A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Cyclist at night in Copenhagen.
I know exactly what you want. It’s the same thing that I want. Indeed, it’s what every homo sapien who has ever lived wants: a direct line from A to B when we’re transporting ourselves. Humans are like rivers carving through a landscape—we will always find the easiest route. This is the most basic principle in transport planning. I call it A2Bism.
The history of traffic engineering can be summed up concisely. For most of the 7,000-odd years we have be cohabiting in urban centers, we were rational. For millennia we provided our primary transport forms—pedestrians and horses or donkeys—with the fastest A-to-B routes. By 1900, the bicycle had appeared in amazing numbers. Public transport in the form of trams and omnibuses had also appeared on our streets. Still, we were rational. Direct A-to-B lines. By 1920, cars had shown up in our cities and yet we still maintained our rationality.
Then around 1950, what had begun in the thirties and forties in the United States washed over the world like a tsunami. American traffic-engineering standards and principles. To this day in most places, the automobile has been handed exclusive rights to go fast from A to B, at the expense of everyone else just trying to get around a city.
A short history of traffic engineering.
The Copenhagenize Traffic Planning Guide.
The quickest and simplest traffic planning guide for a life-sized city isn’t difficult to produce. Give the three transport forms on the left a high level of A2Bism, and make driving a car difficult, inaccessible, and expensive. Make it less competitive in travel times. All the campaigns in the world for Ride a bike! It’s good for you! Save a polar bear on your bike today! are completely irrelevant and a colossal waste of money unless we are doing that fourth line.
Cyclists, pedestrians, and public-transport users are by nature intermodal. Personally, if my tire is flat in the morning, I chuck the bike into the bike shop and walk to the metro to get to work. With 600 shops serving 600,000 people—I have 50 of them within a five-minute bike ride—it is the easiest option. It only costs about $8, on average, to have a flat tire fixed. The bike is the quickest way to get around, but public transport, combined with walking, is a respectable option. Switching among the three is easy and intuitive.
Motorists are the last traffic-user group to change their behavior. It’s hard to escape the metal-and-glass bubble that they invested money in and that has cut them off from the city through which they drive. In many places, having your car break down is virtually an acceptable excuse for missing work.
We know that A2Bism is a key factor in making cycling desirable. In their biannual Bicycle Account, the City of Copenhagen has been asking the citizens since the 1990s to specify their main reason for riding a bike in the city. The numbers never change: 56 percent say that it is quick; 19 percent say that they like getting some exercise (not fitness cycling, just riding to work to help them get that 30 minutes of exercise that the doctor said they should); 6 percent say it’s because it is inexpensive; and only 1 percent say they ride to save the planet (that is, environmental reasons).
If you make the bicycle the fastest way from A to B in a city—any city in the world regardless of climate or topography—you are halfway to the goal. Everything is 20 minutes away in Copenhagen, even if it’s actually longer. That’s what it feels like.
I was interviewed for the German edition of Greenpeace magazine in 2017. The journalist had lined up a great show for me. She was intent on testing travel times in Copenhagen. We started in the Nørrebro neighborhood, near Åboulevarden and Blågårdsgade, and the destination was the Copenhagenize Design Company offices on Paper Island, south of the city center.
First up was car-share. It took 37 minutes to drive the 4.8 km (about 3 miles), park, and walk to my office entrance. And this was in the late morning. The drive back to the point of departure took 40 minutes. What a nightmare. A totally restrictive, stressing experience. From the same departure location, I walked to the Forum metro station, traveled three stops to Christianshavn, and walked the last mile to the office. That took 32 minutes and was quite pleasant, even with some light rain. Finally, the pièce de résistance. I hopped on my bike and it took 13 minutes to get there and 14 to get back.
By and large, the City of Copenhagen understands desire lines as well as A2Bism. At the intersection called Søtorvet, where the world’s busiest bicycle street, Nørrebrogade, enters the city center, something strange evolved. For centuries, the street was the primary artery for getting to the capital from the northwest. The all-roads-lead-to-Rome principle has applied in Copenhagen for a very long time. But recently the City noticed that something new was happening at this intersection: many cyclists were turning off the cycle track and traversing a section of sidewalk to get to a parallel street, Vendersgade. Instead of putting up barriers to stop this—cycling on the sidewalk is illegal in Denmark—they set out to find out the reason. The first guess was that people were trying to get out of the incredibly intense morning rush hour for bikes, but the actual reason turned out to be a a bit more than that.
If you make the bicycle the fastest way from A to B in a city — any city in the world regardless of climate or topography — you are halfway to the goal.
Ørestad, the new development to the south of the city, is a popular destination, with new university buildings and many workplaces. People were taking a little shortcut to escape the rush hour, yes, but also to circumnavigate the city center and head over to Ørestad. For a century this had never happened before at this location, but a new mobility pattern had emerged. The City observed and respected this behavior and made a temporary bike lane across the sidewalk to see if it would work. It did. Less than a year later, permanent infrastructure was put in. By legitimizing the behavior of a handful of citizens, the City carved out a new route that has proven to be incredibly popular. No time-consuming survey or long meetings, just human observation leading to improved facilities.
The author’s travel times through Copenhagen in a car, by the metro, and by bike.
The reasons why Copenhageners choose the bicycle as transport.
Heading to the Central Station by bike.
Family arriving at Copenhagen Airport by bike.
On a much larger scale, A2Bism’s greatest experiment in Copenhagen unfolded inadvertently between 2012 and 2013. From one year to the next, the modal share for bicycles, measured by how people arrive at work or school in the city, exploded from 36 percent to 45 percent—a leap of 9 percentage points. That has never happened anywhere. Ever. Seriously.
Copenhageners, being rational homo sapiens with places to go and people to see, chose other transport forms.
The modal share for cars also fell from 27 percent to 23 percent. The average trip length in Copenhagen rose 35 percent from 3.2 kilometers to 4.2 kilometers in that year. That means that the oft-quoted statistic about how Copenhageners cycle 1.2 million kilometers a day needs to be upgraded to more than 2 million kilometers per day. Okay, okay. But what does it all mean? When the data came out, journalists began scrambling for answers. Two researchers at the Danish Technical University were “surprised.” They were quoted in the Danish press as saying things like, “Uh … the City’s new bridges and traffic calming on certain streets seem to have worked. Giving cyclists carrots encouraged cycling.”
The detail they forgot was that the new cycling bridges weren’t quite finished yet, nor was the traffic calming on Amagerbrogade. The Nørrebrogade stretch is from 2008. Cycling rose on that street by 15 percent, but that was before 2012, obviously. Basically, there hadn’t been many carrots dangling in this city for a few years at that point. What did happen was that 17 huge construction sites fell out of the sky all at once—stations being built for the new Metro ring. That’s not something that happens every day. In addition, most of central Copenhagen—between 2012 and 2013—was under further construction because of the upgrading of district heating pipes beneath many streets that had to be ripped up.
Driving was rendered incredibly difficult. Copenhageners, being rational homo sapiens with places to go and people to see, chose other transport forms. The use of public transport increased, too, but the bicycle was clearly the chariot of choice. It was the greatest urban experiment anywhere in the world, and it proves the entire A2Bism premise. Mark my words, however. When the Metro construction is finished in 2019, we will see a sharp drop in cycling levels, back to the standard levels we’ve plateaued at for the past few years. You read it here first.
A question in an American survey about cycling that misses the point.
Unless, of course, the City of Copenhagen has the cojones to embrace this experiment and use it to finally make the leap back to the future. Expanding and widening the cycle tracks. Reallocating space from diminishing car traffic to bicycles and public transport. If they don’t, this rich petri-dish experiment will just rot and be forgotten.
Desire lines are happily married to A2Bism even on a micro-scale. The photo of the small ramp shows how you are technically expected to continue onward for about 100 meters, turn right, and then loop back in order to get to the harbor. Cyclists and pedestrians were observed taking this obvious shortcut, lifting their bikes down. (Again, it serves no democratic or planning purpose to erect barriers.) So a ramp and some stairs were put in after the fact. Not a comfortable ramp but just enough to make it more pleasant and accessible. For bikes or parents with baby carriages. This is still an idea that needs to catch on in some parts of the world. There was a survey about cycling habits that was posted on a website called Ecology Action in 2010. The single most important reason wasn’t even on the list. “Quick and convenient.”
Richard Masoner from the Cyclelicio.us blog wrote about this survey when it came out, and I agree: “No wonder we fail so miserably at cycling promotion. Do car advertisements speak blandly to the raw, number-crunching, analytical bottom line? Or do they appeal to your desire for the visceral, go-fast, fantastic feeling of freedom and sexual prowess?”
On the Ecology Action—Bike2Work website that hosted this poll, I found this list and added my own comments:
Why Bike Commute?
» It’s good for your health.
(Nice… but I want to get there quick.)
» Saves you money on gasoline, vehicle maintenance, parking fees, and parking tickets.
(I don’t care…I want to get there quick.)
» Reduces air, water, and noise pollution associated with driving.
(Sweet… but I want to get there quick.)
» Reduces automobile traffic.
(Good… but I want to get there quick.)
Three photos that show the transition from a bike lane across a sidewalk to permanent infrastructure based on the desire lines of cyclists in Copenhagen.
Bicycle seatbelts on the train between Denmark and Sweden.
A2Bism messaging from the City of Sydney. ©Gerry Gaffney
A small ramp put in to legitimize a user-defined desire line.
» It’s good for the community by making our streets safer, quieter, and cleaner. (Yeah, yeah, sounds nice… but I still just want to get there quick.)
Once you discover the freedom, convenience, and fitness benefits of biking to work, you’ll wonder why you didn’t start riding sooner. Bicycling can be a convenient, dependable, and virtually free mode of transportation. And bicycling burns about 500 calories an hour, so you can commute and stay fit at the same time.
From a marketing perspective this is really dreadful copy. It isn’t selling anything, let alone cycling. And yet this is the standard fare on so many “advocacy” websites all over the world—but I’ll get into that later. The point is that we need to understand that A2Bism is an absolute truth for homo sapiens. It’s hardwired into our brains. Make the bicycle the fastest transport form by building infrastructure, prioritizing cycling, and respecting the psychology.
As ever, it’s not just about the bike. It’s about creating an urban framework that makes the bicycle a natural and intuitive choice, either alone or combined with public transport. There are different approaches to this. In the Netherlands, the national railway (NS) is not a big fan of bikes on trains, although it is an easy process for passengers to bring one. Their unique bike-share system, OV-Fiets, is available at most train stations, and the A-to-A concept allows people to grab a bike, use it, and drop it off at the station when they leave. They have a train network with high volumes of passengers in their small country, which is also saturated with bicycles.
The massive rise in passenger numbers after DSB made it free to take bikes on their S-Train network.
From 2014 to 2017, Copenhagenize Design Company was a partner on a European Union project called BiTiBi—Bike Train Bike. The project was tasked with inspiring citizens to ride a bike to the station and combine it with a train journey. It involved pilot projects in Belgium, Catalonia, Italy, and the United Kingdom that improved parking facilities for bikes and also tested bike-share programs available at the stations. I was in charge of getting the logo made and producing posters and materials for the project. It was important to avoid the typical messaging about saving polar bears by riding your bike and to focus instead on faster, easier, and cooler as keywords. A poster campaign from one of the project’s partners, Merseyside Rail, highlighted the ease of use and convenience of their Bike & Go bike-share.
In Denmark, Danish State Railways (DSB) has been transporting passengers with bikes almost since the bicycle was invented. Greater Copenhagen is served by the S-Train network—S-tog in Danish—and for many years passengers had to buy a reasonably priced bike ticket. In 2010, DSB decided to make bikes free on all their red S-Trains that transport people to and from the city from the far reaches of our urban sprawl. It was a bold move, but far from being an example of corporate social responsibility, it was simply a clever business model. They assumed correctly and rationally that bikes don’t travel alone, so by making it free, there were good odds of increasing the number of paying passengers. Boy, did they nail it.
What started with inventive campaigns advertising the fact that bike tickets on the S-Trains would be eliminated—like placing a makeshift tunnel resembling a mock train compartment on the cycle track, complete with hot air heaters to warm cyclists, however briefly, on a cold December day—ended rather well for them.
When the Metro construction is finished in 2019, we will see a sharp drop in cycling levels, back to the standard levels we plateaued with for the past few years.
Actually, “rather well” would be an under-statement. The number of passengers taking a bike on board rose from 2.1 million to 9 million. A total, whopping passenger increase of more than 300 percent. And it continues to rise.
The loss of income from ditching the bicycle ticket has been paid off several times over with the increased passenger numbers. It is estimated that almost 10 percent of passengers now take a bike with them.
Indeed, when asked in a survey, 91 percent of passengers were positive about the possibility of taking bikes on the trains; 27 percent of the cyclists on board responded that they wouldn’t have traveled by train if they couldn’t take their bikes with them; 8 percent even said that they travel more by train now that taking a bike is free.
In May 2009, before it was free, 188,000 bikes were taken on the S-Train network. A year later, after the bike ticket was eliminated, 630,000 bikes were taken on board, and those numbers are rising, too. In order to meet the demand, DSB redesigned the compartments on all their trains and created so-called Flex Zones with fold-up seats and bike racks beneath each seat. They adjusted the seating on all trains so that every single one now has a capacity for 60 bicycles.
The redesign also included a comprehensive reworking of pictograms and the implementation of a one-way system to ease conflicts when bikes are rolled on or off the train. The spacious bicycle compartments are located in the middle of the trains, since DSB research showed that the seating in the middle of the train was less popular with passengers. Continuing with their work to encourage bicycles on trains, DSB has toyed with the idea of putting bicycle pumps on board trains, but so far they have gone with bicycle foot pumps integrated with advertising facilities outside their stations.
With all that said, most stations in the suburbs are also fitted with ample bike parking as well as secure facilities for a subscription fee. On the trains that operate between Denmark and Sweden, there are even lovely little bike seat belts in the bike compartment. Whatever the situation, whether you park at the station or take your bike with you, it should be an easy way to travel.
Interestingly, bikes on buses have been through a few pilot projects in Copenhagen. Buses have space for two baby carriages at a time, and on some routes the bus company added bikes to the mix. Very few people use this, however. The Copenhagen Metro still charges for bikes and doesn’t allow them during rush hour, but as with the buses, they cover an area and distances that are easy to cycle.
The bicycle must be integrated at every step of people’s daily lives if a city is to be truly bicycle-friendly. Think bicycle-first.
Worldwide, there is a broad spectrum of ways that rail operators deal with bikes. Some are far ahead of the curve, including regional operators in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Catalonia, while others lag far behind. A pragmatic approach, coupled with a cool business decision, has paid off for DSB. The bicycle must be integrated at every step of people’s daily lives if a city is to be truly bicycle-friendly. Thinking bicycle-first in urban planning and intermodality ensures prioritizing the bicycle as transport.
Mock train compartment with heaters for cyclists to pass through, promoting DSB’s new policy of making bikes free on their S-Train network.
Campaign by Merseyside Rail’s Bike & Go bike share system in Liverpool.
Copenhagenize Design Company poster for the European Union BiTiBi project.
A typical bicycle compartment on an S-Train in Greater Copenhagen.