Biking through a University Town (Odense)

Our last stop in Denmark brought us to the country's third most populous city, Odense (estimated population in 2022 of approximately 172,500 residents). The population and size of the city provided an apt comparison to the city I've lived in the past two years, Eugene, Oregon. Not only are the populations comparable, but we learned that Odense is considered a "college town", supported by three universities: the School of Social Work under the umbrella of the University College, Little Belt network, Odense University, and the largest of the three, Southern Denmark University (SDU). The universities' presence is comparable to Eugene, which is home to Bushnell University, Lane Community College, New Hope Christian College, and the flagship institution, the University of Oregon. The task at hand then is to experience what it is like biking in a city that is predominantly younger, bolstered by the student population, but also one that is over 1,000 years old.

I must admit, after three days here, I did not recognize the "feel" of a "college town" as one would describe back in the United States. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Vermont, located in Burlington, which reflects a similar relationship between the City of Burlington and the university. Much like attending the University of Oregon, there is a clear distinction between the university space and the city space. Not here in Odense, where the universities were located on the outskirts of the city center. The comparison between the two examples is somewhat difficult as well, given that Odense is a city that appears first in historical record around the year 988 C.E., while respectively, Burlington, Vermont was chartered as early as 1763 and Eugene, Oregon in 1853. But this is not a historical nerd's blog; it's a biking nerd's blog, so let's talk bikes.

One of the first notable characteristics of the biking infrastructure is a design I did see in Copenhagen, but it appeared much more apparent here in Odense: the slight right directional "slip lane" as it is called. The roadway is split by small pedestrian islands, much like an exit ramp on a freeway back in the U.S. functions to smoothly direct traffic off the road to redirect the traveler and filter them onto a new roadway. Clear, white painted markings on the street communicate to bicyclists of what space to veer towards to enter the slip lane and proceed right. In the picture provided, the roadway is clear, with pedestrians standing on either the sidewalk or island that splits the road between these two lanes. Awareness is still a prudent strategy, however; at one point during my time using one of these slip lanes, two older women with their luggage happened to find themselves "belled" out of the way by our group of bicyclists as they were standing in the middle of the lane.

A slip lane directs bicyclists to the right to make the turn onto a new road in Odense, Denmark

The usage of slip lanes lends to the overall connectivity of bicycling infrastructure throughout the city. Biking in the lanes feels quite safe as one is mostly separated from vehicles using the cycle tracks I have come to recognize in most Danish cities. Here in Odense, we experienced another form of biking infrastructure and network design: the cycling superhighways. These cycle tracks are wide and allow continuous biking throughout much of the city, supporting commuting not only within the city center but also outward in the surrounding neighborhood districts and surrounding communities that border Odense. Apart from the physical cues of biking on a wider cycle track, one sees large blue rectangles painted on the road present with two cross symbols (such as ++) to designate the cycle track as part of the superhighway. I saw another version of the superhighway while we stayed in Copenhagen as the now decade-plus old network communicates through symbols, such as an orange circle with a white C painted in the middle (see below).

Blue painted signage indicating the track as part of the
cycling super highway. Photo Credit: Nick Deshais

Raising the curb as a traffic calming tactic 
to slow cars down on a residential road

Within the interior of residential neighborhoods, we noted several other design tactics employed to reduce car speeds while supporting bicyclists. For example, at intersections, the asphalt making up the road is raised to create a semi-speed bump in order to reduce car speeds as they enter the space. In the image to the right, one can also see the "shark teeth" symbols notifying drivers and bicyclists to yield to the oncoming traffic in the intersection. The raised road complements this design.

To further facilitate the seamless movement of bikes through these residential areas, one notices subtle details in the roadway design. For example, walking down one interior street, our group came to an intersection where the diagonally oriented car parking spaces ended about one car-length space before the sidewalk. In this space, a small entry lane allowed bikes to slip onto the road and veer left around the cars to proceed forward with little interruption (see image below). 

 

An entry point for a bicyclist to continue
on the interior, residential road

Collectively, the built design elements promote an efficient and uninterrupted journey through most of Odense. What I will lastly note about the intentionality of supporting biking here in the city is the ample amount of bike parking available. As with cars, the need to store one's vehicle is essential to encourage any mode of personal transport and biking is no exception. It just benefits from the fact that bikes take much far less space compared to car parking and it is hard to miss the parking infrastructure in Odense that provides for bicyclists. Near our hotel, a small covered structure included well over a hundred spaces for bike parking, utilizing both ground-level spaces and a useful contraption where a person can unlock a ramp, slope it down to roll the bike into the track to secure it, and then push the space upward to level it out and lock it in place (these are the orange handles displayed in the image below). I observed several of these bicycle parking stations along with the familiar ground-level spaces strewn throughout the city. Despite the ample availability, I did see that many bikes were parked in a free-form manner, suggesting that demand may even be overtaking the ample capacity of bike parking in Odense.

A bike parking station provides spaces on both the ground and raised levels to maximize available parking spaces

All the collective infrastructure is reinforced through policy and marketing pushed by the city to encourage cycling. For example, students that study at one of Odense's universities are given a bike upon arrival (Walker, 2016). Over 80 percent of school children ride a bike to school, an impressive accomplishment further encouraged by Cycling Anton, a local mascot champion of bicycling for Odense's youth. When we walked with our tour guide that worked for the city, she stressed the importance of marketing and effective public campaigns to promote not only bicycling habits to the city residents but also to garner support for the retrofitting of existing roadways into more supportive travel ways for multiple modes of transport: cars, bikes, and pedestrians. It fits with the motto recently adopted and circulated around the city: At leger er at leve (to play is to live).

Overall, I felt safe and found biking around the University Town convenient. Part of the reason in addition to the ample bicycle infrastructure present was the notably fewer people to compete with on the cycle tracks, as compared to the densely populated capital of Copenhagen. The immediate takeaway is remembering how many U.S. cities support a population between the smaller end of 50,000 people to a higher end of 250,000 people. Many of us think of the metropolises of the country supporting over a million residents, but the vast majority of U.S. cities reflect the populations compared to Odense, including Eugene, Oregon, which exists as the state's second-most populous city, after Portland. Furthermore, despite clear challenges in the topography of some metropolitan cities, there are many places in the U.S. built on flat terrain, much like Odense and much of Denmark. A growing e-bike market can further support the adoption of biking as transport for these midsized U.S. cities. The main takeaway I felt in bringing lessons back to these contexts is instituting a deliberate effort to build biking-supportive infrastructure by retrofitting existing roadways (we have plenty of these throughout the country) coupled with effective public campaigns that emphasize the benefits of biking for health, convenience, good for students across the age spectrum, and efficient in land use, where fewer parking spaces for cars and more spaces for bikes frees up land for other uses. If any of our city councils need land for desperately needed housing, we could start there.