Upcoming carfree conference and workshop in York

Last October at the "Mobility week workshop" in Budapest (you can read about my experiences in these articles) Sonja and I met a few young and enthusiatstic volunteers who work for the World Carfree Network in Prague, Czech Republic. That's also how I learned about some nice events they organize in York, England, in June and July. But before I will come to that, let my briefly introduce you to the WCN...

Girls and bicycles

I must admit that I almost forget the importance of today -- it's International Women's Day, and probably a good idea to think about women and transport as well. If once written how little influence women have on traffic planning and how much of difference that could make (see "Women and transport").

Through Alec's article "Girl.Pedal.Power: Selbstbewußtsein per Rad" on the Austrian bicycle culture platform Velosophie.at I found this interesting video about school girls in Darlington, UK, who started to think about the use of bicycles in their town and compared it to the bicycle-friendly German city Bremen. Here's their video "Beauty and the Bike" in which they talk about their experiences:


If you got interested -- read more about their project "Beauty and the Bike" in German and English.

What are your reasons to (not) ride a bicycle? Do you prefer cycle lanes or rather not have them?

The city as playground

I don't see many teenagers around here riding bicycles. Are they (or their parents) too afraid? Is it not necessary to get around because public transport is good enough (or parents drive them around)? Or is it just not cool to do so?

I remember being made fun of by other kids when I cycled to and from the grammar school in the neighboring town. Maybe it was because I didn't attend the extended elementary school in my town as most kids did (Hauptschule in German, a school from 10-14, but without a general qualification for university entrance -- see Wikipedia for an explanation). But actually I believe it was because of that stupid looking bicycle helmet that my mum made me wear. The "bicycle helmet fashion" in my area started in the early 90s, and the first helmets were really really ugly and uncomfortable. It created a very negative image of cycling amongst young people.

Better motivations for kids to cycle are those fancy trial riders, e.g. Danny MacAskill from the Inspired Bicycles Team in Edinburgh:


Cycling is really fun, and can be very challenging and cool if need be :).

COP15 and cycling

COP15, the Copenhagen climate change conference, is trying to find appropriate mitigation and adaptation goals and strategies against climate change. Cycling is a carbon-efficient means of transport that in many cases presents a true alternative to driving a car. Let's take a look at how cycling has been showing in the first week of Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Denmark is a country of utility cycling, which can be an inspiration to both the conference participants and internationally. In Copenhagen, 1/3 of commuters cycle to work or school, but the city goal is even higher. Copenhagen is aiming at becoming the cycling capital of the world and hopes to achieve the cycling commuter rate of 1/2 by 2015. That city knows how to set a positive example!

Suburbanization and cycling

Suburban sprawl by David Shankbone 2008

As you may know, I am a geography student, so why not utilize my education? Forgive me if I'm dry, I'll try to be at least informative :)

There are 2 types of suburbanization: British and American. Both mean that people desire to live outside the city center. The British suburbanized in the 19^th century by developing public transit system. The American way was to get to the suburbs by private automobile, which also enables the low density population structure and urban sprawl. Nowadays there the both suburbanization types occur in Europe too. The American type has proved to be particularly detrimental for cycling, because the distances are too long and often the necessary and safe light traffic infrastructure does not exist.

Low density housing in America pretty much destroyed community walkability and light traffic infrastructure, but in those European towns that have managed to invest in cyclist friendly infrastructure the cyclist rates are still very high (Follman 2007). The examples of 20^th century Amsterdam and Copenhagen prove this point but they also show that it is possible to reverse this development and break the connection between suburbanization and lower cycling rates.

In the 1^st half of the 20^th century up to 75% of trips in Amsterdam were done by bike. 75 percent! After the second world war cars took over Amsterdam and the city expanded. This obviously had a massive effect on cycling, and the cycling rate dropped to the all time low of 25% in Amsterdam and 10% in Copenhagen by the 70s. How ever, the city road capacity couldn't handle many cars and the oil crises forced the government to think of measures to decrease oil dependency, so they began aggressively promoting cycling among other things by investing in bicycling infrastructure and enhancing cyclist priority in traffic. They succeeded and nowadays the cities have 35-40% bike trip share. That is impressive! Nowadays the cities are known for their cyclist friendliness and are among the safest cycling cities of the world (Jacobson 2009).

So, usually suburbanization and cycling decline go hand-in-hand, but it does not have to be that way. Suburbanization can also promote cycling if the suburb is not too far, but that would be on the expense of pedestrians or public transit, not cars. It is better to reign in the (mostly the American type) suburbanization a bit by supporting strong city centers and restricting suburban mall-building. E.g Muenster has some positive experiences of that strategy (Pucher and Buehler 2007).

Turku has both American and European type suburbs. Less than half of the households on the closer and denser (British type) suburbs have cars, but 70% of the more distant ones have at least one. The highest cyclist rates coming to the center of the city are from the closer suburb area. Surprisingly the cyclists are not coming to the grid plan center as often as the average cycling rate (11,5% of all trips) suggests. From the more distant “American type” suburbs almost no-one bothers to ride a bike to the center (numbers are from Turku Bustrip self-assessment report 2006, in Finnish).

So, it looks like these suburb theories do fit pretty well on my town. How about you, do you have any theories about the connection of suburbanization and cycling or would you like to share your experience? Is this kinda stuff too boring for you or do you wanna hear more of my academic brain farts?

P.S. Here's a video about the solution to the problems presented by urban sprawl (which is not the same as suburbanization, but closely related to the American type)

What the Greens in Europe do for cycling

At the beginning of June we will have the elections for the European parliament in the EU. This is a very important opportunity to take part in decision-making. Concerning cycling, and a positive promotion of it, I found some cool videos of the European Greens where they explain what kind of measures have been implemented throughout our cities. Here are just a few examples (all in English resp. with English subtitles):

Vienna
Christoph Chorherr talks about a car-free estate in Vienna (I tried to get a flat there but it's impossible because the demand is so high -- but they want to build a second one :-)). He also writes a very interesting blog (in German). The Greens in the 2nd district do that too.


London
Jenny Jones tells us how biking can help against the traffic chaos. By the way, Trisha and Dottie have recently visited London and wrote something about it in their blog.


Freiburg
The Green mayor Dieter Salomon talks about the nearly car-free district Vauban. Although it is a well-known fact that Freiburg has a very high number of cyclists I didn't know about Vauban until I read it in spiderleggreen's blog.


For more videos explore the YouTube channel of the European Greens yourself. There you may also find the videos with subtitles in other languages (I didn't check that, but it would make sense). And there are of course also videos about other green topics, e.g. how the sun is used in Barcelona, squatters in Helsinki, about how geothermal energy is used in Paris and so on. A lot of exciting, sustainable and future-oriented projects in Europe.

Saddle up the horses

As you already know from an earlier post, I want to buy a new bike as at the moment I only have a rather unsuitable mountain bike for my city rides. There are many similar types of bikes -- city bikes, cruisers, comfort and commuter bikes etc. To keep things simple:

I'm looking for an urban bike.

I love old bikes, in particular the old Puch bicycles. But I also want new technology, e.g. hub dynamos. I don't know if I want a retro bike though. However, this is a discrepancy. And maybe I will end up buying a cool second-hand bike first before I settle for a robust new bike because I can't resist the temptation ;-). For sure I want fenders, a rear rack and all the other good stuff. Parking space is limited though -- actually not available. In my house there is no dedicated space to park bikes and therefore most bicycles are illegally parked in the hallway. That's why I procrastinated the need for another bike. And it's still an unsolved problem. Even parking my bike in the flat is impossible because I live on the 5th floor and the elevator is too small to fit a bike in there. Maybe I will disassemble the mountain bike and put it in our small compartment in the basement, but that's not really a satisfactory solution. I also want to have a second bike so that I can lend one to guests -- and not to collect dust :-(. But I will just go ahead now and find a solution later. You must know that I'm really an indecisive person, though settling for just one bike will be a tough choice anyway. I will keep you informed about the bikes I look at and I'm of course grateful for any advice. Today I had a look at Bobbin Bicycles from Britain. They sell some nice retro bikes with up to 5 gears that I definitely need if I don't want to push my bike uphill every day. Unfortunately some bikes only have a bottle dynamo and a rear battery powered light. The bikes in this post are from Electra (California), Gazelle (Holland) and Pashley (Britain). By the way, the Bobbin bikeshop sells great accessories too.

Cycling the world wide web

There are many things on my mind, I want to talk about. But because today was supposed to be the day of the appearance of the 44th issue of the citycycling magazine, I wanted to devote this post to all the cyclists in the UK. Unfortunately, they lost track of time there, so the magazine won't appear today but on Sunday :-(. Good for you maybe, if you didn't know it before - now you gained some time to catch up on the back issues 1 to 43 :-). If that's too much for you at once but you still want to find out about the things they talk about, you should check out the article archive.
Meanwhile I will impatiently wait for Sunday. The citycycling magazine really is that good! They have so many topics, even bicycle poems. I've listed some of my favourite articles here:

• how to fall off
  
• i don't like cycle bells
• the dangers of cycling
• the importance of being cyclist
• are cyclists saints?
• how to deal with bad drivers
• the number game, e.g. nostalgic figures and obesity
• poetry, e.g. about abandoned bikes and rain
  
• and many many more

While talking about bicycle culture in the UK, you should definitely do a few awareness tests. I think they are a great idea to make people watch out for cyclists.