MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 18 August 2007
Northern Europe:
traveler's delight
Marie
and I just returned from four glorious weeks in Amsterdam, Copenhagen,
Stockholm, and points in between.
These are exciting urban places with a quality of life that's hard to
match, real cities full of people day and night, and not the hollowed-out
shells that most American cities have become.
The
transportation systems of northern Europe are a marvel. We traveled by train, one of the many
reasons we love visiting Europe.
Bicycles and pedestrians fill the city streets, streetcars and buses and
subways are everywhere, while cars face numerous restrictions and are generally
granted only one lane each way inside the city limits.
For
me, the trip's highpoint was a three-day bicycle tour around Bornholm, a Danish
island off Sweden's southern tip.
The island is an idyl of people-oriented small towns, forests, and rural
vistas networked with bicycle trails.
Such tourist tours are common in Europe.
All
three cities rent bicycles. These
"city bikes" are very popular, but the system works best in cities
having strict borrower registration systems that prevent theft and damage to
bicycles. A recent London Times article notes that the green-minded mayor of Paris
has just sprinkled his city with 10,000 self-service bicycles at 750
racks. Critics predicted the
experiment would fail, but within three weeks a new pedaling army was taming
the city's fierce traffic. This
project is being closely watched by London, where Mayor Ken Livingston has
asked his transportation department to develop a similar scheme. Both mayors are already famous for
levying $8 per day "congestion pricing" fees on all cars and trucks
entering the central city, for widening bike and bus lanes, and for banning
SUVs from city streets. In a
hopeful domestic note, New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg supports similar
plans.
In
an effort that's similar to the rented city bicycles, Fayetteville's "Bike
City Recyclery and Infoshop" renovates old donated bikes and sells them at
low prices "to provide an affordable, pollution-free mode of
transportation." They are
located where the bike trail crosses Center Street. Phone them at 521-2020.
Copenhagen
represents the transportation future.
We rented bicycles and, with the exception of the extensive pedestrian
zones, pedaled all over the center of this compact, bustling city. There's a clear transportation
hierarchy here: Pedestrians first,
bikes second, buses and trolleys third, and cars last. The "traffic-flow mentality"
that plagues U.S. transportation engineers is mostly suppressed in Europe. Every intersection has pedestrian
crossing lights in all directions, and waiting times are short. These short light-change times favor
pedestrians and inhibit the smooth flow of cars. Sidewalks are always wide and, even in the suburbs, always
on both sides of all streets.
Copenhagen's
marvelous bicycle lanes line both sides of all major streets, and at least one
side of all minor streets. Bike
lanes are usually one-way (with the traffic), and most importantly they are
lined with a curb on both sides so that neither the pedestrians on the right
nor the cars on the left can stray into the bike lanes. Parking in bike lanes is strictly
forbidden. All intersections
include bright blue bicycle-crossing lanes, along with separate
pedestrian-crossing lanes, as well as a separate set of small traffic lights
for bicycles that allow bicycles and cars to cross at different times. This scheme allowed us to pedal freely
and safely through dense city traffic.
Signs
posted all over town announce that Copenhagen plans, by 2015, to have 50
percent of its commuters on bicycles and for 80 percent of bicyclers to report
that they "feel safe.".
This is a far cry from Fayetteville and other U.S. cities where city
streets are not safe for bicyclers.
Europeans have found that the key to bicycling safety, and therefore the
key to getting large numbers of people on bicycles, is dedicated bicycle lanes
on the streets or sidewalks of the central city. Despite a commendable emphasis on separate trails in
Fayetteville, we still don't have separate lanes on, say, Dickson Street, Block
Street, and so forth. Until people
can bicycle between the library, campus, square, post office, etc. on dedicated
lanes, bicyclers will not feel safe.
Copenhagen's bicyclers are not athletic, leotard-clad young people who
get out in the street and compete with cars, but are instead people of all ages
going about their daily business who want a separate, safe place to pedal. Fayetteville will have succeeded in
bicycle transportation when we see ordinary people of all ages, especially
including older people, going about their normal routines on bikes.
Although
everyplace in the central city was easily reachable by foot or bicycle, buses
and trolleys are ubiquitous in Copenhagen and got us out to an art museum in a
nice suburb quickly and pleasantly.
Many streets have designated bus lanes that cars cannot use.
The
rest of the industrialized world is moving toward a bright transportation
future, while America remains chained to the automobile. It's clear that Fayetteville should be
moving in the direction of regional rail, a dense system of regional buses,
green highway medians, narrow city streets, bicycle and walking trails,
dedicated bicycle lanes, sidewalks on both sides of every street, and traffic
calming. I'm happy to note that
Mayor Coody and most of our city council support such good moves. Wrong directions include street
widening, five lane highways, three lane highways, flat parking lots, excessive
curb cuts, and the further facilitation of car-oriented shopping at malls and
big box stores.
America's car culture needs to remove its blinders and look around the world at what more advanced nations are doing about transportation.