Biking as Sustainable Transport: Study in Denmark and the Netherlands

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...

After experiencing Amsterdam for a couple of days, I wanted to briefly reflect on the types of people I see biking in each of these cities. The reason for posting about this topic is that the answer runs the spectrum of life stages, from very young children to older adults. In both Denmark and the Netherlands, I have witnessed young children, some probably as young as five or six, biking in the environment with their parents. Children not much older, closer to say an eight to 12 range also bike and often do so independent of any parents by their side. Biking in tandem with children are parents of varied ages and one can spot their presence by seeing the bikes with an extra passenger seat attached (see photo below of the Utrecht school for example). Several bikes parked at an elementary school in Utrecht, Netherlands; both bikes for adults & children   Adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults all bike frequently in both countries as one may expect to be the most common ...

Arriving in our final city of the trip, Amsterdam, members of the group participated in the PUMA Game developed by Dr. Meredith Glaser of the Urban Cycling Institute housed in the University of Amsterdam. PUMA stands for Planning, Urban Design, Mobility, and Accessibility. The task challenged us to explore three areas of the city: the Post-War suburbs, the Pre-War region, and the city center (the war reference is for the period after World War II). We needed to identify and document a series of examples of how the spatial and social fabric of the city influenced these four elements of Amsterdam's transportation system. Riding the M53 Red Line from Weesperplein station to the southern terminus and suburb of Gaasperplas A station map of the M53 Red Line What I enjoyed about this activity is how I could compare different areas of Amsterdam that developed during different time periods in the last century as well as provide a comparison to the land use patterns employed in the United St...