Groningen: The World’s Cycling City

Streetfilms shows us what a real cycling city looks like, in the Dutch university town of Groningen:

I can’t help but laugh and sigh whenever someone touts Boulder as a “world class cycling city”.  We are so, so far from that.  But hey, it’s good to have aspirational goals… like 50% of all trips done by bike.  Maybe we just need to elect some young leftists to city council, like Groningen did in the 70s!

 

http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=76207227#at=0&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

How the Dutch got their bike on

In the post-war era (the 1950s and 1960s) the Netherlands started down the car-dependent re-development path. Much of the country needed to be re-built, and the nation became wealthy quickly, and then oil and gas were discovered off shore. Then they realized that designing for the automobile came at far too high a price in both blood and treasure and mass protests nationwide reversed the country’s transportation investment policies, returning to the human powered cities we’ve build for millennia. Change is possible.

Population density vs. cycling rate

David Hembrow looks at the correlation between population density and cycling rate for a range of cities.  Or rather, he points out the remarkable lack of correlation.  Clearly there’s an intrinsic relationship between population (# of people) the distances people need to travel to access that population, and the density of the population, but even for cities with densities comparable to the US (1000-2500 people/km^2) cycling can be a very convenient mode of transport.

Pedestrianization Done Right

A post from David Hembrow in the Netherlands on what it takes to make pedestrianized spaces work by examining a new living/shopping development in Assen.  Make it clear that pedestrians have right of way over everyone, but make it easily accessible to bikes.  However, ensure that it isn’t a throughfare for bikes — only cyclists actually coming to the place as a destination should be there.  If you exclude both bikes and cars from the space, then you decrease the relative attractiveness of cycling unnecessarily, encouraging people to drive.

Reckless Driving in the Netherlands

In the US we wouldn’t think twice about a young testosterone laden driver endangering the lives of four cyclists with his “monster truck”.  If anything, we’d probably blame the cyclists — especially if they weren’t wearing helmets.  But how is it different from someone carelessly brandishing a gun in your face?  That’s how seriously they seem to take it in the Netherlands:

From David Hembrow via Streetfilms.

Links for the week of November 26th, 2010

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Shared Links for Sat, Feb 7th, 2009 through Tue, Feb 10th, 2009

  • Thefts puncture Paris bike scheme – More of Paris' Velib bicycles are being stolen or vandalized than expected. Not sure what their expectations were, but it is pretty annoying for basically every bike in the network to have been either stolen or damaged in only 18 months. The vandalism is probably impossible to stop (since it can be carried out while the bikes are locked in their stands) but the theft should be preventable with secure stands, and aggressive enforcement of responsibility for a bike while you've got it checked out (i.e. if the bike doesn't come back, your credit card is immediately charged for the total value of the bike, or possibly even more). I also can't help but wonder if the same functionality could be implemented with much, much cheaper bikes, especially in a city as flat as Paris. Singlespeeds with fenders and a basket, maybe 100 Euros each? With an RFID tag embedded – and put all the smarts in the racks. (tagged: bicycle bike cycling transportation paris velib )
  • Google Power to the People – Google developing tools to allow you to disentangle your own energy use, when the datastreams from smart meters come on line. Making this information easy to comprehend, pricing electricity to displace demand from the peak times, and allowing the largest energy users to schedule their use in an automated way could (without even changing anything physically) have a large impact on the amount of power generating capacity we (don't) need. (tagged: energy google sustainability green open data transparency )
  • WattzOn and Wesabe Join Forces – This is the post that made me wish the Elevations Credit Union was more internet savvy. I want to be able to apply all these big-brotherly tools to myself! (tagged: open data transparency energy wesabe wattzon money finance )
  • Numbrary – A library for numbers – mass quantities of publicly available data, mostly (entirely?) from the US Government. In a hopefully usable and searchable form. Many automatically generated charts and tables. (tagged: data transparency government statistics open )
  • Mayapedal – People building useful human-powered bicimaquinas, in Guatemala, where human labor is still a common prime mover: washing machines, coffee de-pulpers, corn de-grainers, grain mills, blenders, concrete microvibrators, etc. One kind of appropriate technology. There's also some YouTube videos on them, e.g.:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrqbtUKpSjo (tagged: bicycle guatemala appropriate technology human power energy )

  • Humanity In Motion – An incredible montage of what bicycles can be: safe, enjoyable, cheap, convenient, everyday transportation for young people and for old, for families, in a city largely unpolluted by the exhaust and noise of cars. (tagged: bicycle transportation amsterdam netherlands photos )