Copenhagen plans bike highways

Reduce bike congestion

Vilas Bhuchar, Dec 10, 10.

Copenhagen, already one of the world’s most bicycle-friendly cities, is starting to transform some of its 242 miles of cycle paths into bike highways to reduce bicycle congestion and encourage more suburban commuters to ditch their cars for bikes, according to Yahoo News:

Considered one of Europe’s two “bicycle capitals” along with Amsterdam, Copenhagen counts more bicycles than people and cycling is so popular that its numerous bike paths can become congested.

Two-wheeler traffic jams are especially regular on the main Noerrebrogade thoroughfare used by around 36,000 cyclists a day.

“You have to elbow your way in to go forward and some cyclists aren’t always thoughtful,” complains 22-year-old university student Lea Bresell.

The creation of bike highways “comes right on time”, says Danish Cyclist Federation spokesman Frits Bredal.

“Copenhagen’s roads are overloaded with people who want to ride their bicycles in all kinds of weather,” he says.

If in the 1960s Danes viewed the car as the symbol of freedom, the bicycle has assumed that role today, Bredal says.

“It’s a mode of transportation used by all social classes, even politicians ride bikes,” he says.

It is on crowded Noerrebrogade—the busiest bicycle street in Europe, according to the cyclist association—that city planners have decided to build the first of Copenhagen’s environmentally friendly boulevards.

The jammed bike paths will be widened up to four metres (yards) on either side of the road, which will itself will be reserved for buses only.

The idea is to make Noerrebrogade “Europe’s great cycling street”, says Andreas Roehl, the Copenhagen municipality’s bicycle programme manager who is also known as “Mister Bike”.

But Roehl is not content with making life easier for Copenhagen’s inner-city cyclists: he wants to get suburbanites out of their cars and onto two wheels as well.

His goal is to hike the percentage of suburban commuters cycling to and from the city from the 37 percent it is today to over 50 percent by 2015.