Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark is widely regarded as the best city in the world for getting around on by bike. Here are 5 Keys To The Perfect Cycling City.
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There are many reasons why this city is so perfect for cycling, GCN staff have been there and can verify it really is a wonderful place to get around on by bike.
What are your ideas for a perfect cycling city? Let us know in the comments 👇
Here are the basics, but of course the video tells you way more!
– Infrastructure – Copenhagen has 454km of bike lanes! And there is 1.2m kilometres cycled each and every day!
– Government Support. The government supports the use of cycling and recognises the financial impact it has.
– Bike Culture. Bikes of all sorts are being used by business’s of every type. Check out this for a blog all about the “chic” style of cyclists in Copenhagen http://gcn.eu/CPHchic
– Communal Bike Scheme – Much like many large cities, Copenhagen has a rental bike scheme called Bycyklen. In 2016 3.6m km were ridden and 1m trips used on this scheme. Oh, and they are e-bikes too!
– Transport Integration – Bikes can be taken on the S-train, locally known as S-tog as well as ferries permitting bikes to be taken on board and even some bus services allow bikes!
Watch more on GCN…
Top 10 Cycling-Friendly Cities 📹 http://gcn.eu/1GNZYAi
How To Cycle In A City 📹 http://gcn.eu/cycle-in-a-city
Copenhagen Footage/Photos courtesy Thomas Rousing, Ty Stange, Wonderful Copenhagen / Copenhagen Media Centre
Bycyklen photos courtesy Jon Ram Bruun-Pedersen / Bycyklen
Cycle Chic Copenhagen by Mikael Colville-Andersen via Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 [https://flic.kr/p/D2Vwod]
Copenhagen train parking by Federation European Cyclists via Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 [https://flic.kr/p/bB24HC]
‘S’ Train Copenhagen by Federation European Cyclists via Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 [https://flic.kr/p/bPVG2v]
Cycle counter by James Cridland via Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 [https://flic.kr/p/72SX97]
Photos: © Bettiniphoto / http://www.bettiniphoto.net/ & ©Tim De Waele / http://www.tdwsport.com
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30 Comments
I just moved to Boulder to avoid the usual bike vs cars problems. it's a great place and has excellent infrastructure but cars and trucks still pose a problem due to poor driver education…and sometimes idiots on bikes. still the best place in the USA to ride!
Ive rode for A LONG TIME – the major problems are (in the uk) not using eyes, speeding, treating you like a piece of… seeing you as not important…drivers commit murder whilst driving yet get away with it ! The Dept of Transport/CPS/Courts/Judges – totally reorganised ! The city where i livehas a cycles for hire scheme YET youve got to go online to load money onto an account THEN hire the bike..yet no lanes, no courtesy from drivers… ITS A JOKE cycling in this country !!!!!!!!
I totally missed the 5 keys. The first was infrastructure and the rest of what i heard was some weird advertisement for copenhagen.
point 6, København is flat
Making safe cycling lanes gets more people to use bikes. Many people are afraid of accidents with motor vehicles.
We have some good infrastructure here in some parts of Sydney, however there is clearly no overall plans for cycling, even within a single council area, and rules for the use of the paths are obviously created by people who don't ride. Also many cycling paths are actually 'shared paths' shared between bicycles and pedestrians, joggers, pram pushers, dog walkers, etc. Too often bike infrastructure seems to be a way for councils to get extra funding and/or votes rather than a plan to encourage/integrate cycling.
With so many paths being 'shared paths', the other big issue is the zombie behaviour of so many pedestrians who have right of way and pay no attention to their surroundings, whether on the phone or not.
It's very easy too get around in my city.. as long as you don't mind riding the same lane of a bus driving at 80 km/h..
Lol you'd have to burn down the city closest to me to make any improvement whatsoever.
The best cycling city I know is Rotterdam
Why is everybody on such shit bikes though
Haven't been to Copenhagen unfortunately, but San Sebastian is probably the best cycling city I've visited. Really well thought out cycle lanes, somehow you could get almost from one side of the city centre to the other without cuttings through traffic or pedestrians.
Buffalo, NY (where I am from) has an alright bicycle friendly infrastructure. Thankfully our major established a plan to make our city significantly more bicycle friendly. It has been impressive to see just how quickly our city is adapting.
I work in Copenhagen two weeks a month and it's a great city. I have a bike there (lent by friends) and it's so easy to just get on it and go wherever you need to go – because it's a proper city bike there is no faffing around with getting changed, locks, helmets etc – just go. A weekly shop is easily done in a Christiania bike (you can also fit a couple of kids for a trip out). And of course CPH has some of the best pubs, restaurants and beaches anywhere – highly recommended in summer!
I'm a student in Manchester. I find it really hard to plan rides for my university cycling club because of the poor quality of cycle lanes/paths and because of highly congested roads. Not enough is done for cycling in the city and the surrounding area were so many people commute to work/study by bike
I think this video overlooked a couple of key issues present in places like Copenhagen and the Netherlands:
1. They make it more difficult to own and use a car inside the city. In some places cars are banned completely, and in other places the cost of parking, car taxes, car costs, etc. are very high. So it makes more financial sense to get around by bike than it does with a motor vehicle.
2. Motorist/cyclist education and accountability. In those places, almost every ride a bike at some point, for the purpose of transportation, at some point in their lives. And they all participate in some form of cycling education in their schools from a young age. Additionally, the in the cases of car/bike collisions, the fault is assumed to lie with the motorist unless they can prove otherwise. Those things make for a culture where motor vehicle drivers are far more likely to respect and look out for other road users, and care about more than just themselves.
Without those things, you simply can't just copy infrastructure design and expect it to become some kind of cycling mecca.
I live in High Wycombe in England – half-way between Oxford (a big cycling city) and London (ditto). And yet my county council does the bare minimum to encourage cycling – we are an inconvenience at best, vehicle fodder at worst. It has no sense whatsoever of the wider benefits of encouraging cycling, which is very frustrating.
I would so love to live in Copenhagen – tempted to move out there…
none of them wearing a helmet
Tons of people without helmet
in hyderabad, cycle lanes are a dream for everyone… the isn't even a footpath and the roads on which cars ride is absolutely terrible. on top of that people travelling in car itself don't find it safe… so you can forget about us.😂
there are plenty of cycling friendly cities in Italy too, with a simple
cycling culture, high modal shares and good infrastructure, read about
them:
https://albertomzanni.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/a-digested-read-of-the-legambiente-2017-report-on-the-cycling-economy-in-italy/
You forgot about the weather
lets find a way to merge the benefits of both the US and european model. I get annoyed with the bash,,,bash..bash attitude.
Here in Brazil, car drivers purposely run into cyclists very often
I think small pockets of Sydney, Australia is proving that if you build it, they come. This is a city that can be very hostile towards cyclists (a result of poor infrastructure and lack of a cycling culture), but in the past decade improvements have been made in certain areas. I cycle to and from work every day on an excellent Dutch-style cycleway that runs from the inner south to my workplace and it's packed with cyclists every morning. It's linked to some nice "cycle friendly" quiet streets and links that run North and West through the city.
Went cycling through parts of the inner south, inner west and the CBD with a Dutch friend of mine, and he told me "cycling here wasn't as bad as I expected". Obviously I only took him through the safest areas.
Generally, there is a lack of connectivity and a lack of high quality infrastructure. Local councils here have a hard time work together as they have vastly different options on the importance of building cycling infrastructure. They often have to make big compromises to get anything through as the general attitude towards cycling infrastructure is that "there is no space" and that street parking is a holy entity. The extremely low proportion of trips being made by cyclists in the city makes it seem like wasting a ton of money on very few people.
The inner city seems to have some idea of what they are doing, you can already see that main streets of new, inner-ring developments within the council now come with nice, segregated cyclepaths or wide shared paths (which aren't optimal but good for children and casual riders). I see things changing (very slowly) for the better within the next decade.
Denver RTD light rail: 2 bikes in first car (rear only), 4 bikes in other cars.
Wait till you get to The Netherlands, its even better!
In The Netherlands, there are more bikes (22 million) than people (17 million)!
Copenhagen is a beautiful city! 🤩 But not really bike friendly and still 40 years behind, compared to The Netherlands! 😁
If you wanna see the difference between Copenhagen and Amsterdam, by far, not the best cycling city in The Netherlands, look at this video!
https://youtu.be/HjzzV2Akyds
Copenhagen is the do-able option for other country 's, the netherlands is the mekka for cyclist. I cycled in copenhagen and its rubbish in my eyes, but im spoiled I live in the netherlands and I never owned or needed a car
Love Copenhagen and think it has a great bike infrastructure. However every dutch city beats Copenhagen! And even some Belgium cities in the Flemish part.
And Copenhagen is OK, but ai have visited many cities in Denmark and they are far from bike friendly. Still a lot better than most countries but again no match for dutch infrastructure. We even have a country wide network of bicycle roads that allow for easy traveling between cities.
You can take a bike on a train, but only outside rush hour. Or take a folded bike. So many people use bikes here that its just not practical to take it on the train. That is why the Netherlands has the largest bike parking facilities in the world. The biggest in Utrecht with 12.500 bike capacity.
Copenhagen lacks in that department. Helmet usage in Copenhagen is much higher than here in the Netherlands where only tourists and small children wear them. That could be another indication that people don't feel safe enough yet. Danmark is still a very car centric country and Copenhagen is even more car centric than Rotterdam here in the Netherlands. One of the least bike friendly cities here.
So Copenhagen has a long way to go before reaching dutch standards. However their countries advertising for being the best bike country in the world is false but great!
Even though the government has adapted and provided bike lanes during the lockdowns to make the roads "safer" for cyclists and motorist alike, it's still a far cry from being cyclist friendly. Can't even plot a good route from home to work without any safe bike routes / lanes available.