The Twin Cities has consistently been ranked the best large bike city in the US. Complete with a citywide bike share system, on road infrastructure and dedicated bike paths, bike culture in the cities has impressed me. Living there for the past two years has got me pretty accustomed to an active bike community that has become important to me and my life in the cities.

But this supposed ‘American bike utopia’ is nothing compared to bike culture in Europe.

One of the best aspects of life in Europe is transportation. This has been one of the most striking differences about living abroad in comparison with the US. We’ve been on this continent for over a month, and have no necessity for a car. Bikes, trains, boats, and our two feet have gotten us around sufficiently.

These older cities were not built with the automobile in mind. Although most major European cities have accommodated the rise of the automobile, Venice specifically, could not even consider shifting to an auto centric culture. Public transit (vaporetto) and walking still dominates Venetian transit. Without cars and highways being the main focus of the urban landscape in Europe, cities are much more livable and sustainable. The cities are different. They feel different.

To me, Europe feels much more sustainable. Living in a place where biking and sustainable forms of transportation reign supreme makes a far more livable city, one where there are hardly any barriers to getting where you want to go.

Besides Venice, which was un-bikeable for obvious reasons (canals, stairs, tourists, pigeons, etc.) each new location I have visited has blown me away with its bike friendliness.

Since leaving Italy, I’ve been in three different cities in Switzerland and Germany, one small (Lucerne, 81,057), one medium (Zürich, 391,359), and one large (Cologne, 1.047 million). Using these as a bit of a case study, I have been able to examine three vastly different cities. But uniting them all together, and with most of Europe as well, is there bike friendliness.

Beginning with Lucerne, this small city near the Alps has very impressive bike infrastructure for such a small city. Many people were biking, especially on their morning commute, and the bridges across the river all had bike lanes.

Visiting Zürich over midterm break further awoke me to the extreme bike friendliness of Europe. Zürich, the midsized Swiss city, is teaming with bike lanes. In fact, I spent my whole time in the city on two wheels. Many streets in the older part of town are blocked off from cars, allowing just bikes and pedestrians to easily get around, and major streets have both car, bike, and tram lanes. In Zürich specifically, two-thirds of the citizens have a bike, with an average of 1.4 bikes per household.

Most notably, Zürich has a totally free bike share system. With a 20 Franc deposit, you get a very durable city bike for the entire day, complete with a basket and lock.

Finally, Cologne’s infrastructure for a bigger city is very impressive. According to our Cologne tour guide, after World War II, the government of Cologne was deciding between making Cologne a city for bikes or a city for cars as they rebuilt. Ultimately, the automobile won, but bike lanes and bicycle culture still pervades throughout the city.

Cologne has bike lanes on most major streets, and separated bike lanes on many sidewalks and around public parks and the river. These are ideal for biking, as there is no need to deal with cars. Bike rental is available at the train station for 10 Euros a day and most stoplights have specific signals for bikes as well.

Even with all these great elements of cycling in these three cities, none of these locations are among the most bike friendly places in Europe; all still a far cry from the true bike utopias of Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

And yet they far exceed the US.

Biking in Europe is not a hobby but a major form of transit. The energy and framework surrounding biking is ingrained in citizens so it is not foreign to consider biking day to day. (The articles linked below further expand upon the differences between US cities and European cities.)

The US needs to take notes. Shifting towards biking as a major form of transportation is critical for maintaining urban livability and reducing fossil fuel reliance. Seeing how it can be done in Europe further inspires and excites me to bike more upon my return to the US. Seeing how a bike friendly community can be accomplished and is present in Europe makes it further obvious that the US has much room to grow and needs to begin to model it’s development after European bike powerhouses.

Having a bike friendly community is vital to the sustainable development of our cities. Bike lanes are so important to keep bikers safe and separate from cars and having infrastructure in place will further a cities reliance on the most sustainable form of transit.

Being as traveling and getting around a new city has been a major part of our past few weeks, this part of life in Europe has been very important to me, seeing what could be in the US and how sustainable transit reliant communities dwell in various sized cities, with the possibility of application for the Twin Cities and beyond.

 

Articles and Sources for further exploration:

https://www.thelocal.ch/20121109/zurich-rolls-out-ambitious-cycling-plan

http://www.reliance-foundry.com/blog/biking-usa-europe#gref

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/15/us-europe-biking

https://qz.com/160598/eleven-reasons-why-bicycling-in-the-us-is-exceptionally-dangerous/