Advocacy & Safety - Report: Bike policies of select European cities

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Bekologist
12-06-10, 08:15 AM
Loads of interesting reading at this European report analyzing trends in bicycle use in select cities in Europe.

The report is quite intriguing. it illustrates how some cities in the study took a much more autocentric approach to transportation and compares them to other cities that placed more emphasis on the bicycle as a normal and viable part of the transportation system.

The report fairly clearly illustrates how focusing on motor vehicles begats high dependency on the motor vehicle, and correspondingly, how transportation policies that fairly and equitably treat bicycles as a mode of transportation enourage and boost bike ridership.

One interesting tidbit: Copenhagen suffers from the third largest urban sprawl in Europe, yet it has built incredibly high ridership despite the sprawl. Think Dallas with 35 percent bike traffic (just kidding, but close!)


european bike policies (http://www.fietsberaad.nl/library/repository/bestanden/Fietsberaad_publicatie7_Engels.pdf)

http://www.fietsberaad.nl/library/repository/bestanden/Fietsberaad_publicatie7_Engels.pdf

mikeybikes
12-06-10, 08:49 AM
One interesting tidbit: Copenhagen suffers from the third largest urban sprawl in Europe, yet it has built incredibly high ridership despite the sprawl. Think Dallas with 35 percent bike traffic (just kidding, but close!)

Not a great comparison. The city of Copenhagen has a pop density of 15,589.8/sq mi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen). The city of Dallas has a pop density of 3,697.44/sq mi. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas) Dallas is quite a bit more sprawly than Copenhagen...

However, there are a few cities (32 altogether) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density) in the U.S. with higher population densities than Copenhagen.
A couple notables:
New York City - 26,402.9
San Francisco - 16,634.4

Density is commonly used as an argument why the U.S. will never be bicycle friendly. I don't think that's a very good argument. Our cities have a great chance of becoming bicycle friendly. Pop density be damned.