Case: London’s Transformation
“Much of the opposition to cycling schemes is based on a belief that motor traffic is like rainwater and the roads are the drains for it. If you narrow the pipe, these people say, it will flood. If you block one route, they say, the same amount of traffic will simply flow down the next easiest route. But that seldom or never actually happens in practice. Because traffic isn’t a force of nature. It’s a product of human choice.”
Andrew Gilligan, London’s Cycling Provisioner (TfL, 2016a)
As seen in the description of the eight different case cities described in the chapter ‘Case: Matrix’, plenty of European cities have managed to raise their level of cycling, through investment in infrastructure, campaigns and policy.
When attempting to create a higher level of cycling, critics often point out that the small scale of Amsterdam and Copenhagen minimises the transferability to larger cities (Aldred, 2011). Thereby insinuating that attempting to build bicycle infrastructure and create a cycling culture in a large-scale city is improbable. In the case of London, the largest city in Europe, this statement is beginning to prove untrue. Through a 10+ year intervention on public streets, public image and campaigning, …show more content…
Getting bicycle infrastructure built can be considered the first main step; the next one is evaluation of how it works in the given context. The city can be viewed as a laboratory, since we won’t know what happens until we physically try it at the given location, leaving us the opportunity to evaluate. Syrak Lund points to how design mistakes are still being made on bicycle infrastructure in Denmark, and how refining the Danish way of how to tackle bicycle infrastructure has taken 40-50 years. Time is an important
“Much of the opposition to cycling schemes is based on a belief that motor traffic is like rainwater and the roads are the drains for it. If you narrow the pipe, these people say, it will flood. If you block one route, they say, the same amount of traffic will simply flow down the next easiest route. But that seldom or never actually happens in practice. Because traffic isn’t a force of nature. It’s a product of human choice.”
Andrew Gilligan, London’s Cycling Provisioner (TfL, 2016a)
As seen in the description of the eight different case cities described in the chapter ‘Case: Matrix’, plenty of European cities have managed to raise their level of cycling, through investment in infrastructure, campaigns and policy.
When attempting to create a higher level of cycling, critics often point out that the small scale of Amsterdam and Copenhagen minimises the transferability to larger cities (Aldred, 2011). Thereby insinuating that attempting to build bicycle infrastructure and create a cycling culture in a large-scale city is improbable. In the case of London, the largest city in Europe, this statement is beginning to prove untrue. Through a 10+ year intervention on public streets, public image and campaigning, …show more content…
Getting bicycle infrastructure built can be considered the first main step; the next one is evaluation of how it works in the given context. The city can be viewed as a laboratory, since we won’t know what happens until we physically try it at the given location, leaving us the opportunity to evaluate. Syrak Lund points to how design mistakes are still being made on bicycle infrastructure in Denmark, and how refining the Danish way of how to tackle bicycle infrastructure has taken 40-50 years. Time is an important