Music
Music
Music
Music
Music
Music
We decided at Copenhagen Eye's design code to make a series of films that explore all
the different elements that make Copenhagen a truly bicycle-friendly city.
And there's a lot of different details involved, a lot of the design and infrastructure details,
but we thought it important to start with the big picture.
Most cities in the world are incredibly car-centric.
We've had 100 years of really what has failed traffic engineering and planning of cities
based on a car-centric mentality.
There's an engineer think car first and everybody else is sort of left in the dust.
So a modern city here in this new millennium is a city that prioritizes differently, that
focuses on how to make a city a more livable place, a safer place, a healthier place and
in doing that you need to prioritize bicycles, pedestrians, all the transport and of course
we focus on bicycle culture at Copenhagen Eye's design code.
So highlighting these details of what makes Copenhagen so bicycle-friendly.
I think what defines the big picture of in bicycle planning in Copenhagen is the uniformity
of the bicycle network.
In Copenhagen and in Danish cities there are four types of bicycle infrastructure.
Number one is where you don't have any infrastructure, you have a 30 kilometer an hour zone or slower
so bicycles mix with cars, shared space concept.
We do have some bi-directional infrastructure.
This is largely on bicycle paths separated from the traffic.
We don't even have very many of them in Copenhagen or in between two rural towns out in the
country.
We do have a bi-directional path off to the side.
Number three is paint and lanes.
We still have them in some places in Copenhagen and of course wide enough to accommodate two
cyclists riding together.
And then of course number four which is the fully separated and protected cycle tracks
that you see almost all over the city.
In Greater Copenhagen there's about 1000 kilometers of protected cycle tracks.
In the city of Copenhagen and all the surrounding municipalities that make up Greater Copenhagen.
We know that this is the safest, we know that this is what makes people want to ride a bike,
makes them feel safe and keeps them safe as well.
When you only have four types of infrastructure it makes it incredibly uniform, it makes it
incredibly easy with wayfinding, it's very logical.
You can take your bike on the train and go to any other Danish city, get off the train
and you'll find bicycle infrastructure that you recognize and you'll know that it'll
probably take you somewhere.
This uniformity in the Danish design of the bicycle infrastructure here is really one
of the key elements to making Copenhagen a bicycle-friendly city.
I think one of the things I like best about cycling in Copenhagen is that for example
at no point do I have to push a button like a lot of pedestrians do in other cities as
a cyclist and wait for permission to cross the street.
I think this is an indication that bicycles are taken seriously as transport.
Riding in Copenhagen, riding a bicycle to the kindergarten, to school, to the supermarket,
to meetings, to work and what not is a pleasant experience.
In the middle of a snowstorm or in the 40 degree heat in the summer, the bicycle is
the fastest way to get around the city and other cities if you make the bicycle and you
really work hard towards making the bicycle the fastest mode of transport from A to B
people will ride.
That's why the people of Copenhagen ride.
Prioritize the bicycle and they will ride, if you build it they will come.
I think that what's maybe taken 30, 35 years here, nice and slow, making mistakes, fixing
the McCain and establishing at the end of the day what really is a best practice in
bicycle planning.
This is possible for other cities to do in 5 to 10 years with the right political will
and engineers and planners who know how to plan for bicycles and who are willing to think
about the bicycle first.
