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Copenhagen is best case scenario for bicycles.
They've properly integrated bicycles into the transportation fabric.
I think one of the main things is the separated bike lanes because it makes people feel safer.
But everywhere you go, you have a sense of a very humane and human city.
And the people here, it's just part of their daily lives to cycle and I just find that so amazing.
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The fact that there are around about 100 people here from North America, from the U.S. and Canada, I think is cause for optimism.
Because I think one of the things we've lacked in the U.S. is the real belief that this stuff actually works.
That we've been sort of making it up and setting Copenhagen's like this.
But until you really see it and touch it and feel it for yourself and you ride the streets of Copenhagen during rush hour,
it's really hard to believe.
They have created a system where every single road works for bicycles.
Some of them are quiet streets where you just ride right on the street.
Some of them they have painted bike lanes, but more often they have cycle tracks, which are these elevated bike paths.
It's only two or three inches of elevation with a little bit of curb and some asphalt filled in.
But the difference that it makes is really profound.
They've really made safe facilities, comfortable facilities, facilities that are welcoming for people of all skill levels.
What you do have is a lot of cargo bikes that are often moving slower.
You've got a mom or dad pedaling one, two, sometimes three.
I've seen children in the cargo bikes and that slow speed is not only accommodated, but it's almost celebrated.
A lot of times in the U.S. when you're riding your bike, you feel almost like an outlaw.
You feel like, oh, can I just find a little tiny bit of space for myself?
Here, you feel like they're just laying out the red carpet for you.
In American cities, when you come to a really busy street, that's when you really tense up and you wonder,
can I get across this street?
When you come to a busy street in Copenhagen, you say, oh, good, I know I'm going to find a cycle track here
and it's going to be a quick route and I'm going to be where I need to be in five minutes.
I mean, what a difference from just about any place else that I've been.
I love the counters on the side of the road.
It makes you feel like you should be on the road, that it's okay to be here.
You don't feel like anyone's going to tell you to get out of the way.
We are here standing in Copenhagen at Nørrebroga.
Nørrebroga is the busiest street for cycling in Copenhagen.
Last year, we put this machine up.
There's now 36,000 cyclists per day in this street.
To stand and see a couple of hundred cyclists go through an intersection
and then realize that just to block away, there's another hundred coming in there,
it's a phenomenal experience.
We went by the counter last night and I was cyclist 10,361.
That is amazing.
It just feels really empowering to know what's possible.
Copenhagen is mainstream to go on a bicycle.
It's everybody.
It's all incomes, it's all age groups, it's both female and male.
So that means the average cyclist is a pretty relaxed person.
I've heard from some of the Copenhageners that it's 55% women biking here in the city,
which is really impressive and it feels like that.
One of the main things is the separated bike lanes because it makes people feel safer
and the slow speeds of cars also makes people feel safer with their kids.
You see just like these buckets of kids.
The cargo bikes, you know, your child's in the front with you.
You can put your groceries in there.
You can just totally utilitarian everyday kind of stuff.
Why wouldn't you ride?
Why wouldn't women and children ride here?
It just seems so practical and so obvious.
You see these women wearing skirts and dresses and high heels and just pedaling around.
They obviously feel comfortable taking their kids on bicycles.
One thing that I've noticed here are a lot of really little bikes.
And they're like four-year-old kids and they ride a straight line and they're super on it
and they ride better than most American adults.
The kids have training at schools in the third year, third grade,
and again in the ninth grade and they have to do, you know, proficiency tests
on the bike lanes, signaling and all that stuff.
My son who's eight, he was riding on the bike lanes to kindergarten with me
or to daycare when he was three and a half with his training wheels, you know, riding along.
And this is the way it is, you have to.
It's a practical solution.
The kids have to start riding so you can get around the city.
The drivers get tamed.
Well, that's my expression.
They get tamed.
They look before crossing.
Lots of intersections I've seen.
A car wants to turn right and just sits there waiting while four, five, six bikes go by
and then when the coast is clear, then they make their right turn.
Drivers are so comfortable and familiar with what to do around cyclists
that even when you remove all the infrastructure in the sense that you're on a street
without any bike infrastructure, you still feel very safe.
Yeah, there is sort of a driver education component,
but the speeds are basically kind of what do it.
I think that's what brings people down and people being accustomed to cyclists in general.
You trust them on such a fantastic level because that lady or that guy in the car,
they have a bike at home, you know.
They were on the bike lanes when they were five years old, six years old.
So we understand each other, but we're all cyclists.
The more people ride, the more that motorists expect to see cyclists out there.
The safer it becomes, you know, that there's safety in numbers.
It's just we've been brought up with this.
I mean, I didn't think about all of this till I went to New York, for instance.
That's when I really became aware of what we do here in Copenhagen,
that biking is just part of our life.
I've never once had a lift up my bicycle.
There's ramps at every stairwell.
There's places to put your bicycle.
It's lovely.
You know, one of the things that just is an incredible feeling of freedom here
is to roll up to your apartment or a store or restaurant.
You slip the key into that simple little back tire lock, click it,
pull the key out, and you walk away.
No wrapping a chain around, you know, a tree or a pole.
It makes even shorter bicycle trips more possible.
It's very impressive to see the special infrastructure,
the special traffic treatments, the little tiny turn pockets,
the traffic signalization.
We have the green wave here, the signal timing that supports
a continuous and comfortable bicycle movement.
For example, you would have a green wave adjusted for the speed of the bicycle
instead of for the speed of the car.
So we have, for example, a stretch where you can pass.
If you travel with 20 kilometers an hour, then you can pass.
I think it's 14 traffic lights that will all be green for you.
Wherever they're doing construction, you know, road construction,
they always drop down these temporary asphalt ramps, you know,
so that even if they're just working on it for half a day or a couple of hours,
you never have a curb where you approach.
There always will be a transition.
This is the Danish parliament where I work.
And one of our big victories in recent years for us,
that we got about 10, 15 parking lots shut down and turned into bike parking.
Every morning you'll see parliamentarians,
you'll see all the people working in the parliament,
coming with their bikes, placing them in front of the parliament.
This is the most beautiful, wonderful bike city in the whole world.
Too much in the United States there's this feeling of the other,
you know, that somebody on the bicycle, that's not me,
that's, you know, some different kind of creature.
And here it's very clear, you know, the person on the cycle,
that's just me using a different mode of transportation.
Copenhagen has hit some point of transformation
where bicycling is cheaper, easier, quicker,
perhaps safer than any other mode of transportation.
And so it's just what people do.
I think if we can succeed in making our streets back home
safe and welcoming for moms,
for parents bringing their children out, we will have succeeded.
The painted bike lane is great for the committed and enthusiast cyclists,
but for the next big swath of the population, that isn't going to be enough.
We need to find a way to give bicycle riders a place that's comfortable
and inviting and has a sense of safety.
We don't have that yet, so we need to move on that
and we need to accompany it with promotion and education and explanations.
We could do this fairly easily and fairly inexpensively
in just about any U.S. city and the only thing that we would need to do
is have the will and the political power to squeeze the cars a bit.
We like to say to sort of put people at ease
that Copenhagen didn't do it overnight
and they took 40 years to get where they are today.
We don't have the luxury of waiting 40 years to get to that point in U.S. cities.
We have to do it a lot more quickly.
To me, it is fantastic to be in a city where every morning when you wake up
you have the feeling that the city is a little bit better than it was yesterday.
It's remarkable to have that feeling every morning for 40-50 years
and that is the case in Copenhagen.
