

37% of people commute by bike in Copenhagen thanks to this infrastructure - MikeCapone
http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagen%E2%80%99s-climate-friendly-bike-friendly-streets/

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baguasquirrel
My my all the hating on bikes here. What gives? Have any of you actually
commuted on a decent bike-- not one of the cheap $300 Walmart ones? It's
glorious.

Is it wrong for Denmark to impose such a high tax? There's probably better
economic means to accomplish the task. But the hating on the bike counter? Now
that's just silly.

If you're in SF South Bay, there are plenty of low-traffic roads where you
will beat the cars back home and be much, _much_ less stressed out from not
needing to jockey in traffic-- at least if you could give up your prejudice
for a moment. It also does your burn rate well for those of you doing
startups.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I commute on a bike that's several levels _below_ a cheap $300 Walmart one --
and it's glorious. Every day, I get to work in a better mood than when I left
home. I defy _anyone_ who drives to work to make the same claim honestly.

~~~
ams6110
What are the temperatures like in your area? If I biked to work, at least 6
months out of the year I'd arrive a dripping, sweaty mess.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Northeastern rustbelt city. Hot and muggy in the summer, freezing cold in the
winter (it's raining today but last Thursday and Friday were baltic), soggy
the rest of the year.

Oh, yeah: and hilly. And there are almost no bike lanes.

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gwright
I'll bet the 200% tax on car purchases helps to encourage bike commuting:
<[http://wallstreetpit.com/12684-denmarks-200-pecent-car-
tax-c...](http://wallstreetpit.com/12684-denmarks-200-pecent-car-tax-crazy-
and-crazier>);

~~~
mseebach
Indeed. And the result is that our car-fleet is one of the oldest, least
environmentally friendly and least safe in western Europe.

~~~
jimmybot
Sounds like relying more on a gas tax would have been the better way to go.
Distortionary taxes really need to be careful they are distortionary in the
desired way.

~~~
mseebach
Well, we have that too, and that also distorts.

A family with both parents working, living economically ie. not in an urban
center, needs to drive a car to make ends meet. You can't do shopping for a
family, and definitely not in economical sizes, on a bike or in a bus. They
are hit hard by high gas costs, while a well-off urban professional takes his
SUV to go skiing in Italy because it's still cheaper than flying+renting a car
when he gets there.

~~~
vidarh
You need a pretty big family before doing shopping by bus is not feasible.

I'm 34, Norwegian, have lived most of my life in Norway and England, and have
no drivers license. Never learned to drive, because I've never felt the need
to.

I do the family shopping for my small family of 3 on my commute home. I rarely
need to pick anything up more than 2-3 times a week, and usually I only need
one "big" round of shopping per week. It's never so much that I can't take it
with me on the train, then walk to the bus stop and take it with me on the
bus, _in addition_ to my fairly heavy bag of gym shoes + clothes. If we had
another child or two I might end up going to the shops once more a week, or my
wife might end up having to help out with the shopping more often.

While I might've saved a little bit here and there on buying larger
quantities, not having the cost of car makes up for it many times over.

For that matter, not having a car saves us so much that we can easily afford
delivery charger and/or taking a cab back if we ever want to do really large
amounts of shopping, and still save money.

In other words: Apart from a really small number of people that live in so
rural areas that they are not properly served by public transport (I'm talking
about Europe here) _and_ are too far away to walk, it's not about needs but
about perceived convenience.

But I don't even want a car. Apart from the cost, there's all the hassle of
keeping it in a decent condition. I'd rather just pay for the service on the
rare occasions I need it. Though I may consider getting a drivers license to
at least have the option of renting a driverless car now and again.

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jrockway
The difference between Denmark and the US is that the US would _never_
implement cycle infrastructure that could possibly increase travel times for
cars. Denmark is willing to reduce the convenience of roads for motor
vehicles, and that makes for a vastly better cycling experience. (Actually,
cycling is fine in the US, but you have to be brave when you are just starting
out. Copenhagen has designed in features that makes the roads very newbie-
cyclist-friendly, so people don't get scared off the first time they ride on
the street.)

Anyway, if the US ever wants to see cycling adopted by the average person and
not only people who have already made the decision to commit, we need to:
reduce the speed-limit in city centers to 20mph; have bicycle-only light
timings; and start selling bicycles that are useful, not just "cool looking".

My guess is that this will not happen in my lifetime.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
> cycling is fine in the US

My ER doctor friend says urban cycling is idiotic.

I do it all the time but you're kidding yourself if you don't realize it is
extremely dangerous.

The more important issue in the US regarding bikes is the lack of density.
It's simply not feasible to bike the kinds of distances most people need to
go.

~~~
jrockway
_My ER doctor friend says urban cycling is idiotic._

A friend of yours said something, so it must be true...

Most accidents are due to people driving their bicycles unsafely. If you drive
safely, urban cycling is not dangerous. If you drive like a maniac and
disregard traffic controls (running lights, riding on the sidewalk, going the
wrong direction, etc.), then yeah... it's dangerous. Just like it would be as
a pedestrian or motorist.

In aggregate, cycling is not significantly more dangerous than any other
activity: <http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/almanac-safety.html>

(Despite this, I am in favor of laws and regulations that make the roads less
dangerous. Cars should not go faster than bicycles in cities. If you need to
get somewhere fast, use rapid transit.)

~~~
chancho
> If you need to get somewhere fast, use rapid transit.

I have a hard time believing anyone in the US (except maybe New York) could
say this with a straight face. Where do you live that rapid transit is so
rapid?

~~~
jrockway
Chicago. It takes me about 15 minutes to get to work on the train. Driving
would probably take a bit longer, and would cost about $40/day. (Not including
the cost to get a car and a driver's license; neither of which I have.)

------
San
Nice cycling lanes and impressive statistics, but I don't get the impression
that bicycles are as ubiquitous (yet) as they are in Amsterdam.

I wonder how they handle bicycle parking in Copenhagen, because that's a real
problem in most Dutch cities. Especially those cargo bikes take a lot of
space.

~~~
kqr2
This is a great photo essay on bicycles in Amsterdam:

<http://www.ski-epic.com/amsterdam_bicycles/>

~~~
gjm11
It's a bit weird how the short description of just about every photo ends with
"... on a bicycle, in Amsterdam" or some close equivalent. Either the author
is just completely freaked out that all these things happen OMG ON A BICYCLE
IN FREAKING AMSTERDAM, or it's some sort of attempt at SEO, hoping that Google
will place this page really highly for people searching for <<<bicycle
amsterdam>>>.

If it's the latter then it seems to have worked; the page is the top organic
Google result for those words, at least for me at the moment. I do hope that
_isn't_ because of the clunkily repetititititive writing style.

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njharman
It's thanks to a lot more than just that infrastructure.

    
    
      1 taxes, cost of fuel
      2 culture (USA views bikes as for kids and tree-huggers)
      3 density of urban areas
      4 layout/zoning of urban areas (i.e. no ring of suburbia, shopping/strip malls around cities)
      5 probably others that I'm not aware of
    

The infrastructure doesn't work without 3 and 4, and probably doesn't work
without 2.

~~~
jules
The Mandatory Helmets also help to discourage bikes.

~~~
goatforce5
In the same way that everyone stopped driving their cars when seatbelts became
mandatory?

~~~
jules
No, in the same way that people will not start smoking if they have to use
mandatory safety goggles. Of course this kind of method depends on two things:

1) how critical the activity is to people's lives (cycling: low, driving:
high)

2) how funny you look with the safety item on (...)

------
grk
After living in Copenhagen for 1,5 years I think I can add some info to this.

First of all, biking is the only reasonable way to commute in Copenhagen. Car
traffic is big, but the most discouraging factor for me is the parking fees.
During business hours, paring in the red zone, which is the city centre, is
$5.50 per hour. And you have to be lucky to find a spot, and you still have to
walk a significant distance to your destination. Whereas when you take your
bike, you can leave it just outside the place you're going to (bike parking
spots are everywhere).

There is a lot of people who live in Greater Copenhagen (Cph and cities around
it) and commute to the centre by S-trains. This creates the problem of having
to either pay extra for taking your bike on the train, or having one bike for
home - train station and one for train station - work. The attempted solution
for that was the city bikes system, free bikes you could rent, in theory
everywhere. In practice however, these bikes are nowhere to be found or
somehow broken.

So, what Copenhagen really needs is a decent bike sharing system. A friend of
mine conducted a survey for a university project, and there is a huge interest
in this kind of system. People would gladly pay a monthly fee to be able to
get off a train and pick up a bike that's waiting right next to the station.

I see this as a big idea for many cities. More people would use bikes if they
didn't have to actually own and maintain them, and care about theft. Someone
make this into a startup please? :)

~~~
jvdh
This already exists in the Netherlands, called the "OV-fiets" (public
transport bicycle). You take a subscription (€10 a year), and then using a
card you can rent a bicycle at almost any railstation for a little less than
€3 for 18 hours. You can rent them longer if you want, and even return them to
a different place than you got them from (for a fee).

Most of these places have manned bicycle storage facilities where you can rent
them, but they also have some in automated lockers in lesser frequented
locations. They're now also starting to put these in commuter parking spots at
edges of cities.

------
nraynaud
I think a good way to bootstrap the stuff is the rental bike program like Lyon
then Paris. They just put a lot of bikes at once in the city.

There's a lot of friction in the beginning (you know how car drivers always
think pedestrian and bikes are dangerous, when the kinetic energy computation
tell another story) but I think it's efficient.

But you need strong political will, I mean you'll have stories dead bikers in
the news, you'll have to cope with the bike-unaware traffic rules and stuff
like that.

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mseebach
First, the über-fancyness reported is purely COP-15 show-off and nothing else.
The bike-counter, for an example, serves no practical purpose. I don't even
know what the reported LEDS are.

It's true that it's very nice to be a biker in Copenhagen, but I believe that
it's a case of chicken-and-egg: I think most of the amenities are there
because Danes enjoy biking in large numbers, and not the other way around.

~~~
warfangle
Fairly certain the LEDs he was talking about were the turn-lane indicators,
that warn a turning car if a bicyclist is on the way. That's kind of amazing,
and would potentially do wonders in a city like NYC. We already have some
separated bicycle lanes (with obstructions between the cyclers and the autos),
separate bike traffic lights, but only in a very few spots (8th avenue has a
large stretch).

One of these days I'll get one.. :)

Also, if you watch the video he mentions that it's taken thirty some odd years
to build out this infrastructure, and that it used to be a much more car-
centric city.

~~~
TravisLS
The other thing that NYC would do well to implement was the so-called "green
highway". I bike to work every day and find that our separated bike lanes have
longer and more frequent red lights than the lanes given to cars (we have a
red light when they have a green light + left turn arrow). Most of the people
who bike frequently in the city actually avoid the separated bike lanes
because of the poor traffic light timing.

~~~
thefool
Yes, that I think is the best of the social engineering ideas presented in
that video, its also one of the easiest for the city to implement in terms of
infrastructure.

You would make a lot of people mad by doing it though.

~~~
warfangle
There's already so much bicycle-hate in this city (mainly towards couriers:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmHRnA780WM> ), that I can imagine it getting
out of hand.

Most of the people it would effect are cab drivers/drivers-for-hire and
delivery trucks/vans. Everyone else who drives daily in the city is, imho, an
asshole ;)

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anamax
The fact that they live within biking distance of where they want to go has
nothing to do with it....

~~~
grk
Not really true. People can take their bikes on S-trains, which come from
>20km from the centre.

~~~
anamax
CalTrain carries bikes too.

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jvdh
The claim for having the busiest bicycle street of the west is frankly
ridiculous. The guy must never have been to the Netherlands. I myself live in
Utrecht, and we have streets that see more than 2000 bicycles at 8:30am, let
alone at 11am (yes, even on weekends).

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joubert
[http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/portland_se...](http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/portland_seeks_public_input_fo.html)

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access_denied
To see the number 37 and the word Copenhagen in one headline, makes me think I
should get real.

