My wife and had a lovely time on our trip to Denmark last week. This was not primarily a biking vacation, but I did manage to get some riding in. Now I'd been to the Netherlands before, and admired its bike culture and networks of bike lanes and bike highways. But even the Netherlands pales in comparison to Denmark.
City Bike
I'll begin with Copenhagen's City Bike program. Scattered throughout the city center are 2000 bikes, free for anyone to use. Just find a bike, plunk in a DKK20 ($3) coin to unlock it, ride it wherever you want to go in the city center, and lock it up (getting your coin deposit back) anywhere you feel like when you're done. One evening while my wife was taking a nap, I decided to grab one of these bikes and do some exploring.
Similar free-bike programs have been tried in other cities, and most have failed, as the free bikes gradually disappared and money to maintain and replace the bikes ran out. Yet Copenhagen's program continues on successfully after many years. Here's why: the bikes use nonstandard parts that won't work on other bikes, the coin deposit provides a tiny incentive not to keep it, the advertising on the bikes helps pay for the program, a supportive taxpayer base pays for the rest, and a stiff fine is levied against anyone who takes one of these bikes out of the city center.
With somewhat odd-ish steering and 24" airless tires, this is not the highest performance bike in the world, but it is a bike (and it is a singlespeed!) and it sure beats walking. In 90 minutes I made a big circle around the entire city center, hitting many of the major sights and stopping to take pictures a whole bunch of times. The same trip would have taken half a day or more on foot. Some examples:
Bikes Everywhere
Even as a non-cyclist, after a few minutes in Copenhagen it's hard not to notice the bike lanes everywhere. Pretty much every significant street has bike lanes each side, and not just the skinny little 4 foot North American lanes, but 8-12 feet of bliss. Which is good, because there's enough bike traffic that you'll need the passing room.
This is difficult for me to even comprehend, but bicycling is the number one mode of commuting in Copenhagen. More popular than the train, the bus, or even the automobile. 30% of Copenhageners commute by bike even in winter, and in summer the proportion is a staggering 50%. Unbelievable. Crowded bike racks like this are a common sight:
Three Hours on Three Speeds
By the way, I checked over the entire row of bikes above, and only one of them had a derailer on it. Singlespeeds are quite common, but internally geared hubs are the real drivetrain of choice for the typical Copenhagen City Bike. Perfect if you want low maintenance in a city with less than friendly weather. So in that spirit, I decided to rent one myself (and experienced less than friendly weather, including hail, while riding it!). I went for the 3 hour option, but for about $13 you can have one of these babies for 24 hours:
With a Shimano Inter-3 internally geared hub, 700x35c city tires and a weight well under 30 pounds, this machine felt comfortable, fast and efficient after riding the free-bike. Even without a top tube, it felt quite stiff, although the lack of top tube carries a disadvantage I hadn't thought of: a couple of times I stopped to take a picture, and the bike fell to the pavement between my legs as soon as let go of the handlebars! I didn't count the teeth, but the gearing felt like it was somewhere between 2.2:1 and 2.5:1. These bikes are almost always equipped with a rack, dual fenders, kickstand and integrated lock:
These clever locks have two parts, a bar that locks the rear wheel in place, and a separate cable operated by the same key. Cool design, something I'd never seen in the US.
My destination was Dyrehaven, a large nature park north of town. The following photo is the only dirt content in this whole post:
This amounted to a 30 mile round trip ride, with lots of great scenery:
Bike Culture
Probably the most remarkable aspect of Copenhagen's bike-friendliness was something I didn't notice until I tried actually riding a bike across town: the drivers. People actually do yield to bikers in the bike lane. You can count on it. Even here in bike-friendly Portland, I'm constantly on alert for drivers who might not see me or know what to do around me. But after a few minutes on a bike in Copenhagen, I found myself with a high degree of confidence that the drivers around me were fully aware of my presence and would treat me with the same respect they would another car. There has obviously been a major effort to not only build effective bike facilities, but to educate drivers on how to interact with cyclists. Very impressive.And it's not just Copenhagen. It's all of Denmark. 3 days of our trip was spent in a 200 year old farmhouse an hour's drive away, and we got to see quite a bit of the countryside. There are bike paths everywhere, and they get used. In villages you see children, families and little old ladies cruising around -- even at night! -- and on rural roads we saw repeatedly saw drivers slow down and wait for a safe opportunity before passing cyclists, rather than trying to squeeze by at 80-100 km/hr as American drivers often do.
Another uniquely Danish phenomenon is the Christiania Bike. These clever contraptions are also seen everywhere in Copenhagen:
We saw elderly and handicapped people riding these (and for them they are a godsend), but mostly we saw ordinary citizens using them to transport their groceries, or more often their children. You can get these outfitted with child carrier mounts, or with seats and seat belts for bigger kids. They're a whole lot shorter in length than a bike pulling a trailer, and if you think about it probably a whole lot safer too. Cost is $1500-2000 for the bike, plus accessories. I may eventually have to buy one.
I believe Christiania Bikes bend in the center to allow turning. Here's a competitor that uses front-wheel drive and rear-wheel steering to achieve the same effect:
One final photo shows a bike frame design that's quite popular there. Now I know where Jeff Jones gets his ideas:
Reflections
As I rode to work today along wide suburban arterials, where the average passenger vehicle carries its 4000 pound weight along at 40-45mph, I couldn't help noticing how much less safe I felt back here at home. As has been happening in the US, cars have gotten bigger in Europe since my last visit 5 years ago. But they're still tiny compared to here, and even a VW Golf -- a pretty small car by US standards -- is at least average in size. VW sells two sizes of cars in Europe that are smaller than the Golf. And yet I'd feel safer driving a tiny VW Lupo in Denmark than I would driving a Golf here.With decades of cheap fuel, we've built sprawling suburbs where everything's so far apart that you have to drive at higher speeds to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. And because of the dangers brought on by those higher speeds, and the cheap fuel, and the need to drive everywhere because everything's so spread out, the cars have continued to get bigger. Even 10 years ago, few American passenger vehicles exceeded 5000 pounds, yet now that weight is common.
The bottom line is our vehicles carry an awful lot more kinetic energy as they barrel down our wide arterials, and when collisions happen here they are much more severe. Several years ago an acquaintance in Paris commented on the litigiousness of American society by saying, "Whiplash? We don't even know what that is!" I've had a hard time reconciling that comment against my own recent painful experiences with whiplash. But I've now figured it out: the reason whiplash isn't as well known in Europe is that most car accidents occur with much less severity. The danger to cyclists and pedestrians is even more greatly amplified: at 40 mph, a pedestrian has a 5% chance of surviving an impact with a car. At 20 mph, a 95% chance of survival. And our tall SUVs are more likely to drag you under than a car, which will almost always bounce you off the hood. Then there's the difficulty and danger of crossing our ridiculously wide roads and intersections.
I say all this despite living in Portland, repeatedly ranked as one of the most livable, well-planned and bike-friendly cities in America. We might have bike lanes on most major streets now, and reasonably respectful drivers, but there's still no comparison. Only 4% of work trips here are made by bike, and that figure that puts us at #3 among US cities. Pathetic.
It's easy to see why America and Europe have evolved differently. At $2.50 per gallon, everyone here is whining about the "high" price of gas. We paid $5.75 per gallon in Denmark. Not only do people drive more fuel-efficient cars there as a result, but the entire development pattern the last 60 years has been different, with much greater sprawl here because the cost of driving longer distances isn't excessive. In recent years it's gotten worse, with many American cities expanding by 50% in developed area in recent years while only growing 10% in population.
What's not so easy to see is how we change things. You can't just jack up the price of gas overnight. The cost to the economy, and especially to the poor, of such a sudden change would be staggering. It would also be political disaster, given the outcry over a paltry $2.50 per gallon. And besides, our sprawling infrastructure won't shrink overnight even if gas prices skyrocketed and we all switched to more modestly sized cars.
But I sure would like to feel safer on my way to work. I already vote for candidates who support the side of reason on these issues, and I write frequent letters to the editor. What else can I do?
I guess the biggest thing I can do is defiantly continue to ride my bike to work. I'm sure much of the reason the Danes respect bikes so well is that they're used to seeing them and dealing with them. The more bikes out there, the more drivers will get used to us and the more they will respect us. And a little visibility goes a long away. Even though I only commute 2-3 times per week, I'm always amazed how often I encounter a work acquaintance who assumes I ride daily. They see me riding occasionally and extrapolate from there.
I long ago made the decision to be GlowBoy -- to be highly visible on my bike -- so I don't get hit. I don't care if it looks good or not, I just want to be seen. All well and good, but but I am now renewing my commitment to being visible for another reason. The more drivers notice bikes on the road, the more they get used to interacting with us, the more they get used to the idea of us being around, and the safer we all are. They guy who notices me commuting today might give another cyclist a break tomorrow because he's noticing more cyclists on the road. Or he might give me a break 3 months from now for the same reason. Or best of all, after seeing so many bikes on the road (even if it is just me, repeatedly) maybe decide to give it a try himself.
End of diatribe. Hope you enjoyed the photos.
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