Touring Copenhagen with Copenhagenize

On our last day in Copenhagen, the group visited a local urban planning and design firm, Copenhagenize. The presenter and tour guide, James, originally came from Toronto but mentioned living in Stockholm and Copenhagen over the past decade. His presentation reviewed some of the concepts we had already learned both from other lectures and bike tours, such as the infrastructure types that I had seen throughout the city (i.e., cycle tracks and the curb ramps that help one enter bicycle lanes). However, I appreciated the extended level of detail provided about the typology of infrastructures. For example, the group learned how the infrastructure aligned with the relationship between speed limits for cars and where the bicycle lanes existed. When cars traveled at the slowest speed, about 10 mph, the road is most often shared between cars and bikes, with no discerning infrastructure for bicyclists. At driving speeds of 20 mph, one sees bicycle lanes painted on the road with no physical barrier between the two modes. At a speed of 30 mph, then the design requires a separated cycle track that provides bicyclists their own designated lane and road space. At the highest speeds, such as 35 mph and faster, the design calls for installing a fence or creating any hard, physical barrier between the road and the dedicated cycle track to ensure the bicyclists are separated from the car traffic.

 

An island in the road for pedestrians and bicyclists
to wait for traffic to pass

The "Kissing Bridge" in Copenhagen; supports bicyclists &
pedestrian traffic and serves as an important connector
between residential areas and the central city

Another valuable takeaway from James’ presentation was the financial impact of promoting more cycling transportation within the city of Copenhagen. One instance is the relatively low cost of installing bicycle infrastructure compared to the significant cost of infrastructure projects such as roadway bridges or paving, and maintaining, new roads that support cars. Furthermore, James described a study conducted to assess the net financial impact of bicycling for transport compared to automotive transport. The study’s conclusion estimated that each bicyclist contributed a net gain of $0.65 to the public system while the automobile commuter contributed a net loss of $0.71 to the public system. This finding really hit home with me and I couldn't help but think, “A capitalist would not be able to deny such a clear financial benefit of the cost-benefit analysis presented.”

Beyond the monetary element, I walked away from the presentation with another insightful conclusion that James drove home. When discussing a vision with people, and especially those individuals that appear resistant to changing the roadway to be less supportive of driving and more of biking, the argument must emphasize the benefits to the person and neighborhood: improved air quality, a safer street for one’s children, and reduced noise. Benefits exist for the people that do not intend to switch transport modes. Supportive infrastructure for biking functions to support the entire community and does not exist as a basic one-to-one trade-off between better for bicyclists at the detriment of car driving.

An intersection between the two-way bike lane and a street space shared between cars & bikes

The bicyclist stops slightly ahead of the car stop to bring
the bicyclist out of the driver's "blind spot"

After the lecture, James took us around the city on another bike tour, providing insightful explanations about the decisions behind infrastructure choices and the design of space in the built environment. One example includes tiering the stop line between the roadway and cycle tracks. Bicyclists stop slightly ahead of the stop line for cars in order to move bicyclists out of the driver’s blind spot. For any cars that make a right turn, drivers can be aware of the presence of bicyclists traveling down the cycle track to avoid any collisions. Furthermore, the signaling for each mode staggers, turning green for bicyclists first and delaying the green light for cars by about 5 seconds, allowing the biking traffic to proceed and clear the intersection before cars need to turn. Managing the intersection space and traffic flow is only one example of intentional design but underscores how multiple transport modes can coexist in a shared space.