Bicycle Transportation Supporting a Strong Towns Approach

This final post for my blog will briefly talk about why I chose the topic of bicycle transportation and how it transforms urban landscapes and communities through a Strong Towns approach. I will also suggest why people in the United States should care about this topic.

Simply put, I chose this topic for my final project because, in my four weeks in these two countries, there really was not one isolated thing I could direct my attention towards. I mean, there were plenty of options, but each topic drove outcomes or was an outcome, of another tangible element of the system. It is difficult to talk about the effectiveness of cycle tracks and enhanced safety without quickly pivoting to the reclamation of space, which then introduces discussions about increased development of housing, commercial businesses, public space, which then . . . the list just goes on like that. All of those topics could direct our attention to the city's financial health; the total number of amenities and assets at its disposal; how that affects people's perceived quality of life in a place. Cumulatively though, I realized towards the end of the course that what I was experiencing was a Strong Towns approach in action.

One of the busiest cycling streets in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Founded in 2014 by licensed engineer Charles L. Marohn Jr., Strong Towns is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization advocating for a bottom-up transformation of our North American communities. The simplest summary of this approach to building community is transforming places block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood. In transforming neighborhoods to be more resilient, affordable, and lively, we can transform districts, cities, metropolitan regions, states, and of course, the entire continent. A place that functions as a Strong Town can support multiple life stages in the same community: from young, school-aged children to working adults all the way to retired older adults. People have choices in how they travel, where they go, how they can meet their basic needs, and who they can socialize with on a daily basis. What I realized is many of these European cities possess these kinds of neighborhoods, though certainly not all of them. But I saw elements of the Strong Towns approach I have come to believe in and suddenly, the "what it could be" vision collided with the "how you realize that vision" experience via studying the potential of increasingly bicycle transportation.

"Queen Louise's Bridge" in Copenhagen, Denmark;
carries an average of 40,000 bicyclists per day across the lake 

There are many reasons I think people should care about this topic back home, but I will offer just two I think are most paramount. The low-hanging fruit is safety. The places I visited felt safer to move around, whether I walked, biked, rode a light rail metro car, or sat as a van passenger on our way out of Odense. Vehicles are larger than people and made from steel. When moving over 30 miles per hour, there is a good chance a collision with a pedestrian or bicyclist will seriously injure or kill the person and not utterly destroy the vehicle. Our system is vehicle (cars, trucks, buses) dominated and our spaces exist to move vehicles first, and people second. That is why the leading cause of death among U.S. children remains car crashes; it is why it is statistically more dangerous to walk or bike in the U.S. than any other travel mode (which is a bit of a problem because nearly every trip begins and ends on foot, even with driving). The more multimodal the transportation system and when all modes travel at slower speeds, the system becomes safer for everyone. 

A woman rides south along the MaasWaalspad in Nijmegen, the Netherlands;
a 6.4-mile roadway for bicyclists and foot traffic, it functions as a recreational trail
as well as a regional connection between the rural communities of the province and Nijmegen

The other reason is more controversial but no less significant: money. Our cities cannot afford to maintain the current automobile-dominated system and we will not be able to future-borrow our way to paying for all of it in the coming years since most cities already carry too much debt to even be solvent. Without direct aid from state governments or the federal government, there are few means local governments can use to pay for the maintenance the transportation system requires. Automobile dominant systems suck money off public balance sheets and much like a black hole, only consume more, until they collapse. Using biking networks to add other transport choices, however, is stunningly cheaper, like 60 - 70 percent cheaper. It is cheaper to build and maintain. It reclaims land from roadways that can be used for other taxable uses, expanding the assets a local government can collect property tax as well as shares of sales tax. If used for more housing, the tax base further expands. As maintenance of roads and bridges comes due (read overdue in our current reality) someone will have to pay for it; the local tax base is becoming increasingly unable to do so.

View of the harbor city Svendborg in Denmark, population of approximately 27,330 people

Thus, people should care how bicycle transportation allows for urban transformations such as those I witnessed in these European communities, places that take a Strong Towns approach because it delivers us a safer and more affordable system. It is a strong community. As the challenges mount during this decade we need a path that strengthens all of us, not a flailing, indecisive, ad hoc path that favors only the loudest demands for public resources at the expense of everyone else. Plus, as I will discuss in my project, people can make money for themselves through this transformation; and this is the United States, who doesn't love some money! Especially when you can do it without the risk of being struck and killed by a car!

On that happy note, thank you for reading this blog. Hope it entertained at the least, and if I'm lucky, provoked a bit of thought too. Be well!

A view of Nyhavn, a harborside street in Copenhagen, Denmark;
officially this blogger's favorite city on the trip, congrats Copenhagen! (sorry Floris)