Copenhagenize.com - Bicycle Culture by Design

Wayfinding in a Liveable City

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Sun, 19 May 2013 09:36:00 +0000

"Hi... excuse me... can you help me find this address?"

An oft-used phrase for visitors in a foreign city. A few months ago I met up with Andy Cutler from Providence, RI, who was in Denmark to explore opportunities for Providence and Copenhagen to hook up on a creative and business level.

He did a cool little experiement. He was here for two weeks and only got around by asking people on the street for directions, instead of using tech-gadgets. He wrote about it here, on the Better World by Design blog.

He told me about it at Bang & Jensen café in Copenhagen one evening and I thought it to be cool.

One of his observations is that Copenhageners - besides being helpful - never really gave him complete and specific directions. They sent him in the right direction and then suggested he ask someone else for further details once he got closer. I found that interesting.

I've spent a awful lot of time thinking about it since then. Making mental notes of my own experiences. Asking friends about their wayfinding habits. In addition, I've been using a valuable resource at my disposal - all the guests who stay with me in my flat, my Airbnb room.

The baseline of my observations it that Copenhageners aren't very good with street addresses. They'll rarely be able to tell you what house number a certain establishment is at on a certain street. Street names, too, are not something that roll right off the tongue when describing how to get somewhere.

We live in densely-populated neighbourhoods with pretty much everything we need in close proximity to us. There are fixed points on our personal maps, sure. Supermarkets, cafés, banks (although less so these days with online banking), busstops, train stations, parks. When something new appears on our map, people have to start telling each other how to get there. A new café or restaurant, for example.

"I was at this cool, new restaurant last night. It was great."
"I've read about it, heard good things about it. Where is it?"

At this point a street name will, most likely, come into the conversation but rarely a house number. The description of the restaurant location will involve describing the new place's proximity to other established points on our urban map.

"It's just up from XXX supermarket. You know... near XXX café."
"Okay. Which side of the street? Heading towards the city or away from it?"

You'll never get a specific location. You'll end up riding your bike to the new restaurant and, as you approach, you'll narrow down your wayfinding using the locations of the known establishments and finally spotting the sign for the new restaurant.

I've played around with friends and colleagues, asking them if they know a certain place and how to get there. In fifty or so attempts, this is the overwhelmingly the pattern.

I also discovered that I didn't know the exact street address of my regular haunts. Cafés, resturants, etc.. I often send visitors to the aforementioned Bang & Jensen café - a place I've been frequenting for over a decade. I seem to recall that the house number was over 100 and, when describing the location I'll mention some cross streets but I'll mostly mention shop names nearby by. Little pins on a mental map that will help the person find the place. If neccessary I will say "the house number is over 100", in order to help them more specifically.

I just googled it and found out it's at Istedgade 130. I'm sure I'll forget that by the end of the day.

I've also been asking my Airbnb guests if they asked anyone for directions while out in the city. If yes, I've asked what kind of response they got. Again, the same pattern emerged. Copenhageners were helpful but described things around the desired destination. Visual and textual clues to help them narrow the wayfinding journey. I also catch myself telling them how to get to places using visual references.

"It's just after a green building. There's a supermarket with a big sign reading FØTEX. It's just after that. Heading towards the city, not away from it." And so on.

So what's up with this? Here's what I think.

Copenhageners are't shockingly bad at finding their way. Of course not. We're Vikings... we discovered America and sailed at will around the known world, as though we designed it ourselves. We invented the first compass. :-)

Nah... here's the thing. Copenhagen is a city of densely-populated neighbourhoods. It's a city where 71% of the population do not own a car and they transport themselves around their urban landscape on bicycles. In their local neighbourhoods there's a lot of walking. We spend great amounts of time not sitting in boxes of steel and glass with restricted vision but on the cycle tracks and sidewalks - or even on busses staring out of the window.

Our wayfinding is visual. Shop signs, building colours, proximity to fixed points on the map like train station or parks. With so much time spent looking at our city from the seats of our bicycles, the need for specifics like street names and house numbers dwindles. In communicating wayfinding to others, we describe the visual images imprinted on our inner map in our head.

Mistakes may occur. "You said past the green building... that's not green, that's blue..." Or you discover that the café across the street from the desired destination closed down and is now a flower shop, throwing us off our wayfinding.

Not to worry. Just stop somebody on the street and get some more visual clues. You'll get there eventually. And your journey will be a human one, worthy of a truly liveable city.

I've noticed the same patterns in other cities like Amsterdam. Few street names are mentioned, just visual directions involving establishments, certain bridges, etc.

Bicycle-friendly cities allow a closer contact with the city for those living in it - or visiting it. They are cities that are imprinted more indelibly on the retina of our inner cartographer.

I like that. It's human.

Addendum:
Then there is the whole human aspect of how being closer to your city on bicycles drastically increases your chances of spotting friends - and stopping to say hello. You see it all the time. Someone on a bicycle chatting with a friend on the sidwalk. Or two bicycle users who ran into each other and are having a chat on the sidewalk.

A bizarre coincedence just yesterday... I was heading to the beach with the kids and, at a roundabout, a man in a pedicab hailed me down. He - and the pedicab rider - wanted to know where the Bicycle Innovation Lab was. They decided to ask the first person they spotted. That was me.

Bizarre, because I was involved in starting the Bicycle Innovation Lab - the first cultural centre for cycling - and the Bicycle Library. Even more bizarre because the man in the pedicab was my friend Karta from London. He runs, among other things, The Bicycle Library in London.

It was a wild, unfathomable coincedence. He is in town for 24 hours, having flown in from Hong Kong. And boom... I'm the guy he spots on the cycle track to ask about the whereabouts of the Bicycle Innovation Lab.

Even more bizarre, as we're standing there talking on the cycle track, my two German guests in my flat from Airbnb roll up behind us. Little Lulu, sitting on the Bullitt, said, "Look, Daddy... it's our guests." They were heading to the beach, too.

There's no way I'm playing the lottery. I've used up my wild odds on a roundabout in Copenhagen.

Bicycle Racks on Taxis in Denmark

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:59:00 +0000

There are many ways to combine transport forms. One of the unsung modes is combining the bicycle with a taxi. In Denmark, every taxi is equipped with bike racks to accommodate two bicycles.

There is an additional fee of about 10 or 15 kroner ($2-3) if you need to get your bicycle home with a taxi. For whatever reason. A flat tire or other defect, you're in a hurry, it's raining and you forgot your waterproof mascara, the guy/girl you met at that bar and are heading home with doesn't have one - and you want to get home in a hurry... wink wink nudge nudge.

All a part of a truly integrated bicycle culture.

I was suprised to learn in this travel film about Copenhagen from Pan Am in 1962 that all taxis had this option even back then. Click here to hop into the Youtube film and see what I mean.

I Vacuum Copenhagen

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000

I've been saying for years that we don't have bicycle culture in Copenhagen. We just have vacuum cleaner culture. We all have one, we all have learned to use it, we use it. End of story.

We don't buy vacuum cleaning clothes at a specialty store, we don't wave at other vacuum cleaning enthusiasts on the street, we don't keep 7 vacuum cleaners polished in our shed. It's not a hobby or a fetish or a sub-cultural membership card.

Our vacuums, like our bicycles, are just tools that make everyday life easier.

So I figured I needed a logo.

Car Industry Strikes Back - Smart Car

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:02:00 +0000

What a lovely way to start the week. Another fine example from our Car Industry Strikes Back series, wherein we observe the desperate tactics of the car industry as they try to respond to rising cycling levels and public transport in their vain attempt to keep their dominant market share in this age of de-motorization.

This time it's Smart going for gold in this Portuguese commercial. Presenting us with worst-case scenarios from public transport and then having a young, hip-looking-ish man looking out the window at a Smart car rolling past - on an empty street at night. No traffic jams, nothing. Always amusing to see how car commercials try to get around showing traffic.

The tagline is SmartforTwo Public Transport. So now they're muscling in on the phrase Public Transport. That's even goofier than former BMW designer Chris Bangle using Personal Emotional Mobility as he tries to "hook people back to the car".

Have a scroll through the long list of other examples of Car Industry Strikes Back.

Thanks to Miguel from Lisbon Cycle Chic for the link.

Copenhagenize Index 2013 - Bicycle-Friendly Cities

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:50:00 +0000

We released our Copenhagenize Index 2013 - Bicycle-Friendly Cities today. We did a countdown on Twitter and then published the full list afterwards. Business Insider published the results simultaneously, as well.

The 2013 Index has taken a lot longer than we expected. We ranked 80 cities in 2011 and increased that to 150 this time round. Although this time round we had the help of over 400 individuals on every continent - our eyes and ears on the ground - to assist with the ranking.

While a mammoth task done con amore, it was just as interesting and rewarding as in 2011. While we would have liked to have ranked every single city on the planet, we kept it to a rough population size and included some cities because of their importance in their nation.

Have a look at the Index. Lots of changes in the Top 20 what with the addition of 80 new cities.

We've had a lot of interest in the Index since 2011 and the way we calculate the ranking. We used it in a large report we did - together with our partners Civitas - for the Norwegian Ministry of Transport wherein we explored why Norwegian cities are less bicycle-friendly than their Swedish and Danish counterparts.

All in all, it has been worth the time and effort and we thank the over 400 people who helped us out and I thank the whole Copenhagenize Design Co. team - especially Meredith Glaser in Amsterdam - for making this happen.

Cargo Bike Nation - The Book

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:01:00 +0000

So what do you do when you have several thousand photos of cargo bikes in your archives? Well, it's 2013... you slap them into a Blurb book, of course.

We just published Cargo Bike Nation on Blurb if anyone is interested. Here's the introduction from the book:

There are two reasons for producing this book. Firstly, the rise of the cargo bike as a transport solution in cities continues unabated. Secondly, out of the 15,000 or so photos I have taken while documenting bicycle culture in Copenhagen and other cities around the world, easily 3000 are of cargo bikes.

While I'd like nothing more than putting them into old school photo albums and inviting you all over for coffee while we leaf through the photos together, this book is probably a more logical solution.

What you'll find in these pages is photo after photo of cargo bikes, as well as bicycles with cargo.

There are 725 photos on offer. 615 of them are from Copenhagen. Not surprising considering that is where I live and that Copenhagen is easily the cargo bike capital of the world, with 40,000 cargo bikes in action.

There are, however, photos from 33 other cities on every continent that I've taken on my travels as CEO for Copenhagenize Design Co.. A large number are from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, where the cargo bike still serves the citizens for deliveries of goods.

In the Copacabana neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro alone there are 11,000 cargo bike deliveries a day. Where in Copenhagen the cargo bike is primarily used by families, in Rio it is pure logistics.

The number of cargo bikes in cities has dwindled since the mid-20th century, but there are an impressive number to be found. With the growing popularity of the cargo bike we can expect the armada to swell in size. Which is a good thing.

At the end of the book there is a list of the brands featured in this book. I've counted 23 recognizable brands and easily 20 cargo bikes that are undefinable because they are vintage or customised. Add to that the postal service bikes, pedicabs and the no-name Chinese bikes that some shops sell in Copenhagen.

Fourteen of the brands are Danish. Hey, it's a big market in Denmark. It's worth stating, however, that there are a great many other brands out there in the world. I don't have photos of all of them - although I wish I did. In particular, the United States is experiencing fantastic growth in the number of companies producing cargo bikes. It's all good.

It was a maddening process selecting photos for this book. At the end of the day I just wanted to produce the ultimate cargo bike photo book. Nothing sells cargo bikes like a long line of photos showing Citizen Cyclists and others using a cargo bike in their daily lives. As a vital tool for urban living.

The book is divided up into these chapters:
- The Cargo Bike & I - photos from my own life with cargo bikes.
- La Famiglia - how families use cargo bikes.
- You've Got Mail - postal service by bicycle.
- Municipal Services - city maintenence on wheels.
- Heavy Petting - pet transport on cargo bikes
- Musical Ride - musical instruments transported on bikes.
- Pedicab Nation - the rise of the pedicab in cities.
- Sharing is Caring - it's not just rugrat transport... cargo bikes are for friends and loved ones.
- The Buy Cycle - selling goods and services from cargo bikes.
- Trailer Park - let's not forget the trailer.
- The Classic Short John - photos of the ShortJohn/delivery bike/butcher's bike.
- Hors catégorie - Bikes that fall just outside the cargo bike category but that are cool.
- Early Learning - kids on mini-cargo bikes.
- Flea Markets - cargo bikes used in connection with flea markets.
- Aging Gracefully - bikes and trikes for the elderly.
- You've Got to Move It - moving your stuff around the city by cargo bike.
- Svajerløb - The Danish Cargo Bike Championships 2009-2012.
- Chameleons - people moving stuff on regular bikes in cargo bike spirit.
- Favourite street shots - some of my favourite shots from 6 years of photographing the subject.

The book is available at Blurb. Self-publishing is pricier than normal, but with 725 photos .... that's 8 cents a photo. Or something. :-)

Here's a slow motion sneak preview:

Using Street Space for Bike Parking

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:33:00 +0000

I ventured into the city centre of Copenhagen for a night out yesterday and was thrilled to behold the new cycle track down Gothersgade. It's a one-way street for cars and bikes - until now. This stretch was a missing link for bicycle traffic. Bicycle users had to do a rather irritating detour to get to key destinations.

Now a cycle track runs straight down the street towards the harbour while the street is still a one-way street for cars. Mary blogged about it a short while back - you can see what the street looked like before - and now the construction is almost complete.

On some stretches The Arrogance of Space has been addressed by adding cycle tracks in both directions, like above. Narrowing the space for cars to create safer conditions.

But what started as an article about bicycle infrastructure on a one-way street is now going to morph into an article about the deconstruction of The Arrogance of Space by using bicycle parking. Along stretches of the street, bike racks have been placed on built-up medians between the street and the cycle track.

I suppose it creates a buffer between the bicycle users on the cycle track and the roadway, sure, but it really is nothing more than using existing urban space for more rational and practical purposes. Good old fashioned space management.

Here's an earlier example of placing bike racks on traffic calming infrastructure. This is in Guldbergsgade in Nørrebro.

I went exploring through our archives looking for other examples of reclaiming street space for bicycle parking. This is near my flat. A photo I took in 2008. Roughly two car parking spots reclaimed for bicycle parking on Nordre Fasanvej. Notice also the built out half-circle with a newly-planted tree. More space taken back for creating a more pleasant urban environment. Who can hate trees?

Overflow parking at Central Station back in 2009 used street space while the space outside the station was being renovated.

Back in 2009, the City of Copenhagen's Bicycle Office experimented with Parking Zones at four spots in the city. Reclaiming street space for rackless bike parking. Here's an article about these parking zones.

On this narrow street in the heart of the city - Adelgade - bike racks take up the space of two car parking spots.

In my neighbourhood, the City of Frederiksberg, there are some good examples of reclaiming street space for use by bicycle users.

Top left: another example of taking back a bit of space from car parking and planting a tree. In addition, these little islands feature a couple of bike racks.
Top right: it's an older tree, but the municipality slapped in a bike rack and took back a bit more space.
Bottom left: This isn't bike parking, it's just a passageway for bicycles crossing the street, providing them with space to get to the cycle track.
Bottom right: Car parking spot removed to create six bike parking spots in a shopping district.

Here is Your Bicycle. The City of Copenhagen used street space for temporary parking near Nørreport Station. You can read about this Hi, Cyclist! Here is your bicycle! campaign here.

Urban Graphics on a closed off street - for cars - in the Amager neighbourhood with many bike racks for the residents.

This street, Elmegade, has been completely traffic calmed and is a slow, cosy street with loads of cafés and shops. It's a one-way street for cars and the city placed bike lanes in the opposite direction, creatively curving them around reclaimed street space used for bike parking and tables outside cafés. It's a lovely street to ride down.

Along Nørrebrogade, when the huge retrofitting project started, the cycle track was reclaimed for bike parking, as well as space for shops to display their goods. Not to worry... a car lane was reclaimed to create space for the cycle track. This was a temporary solution until the permanent infrastructure was built.

What started as a fun experiment for me and my friends is now our standard way of parking when we're out on the town. If there is a car parking spot available outside the bar or café we take it back. I did this little experiment called the Bike Magnet a while back and I can assure you that it continues to work every single time. Technically, according to the City's bylaws you're not permitted to do this, but people power is a lovely thing.

Another innovative project from the City of Copenhagen was this pink car that conquering one and a half parking spots and provided four secure parking spots for cargo bikes. Here's the article about this project.

Here's an unorthodox use of bicycles to block curb space. It looks like someone is reserving the space for use by a moving truck or the temporary placement of a container. The orange posts and plastic ribbons are often insufficient in keeping motorists at bay in their search for parking. So why not take some bikes and lay them down as a deterrent..

There are, of course, examples in other cities. At left is Kensington Market, in Toronto. At right is shopping district in Long Beach, California.

All of this is nothing new. Here are examples of reserving urban space for bicycle parking "corrals" from the 1940s.

Now, however, the battle to reclaim space from cars is more necessary than ever before. Perhaps these Copenhagen examples can serve as inspiration.

The Copenhagenize Bicycle Planning Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:12:00 +0000

In the interest of expediting the journey towards bicycle-friendly cities and eliminating misconceptions, Copenhagenize Design Co. has produced The Copenhagenize Bicycle Planning Guide.

The beauty of the bicycle infrastructure network in Copenhagen is the uniform design of the infrastructure. There are, by and large, four types of infrastructure - all represented in this graphic. Based on the speed limit for cars, you select the appropriate style of infrastructure and off you go.

If you fancy sending your local planner/engineer a gift that keeps on giving, this graphic is also available as a poster.

Into the Country

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:46:00 +0000

Late last year I transported myself a bit farther than normal on my bicycle. The occasion was a weekend in the woods with the families in Felix's class. The destination was about 21 km north of Copenhagen. Somewhere near Værløse. Which is "Middle of nowhere" (MoN) to this city boy. Normally, I don't bother going farther than IKEA. But I'll ride my bicycle there every time.

I'm not a cyclist. I don't demonstratively ride my bicycle everywhere. Like almost every Copenhagener I don't know how many kilometres I ride each year. I'm just a guy who uses a bicycle because it's practical.

With Felix and Lulu in tow, we had three options for getting there.
1. Take the train and then a bus.
2. Take the bikes on the train and ride the last 5 km.
3. Take the bikes.

It was number two if the weather was crap. I asked Felix if he thought he could ride 21 km and he was up for trying. Turns out the weather was fine so off we went. If you want to see the route, we tracked it on the Endomondo app.

All the motorways - and roads for that matter - leading to Copenhagen have cycle tracks on both sides, as you see in the photo above. So getting there by bicycle was no problem.

We loaded up the Bullitt with all the gear required of a weekend trip with a single dad and two kids - duvets, pillows, etc. and off we went.

Felix was on his Chopper and raring to go.

Along most of the route parallel to the #16 Motorway, the asphalt was so fresh you could almost smell it. What a splendid ride on that surface. Lovely, wide cycle tracks on both sides of the motorway.

Along many sections, the cycle track is bi-directional - never, ever in the city - but because of the desire lines of the people along these routes, it makes logistical sense. The volume of cyclist traffic out here is, of course, nowhere near the levels in the centre of Copenhagen and there are few intersections, so it makes rational sense.

We passed Skovbrynet Station on the bridge. Low traffic volume for cars and so there are painted lanes along the road below. Although a separated cycle track in the foreground up to the entrance to the station. These painted lines are getting quite rare. Many municipalities upgrade to separated cycle tracks because they know they encourage more people to ride.

Off the motorway we came.

We took a shortcut through the woods - Hareskoven. Lovely in the autumn light.

This neck of the woods is mountain bike heaven. Or so I've read.

On the other side of the woods we were back on cycle tracks. A bit narrow here, but this was an exception. It was a road cutting through the woods. Not exactly a bicycle user expressway.

Through small towns we were on separated cycle tracks once again.

As we ventured out into the country the cycle tracks started to separate from the roads with a verge, as per Danish best practice. When the car speed limits rise, you get cyclists farther away from the road.

One thing I tire of hearing is "Denmark is so flat". No, it isn't. The Netherlands is. And so is Copenhagen in the city centre. Once you're out of the city centre, however, you meet hills.

A few were nasty with a fully-laden Bullitt and Felix struggled on some of them, but we made it up every one. When you live in Copenhagen, you forget that much of the rest of the country is hilly, even though we sing the praises of our hills and valleys in the national anthem.

But hey. Hills end. Wind doesn't. Give me hills over wind any day. Luckily, the weekend was largely windless so we avoided that evil combination.

This is an example of a fine, separated cycle track through the countryside.

After a lovely weekend with friends, we headed home to Copenhagen.

Interestingly, in this article, you've basically seen three of the four types of bicycle infrastructure in Denmark that makes up the Best Practice. There are only four. That's what makes good design.

- Separated cycle tracks. The standard when speed limits for cars are above 30 km/h - unless car traffic volume is deemed low then above 40 km/h. Separated from the street with a curb.

- Bi-directional cycle tracks. Not used in cities because of safety issues. We threw these out of the Best Practice for cities a couple of decades ago. They serve a great function on routes with few intersections, like along the motorways or bike paths that run through parks, etc.

- Cycle tracks separated by a verge - completely away from the road, but running parallel. This is the standard when speed limits for cars are 60-70 km/h or higher.

The one you didn't see is what you get on residential streets with a 20-30 km/h speed limit. Then there is no bicycle infrastructure. Bicycles share the street with other vehicles at that speed.

Bicycle Carousel

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:26:00 +0000

Just when you thought you've seen it all, this pops into your inbox. It is from the lovely blog Bisikleta iha Dili, run by J.P.. A bicycle carousel for children. Fantastic. Especially as I'm in the midst of editing a book featuring 725 of my photos of cargo bikes entitled Cargo Bike Nation.

Dili is the capital of East Timor - or Timor Leste - the former Portuguese colony nestled between Australia and Indonesia. J.P. is running a cool little blog showing the bicycle's role in daily life.

Ageless Cycling

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:54:00 +0000

My friend Ole had an idea last year. The elderly who are in care homes need to get out a bit more. They grew up on bicycles. Why not take them for a ride? He borrowed a Christiania pedicab and volunteered to take the residents of a care home for a ride through the city. Talking with them, hearing their stories, showing them their town from the cycle track.

The idea is good. So good that the care home invested in a fleet of the pedicabs from Christiania Bikes. Now Ole took it to the next level and he started a group called Cykling uden alder - or Cycling Without Age. Last weekend they arranged a fantastic bike ride through the city with the fleet of pedicabs and a group of supporters.

As Ole puts it:

"Cycling Without Age is about quality of life.

It's about showing that the city is at it's loveliest when seen from the cycle track.
It's about the fact that cyclists are happier.
It's about the fact that cyclists are healthier, live longer and are less ill.

We want to promote that more people use their bicycle each day. There are already many that ride here in Copenhagen, but we can be many more. Especially children and the elderly.

Everyone who met up here today (at the bike ride) are living examples that we can make a difference.

Will you do me a favour and tell at least one person about this day and this bike ride and get that person to cycle more?
If you do that, you'll be a part of creating a better city and a better and happier Denmark."

What can you possibly add to that but some photos?

Ole's mum was on the ride, too.

Ole's mum again.

And here's Ole himself, in action.

Having inspiring friends is a gift. Ole is also on the board of Cykelrepublikken.

All the photos are by Sandra from the always brilliant Classic Copenhagen blog.

Busting Urban Sprawl Myths

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 09:00:00 +0000

With my work I travel a lot and that means I meet loads of interesting people and learn a whole bunch of new things all the time. Sometimes you hear the same things over and over when you're dealing with the same subject matter. Often it's no problem. All part of the game. Sometimes, however, you hear certain things in loop. Things that you wonder about.

One of them is that North American cities are just bigger. On a recent visit to Calgary a couple of weeks ago I must have heard it a dozen times. It's often a (not so) secret code for "we're not really committed to taking the bicycle seriously as transport." As though trying to brush off comparisons with urban cycling in Copenhagen and other Euro-filth concepts. No matter how often I highlight the fact that Copenhagen has the third largest urban sprawl in Europe and most of Copenhagen outside the medieval city centre is a 20th century invention. Nope. "Ain't gonna work here, bubba. Now git off ma lawn."

So I opened up Google Earth. Zoomed out to about 60 km. Highlighted Calgary, above, in yellow. The rough line of the city limits. Very rough... it was late and I was drinking wine.

Then I did the same for Copenhagen.

The rough line of Greater Copenhagen is in blue. I slapped Calgary onto Copenhagen, tilting it to make it fit nicer, and there you have it.

I didn't include the cities in the region that are bedroom cities for Copenhagen or Calgary. Just drew up the rough line around the urban sprawl. Calgary has about 1 million people and Greater Copenhagen about 1.9 million.

Here's both cities slapped onto Melbourne. Their metro area has about 4 million people. So they're bigger. Duh.

And here's Amsterdam, with Calgary and Copenhagen laid on top. It was tougher to see what was sprawl and what was farmland on the Amsterdam map, but it's still not far off.

So with that aside, I am well and truly tired of hearing about many cities and their perception of size. Time to move on.

Gothersgade and the Two-Way Cycle Track

noreply@blogger.com (Mary) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:32:00 +0000

One way streets. Where do bicycles fit into this ever-present downtown street model? A common question, and [from a car culture kinda perspective] understandably so. The City of Copenhagen answers that question, punctuated with an exclamation point - making Gothersgade a prime example of how to plan for cyclists and pedestrians in one-way situations.

A main street in the historic city centre, Gothersgade runs past Rosenborg Castle and the Kings Gardens at a hasty 50 km/h. One segment of it, leading away from Nyhavn and toward the Kings Gardens, is a three-lane one-way stretch of traffic lined by boutiques, bodegas, and cafes.

Google Maps view looking east on Gothersgade.

The one-way segment, up until the redesign, had a skinny mini sidewalk and three lanes for automobiles which fluctuate between parking and driving lanes.

Enter the road diet. Now we've got one lane for traffic, widened sidewalks, and cycle tracks going in on both sides.

One-way streets across town are slowly transforming into two way streets for cyclists (in addition to maintaining one lane for automobiles). Whether it's with a painted bicycle lane, or a separated cycle track (depending on road speed and traffic volume), the desire lines of cyclists are being made both the fastest and safest routes. Previously, in The Arrogance of Space, we saw how only slightly narrowing lanes allows plenty of room for proper bicycle infrastructure.

The [almost] finished cycle tracks of Gothersgade.

The cycle tracks of Gothersgade are still under construction and, it being my 'hood, I take lots of pride in observing their progress, and the reactions of citizens. The track above is similarly still under construction, but that hasn't stopped cyclists from rounding those bright orange cones and carrying on. Note the tilted trash bin for cyclists too. The city's really going all out with this one.
It looks like they even widened the opening for those of us who are more likely to make a granny shot than a slam dunk..

Once it's all built and done, the simple two-way tracks will actually be part of a much larger scheme. Not only will they save Copenhageners time from wiggling around a delightful maze of small city centre streets, but they'll be a main link to the new pedestrian/cyclist bridges over the harbour.

The conceptual design for the new harbour bicycle bridge, which is currently under construction.

The final answer: one way street + two way cycle tracks = win win win. No need to complicate traffic flow with bi-directional bike lanes, just standard infrastructure on both sides.

The Arrogance of Space

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:46:00 +0000

We have a tendency to give cities human character traits when we describe them. It's a friendly city. A dynamic city. A boring city. Perhaps then a city can be arrogant. Arrogant, for example, with it's distribution of space.

I've been working a lot in North America the past year and I've become quite obsessed with the obscenely unbalanced distribution of space. I see this arrogance everywhere I go. I see the insanely wide car lanes and the vehicles sailing back and forth in them like inebriated hippopotami. I was just in Calgary for five days and from my balcony at the hotel I watched the traffic below on 12th Ave. A one-way street that was never really busy at all.

From above, the arrogance of space was very apparent. Even more so than in a car driving down the lanes. The photo, above, is the car lines divided up with their actual width. Watching for five days - okay, not 24/7 ... I have a life after all - I didn't really see any vehicles that filled out the whole lane with their girth.

So, in a very unscientific way, I decided to take a bit of each lane away.

Narrowing the lanes slightly, space was created. Obviously. Duh. And there was still ample space for the vehicles - including the big trucks and SUVs.

We know that narrowing lane width improves safety. Just like tree-lined streets - or streets with utility poles, etc - make drivers slow down and concentrate, narrower travel lanes have the same positive effect. There were posters all around Calgary with the catchy headline "Crotches Kill". I can understand why texting is deemed easy when motorists are given so much space.

So, narrowing lane widths is safer. But what to do with that extra space?

On so many streets I've looked at in North American cities, even a two-lane street can cough up enough space for a Copenhagen-style cycle track.

Addendum: It's not possible to see it on these photos but the car parking at the bottom is an indentation in the curb in front of the hotel, so the cycle track runs along the curb, as it should.

I tire of hearing the incessant "we don't have space for bicycles" whine, especially in North American cities. The space is right there if you want it to be there. Removing car lanes to create cycle tracks is, of course, doable. So many cities are doing it. Not making cycle tracks for those who cycle now, but for the many who COULD be cycling if it was made safe.

However, when you live in an arrogant city, space is readily available. Often not even involving removing lanes or parking. It's right there. If you want it.

Another example from Calgary. Memorial Drive. A cyclist off to the right on this 60 km/h stretch. The motorist gave him a wide berth, exposing the arrogance of space for us.

Here's what could be possible.

I can hear the traffic engineers complaining already. This, of course, messes with every computer model they have. It's not, however, about them anymore. They've had their century of trial and error - mostly error. We're moving on now. We'll redesign our cities and tell them what to do and how to help us - based on human observation, rationality and logic. They're brilliant problem solvers. We'll just be telling them what problems to solve.

This quote by Andres Duany is appropriate:
"The problem with planning is that it has been overtaken by mathematical models - traffic, density, impact assessment, public costs etc. discarding common sense and empirical observation."

Ironically, I was reading a copy of The New Republic - found a copy at an airport - and saw the above snippet. The writer, one Tim Wu, clearly has time to ponder when he's sitting in traffic. He noticed the wide car lanes as well. His solution, however, was to promote narrower cars and increase the number of lanes - thereby creating "the first real drop in traffic congestion in decades", he claims. Note the tagline at the top right: "A more perfect world". This company is even producing narrower cars and their website makes the same claim: "This doubling of lane capacity can solve traffic congestion.

Unfortunately, the myth persists. The sum of our knowledge after 100 years of traffic engineering is that if you create more space for cars, more cars will come. Period. Again, time to move on. A more perfect world is within our reach, once we get a flock of misconception monkeys off our backs.

Another street, this one in Montreal. Wasted space on the right, arrogance of space on the left.

Take a look at the streets around you. This all applies to a great many of them. The space is right there for the taking.

Bicycle Malmö 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:18:00 +0000

Bicycle Malmö 2012 from Martin Lang on Vimeo.

A lovely little film about our neighbours in Malmö, across the bridge from Copenhagen.

Closing Streets to Cars - for Good

noreply@blogger.com (Pedro Madruga) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:35:00 +0000

The neverending story of car dependency:

(c) Todd Litman, 2013. "Smart Congestion Relief - Comprehensive Analysis of Traffic Congestion Costs and Congestion Reduction Benefits". Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. This is the general feeling when drivers know that the street they usually drive on, may soon be closed to vehicular traffic. This feeling has, to some degree, been used by those who decide to build new roads. In other words, we still live according to Henry Ford's motto, “With mobility comes freedom and progress”. As someone who works with urban planning this can be viewed as when the ends actually justify the means – cities scratched by black tar marks, roads planned and built with eyes closed.

Now, the results of unconsidered planning are here - we feel these impacts on a daily basis.

Currently, that paradigm is slowly shifting to a new one. In a rather considerable number of cities, city centres, as well as many other streets, are being closed to cars.

Nevertheless, there remains constant misconception about closing streets to cars: chaos and congestion are imminent. All those cars will just end up somewhere else. On other streets, in other neighbourhoods. Although considering that some cities have already implemented car-free streets for quite a while now, it's possible to observe the impacts.

The Braess's Paradox is a statistical theorem that determines that when a road network is already jammed with vehicles, adding new streets can make traffic flow even worse. Overall, it encompasses the (wrong) idea that more roads will improve traffic. According to this paradox, extending a road network may result in even longer commuting times.

“Ok, but that's on paper. Usually it doesn't happen in real life.” You might say.

In New York, when the City's Transportation Commissioner decided to close 42nd Street during the Earth Day celebration, a “doomsday” was predicted due to the expected generated traffic chaos. We're not talking about any street – it's the same 42nd street that intersects Time Square and runs past Grand Central Station. This anticipated doomsday couldn't be further from what really happened: traffic flow actually improved. A real world example of the Braess's paradox.

Calming Times Square.

This paradox also came up in an article citing a research paper titled “The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control”. In this article, one of the interesting conclusions was, "...simply blocking certain streets can partially improve the traffic conditions." Dietrich Braess must be proud.

But let's look at a few other examples. In Kajani, Finland, a proposal to close traffic through the main square was brought to the table when the daily traffic was 13,000 vehicles per day. After the authorities closed it to car traffic, the streets nearby had a slight increase right after the closing and, after that, the overall traffic had decreased with hints of “evaporation”.

Post-pedestrianisation in Copenhagen's City Centre.

Another common concern when closing streets to traffic is commercial activity. In the same city, a survey of retailers found that 52% felt that the decision to close the streets down to cars had improved local commerce or will improve it in the future.

In Wolverhampton, UK, the “evaporation” of traffic also happened - after closing down the city centre to cars, 14% of the overall traffic was reduced in the nearby streets. Also in the UK, in Vauxhall Cross, a simulation predicted an increase of 267% in traffic queueing. The results, of course, were quite different: traffic queues were shorter than before and there was an overall reduction of 2-8% of traffic. Ugh, talk about cities ruled by computers instead of people.

In Strasbourg, right before the decision to close down streets to cars in the city centre, the daily traffic was 240,000 vehicles/day. Ten years later, instead of having the same amount of traffic in nearby streets, the volume fell by 16%. Predictions were that if this implementation was not considered, there would have been a traffic increase of 25% in the city centre by the year 2000. You can check more of these facts here.

Nørrebrogade at rush hour.

There's a great example in Copenhagen as well. In 2008, Nørrebrogade was closed to cars. In 2009, a study was performed to assess the overall impacts of closing that street to cars - which had immediate interesting results. The latest results (2012) show that Nørrebrogade had a:

20% increase in cyclists,
decrease of 45% in accidents,
60% increase in pedestrians,

when compared to 2008's levels. Although a part of the traffic has been redirected to nearby streets, just one year after closing down Nørrebrogade to car traffic, the overall traffic was reduced by 10.7%, which means 19,000 fewer cars/day.

San Francisco Streets.

In San Francisco, the parking space is restricted to a maximum of seven percent of a building's square footage. Despite the fact that employment has increased in the area, traffic congestion is in decline – people are looking for alternatives, like cycling and walking.

Ok, now that we demystified the expected chaos of closing streets to cars, let's see what happens when the opposite occurs, i.e. creating more traffic lanes (or more infrastructure) to deal with congestion problems.

For decades, roadways have been expanded with the idea that it could solve problems. This is also a common misconception. Rather than in writing, Todd Litman explains this in a beautiful way:

In a few words, the more lanes you create, the more traffic volume you will get. It's also interesting to note the difference from the projected traffic growth and the actual generated traffic.

Traditional Traffic Planning in Tokyo.

There are also more than a few issues attached to traditional traffic planning (which includes creating more lanes). According to a 2013 study called “Smart Congestion Relief – Comprehensive Analysis of Traffic Congestion Costs and Congestion Reduction Benefits”, there's a whole set of ignored impacts when analysing traffic congestion. For instance, congestion intensity is often assessed instead of its costs, thus ignoring the savings created by commuters who shifted mode or reduced car usage. Moreover, several other factors like downstream congestion, traffic accidents, energy consumption, pollution emissions among others, are often ignored. Cost values of generated traffic congestion, traffic accidents, energy consumption, and pollution emissions to name a few have been underestimated and ignored.

Additional benefits can come from closing streets to cars. For instance, street life. Every summer, for three straight days, approximately 11 km of New York's city streets are closed to cars and open for everything else. In 2012, 250,000+ people enjoyed car-free streets under that initiative.

Thus it's possible to conclude that immediately after closing the streets to cars, there is a slight increase of traffic in the nearby streets. I guess that's expected. But traffic adapts and the overall number of cars decreases. After a few years, people just choose public transportation and/or non-motorised vehicles. The number of non-essential trips also declines – yes, it may even reduce drivers' laziness.

Overall, two main points can be extracted from this article: 1) building more roads doesn't mean alleviating traffic flow but instead could even make congestion worse; 2) closing a street down to cars improves pedestrian and cycling share and the overall number of cars will be reduced, thus less congestion throughout the city.

Mathematicians first said that it's alright to close streets. Reality proved they were right.

Cyclist Detection System on Volvo Cars

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:13:00 +0000

Volvo have announced a cyclist and pedestrian detection system in their cars. When a cyclist heading in the same direction swerves in front of the car, the system brings the car to a full stop.

A step in the right direction placing the responsibility on the motorist instead of the pedestrians and the cyclists. Combined with the Dutch external airbags on cars, we might be getting somewhere.

How about a simple addition? A speed sensor. When the car enters a 30 km/h zone, the car is rendered incapable of exceeding 30 km/h. Or 50 km/h. Or whatever the speed limit may be.

Win Win Winnipeg

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:39:00 +0000

We were in Winnipeg, Canada late last year, for The Kickstand Sessions. One evening before the Sessions began, we walked from our hotel to a restaurant (saw two other pedestrians!) along Pembina Highway. Our host with the most, Anders Swanson, asked if we wanted to see a cycle track solution by a bus stop.

Sorry, but when I'm in North American cities and someone wants to show me bicycle infrastructure, I've learned not to get too excited. Seen one crappy painted lane too narrow for a bicycle user to overtake another and mostly used for unenforced car parking and you've seen them all. If it's a painted on on the LEFT side of parked cars instead of along the curb, I'll politely decline and blame jetlag - that's not bicycle infrastructure, that's the work of people who shouldn't be working on bicycle infrastructure. If it's sharrows... I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a burned stick.

I was pleasantly surprised when we happened upon the cycle track in question. A decent width - not Best Practice but better than other stuff I've seen around the world. Running along the curb. And there was the bus stop. Who knew? Right there in Winnipeg, Manitoba was a cycle track that skirted around a bus stop island. I felt like I was at home in Copenhagen.

What is this place? This Winnipeg? What on earth possessed the engineer responsible to be inspired by established best practice instead of the last-century, car-centric "guidelines" for bicycle "infrastructure" written by people who couldn't bicycle plan their way out of a wet paper bag? Is the Louis Riel spirit alive and well in the Manitoban capital?

When you see a lot of crap in cities around the world, something like this warms your heart on a frigid prairie night.

Hey, let's be realistic. Winnipeg is not Montreal or Minneapolis - the two premier bicycle cities in North America. They're starting out on their journey. But while the rest of the continent - not to mention cities in the same region - are still lacing up their booties and ordering feasibility studies about the possibilities of perhaps considering taking their first baby steps by contemplating a single cycle track to nowhere, Winnipeg is toddling onwards.

It's a cycle track with a sensible bus stop solution on a road south of the downtown. Sure. It's not part of a complete network. Nowhere near. Let me tell you though, that this little cycle track bus stop strip is a beacon of light in a world of nonsense.

The cycle track is new. And it's Winnipeg and they have winter. They call themselves Winterpeg. Winter cycling is "no longer weird in the city" but there is still a learning curve ahead. The cycle track wasn't totally snowploughed, but my god they had tried. Again, better than most cities.

If I can get excited about all of this, it's probably going to get better. Copenhagenize Design Co. recently won a bid - together with our partners - for Winnipeg's Pedestrian & Cycling Strategies. Working with a city that is ahead of game will be a pleasure.

On the way from one bar to the next one night, along the river, we ceremoniously tilted a garbage bin into a Copenhagenize cyclist-friendly garbage bin. They also have beer in Winnipeg.

The Kickstand Sessions are a master class for planners, engineers, health, transit, architects, etc. in bicycle planning for North American cities based on Dutch and Danish best practice.

At the end of the sessions - after two days of bicycle planning and infrastructure work - we wrap up with communications. How would the participants communicate their vision for the city? They're not in marketing, but they're professionals/citizens/consumers with a vision. Developing a common language is important, especially when you're in a room with people from so many different professions. It's a great way to round off the master classes.

The teams develop each their own slogan and everyone votes for the one they like the best. Then we whip up a quick and dirty poster with their text. Here's what the 40 participants ended up with:

Your bike looks better on the street. Winnipeg. Powered by People.

Indeed. Powered by, among others, these people. The Kickstand Sessions participants. Not everyone was from Winnipeg - some participants came in from Portage la Prairie and even Thompson - but people power they all surely possess.

Culture of Fear Meets Science on the Pistes

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 21:52:00 +0000

We got sent a link to a page from the Danish Consumer Council (Forbrugerrådet)about ski helmets. It was interesting reading because of a confusing mix of Culture of Fear (for profit) and the science of helmets. And much of it is a mirror of the rhetoric about bicycle helmets. Ski and bicycle helmets are even compared.

The article starts with the standard emotional propaganda in the first few lines:

Ski helmets can reduce the number of injuries by up to 60%, BUT roughly half of adults ski without head protection.
Would you ride 40 km/h on a scooter without a helmet? If you answer no, then why ski 60 km/h down a piste without a helmet?

Right there we can see the ideology shining bright. Go for the emotional juggler. Project fear and guilt onto the reader so that their perception is manipulated for the rest of the text.

Usually, the rest of the text continues in the same vein - you've all read this kind of stuff before. This article, however, embarrasses itself involuntarily.

According to statistics, head injuries are not the typical reason that a ski holiday ends up in a hospital. Concussions made up 9% of all reported injuries last season. This is a rise of 5-6% from the year before.

So... head injuries are not typical injuries. Um. Okay. But head injuries are up? From the season before last to last season, there was little dramatic increase in the number of helmet wearers, and yet head injuries are up? Boy, that sounds like Risk Compensation at play. Are people feeling protected so they go just a bit faster?

According to statistics from Denmark's Ski Union, the total number of injuries are two per 1000 ski days for skiiers. Head injuries make up about 15%. In other words, the risk of a head injury is one per 3000 ski days - or one head injury every 400 years if someone skiis for one week each year.

So I have to ski for 400 years? Personally, I've probably skied about 400-500 days in my life. While I love the thought of skiing for 400 years, I don't know many people who will.

The potentially dangerous brain injuries make up one injury for every 14,000 ski days and 94% of them are concussions.

Okay. This is rare information. Normally, the phrase "brain injury" is happily chucked around in the rhetoric without any differentiation in order to scare and confuse. Yes, a serious concussion can be life-threatening and dangerous. Most aren't. I've had several in my life. None whilst skiing or cycling, but hey, that's just me. This article that started out with a scary paragraph is turning out to be rather informative.

Snowboarders have a bit higher risk of head injury than alpine skiers and children under 18 have more than double the risk.

Does that mean kids have to ski for 200 years - before they're 18?

The Helmet protects partially
Ski helmets aren't built to withstand direct impacts in speeds over 20 km/h. Measurements at several destinations have shown that the average speed on the easier pistes is around 30 km/h - and much higher on the medium and difficult pistes. If a head hits a tree, rock, other skiers or chairlift poles at high speeds, the helmet offers no protection.

Hang on... rewind to the first paragraph. I thought they were fingerpointedly telling me that I needed a ski helmet at 60 km/h. Now they're telling me that it won't really do anything for me. I'm so confused. Interestingly, as I'm sure you all know, the same limitations apply to bicycle helmets. No direct impacts and keep it under 20 km/h.

The helmet's benefits are limited to minor head lesions like scratches and cuts on the scalp and minor concussions.

Sounds like a bicycle helmet again. Actually, it sounds like something everyone should wear in the home and certainly in the car. But hey... they were throwing around all manner of confusing stats on "brain injuries" and concussions, weren't they? Again... I'm confused.

In all collisions, the helmet protects in glancing collisions and protects against getting hit by ski edges and other loose objects, just like it protects when your head hits a hard snow surface and when you tumble off a t-bar lift.

Which, we assume, means it protects against hitting your head against the cupboard door or if you slip in the shower. Or if you're out gardening. Good to know.

The Ski Union recommends helmets
The International Ski Union - FIS - recommended a couple of years ago that all skiiers and snowboarders use a helmet. FIS based their recommendation on a Norwegian study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study showed that using a helmet reduces head injuries by 60%.

But isn't the FIS a sports organisation? You know, professionals going super fast in order to win medals? A far cry from Citizen Skiers. Kind of like the forms you have to fill out in America to ride through a park at low speeds. Based on this logic, why doesn't the company behind Formula 1 car racing recommend motorist helmets? FIS based their recommendations on one study. Were there others? What was the collective result of the different studies? Why base it on just one? Here the information dries up.

FIS also deals with cross-country skiing. You'd think that these athletes would be better off wearing helmets if they protect against tumbling onto the ground and getting a glancing blow by a ski or other object.

Also, is the FIS sponsored by a helmet company? Duh. Of course they are.

The helmet's strength is a compromise between strength and comfort. If ski and bicycle helmets had the same strength as motorcycle helmets, nobody would bother wearing them.

So a motorcycle helmet is better since a ski or bicycle helmet is just a question of comfort more than protection?

Every second adult skis without a helmet
Here in Denmark, experts used to only recommend helmets for kids and other risk groups like young men with an aggressive skiing style.
Denmark's Ski Union recommends helmet use, especially by kids and youths and if you participate in high-risk snow sport competitions and training in the snowboard park and off-piste, but the Ski Union doesn't support a helmet law.
Yes, you said that bit about every second adult up at the top. Just slapping in another guilt trip for good measure, are we? Interestingly, the Danish Ski Union has an entire page telling people how safe skiing is. "It's dangerous!... Uh... no it isn't..."

No law yet...
A law can be a reality in the future. Both in Italy and Austria children under 15 have to wear them. In Northern Europe there is no law, but many places let children use the lifts free if they're wearing a helmet. Therefore, it's rare to see a child without a ski helmet in Norway or Sweden.
And yet the children are transported helmetless in automobiles on winter roads without helmets. Odd logic.

Dealers that the Consumer Council have spoken with think that half of all adult skiers ski with head protection and for children the number is close to 100%. The reasons include the fact that the pistes are groomed for high speeds, so that even weaker skiers can ski faster. And many people traverse the busy pistes. Conditions that increase the risk of collision.

Traversing a piste? Isn't that just called skiing? And the risk of collision... the article told us all about that farther up.

Ski with care
Collisions on the pistes cannot be avoided if everyone wears protective gear, but by showing responsibility for yourself and others. Respect your technical level, be aware, adjust your speed to the conditions and keep your distance from other skiers.

THAT took us by surprise. We were totally expecting the whole article to end where it started, not with this sensible, rational advice.

While the article DID start out with the usual verbal diarrhea from the safety slash profit crowd, we are left wishing that all "advice" about skiing - or cycling - provided the reader with rational facts and statistics so that the individual was able to make up their own mind instead of merely being subjected to fear rants.

It's a hard slog at this point in our society, we know that. The Culture of Fear has a firm grip. Sitting in the café at a small Swedish ski resort - with five or six measly, ten turn pistes - an hour and a half from Copenhagen, I was amazed to see so many people sitting there with their jackets off and their backs protected with Terminator-like back shields, like they were characters in a wintry Call of Duty-Black Ops 2 level. Having bought into the fabricated gear myth presented to them at every turn.

What you can mine from this article is the fact that if you put a helmet on your kids when skiing - to get those free lift tickets - you can just use their bicycle helmet if they have one of those. Save some money right there. Just don't let them use them at the ice rink, because bicycle helmets (and ski helmets we figure) aren't allowed at some ice rinks... Yes. We're confused, too.

Dublin is Planning for the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Pedro Madruga) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 19:49:00 +0000

We've got a thing for Dublin at Copenhagenize Design Co.. Not least because we're involved - together with local partners - in three bicycle infrastructure projects in the city. Now we're loving them just a little bit more.

Dublin has been doing traffic counts of people crossing the Cordon Canal towards the city's centre since the 1980s. The counts are done between 07:00 and 10:00 am and the Dublin Transportation Office has been collecting the data since 1997, releasing results on a yearly basis.

The whole starting point of this analysis was to predict the evolution of modal share and to then compare it to the expected population growth. Thus, I wanted to correlate the population numbers evolution with the growth or reduction of three different types of transportation: walking, cycling and by car. First of all, this is the expected population growth for 2020 in Dublin.

Dublin's expected population growth 2002 - 2020.

In the upper left-hand corner we can see that the expected population in 2020 is almost 180,000 inhabitants, whereas the population for 2002 was close to 100,000. Thus, two particularly important dates are withdrawn from these data: 2002 and 2020.

If curiosity killed the cat, then data drove the analyst insane...ly happy. In other words, I needed more facts and had questions that needed answers. For instance, how will the modal share evolve considering the population is expected to grow as much as 80,000 in 18 years? Is increasing the number of roads towards cities' centres a future-oriented solution?

Dublin is extremely proficient in collecting data that helped with the answers. Perhaps, in some other cities in the world, if the population is expected to grow, more car infrastructure will be priortised. In this case, however, the city opted for the implementation of a great bicycle share programme - one of the most successful in the world - and a countless number of other pro-cycling policies.

But let's keep calm and geek on.

Considering those two important dates – 2002 and 2020 - I've assembled the numbers for walking, cycling and cars entering the city centre based on the existing data. Then, I created a trend line (also known as linear regression) to help understand where are the numbers going after 2012 (the last public data).

Dublin's modal share (sources 1 & 2) and trend lines.

The thick solid lines represent existing data and the dashed ones represent the trending lines. As you can see, the number of cars entering the city centre has been decreasing in the past few years. Thus, the dashed lined represents the future trend – increasingly lower throughout the years. However, the same is happening for pedestrians which could be read as a warning for future policies.

Cycling however, has been booming: according to the Report on trends in mode share of people crossing the Canal Cordon 2006-2011 the number of cyclists entering Dublin City increased 42% between 2006 and 2011. This report goes on to present this number as a result of the implementation of several cycling policies and the success of the city's own bike share scheme, Dublinbike. Indeed, a successful and worthy case study.

Generally, one of the most common actions taken to tackle population growth in city centres is a hopelessly old-fashioned one. Building more roads for cars, increasing the number of parking spaces and enhancing pro-car policies. The new city has no money for that, or the space or the time. Dublin is showing everyone how to be a future-oriented city by doing it as you read this – and even long before this article was written.

And then we have current Copenhagen case. The City of Copenhagen is also expecting a rapid population growth. 100,000 extra inhabitants by 2025. How has Copenhagen been planning to deal with this population growth? Cancelling a proposed congestion charge - despite hard evidence from many cities that it would work - and planning a monstrous and expensive new tunnel for motorised vehicles that will increase the number of cars entering the city centre. Furthermore, they continue to ignore the 6-8 lane expressway - Hans Christian Andersen's Boulevard - that slices through the city centre and the current Lord Mayor, Frank Jensen, is putting back in car parking spots after many years of removing them. And so on.

It's more than two steps back, considering this is the city of cyclists. But like we've said before... welcome to the New Copenhagen.

Which is why looking at a modern, visionary city like Dublin is refreshing and optimistic. Not to mention inspirational.

I've not yet had the chance to visit the city of Dublin but I love it already. As a data geek but also as a bicycle user and an urbanite.

Crisis Averted. I'm a Bicycle girl.

noreply@blogger.com (Mary) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:11:00 +0000

Most of us international Copenhagenizers end up spending a chunk of our evenings learning to pronounce Danish words and names like "Oehlenschlagersgade" and "rødspættefiletter." Not so much for getting around, but more as a way of showing gratitude for the very-accommodating-English-speaking-Copenhageners, and an appreciation of Danish culture. Enter a monotonous list of books for adults learning Danish as a second language.

One quickly learned point with these books, is that not many have a good ending. Or a good beginning, for that matter. So much for encouraging us newcomers' love affair with Denmark.

But that's beside the point.

The point is that many of these books feature bicycles. A normal part of culture in Copenhagen, why wouldn't the simple bicycle be mentioned in 90% of the books I've picked up over two years of Danish lessons? The most recent however, had a fantastic addition to the bicycle's many uses. One we hadn't yet considered.

The protagonist of the book, Camilla, is caught in a bit of a situation with a suitor one evening after he's taken her out for dinner. He's sweet, definitely handsome, a police officer, and yet she doesn't like him enough for him to take her home. Jump to (roughly translated) stream of conscious writing as Camilla talks herself through the minutes following their exit from the restaurant...

This is why I'm a bicycle girl. All I do is hop on my bike and go. No awkward goodbye, no uncomfortable 'who's going home with who'. Crisis averted. Deep breath. I'll just hop on my bike, wave, and say thank you for dinner. Suddenly, I'm gone. Cruising home alone. Thank goodness I'm a bicycle girl.

Thank goodness for bicycle culture - preventing awkward encounters one bicycle at a time.

Paint Is Not Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Griswold) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:59:00 +0000

♫♪Yes, there used to be a painted bike lane right here. ♫ (with apologies to Joe Raposo)

Forty Days and Forty Nights.

This time period appears again and again in the scriptures of various religions, but especially in the christian bible (which may have inherited it from paganism) where it, amongst other things, measures the period of Lent. The day of this posting will mark the reaching of Forty Days and Forty Nights by an example of something far less spiritual but very detrimental to the realization of the goal of Copenhagenization. And this is an important topic to address and discuss as North America begins to see an explosion in the addition of bicycle infrastructure to its "Complete Streets" where cars are no longer allowed to totally dominate as they not long ago did.

Paint is not enough!

In most of the pictures throughout this post, you see the results of a contractor (in the United States this is usually the firm that submitted the lowest bid to do the job) working on underground utilities and the damage done to a paint-only bicycle infrastructure project.

Was once quite a rare sight on this street.

Some background first. This street is located in the broad urban expanses of the area known as Southern California. I'm not going to identify where because I don't desire to use my contributions to this blog to pick on a particular city or utility company...at least not yet! And it really doesn't matter because this could be anywhere on the continent as this sort of thing happens all the time and everywhere in North America, not only to bike lane striping but to other markings like crosswalks and stop-lines which are intended to make the roadway safer for its non-motorized users. In truth, the city where these pictures are taken is actually very progressive, for one in North America, in its pursuance of bicycle "friendliness". The city which-shall-remain-nameless really cares about promoting cycle use, so can you imagine how long this sort of thing would fester in a place that pays only lip-service to cycling? Sometimes the removal of paint on roadway is caused by utility work, as in this case. Other times it is due to a failure to repaint sun-faded markings over time, or wear and tear from winter work like salting and plowing. But since this situation is an example I've been able to document and monitor, it will be our laboratory rat or guinea pig today.

The street in question used to be a four-lane "facility" with curbside parking on each side, no turn lanes and no accommodations for bicycles what-so-ever. The speed limit was routinely being exceeded by motor vehicles and this street was easily a candidate for at least a five miles-per-hour increase thanks to the incredibly biased method of setting speed limits known as The 85th-Percentile. Indeed the street has a higher speed limit when it crosses over into the adjoining city because there it passes by some formally industrial areas.

Source: NYCDOT Allerton Avenue project

California has a good number of what it uniquely defines as "Class One" bicycle paths. They are exactly that, paths which offer a cyclists an unfettered ride, usually only occasionally intersecting cross-streets, and in many cases offering overpasses or underpasses to do so. Unfortunately while these paths are usually pleasant and well used by recreational cyclists plus what the Dutch call "Wheel-runners" they almost never run past places that a person might work/study or want to go to and visit and/or shop. These follow routes that are often facilitated by abandoned railroad corridors, or rivers (many of which in this area have been cemented into the high-capacity floodwater drainage channels that are very necessary when rainy weather does come). That is what the above "bicycle facility" was intended to be; funds had been set aside to build a separated segregated "Class One" path. Unfortunately the land along which the path was to run became unavailable. So the funds were re-purposed such that they were used to place a "road diet" on this, our guinea pig street.

But of course, the cyclist pictogram is wearing a helmet.

So the dedicated pot of money, that had been intended solely for bicycles was instead used to scrape off the old asphalt from the street and lay a fresh new and smooth layer. Also, these funds were used to buy and install a number of new traffic signals and refurbish some existing ones so that they would recognize bicycles and cars using video cameras. Certainly not an insignificant cost when you consider that a basic set of traffic signals now pencils in at around US$200,000, and the video camera detection systems can add at least ten percent to that number. That did make the street easier for bicycles to travel on as these signals replaced a closely-spaced series of "Four-Way" Stop Signs, except this signalization always creates potential motorist/non-motorist conflict thanks the the USA's blanket permission of "Right-turn-on-Red (Light)". Finally the striping-layout shown in the diagram above was painted onto the street, except of course this being the USA, a land with far too many lawyers, the street's bicyclist pictogram has a helmet on.

(There was actually a period in time after the USA's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) was changed to reflect this "newer" standard when I witnessed crews actually being dispatched to paint the helmet onto already extant pictograms around the city I lived in at the time!)

Now a very popular route.

So, effectively, funds originally set aside for bicycles were used to perform overdue refurbishment (because the funding mechanism for streets, a fixed surcharge per gallon of fuel, has not been increased in over 20 years) on a road also used by cars and add traffic signals that do not actually offer any special features for bicyclists apart from being able to be triggered (unless the sun is rising or setting!) by cyclists. But the discussion of that inequality and further subsidy of the motor vehicle by persons who are not necessarily users of the automobile infrastructure can be left to another time.

The road diet has been successful. First and foremost, this street did not need all the capacity that having two lanes in each direction was providing; It simply did not have the motor vehicle volume. While this is one of a longer street street in surrounding area, it does terminate in the city in which the photos are taken and so does not function as a long-distance alternative to the overcrowded "freeway" system, which many motorists in Southern California are now chosing to avoid by using these more predictable "surface streets". The street now has a center lane for turns which has two obvious benefits. 1)Motorists needing to take a left hand turn now can sit in a demarcated refuge awaiting their opportunity to turn, and do so without blocking the other motorists who happened to be behind them, in the same lane, under the old layout. 2)When crossing oncoming traffic, the motorists only have one lane of on-coming motor traffic and therefore less oncoming vehicles to look through or around (for cyclists) to make the judgement on whether it is safe or not to complete the turn.

Copen Hangnam-style! (photo by Steven Vance)

(You will notice that I am not inferring that cyclists will use this center turn lane. The box-left turn is also called the Copenhagen Left for a reason. Why on earth would a road/traffic engineer create, or for that matter anyone promoting citizen cycling want to encourage situation where a cyclist is forced to stand, unprotected, in the middle of two streams of traffic in order to get to the other side of the road? It isn't done in Copenhagen and it shouldn't be assumed necessary elsewhere. The Franklin/Forester-cult may scoff, but the 8 or 80 year old cyclist shouldn't ever have to be placed in that danger zone. Copenhagen Lefts may take slightly longer, but the overall process is usually shorter than the typical ambulance ride.)

Finally the center lane is almost always empty except for those aforementioned left-hand turning motorists, and it can be quickly vacated by those in it either by completing the intended turn or re-merging into their own lane of travel. This means that the roadway effectively always has a way to permit emergency vehicles to pass less hindered than they would be when the "four-lane" street existed, especially if, for some reason, that old street layout was full of motorists. Which is a good thing since there is at least one fire station nearby and, as is typical of public safety resources management in the USA, it usually dispatches a full size fire truck along with what the rest of the world calls a "crash-car" (except it is a pick-up truck like the one from the TV Show "Emergency!") to almost every call, regardless of need. That center-lane creation is an important selling point because increasingly, at least in the United States, it is the Public Safety profession who object to or intervene to stop traffic-calming an bicycle-accommodating modifications of infrastructure.

So in the end cyclists ended up with two painted bike lanes on a street that is useful to many and is staying at the posted speed limit . Which brings us back to our contractor-created "scar".

Good thing no vehicles are parked here today!

Work was done on some sort of a pipe, which appears in this case to be for water, the clue being the blue spray paint. The contractor dug into the asphalt to create a trench to either install, remove or repair that pipe. The digging occurred along the length of one of the two stripes that make up the painted bike lane. Once finished, the contractor replaced the dirt and put down some asphalt, which is now not only devoid of striping but also quite rough. One would have hoped that the rough asphalt was preliminary and that there would be a second visit by the contractor to smooth and restripe, but that was 40 days ago. So it looks like this is now permanent.

Savvy SUV-driver "taking the lane"?

Cyclists now have a situation where cars drift into the space formerly taken up by the bike lane, space which is uncomfortable to ride in, forcing cyclists to ride in the parking lane if it is not occupied. The roadway that was made smooth for all users by expropriating bike path funding is now very rough precisely where cyclists are trying to use it. The motorist is now given the impression that the painted cycle lane is gone and that they now lord over a sixteen-foot-wide (4.87 m) traffic lane, although to some extent the roughness of the current asphalt keeps drivers not in vehicles designed for off-road use (like the plentiful Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs)) ride hard against the center divider. To add insult to injury, when the asphalt that is in place was poured, it was done in such a sloppy manner that a short portion of the right edge of the former bicycle lane is also now obscured.

Defaced painted crosswalk.

Because the pipes needing repair or modification lay under it (another argument for cycletracks between parking and the sidewalk!) the bicycle facility is now, for stretch of over 400 feet (121 m) effectively gone. While not a huge distance, it is long enough to create difficulties and anxiety for the type of cyclist these facilities are supposed to encourage. The scar also took out some of the crosswalk striping, so pedestrians too lose a part of the road diet improvements devoted to them. If the contractor's job had been larger, more of the painted bike lane would now be removed permanently. This demonstrates what can happen quickly to all the good work being done right now if attitudes and regulations about bicycles in the profession of Construction Management are not changed and if the overseers of this infrastructure are not vigilant in making sure that what gets taken away is immediately put back. Simple temporary lane markings are available to the construction industry, why were they not used here? And if the parking and bicycle lanes were flipped here as they are in Copenhagen, it would have been the under-utilized parking that was disrupted or scarred, not the travel lane of a mode that the city is trying to encourage.

Richmond

Long Beach (photo by Waltarrrrr)

Missoula (photo by Brett VA)

But really more to the point, isn't it time to insist that where possible, bicycle infrastructure gets built in a manner in which a sudden removal is made less possible? Physical separation using traffic islands or raised aprons or recessed curbing as seen in places like Long Beach, California or Missoula, (yes, Missoula!) Montana or Richmond, British Columbia show what is already in use in North America. These forms of infrastructure are harder for a thoughtless site foreman to destroy or for negligent city staff to delete by means of apathy. They imply permanence by their construction and they are what your city and its cyclists deserve.

Nørrebrogade - a Car-Free(ish) Success

noreply@blogger.com (Mikael Colville-Andersen) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:49:00 +0000

The tale of Nørrebrogade keeps getting better. This is the street that the former traffic Mayor, Klaus Bondam, tackled in order to cut the number of cars and increase the liveability for the residents. We're written about the street many times. There is a long list of intiatives that have been tried and tested on the street, which is also the busiest bicycle street in the world.

The City of Copenhagen recently published a study about the first stage of the redesign of the street: Københavns Kommunes Evaluering af Nørrebrogadeprojektets Etape 1. Please don't try to pronounce that without qualified linguistic supervision.

The results include the following:

Car traffic has fallen by 60% from 15,000 to 6,000 a day.
This is a neighbourhood where 19% of the residents own a car, so the traffic was/is largely "parasites". The street had long suffered from lack of development and was a sad, lifeless transport corridor through what is a fantastic, densely-populated neighbourhood.

These cycle tracks are now completed. Loads of space for conversation cycling and overtaking.

The number of bicycle users has increased by 20%
Between 2008 and 2012, the number of bicycle users increased by 20%, due to a variety of factors. The Green Wave for cyclists, which was first launched on this street, has improved the traffic flow for bicycle users and is considered the primary cause of the increase. Generally, the traffic calming effect of the project has encouraged more people to use the street. In addition, the widened cycle tracks at the southern end of the street, where the bicycle traffic bottlenecks, are a massive help dealing with bicycle congestion.

The highest number of bicycle users to cross Queen Louise's Bridge in one day is 40,000.
There are bridges with high numbers of bicycle users, and one of them - Knippels Bridge - is giving Queen Louise's Bridge a run for its money, but these 40,000 bicycles are a fantastic number.

The number of pedestrians on Queen Louise's Bridge has risen by 60% from 4731 til 7616
This is really a noticeable change. You can really see the increase if you frequently cross the bridge. The traffic calming of the street clearly encourages more people to walk.

The travel time for buses up and down Nørrebrogade has fallen by 10%
Faster buses? A good thing.

Car traffic in the entire Nørrebro neigbourhood has fallen by 10%
The nay-sayers guessed that shutting off the street to through traffic would only send the motorists out onto many other streets in the neighbourhood. They were wrong. There has been a fall of 10% in the entire neighbourhood. Also, on the large arteries surrounding the neighbourhood there hasn't been a compensated rise in the number of vehicles.

Noise pollution has been reduced
Noise pollution from car traffic is a major problem in Copenhagen - like in most cities. The noise levels have been reduced on this street. The only effective way of lowering noise pollution is removing cars or speed limits.

The number of small businesses has only fallen by four.
Rumours of imminent death for small businesses were grossly exaggerated - as they always are. Bicycle users, bus passengers and pedestrians are the backbone of retail sale. There are only four fewer small businesses on the street. Which is roughly the same as most other neighbourhoods in Copenhagen.

Nørrebrogade is a success. We were never in doubt. Now it's time to roll out the concept over all of Copenhagen.

Previous posts about a car-free Nørrebrogade:
- The Drastic Measures of Visionaries
- Dots and Bikes and Bondam
- Load on, Load off
- Flexzone on Nørrebrogade
- Surfing the Green Wave in Copenhagen - See the film
- The Green Wave Spreads

Building the Bicycle Snake

noreply@blogger.com (Mary) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:30:00 +0000

UPDATE: A year back we blogged about the Bicycle Snake - Cykelslangen - being built to both help connect the popular Vesterbro and Islands Brygge neighbourhoods of Copenhagen, and to create a simpler more direct route around Copenhagen's unfortunately quintessential American-style shopping mall for the 9000 cyclists that transit that area every day. We've been talking about it, waiting for it, and with it's elegant Danish design - really been looking forward to it.

Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when to discover yesterday that construction has started. A year behind schedule, but hey it's on its way.

As I wiggled down a little ramp on a cargo bike, bumped over cobblestones, and squeezed past delivery trucks (the maze the Bicycle Snake will relieve us from), these are the developments made thus far:

Ok, so it's not much, but in the lower left corner you can see where construction has begun. You can also see a cyclist riding off the sidewalk/current bike lane onto cobblestones where he then dismounts his bicycle and carries it up two flights of stairs. In a few months, he should be sans cobblestones, dismounts, stairs, and riding (10 metres) high. For a brief reminder, taken from approximately the same angle, here's what it will look like:

photo of Cykelslangen from architect Dissing + Weitling

Until then, we've got the City's standard friendly post reminding us that, roughly translated, they're building better connections for pedestrians and cyclists and until it's finished this summer they hope we can bare with them and have a bit of extra consideration and respect for each other in the construction zone.

I think we can.

Essentials?

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Griswold) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 07:00:00 +0000

The city of Portland, Oregon in the USA is one of , if not the most progressive cities in North America when it comes to building bicycle infrastructure. While it pales in comparison to Copenhagen, Portland has managed to build a network enticing enough to have raised the bicycle-to-work/study share up to 6% which is remarkable if you understand that "Portland was a city like any other US city in the 1980s and early 1990s in terms of transportation behavior". (Although we've heard they only do their bike count in June, not like Copenhagen, for example, that counts at over 40 permanent locations and another 160 intermittent locations, but we'll leave that alone for now.)

In other words addicted to the car; though to be fair, Portland did build one of the first post-WW2 Light Rail lines in North America in 1986 and did so by using monies that were originally aimed at widening what Oregon calls a "freeway".

This has come at a "great" financial cost of course, the total being an estimated US$60 Million, which is a lot of money...

...until you realize what the extension or widening of limited-access divided-highways cost.

And in the case of Portland, US$60 million is also what 1 mile (1.6 km) of "freeway" costs to build. Now, to be honest, highway projects in the USA vary in price so look at this report and remember that these prices are per "lane-mile" (if the proposed "freeway" is going to have 3 lanes in each direction, multiply these numbers by 6).

Widening roads is not cheap either. A news item this week announced that 1.2 miles (1.93 km) of road in Los Angeles county would have a Carpool Lane and a General Purpose Lane added in each direction for just US$214 million(!) An underpass designed to eliminate an at-grade or level crossing in Orange County California is penciling is at US$92 million.

But you won't hear much about the costs of those projects as they are built for the bull in society's china shop, the automobile; because the mainstream media in the USA (and increasingly elsewhere) ignores the bull but then scrutinizes the costs of bicycle and railway facilities.

CNN's domestic USA service (which is very different from that which you may encounter with the CNN logo outside North America) recently ran a report critical of the spending of public funds to upgrade a railway in the Northeastern State of Vermont on a show hosted by Anderson Cooper (Cooper is, ironically, the Great-Great-Great-Grandson of railroad builder and magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt)

The piece has been roundly criticized by many for being out-of-touch with reality, the best critique being made by DC.Streetsblog's Tanya Snyder who defended the rail improvements for having "spent .00006 percent of the federal stimulus money on needed track improvements and came in on time and under budget." The cost to the taxpayers of this "outrageous railway boondoggle"?

US$52 million.

Remember what the Portland Bicycle Infrastructure cost?

Typical service before deregulation

A subsidy you will rarely hear about in the mainstream U.S. media, is "Essential Air Service" (EAS). This program was put in place at the end of the old system of government controls on prices and the number carriers allowed to serve city-pairs that existed until 1978. It was intended to ease the "shock" created when the now deregulated airlines could then serve any city they chose, based on market forces. Service to these smaller cities, usually flown as a multi-stop, "milk run" service on jet equipment, had often been a requirement if the airline wanted to also offer non-stop service, often as a monopoly, between two large American cities. EAS now subsidizes the fares of airlines flying to these smaller cities so that they can keep service and connection to a "hub city" at a level of about US$170 million per annum for the Lower 48, or enough to replace Portland's bicycle infrastructure over three times each year.

Air Greenland now arriving!

By the way, the term "Lower 48" which comes from an Alaskan perspective is a simple way of referring to the contiguous or mainland states in the USA. Alaska and Hawaii also receive EAS funding, but their history/geography/topography/ethnography and lack of road networks justify there being some assistance. This is not unlike Denmark itself which sends block grants to the home-rule government in Greenland which in turn subsidizes helicopter flights there to small towns un-reachable by any other means of transport. EAS was intended to slowly fade away in the 1980's, but has instead been expanded, and subject to massive intervention by politicians who want to "bring home the bacon" for their constituencies. Perhaps the prime example is Hagerstown, Maryland to Washington's Dulles Airport (which is in Virginia) a route that covers 54 miles (87 km) in its 40 minutes of flying time, a trip that would take 75 minutes in a car or bus.

The CNN piece focused on a train called "the Vermonter" which runs from Saint Albans near the border with Quebec, (a previous incarnation of this train used to serve Montreal) down to Essex Junction a stop near to Vermont's largest city Burlington, thence to White River Junction, a city near Hanover, New Hampshire, the home of Dartmouth College. It then mostly follows the Connecticut River, which divides Vermont from New Hampshire, south into Western Massachusetts through to New Haven, Connecticut. At this point the train joins the busy Northeast Corridor to New York City and finally ends up in Washington, D.C.

Source: M.J. Bradley & Associates for NRDC

While focusing on the dollars spent on rail infrastructure that should last for many years, CNN did of course not mention an air route funded under EAS that runs roughly parallel to the train, from the Lebanon, New Hampshire airport, which is close to White River Junction, to White Plains, in New York State's Westchester County. While the Westchester County Airport is in an area north of New York City itself, it is also close to the headquarters of many large companies. Those passengers wishing to continue to Manhattan are offered a free connection by van. Before I go on, should I mention that there is a profitable private bus company that runs from Hanover and Lebanon to Manhattan, Boston and the Boston Airport? I think I won't as I would have to look up all the sordid details of what the Interstate Highway System cost to build and now, operate and maintain which would make this post longer than it already is. And those buses don't have to serve the intermediate stops like previous carriers were once required to, like the train still does, because the time and distance penalty for leaving a limited access highway to serve a city on a route is much greater than it is for the typical railway line which were built through small cities rather than around them.

Only one pilot today!

The Federal Government quietly spends US$1 million per year to subsidize two dailys flights on 8-seat (9 seats when they are flown with only one pilot) Cessna 402s. It spends an additional US$1.3 million to pay for four trips a day from Lebanon to Boston, for a grand total of US$2.3 million. Both routes are operated by the same airline, Cape Air, which has transformed itself from a Hyannis, Massachusetts based island-hopping airline that was one of the bases for the TV show "Wings" to a company that has won EAS contracts all over the United States and its territories.

This EAS Subsidy does not include the financial support from City of Lebanon to the airport itself, derived from property taxpayers due to the financial structure of New Hampshre, or the US$1 million that the federal government grants each year to the airport for "improvements", or the airport's traffic control tower, as it is part of the national air traffic control system. Both of these fundings are based on the existence of the EAS flights. And since the Boston flights arrive into a "secure" gate there, the Lebanon Airport must have airport security screeners present for those departures, which are paid for through a ticket fee. However at around 6,000 "enplanements" for Boston at US$2.50 per, that's not generating very much money per year, so funding and capital for the security is coming from elsewhere.

EAS rules requires that at least 10,000 passengers board the subsidized flights each year; something which was only pulled off by Lebanon in 2012 by using steeply discounted fares during the last week of the year. This situation made for a fun day trip (sponsored by the taxpayers to the tune of US$230 each way (The US$2.3M annual EAS subsidy to Cape Air divided by 10,000)) from Lebanon to White Plains for one member of the Airliners.net forum who wrote a trip report about it. One way fares on these flights are normally in the US$130 range. It is touted as a means to access businesses in the area for those who are unwilling to take the bus (see above) from Boston's airport or drive the 76 miles (123 km) from the one in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Might get some work done.

However, I will confess that the fully Wheelchair-accessible 206-seat train, which could operate with many more cars equaling many more seats, requires US$2.7 million in subsidies to operate. That's still less than the two daily nine-seat airplanes plus their share of the associated Lebanon airport cost to fly to White Plains (I'll ignore the federally-supported costs of Westchester County Airport since it handles many more and larger aircraft operations) And, yes, the rail project project mentioned was only for Vermont. There are other projects in Massachusetts and Connecticut, admittedly at additional cost, that will result in even further time savings for the trip as a whole along the entire Vermont to New Haven corridor as well as the potential to add more frequency of service. But then one should note that this rail corridor that the Vermonter uses north of New Haven is owned by private companies who also contributed funding to the project, and despite the public funding for improvements, unless there is an exemption I am not aware of, these private railroads pay property tax on the land their rail "right-of-ways" occupy. If you are reading this in the USA, go someday to your local property tax collector and ask who the largest property tax payer is in that municipality or county. If there is one, it is usually the railroad who owns the local rail line. Is there property tax levied on airports and roads? No! And in regards to capital expenses, I can't begin to speculate what it would cost to buy the land for the Lebanon Airport today and then build the terminals from scratch.

Rail lives (or dies) on intermediate market business, this is what it does best given the ability to stop in cities along the way without the aforementioned time and distance penalties. Remember neither the airplane nor the bus can do what this train does, connecting not only Burlington, Vermont to Washington, but also Wallingford, Connecticut to Waterbury, Vermont or Hanover, New Hampshire to Amherst, Massachusetts (also home of educational institutions), and this part of the world to the rest via New York City, et cetera, et cetera. And you can bring your bike along, and your laptop, and buy a beer.

All for less than the cost of an underpass.