The Copenhagenize Index is out for 2013 and...

WE'RE NUMBER FOUR! WE'RE NUMBER FOUR!

Yes, I know these rankings should be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm still proud of Seville for having come so far in such a short time.

Here's what they had to say about this fair city:

Seville is the poster child of the modern bicycle planning movement. Nothing less. From a modal share of 0.5% in 2006, the city went from zero to hero and now boasts 7% modal share. The rapid rise in bicycle traffic was due to visionary political will. 80 km of bicycle infrastructure was completed in just one year and more was added later. The transformation was rapid, intense and positive. Other cities look to Seville for inspiration and they have shown what is possible. Their bike share system played an equal role in bringing the bicycles back. Indeed, you can't have a bike share system if you don't have infrastructure for people to ride them on. Seville did everything right and transformed their city. While their 7% is far off the high 30s of the three cities above them on the list, Seville reaped maximum bonus points - 12 - in a number of categories including infrastructure, modal share increase since 2006 (6.5%) politics and bike share.

Copenhagenize Fixes
Where to go from here? For starters, aiming for the goal laid out by the Charter of Brussels is a fine idea. A modal share of 15% is the holy grail for European cities. Getting to 5% is the difficult task but getting from there to 15% is much easier. If Seville wants to continue their wave of bicycle culture success, more political will is required. Investment and vision go hand in hand. If Spain adopts the feared mandatory helmet law this year, Seville's ranking - and future as a bicycle-friendly city - is at stake. It's also time to expand the bi-directional tracks to include one-way tracks on both sides of the streets in order to allow full and complete desire lines for the cycling citizens.

I get tired of hearing about how a handful of European cities have the best cycling in the world. I would be more interested to see how other places are making their cities more bicycle friendly despite not having a long history of supporting bicycle transportation. How about a list of most improved cities and how they accomplished that?

I think Seville was the most improved, and it didn't have a long history of bike friendliness. But I agree that I enjoy hearing about cities that are pretty much starting from scratch. Developing a long range bicycle transportation master plan seems like a good place to start. Will you be able to go to any of the charrettes for the Grand River Corridor plan?

https://migrand-charrette.com/

Look a little more carefully at the list, Zeppinger. Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Nagoya and Montreal are on there. Also, both Seville and Barcelona were given points for pretty much starting out from scratch. According to the authors, several U.S. cities are knocking on the door and were close to making the list, so I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of them made next year's list.

What does bicycle friendly mean ??.. Does it mean a city with sepereted cycling lanes or does it mean a city where cyclists and cars share the same roads and respect one another ??

The latter would be impossible to determine. Here on BF, there are often two people posting from the same city, with one saying that the drivers there are wonderful citizens, and the other swearing that they are all jackasses.

I've cycled in most of those cities, and the list is bunk.
Right from the start, Amsterdam comes in first. Not a terrible city for cycling. Beautiful too. But it might be one of the least bikeable cities in NL. Throngs of tourists, narrow streets and probably the highest percentage of foreign-trained drivers. But it is the most famous, and has built terrific structures for bikes, so there we go.

I suppose that the list is not so much about actual bikeability, but an account of who's been making progress. All in all a good thing. These twenty cities serve as good models for others.

I finally found the criteria for the Copenhagenize awards. It's actually pretty biased and subjective, IMO. But they do raise some interesting points. For example, they rated gender of cyclists (female is positive) and their "sportiness" (considered a negative characteristic).

https://copenhagenize.eu/index/criteria.html

They selected 150 cities to start with, and chose the 20 best among the 150.

I can't find a listing of those cities, so I don't know if Amsterdam was the only Dutch city nominated. It's important to know who was nominated to understand who won, and why.

It wasn't. Utrecht (3rd place) is a Dutch city about 25 miles from Amsterdam.

I'd have nominated Groningen. They have the highest modal share in the world.

For all I know, they did nominate Groningen. I still haven't found the complete list of nominees.

Bogota should be on that list. Montreal is a pretty friendly bike city, but so are many other Canadians cities... Ottawa is one.

Sounds like a nice place. Fifty-nine percent of total journeys by bike, less than 37% by car... Wow!

It is. College town. Nice atmosphere.
But Groningen's pretty far from the main tourist spots so not very well known outside NL.

More well known to us, since we have had at least three LCF members who lived there.

don't believe the hype.

with good reason.

Seville has done a wonderful job on this, so the list has it right in that respect.

no cities in the US.

Explain, please.

people who claim that bogota is bike friendly have clearly never been to bogota.

sure, they have the cicolvia. that's nice and all for family days out. try getting around on any other day. it sucks, and sucks hard.

That confirms what I've read about Bogota. Have you been there?

What about the Transmilenio and Ciclorutas?

i am there right now.

you can't ride a bike on the transmilenio routes, and the vast majority of so called ciclorutas are crap. i prefer riding on the roads.