The Man Behind Copenhagenization
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Sharing traffic, main problems in Valencia (1/5)
There is a curious infrastructure in Valencia which I rarely see in any other great city in Europe or at least in the most advanced European countries as it comes to sustainable mobility. They are the “urban highways”. In other words, I am referring to avenues with three, four, five or even six lines in each direction. This causes a lot of pollution and noise. One secondary effect consists of cars not respecting the traffic-light line. In the next figures, you can clearly see them on the road.
And still lots of cyclists have had fights with cars and motorcycles which have not respected it. It is just a matter of time that a crash occurs.
Getting parking right
Getting parking right is key when it comes to biking infrastructure: do it wrong and you’ll create a deadly trap waiting for you to get doored, do it well and create a barrier that will improve the cyclist’s security.
If you think about it, often times drivers ride alone, which means that, often times, cycling on the right of parked cars is safer. Additionally, cars parked on the left of bikeways are a great substitute for physical elements plus you get them for free. Additionally, if cars park on the left of bikeways there is no interference between bicycles and cars when the later are about to park.
Seattle has at least a dozen different ways of designing parking, ranging from terrible through excellent, here is a very good one.
5pm madness
Just like werewolves get wild at full moon, and gremlins get really angry if they are fed after midnight, inner cities are a madness jungle at 5pm in the US.
Drivers block the intersections, stop at crosswalks, invade bike ways, and honk the horn for no reason.
Adrenaline pumps up, anxiety jumps, futile attempts to advance are tested, and resignation skyrockets because you are stuck in a traffic jam.
And in places like Manhattan this is the norm.
A couple days ago a fellow biker asked me “Do people just get crazy when they’re driving?”.
This is the result of 50 years of wrong transit policies by misguided politicians. And there are simple solutions that could solve it in a matter of months, here are some I’ve seen working in other countries:
- Build free, big parking lots outside of downtown and have fast public transportation take you there.
- Pedestrianize popular streets which, by the way, will have a positive impact on those retailers sales.
- Every month, the police department should start a new awareness campaign. The sheriff appears in mass media warning drivers they are going to enforce something, lets say, blocking intersections. After a week, every single car that blocks an intersection gets a ticket no matter what. And after a month, we move to another campaign. In half a year transit safety improves exponentially without installing any additional infrastructure.
A city got it right
When traffic lights look like this
Community driven urban design
For several years I wished a gap on Seattle’s University bridge bikeway was fixed. It was something very obvious and that clearly endangered all the cyclist. And I wasn’t alone: It was very clear when the Seattle Department of Transportation created a public map to let people report fixes. That specific point was full of reports and, lo and behold, it got fixed almost immediately.
In these times when budgets are always under scrutiny, it’s vital to prioritize adequately what gets done and how. Another tool widely used here is Find it fix it, a mobile ap you can use to report potholes and other elements in need of a fix, and you can rest assured the SDOT will fix it on a timely manner.
Additionally, Seattle’s Greenways is an initiative that empowers neighbors to decide which streets should be made safer.
Believe it or not
The best public bike
Public bikes are different in every city: they can be electric, they can have gears, fenders, or they can be belt-driven. But out of all the public bicycles I tried, the ones in Copenhagen are the best by far.Despite the fact that Copenhagen is quite flat they are electric, they have lights, fenders, and racks, so they can be used by everybody.
But one interesting thing is that they all have a tablet that lets you easily register and log in on the very bike. Additionally, the tablet includes a gps that takes you to your destination even if you don’t know the city without having to reach your pocket. Not to mention the fact that they are painted white, which increases the visibility at night (and lets Danish know that a tourist may be in charge).
Kudos to Bycyklen!
Our enemies, our allies
Biking in a city with a huge car usage feels like a struggle, like a war for the future with clear enemies and allies, and here are some of them.
Our allies:
- Polite people
- Nature lovers
- 99.9% of the people
- Health conscious people
- People who love their life
- Progressive urban designers
- Politicians aware of the potential to win votes
Our enemies:
- The stress level
- Tight schedules
- Closemindedness
- Driver’s cellphones
- The lack of empathy
- Any drug taken before driving
