Since a while ago I have been looking at different cities and how ready they are to ride a bike on them. During this, almost, 2 years living in UK I have been going to work cycling more than the 80% of the days. My office is around 6 miles (10 km) away from my house in Ipswich. Cycling there takes between 25 and 40 minutes, depending on the weather conditions and the company (usually when you go with more people takes longer due to speaking). Getting there is quite easy and save as we have a full cycling paths network inside and surrounding the town, so as soon as you can imagine you are inside one of this cycling paths.
Today, by using 4 different videos with true histories of people that lives in Copenhagen I would like to show the people how easy and comfortable can be to go by bike to work skipping traffic jams, not looking for parking and also because it is increment friendly and healthy for yourself. Copenhagen is a city with more bikes than population and where it is not difficult to see entire families going anywhere by bike, from the dad in the shut that goes to work to the little kid that can either go with his own bike or in a special chair in his parents bike. This makes Copenhagen a place where the bike culture is deeply attached to the people and even if you go just for visiting it makes you feel that you have to ride a bike to know how would you feel in the city, kind of comparable as visiting the monuments and museums of the city.
In comparison with my home town Madrid, where cycling is basically a sport that you might do at the weekend and where if you go by bike in the city most likely you will be going through the side-way (which is illegal) because nobody respects you, where you don’t have spaces special for bikes, where it is almost impossible to combine bike and public transport because of restrictions in the metro for instance… So i wish this changes ASAP as Madrid, with all the hills that it has, can easily improve the quality of live with just a few changes in the infrastructure and car culture that we have over there. Other big cities in Spain have started to change this issue by implementing a hire bike service, where you can get a bike somewhere and drop it in a different place.
Hopefully with the Olympic Games candidature our politicians at Madrid think twice about this issue and act in consecuence.
Right, after all I have said here you can see the videos:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
