Biking as Sustainable Transport: Study in Denmark and the Netherlands

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 asset...

In two of the most recent posts, I talked about the types of people I saw biking as well as how land use changed as a result of building more biking infrastructure. For this post, I will briefly conclude my observations by discussing how I learned to put biking in a proper context as I feel we should with any debate about sustainable transportation systems: they must be truly multimodal for context and place, to be effectively sustainable. Without a doubt, a major lesson for me in these past four weeks is how multiple transport modes support and complement each other's utility. Walking and biking can help us go places within that sweet spot of four to six miles, which includes arriving at a bus or train station for when the journey is intercity or further out in a different region. As a result, the components for supporting those systems must be present: pathways, safe infrastructure, parking, and most importantly, destinations. The last bit is perhaps the most overlooked I feel th...

Focusing on examples seen in both Utrecht and Amsterdam, another takeaway of this trip is the land use patterns I have witnessed visiting these cities. What drew my eye throughout exploring the different places is the availability of space that allows one to feel safe traveling via any mode. While our group notably saw fewer segregated spaces between modes in the Netherland examples compared to Denmark, that does not mean they did not exist. In the image below, an intersection in Amsterdam about a five-minute walk east of our hostel, one can see how crossings provide a lane for bikes and pedestrians to travel, keeping them separated from car, bus, or tram traffic. The islands between the crossings keep pedestrians safe when waiting for cross-traffic to clear the pathway but the islands also narrow the vehicle lanes, slowing traffic through the intersection and thereby enhancing safety. Presented in the picture are bicyclists crossing the road in the bike lane, with oncoming cars moving...