July 16th was the first and only full day we had in Malmö. It started with a lecture from two of Malmö's urban planners in their city hall building. Malmö is growing extremely fast and what the citie's plan is to not increase car use as the population increases. They plan to do this in many ways, one being infrastructure. Right now they are trying to rethink the street, they call it Bicycle streets 2.0. Their ideas include cutting cars out of roads and making them specifically for bikes, giving bikes right aways in intersections and adding in bidirectional bike paths.
I found that the idea of bidirectional pathways bad, and even unnecessary at some points, even though the Malmöplanners decided on them through doing tons of research. I didn't spend to much time on the cities bike lanes but when I was on the bi-directional pathways, I felt very uncomfortable. Bikes are coming at you from the opposite direction, often in very close quarters. I understand that on some small streets this may be the only option to allow bikes to go through both ways, but many large streets had bidirectional pathways on either side. This made no sense to me, I believe the feeling of being comfortable and safe should beat out the convenience of riding on whatever side of the street you want.
Another way they are keeping bike usage up and car usage down as the city grows is through building a strong culture around bikes as transportation. Through community events centered around biking, convenient infrastructure such as massive bike garages, and bicycle service stations placed around the city, they really make you feel as if biking is a way of life and not just a hobby, or mode of transportation. I think this is the key to the making of a cycling city. If you began to teach people at a young age that biking is a good transportation method and continue to make it better it'd be hard for people to switch over to cars. The city even offers adult cycling classes pointed towards immigrant families in order to ensure they have an easy and cheap way to get around. This is something you never see in the states. Even in Portland, which is sometimes considered to be a biking city, we were never taught as kids that biking can be a safe and easy way to get around. Hopefully, we can build a culture around sustainable transportation at some point, but I honestly struggle to see our nation even getting close to giving up cars.
I found that the idea of bidirectional pathways bad, and even unnecessary at some points, even though the Malmöplanners decided on them through doing tons of research. I didn't spend to much time on the cities bike lanes but when I was on the bi-directional pathways, I felt very uncomfortable. Bikes are coming at you from the opposite direction, often in very close quarters. I understand that on some small streets this may be the only option to allow bikes to go through both ways, but many large streets had bidirectional pathways on either side. This made no sense to me, I believe the feeling of being comfortable and safe should beat out the convenience of riding on whatever side of the street you want.
Another way they are keeping bike usage up and car usage down as the city grows is through building a strong culture around bikes as transportation. Through community events centered around biking, convenient infrastructure such as massive bike garages, and bicycle service stations placed around the city, they really make you feel as if biking is a way of life and not just a hobby, or mode of transportation. I think this is the key to the making of a cycling city. If you began to teach people at a young age that biking is a good transportation method and continue to make it better it'd be hard for people to switch over to cars. The city even offers adult cycling classes pointed towards immigrant families in order to ensure they have an easy and cheap way to get around. This is something you never see in the states. Even in Portland, which is sometimes considered to be a biking city, we were never taught as kids that biking can be a safe and easy way to get around. Hopefully, we can build a culture around sustainable transportation at some point, but I honestly struggle to see our nation even getting close to giving up cars.
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