How to Design Bicycle-friendly Cities - by The Life-Sized City

Here is a list of some of the key elements in designing a city for bicycles. Not a complete list, but the music track was finite so yeah. But here is some serious T4under2° - AKA Transport for under Two Degrees - transport that can help get us on track for fighting climate change.

0:00 Intro
0:25 Best Practice infrastructure / protected cycle tracks
0:33 Wide infrastructure for bikes and narrow car lanes
0:44 Cycle tracks along motorways
0:50 Winter maintenance - bike infra cleared of snow by 8AM
0:59 Car-free right turns for bikes
1:08 Pre-green traffic lights for bikes
1:20 Pulled back stop lines for cars - 5 meters
1:26 Bicycle bridges - for pedestrians, too
1:36 Tilted garbage cans for cyclists
1:42 Bicycle counters for gathering mobility data
1:48 Railings and footrests to spoil cyclists
2:00 Bus stop islands for bus passengers, with cyclist priority
2:06 Ramps everywhere! Micro-design for cyclists
2:12 Lots of bike parking and free bike pumps
2:18 The Green Wave for cyclists - lights coordinated for 20 km/h
2:25 Bikes free on trains
2:31 Bike-friendly train stations
2:38 Bike-friendly Metro
2:44 Bike-friendly harbour buses
2:51 Bike-friendly airports
2:58 Cargo bikes - lots of them!

Camera: Ivan Conte
Additional footage by: Theis Mortensen
Music: Lars Terkelsen

[ElectricityTaster]

Ahh man this is the sort of video that should be translated into all languages and sent to all governments around the world. So many politicians think bike lanes are just for recreation, to the point some are debating between bike paths and running paths. Once you get how flexible, democratic and efficient bike infrastructure can be it's like opening a book by Aristotle during the middle ages.

[christofferh]

Everybody should love more bike-infrastructure. More bikes = less cars.

[soberhippie]

Watched half of the video before I realized I had to read the captions ) I love the way you narrate your videos, that's why that happened.

[Asmoc]

Sir, I wish you had designed all the cities in Europe. I envy bike bicycle friendly cities. Here in Bucharest there's more cars than people. Bicycle infrastructure inexistent, even pedestrian don't have sidewalks were to walk, cause they are full of cars :)))

[christill]

Things like parking have been done much more impressively by the Dutch, like in Utrecht. That’s the one obvious thing they really need to step up with in Copenhagen and the rest of Denmark. Large indoor bike parks.

[watcher]

The Music of this video works out great.

[mlechnerscott]

I have a question Mikael! :) In your series you say that seperated two way cycle ways are a bad idea (last century). Why is that? Can you pleeeeaaasse make a video about good bicycle designed streets? Thanks and I love your content 🥰

[AlienSensei]

Are shower rooms essential or not? I'm a bike commuter (18km a day) in an ever summer tropical country and everytime I arrive at work, I'm always drenched in sweat. A shower is a must. I wonder if cyclists in cycling cities like Copenhagen or Amsterdam have the same sweating issue.

[dbadia]

I think this was a nice last decade pre-electric vision, now with a full bench of electric powered devices running around everywhere. Average speed is increased near 25km (theorical limit), higher risk of accidents.
Many cities just starting with these cycling infrastructures are now coping to the new challenges of electrification.
How to progress in this end consumer/user pushing environment?

[Alex-cwrz]

Where I live, there isn't any best practice bycle infrastructure and a limited number of people using what is there, the car is king, followed by the Train. It rains quite a lot and frequently too, so I was just wondering how would you incourage people to get out of cars and onto bikes, when it is more likely to be raining than not and I was just wondering what solutions are used to mitigate riding in the rain. I notice it rains 170 days a year in Copenhagen, so it's obviously does not dissuaded people there.

[KrzysztofXD]

It’s great but how are the places in Denmark outside of Copenhagen doing in terms of the bicycle infrastructure? I mean Aarhus, Odense, Aalborg, Esbjerg, Roskilde and provincial towns and villages? Is it comparable to the capital, better or worse?

[hanstun]

They are expanding bike lanes for commuting in Toronto right now. Lots of complaining from drivers but the end result for them was pretty much a zero difference. When it went from 2 lanes to 1 lane there was no more bustling of people merging at every hindrance and intersection so traffic moves a lot smoother. Still a major issue of drivers thinking that the bike lane is the texting/loading lane but hopefully this will change soon if the police finally start to fine people. This behavior is very puzzling for a European living in N America. If you drove your car onto the pavement to text or if I took my bike into car lanes to text people would call 911. Bike lanes are a bit of the wild west still.

[WanderABit]

I love (and envy) this video. One thing though -- reading you comment to the video I think "climate change" is not the best of purposes. One smart ass can say, meh, 1 mln cars do the same as single volcano eruption, or China industry is XX% responsible for climate change, and so on. Cars move within cities and you don't have to have precise instrument to measure the noise they produce, the heat (especially true in the summer), the fumes, the space they take, the risk they bring. It is plainly a matter of quality of life in the city, not some alien species coping with survival at the other place of the globe -- the latter is noble thing to take care, but the former is easier to understand and more relevant.

[mariadebake]

Nice but in no way comparable to the Netherlands

[TdaKraakGaming]

Ugh, the infrastructure in Copenhagen looks bad, but way better than the average city. Go to the Netherlands for once, you’ll see.