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COPENHAGEN —
Soren Jensen sold his car six
years ago and joined the riv-
ers of rolling humanity who
bicycle through Copenha-
gen every day. He quickly
lost about 50 pounds on his
hour-a-day bike commutes,
while saving time and a
small fortune.
“I had a Mercedes, but it
sat in the garage all the time
because it was so much eas-
ier to get everywhere by
bike,” said Jensen, a 51-year-
old who works in a down-
town investment bank. He
got rid of the car, which was
costing him about $500 a
month, after moving from
the suburbs to the city and
finding that he didn’t need it
anymore.
“I don’t miss it at all,” the
6-foot-7 Jensen added before
setting off on the ride home
on a warm summer evening.
He said he’d been looking
forward to it all afternoon.
“The hour on the bike is time
I don’t have to spend in a
gym. I got healthier and look
forward every day to all that
fresh air. Life’s good.”
Cycling has been a part of
the good life in Copenhagen
for decades. It started its
modern comeback in 1973 af-
ter global oil price shocks hit
motorists in this once-grimy
industrial city hard. Despite
windy and rainy conditions
for much of the year, biking
in Copenhagen became in-
creasingly popular in the
1980s and 1990s, thanks to a
build-it-and-they-will-come
mentality — and plenty of
public clamoring for a net-
work of wide, segregated cy-
cling lanes elevated a few
inches above street level.
In recent years, cycling
has enjoyed yet another
surge in popularity — the re-
sult of constantly improving
bike lanes coupled with fears
of climate change. Global
warming presents an exist-
ential threat to this Baltic
Sea port, which lies just a few
feet above sea level.
Copenhagen’s city gov-
ernment reported in early
July that 62% of its residents
are now commuting to work
or school by bike — an in-
crease from 52% in 2015 and
36% in 2012, when the City
Council launched a 14-year-
plan to improve the quality,
safety and comfort of cy-
cling. Those bikers pedal an
estimated total of 800,
miles a day. According to lo-
cal reports, there are more
bikes (675,000) than people
in Copenhagen, and fivetimes as many bicycles as
cars.
As part of Copenhagen’s
attention-grabbing pledge
to become the world’s first
carbon-neutral capital city
by 2025, there has been a
spate of activity in recent
years to improve the already
impressive biking infra-
structure. The aims are to
lure more riders, lower car-
bon emissions and help the
Danish capital stay ahead
of Amsterdam and other cit-
ies.
“We’re a biking city, and
we want to be the best in the
world,” Klaus Mygind, a
member of the City Council
in charge of transport policy,
said in an interview. “We
have a lot of work to do still.
I’m not a car hater. But I
think we need to do all we
can to stop most car travelinto the city. We need more
bikes, fewer cars.”
Mygind, 63, a member of
the ruling far-left Socialist
People’s Party, believes
many more Danes are
switching to cycling because
they feel a responsibility to
future generations.
“I do think the climate
change problem is what has
been motivating even more
to take the bike,” he said.
“They think that if they’re
riding their bike instead of in
a car, they’re helping to fight
the problem in a small and
personal way.”
All walks of life can be
seen pedaling against the
wind during the morning
and evening rush hours.
With lanes wide enough for
two and sometimes even
three bikes, riders are for the
most part cordial and care-ful with nary a road hog in
the peloton. It’s not unusual
to see lawyers, doctors and
business professionals in
suits or dresses standing on
their bikes at red lights next
to butchers, bakers and
clerks.
“I think biking is good for
the society — it keeps people
together,” Mygind said.
The advent of electric
bikes, which has helped a
growing number of seniors
join the cycling craze, and
the more recent arrival this
year of electric scooters,
which have attracted hip-
sters to the bike paths, have
also been contributing fac-
tors to the recent boom in
two-wheeled travel.
“You see a lot more elec-
tric bikes out there these
days,” said Lars Mathiasen,
a 46-year-old podcaster and
video journalist who hasn’t
owned a car since 2002. He
gets around with his three
children sitting in the front
of his box-like cargo bike.
“You see more people who
would probably struggle to
ride a regular bike due to a
bad knee or bad back or be-
cause they’re overweight are
now out there riding electric
bikes.”
To make commuting by
bike even easier, faster and
more comfortable, Copen-
hagen has built 17 new
bridges dedicated for bicy-
cles over the city’s harbors
and canals since 2006 — 15 of
them in the last four years.
Also, a series of more than a
dozen supercykelsti— or
cycle superhighways — have
been set up to create higher-
speed, traffic-light-free bike
paths from the suburbs that
stretch up to 15 miles.
Taken together, the ef-
forts to bolster the cycling
infrastructure while making
driving and parking into the
city prohibitively expensive
and difficult send strong sig-
nals to commuters about
where the priorities lie. (A
parking ticket can cost asmuch as $80.)
“Cycling has truly ex-
ploded in the last 10 years,”
said Yael Bassan, a 29-year-
old entrepreneur whose Co-
penhagen Bicycles shop
rents out about 2,000 bikes a
day — nearly triple the num-
ber of four years ago. “It has
even become an important
tourist attraction in its own
right. People come to Co-
penhagen from around the
world to do some serious cy-
cling in the city, or they just
want to ride around for a few
hours to get a few pictures to
be able to prove they were cy-
cling in Copenhagen.”
Bassan, who bikes about
12 miles a day herself, said
children grow up with bikes
from a very early age — a bit
like Canadians who learn to
skate from the time they can
walk. “I’ve never had a car,”
she said. “It doesn’t make
any sense in Copenhagen.”
There are more than 250
miles of bike lanes in Copen-
hagen, according to the Dan-
ish Foreign Ministry, and
some 600 miles of bike paths
in the greater Copenhagen
area. (By contrast, Los An-
geles, a vastly bigger and
more populous city, has
about 145 miles of free-
standing bike paths or sepa-
rated bike lanes.) Nine out of
10 Danes own a bike.
“I go everywhere by bike
and don’t think I’ve driven a
car in at least 15 years,” said
Sune Scheibye, 43, who
works at Copenhagen’s
modern new Amager Bakke
waste incinerator, which
doubles as a power plant
and features a 450-yard-long
ski slope down its roof. “It’s
like getting dressed or
brushing your teeth in the
morning. You get on your
bike every day because it’s
there. So no one really ever
asks themselves if it’s better
to bike or drive a car. Biking
is what we do.”Kirschbaum is a special
correspondent.Copenhagen: A city on two wheels
IMPROVED BIKE LANES and climate change concerns have driven a surge in
cycling in the Danish capital. The city says 62% of its residents commute by bike.AlamyCycling, for decades a
way of life here, has
become the preferred
mode of commuting.
By Erik Kirschbaum