The Life-Sized City Blog: Clear Passage


Winter’s grip on Copenhagen is still firm. All the snow is formed into frozen ridges throughout the city. As we’ve been banging on about, the bike lanes are are a main priority and they are cleared first, long before the roads. The bike lane snowploughs zip dutifully back and forth.I did, however, read that the counties in Denmark are overbudget regarding snow clearing. The annual budget for all the counties is 1 billion kroner [ca. $185 million] and that number is already doubled this year.The main thoroughfares in Copenhagen are cleared to accomdate the daily armada of bicycles but on the more minor roads without separated bike infrastructure, the snowploughs ain’t been visiting. The roads are divided up into A roads and B roads and the focus is on the A roads with all this snowfall.But I’ve forgotten about the photo up top. This is near the city centre on a relatively main street. The bike lane is cleared but all the snow from the bike lane and the street has been ploughed into a ridge to the left of the bike lane. Normally, this is car parking. You can see what the minivan has to do to park, sticking halfway out into traffic. Farther along, outside a hotel entrance, cars are precariously parked on packed snow.

Meanwhile, the bicycles roll on.


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