Originally Posted by bragi

I've actually never been to Copenhagen, but a guy from Copenhagen came to Seattle a couple of years ago and gave a talk about what they did, which I attended. Basically, their city government made a conscious, sincere effort to modify the infrastructure to encourage more public spaces and to get people out of their cars. They built a network of bike lanes that were slightly raised above the level of the roads, re-routed arterials (traffic calming), as well as a bunch of totally separate bike paths. It was totally a "build it and they will come" experience. People felt safer on their bikes, and it became more convenient to use them, so massive numbers of people started using them. $8.00/gal fuel prices provided an added incentive. In addition, Copenhagen is pretty flat. The speaker (I can't remember his name) emphasized that a lot of people in Copenhagen still owned cars; they just didn't use them in town, because it was cheaper, easier, and faster to use a bike. They decided to spend a ****load of money to get people out of their cars and went ahead and did it. Given the nature of our culture, I'm not sure we can replicate what they did. Well, actually I'm sure we can't. The City of Seattle is thrilled that almost 2% of the population commutes by bike now, and wants to increase it to 10%, and critics think that goal is too ambitious. The few new bike lanes that we got have been bitterly contested by local business and neighborhood groups. (Even a couple of my car-driving friends have become blatantly hostile to bikes, once they realized that improved bike infrastructure meant fewer lanes for them.) Meanwhile, something like 30% of people in Copenhagen commute by bike.