Hello from the city of Copenhagen in Denmark.
When you hear Denmark, and more specifically the city of Copenhagen, it might conjure up images of the Little Bermade, Tivoli Gardens, which was actually inspired while Disney to build Disneyland, and the author Hans Christian Andersen.
But Denmark is also in the leader in another area, and this one might surprise you. It's called sustainability, and it's the idea of reducing, or even eliminating, the impact that humans have on the planet.
The Danes look at this as a competitive advantage, something that will help them, and the rest of us in the future.
Today, I have the honor of speaking with Helen Lungard, who is the spokesperson for the Superbike Highway in the Copenhagen region of Denmark.
Thank you for joining us, Helen.
I was here about 30 years ago as well, and there were bikes, of course, 30 years ago, but now it's impressive, all the lanes, the lights, there's even lights at the intersections, and so now there's also this super highway, so tell us a little bit about that.
As you mentioned, we have had a long history for bicycle planning, and we have an amazing infrastructure for cycling, which means that people do cycle a lot.
But we have visionary politicians that want to improve even more, and they want more people to bicycle, also longer trips and just small trips.
So for this reason, they thought that we might make even higher standards for the bicycle lanes, then we can get more people to bicycle, and there are good arguments for doing this.
As you mentioned, we have climate problems, climate change urges us to do something about emissions of CO2, air pollution, and the congestion.
We have too many cars and so on, so there are many problems, and I want to mention one more, the health, because for the individuals, it makes you more health and gives you more live quality.
So we really don't just bicycle because of CO2 politics in Copenhagen, we also do it because we think it's healthy and makes us happy.
So the super highway is actually going out to what we would call the suburbs of Copenhagen, not just the city.
So how far does it go right now, and what kind of usage?
Maybe a radius of 15, 20 kilometers, we have plans for the routes. It's a network of lanes that was planned by the planners and accepted by the politicians.
And we also are talking to more municipalities in a distance more than 20 kilometers from Copenhagen now to make it even longer.
So what kinds of things would you expect to see on the super highway? I think there's some amenities or some features that are on there.
Yes. Well, you have the pump stations. If you get the flat tire, you may not be able to fix it, but if you need air for your bicycle, you can do that.
I think it's every 1.6 kilometers, there will be a pump and you have lights, green waves and so on.
So if you go with a certain speed, 20 kilometers an hour, you will be able to go through all the green traffic lights without stopping all the time.
So this is one of the features of the concept that you have less of stops and you move faster this way.
You also have, which I think is really, really important, broad lanes separated from the cars.
Which means that if you are a faster rider, you can go faster without bothering the other people.
Thank you Helen so much for giving us the information about the bicycle super highway in the Copenhagen region. We really appreciate it.
Thanks so much again for your time. That's okay. Thank you for your interest.
