Quote:
Originally Posted by racc
Do your research next time instead of just inventing trivial excuses. It is not that hard with the Internet.
The City of Copenhagen 6,136.6 people/km2 is only slightly more dense than Vancouver 5,335 people/km2
The population of the city at 541,000 and metro area at 1.9 million are not significantly different from Vancouver either.
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Speaking of doing research...
Copenhagen City has a density of
2.632/km2 and is quite suburban.. the population is:
1.199.224 ( Jan 2011 )
Sounds like you are making a mistake between the municipal of 'København Kommune' and Copenhagen City..
( quite common since the names are very similar in Danish and often called the same in English )
To keep it brief the Municipal of København ( pop 539k / density: 7250/km² ) is the oldest and largest -
but it is only one of 18 municipals that makes the city!
Map showing what parts of the City 'København Kommune' covers ( black = the municipal, grey = other municipals )
link © me and Københavns Kommune
As you can see there's even a municpal inside it ( Frederiksberg Kommune pop 91k / density 11.028/km² ) and it's surrounded by others..
This mistake between city and municipals often result in very wrong numbers, both when it comes to size and population as here but certainly also when it comes to bike ridership and I'm sure have been made elsewhere in this thread..
Quote:
Originally Posted by racc
What difference do old narrow streets make? There is even less room for bike lanes and still they have made it work.
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Not gonna argue with you there, but what has been done here with bike-paths virtually everywhere has been at the expense of both drivers
and pedestrians ( basically taking space from lanes and sidewalks to create the bike-paths ).. and by cutting down much of the urban trees to free space too..
Luckily the city is very decentralized and thanks to good planing and funding it's not a major problem, but in the old town where there is really dense not even bikes are allowed, it's a pedestrian zone only..
Quote:
Originally Posted by racc
Not many people cycled in Copenhagen 40 years ago. Cars had free reign of the city. Then, when the Oil Crisis hit, they decided they need to change so they focused on building complete networks of separated bike lanes so people of all ages and abilities could cycle safe and comfortably. We need to do the same here.
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It's true that a lot was done after the oil crisis, but it's
certainly not true that people didn't bike beforehand..
Copenhagen has a long culture of biking and ridership and popularity was at it's highest between 1900 and 1940 where both cars and horses were too expensive for most workers to keep..
Here's a picture from 1920
link ©TaxaFinn
Much if not most of what has been done here the last 50 years have been to get car traffic flowing - shared roads with high number of bikes slows down the speed significantly and with only a few major roads leading into the core of the city separation of bikes and cars is important and necessary for the 60 and 70km/h speed limits..
Quote:
Originally Posted by racc
If it is not easy, safe and convenient to cycle, people won't, that is the bottom line. They will drive instead because that is what we have spent decades making it easy and safe for people to do. We see the results in Vancouver, where only 4% of trips are by bike as opposed to Copenhagen, where 40% of trips are by bike.
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I have to correct you there ( though I agree with you ) that Copenhagen is NO WHERE near 40% of trips
For the city it's about 16% ( see picture where Copenhagen is under KBH - yellow represents bike usage )
Transportation percentage by various types in selected Danish cities and regions:
Bil = car ( purple )
Kollektiv = PT
Cykel = bike ( yellow )
Gang = walk
Andet = other
http://i39.tinypic.com/2ryhkic.jpg
On a national scale the avarage distance to work is 24,4km - in Copenhagen it's 16km and very few bike 32km daily..
The thing is that my municipal is playing A LOT on the "green city" rumour it was linked to doing the climate conference and all that stuff and it has a tendency to not only label itself as the city ( playing off the naming confusion ) but also misuse data and stats.. ( never heard 40% before by 36% pops up quite often ) - reality is that such numbers only come remotely true when you look at districts and only at residents, not all the workers who come there or commercial transportation ect..
Reality is that just like any other wealthy modern western nation Danes likes their cars... and more than 50% of Copenhageners does just that for their daily commute.. ( I'm one of them ) that's not to say that people don't like to bike ( 16% of 1,1mil is after all almost 200.000 and many more use their bikes when going down to pick up a pizza or to the park etc.. ) it's just not near such double digit figures thrown around in reality..
As much as I love my city respected and used as a good example ( even idolized from time to time it seems ) I want it to be so without cheating or misinformation and when it comes to bike ridership here it IS high, but it's not "utopian" high..
People do have bikes, but they also have cars, use trains, buses and boats... typically the car is for shopping and commuting to work and the bike for small trips to the park, speciality shops, pub or for the kids to go to school..
It's great to have the bike infrastructure we have here - I have been commuting by bike for many years of my life ( though not anymore since I got tired of being sweaty and hungry at work and I save significant time by car ) but bikes alone can not work miracles nor fill the needs of the people and economy..
Gonna keep an eye on this thread for the next couple of days, so if anyone has any questions about the city or biking here by all means ask - alternatively Google Streetview covers the entire Kingdom so if curious give that a try..
Or why not my Copenhagen photothread with 100s of pics of the city over the last 4 years:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=129330