directions - on this artery and making it safer will encourage more to use the route.

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...

Last year, a proposal for bicycle helmet legislation was tabled here in Denmark. Copenhagenize Design Co. and Bicycle Innovation Lab promptly gathered a list of experts and we sent an open letter to all the members of the Danish parliament - and to the Danish press. The bicycle helmet law was defeated! Rationality prevailed. Here is the letter we wrote to the papers and to every MP in the parliament. The letter is also online here, on the Copenhagenize Consulting website . Experts: Vote no to the mandatory bike helmet proposal and strengthen public health! Danish experts in traffic, mobility and cycling recommend that all members of the Danish Parliament vote NO to the proposed bicycle helmet law. You should vote NO to mandatory bicycle helmets in Denmark because: - Denmark is the world's safest bicycle nation, along with The Netherlands. - Cycling levels are falling and mandatory helmet laws further reduce the number of cyclists. We need MORE cyclists, not fewer. ...

Something one might expect to see at Cycle Chic, but here is the Crown Princess of Tasmania... uh... Denmark on her Nihola cargo bike riding across the palace square outside Amalienborg, where the royal types live. The tabloid's headline reads, " Mary on a bike ride. The Princess takes a day off ". Actually, it's the family's cargo bike. The Crown Prince often drops off his kids at kindergarten in it . One can question whether or not everyday is a day off for a royal. Someone produced this website that tracks the work schedule of Mary's husband, Crown Prince Frederik. Arbejder kronprinsen idag? / Is the Crown Prince working today? But hey, at least Mary is living the dream and a bicycle is under her Aussie ass while she is doing it. Nice.

And so the nightmare that summarises the Culture of Fear reaches the shores of Denmark. Two political parties announced yesterday that they will push for a bicycle helmet law for under 16s. A proposal was defeated in the Danish Parliament back in 2009 , when rationality was still something politicians possessed, apparently. Danish readers can check out Cykelhjelm.org for a crash course in knowledge . The Radical Left and the Socialist Peoples' Party are behind the proposal. The traffic "safety" spokesman for The Radical Left - Jan Johansen - said to Danish Broadcasting: " We are of the opinion that we must make our children as safe as possible when they are in the traffic ". What the Radical Left and the Socialist Peoples' Party AREN'T doing is making our streets safe. They are NOT proposing to follow in the footsteps of over 80 European cities and creating 30 km/h zones in densely populated areas or proposing traffic calming measures in o...

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...

This post is by one of Copenhagenize's finest, Rachel.  She's been involved in quite a few of our projects, including the next Copenhagenize Index for bicycle-friendly cities. By now we all know (or have at least heard) that cycling is beneficial for cities, and the benefits range from improving health to decreasing congestion. For those who aren’t on board yet, some of the findings we developed here at Copenhagenize should help change your mind. We can talk on and on about the various benefits that come with bikes, but when it comes to municipalities actually implementing policies and infrastructure, the conversation will inevitably turn to numbers. How do the real costs of driving a car compare with the costs of riding a bike? We believe we have developed a comprehensive cost analysis to properly compare these modes of transport. With Christine Grant spearheading this effort, we were able to come up with a cost analysis that incorporated typical factors such a...

They're at it again, those New Yorkers. The city's DoT has chucked another bunch 'o money at a fancy ad campaign aimed at maintaining the status quo of the automobile's role in society. Seriously... I can't think of any other city on the planet in recent times that has spent so much advertising money on finger-pointing and "behavioural" campaigns aimed at the vulnerable traffic users of their city. Desperately trying to cement, in the public consciousness of it's citizens, the rather outdated philosophy that cars rule supreme and everyone else are mere pawns to be swept aside without regret. Stand in the way of a Queen, you're stupid. You'll get taken. And you know what? We can afford to lose you. This New York Postian attitude from the DoT towards a city that otherwise has great potential for being much more pedestrian, public transport and cyclist friendly is the primary reason why New York is so far off reaching any sensible level of ...

If you're wondering about the sporadic publishing here on the blog over the past while, it's simply because we have so many exciting projects on the go around the world at Copenhagenize Consulting . One of the projects has been preparing our offering for the upcoming exhbition The Good City - Visions for a City on the Move , which the Bicycle Innovation Lab is curating. The exhibition opens on June 8th in Copenhagen, the first stop on a world tour. It's an exciting exhibition. We're presenting our own vision from here at the company but we are also curating the vision from a third-grade class at LaCour Vej School. Nine and ten year old urbanists. They have been working hard on the redesign of the roundabout next to their school. Here's the spiel about the exhibition from Bicycle Innovation Lab: THE GOOD CITY MINI-CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION Friday the 8th of June at 12 o'clock, Bicycle Innovation Lab will inaugurate the international traveling exhibiti...

We are in the midst of an interesting little project here at Copenhagenize Consulting . Something we've been planning for a while but only recently got started with. Like everywhere else, the ever-growing urban cycling boom is causing a backlash in Copenhagen. There's a lot of negative press about bicycle users and little happening to reverse that. When the police go out on their Viking raids for a week at a time, ticketing cyclists for trivialities, the press regurgitate all manner of hype about the 'lawlessness' that will surely cause imminent societal decay. Always forgetting to highlight the fact that The 99% ride by the book and have done for 125 years. So. We thought we'd look at an intersection - an average one - to observe behaviour and chart patterns and numbers. The Choreography of an Urban Intersection. We chose the intersection outside of our office window. Not only convenient, but also a unique intersection in that it is primarily a transport hub t...