Toban Black

(Photo by Matthew Blackett)

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David Chernushenko’s perspective on two European cities (specifically, Stockholm — “a northern city that has plenty of ups and downs, and cold”; and Freiburg — a city “bordering on Germany’s Black Forest mountains”) -

“What strikes the Canadian visitor is just how ordinary cycling seems to be in the lives of the locals. It is not a big deal to choose to ride somewhere. It does not involve special clothes, helmets, gloves and fancy bikes. Herds of children roll by on their way to school together. Couples head off to work. An older lady rides by with a load of groceries in the rear panniers, and a lapdog in the front basket.”

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Matthew Blackett on the Spacing Toronto blog -
“Bike traffic in Copenhagen”

A stop-action animation which Matthew made out of a collection of photos.

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Andreas Rohl (quoted in this article) -
“Riding a bike is like brushing your teeth in Copenhagen. It’s just a part of our everyday life”

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Aaron Naparstek (in this blog post) -

“In Copenhagen I saw people using cargo bikes to cart their kids all over the place. I rarely saw an adult wearing a helmet. It made an impression on me. This lack of protective headgear — or any special bike gear, for that matter — is one of the things that, to my eye, made biking in Copenhagen seem so remarkably convenient, casual, safe and part of regular daily life. It didn’t matter what you’re wearing. In Copenhagen you just hop on a bike and go.

The sheer sense of normalcy conveyed by streets filled with helmetless, kid-toting Danish cyclists seemed to me to do more to encourage bicycling and promote safety than any personal equipment or piece of infrastructure I’d ever seen back home. And the numbers back that up. Somehow, despite the lack of headgear, Danish, German and Dutch cyclist injury and fatality rates are a fraction of our own [in New York].

We know from the work of Peter Jacobsen that one of the most surefire ways to make urban bike transportation safer is to increase the number of cyclists on city streets. There are a lot of proven and effective ways to encourage more people to get on bikes. Compelling everyone to strap a styrofoam shell to their head is not one of them — at least not in the world cities with the safest streets for cyclists.”

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Some statistics — with more photos -

Joseph Rose in The Oregonian -
“In Amsterdam, more trips now by bike than by car”

There also are photos.

The author compares the Netherland and Portland, Oregon.

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On urban planning -

On a Portland municipal government blog -

“Portland transportation planners have often employed the phrase, ‘Build It and They Will Come’ to explain their approach to building a bicycling infrastructure from scratch in the early 1990s when there appeared to be limited demand.

Some 15 years later it is easy to see their logic. The City [government] did indeed build a vast network of bicycling facilities - bike lanes, off-street paths, and bike boulevards (low-traffic streets that give bikes priority) - and cyclists have come in droves. ”

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On commuting -

Joshua Brustein on the New York Times City Room blog -
“Not just present at work, but presentable”

(Visible sweat shouldn’t be so taboo;
but it certainly is right now.)