Copenhagen, Bicycling Gridlock Central

As cities like Los Angeles struggle to add more bicycle bike paths to their streets, Copenhagen is actually having the opposite problem with its bicycling culture.  From The Guardian’s Amelia Hill:

Even to an untrained eye, it is immediately obvious that the city is struggling to cater for its growing number of cyclists. It is already near-impossible to find cycling parking places near main stations, while cycling lanes that seem gargantuan to British (or American) eyes – three to four meters wide compared to our 1.5 meters – are buried at certain times of day beneath the scrum of cyclists traversing the city.

So are Copenhagen and other bicycle-friendly cities like Amsterdam going to suffer a backlash with commuters returning to cars?  Hardly.  This may just sound like too much of a good thing in Denmark.  But education and enforcement, as in ticketing for bad and reckless behavior, would be a start.  Whether you are driving a Humvee or a bicycle, responsibility is key.

When one sits in highway traffic however, this sounds like a nice problem to have, and an easy one to solve.  Cities need to work on increasing the ease of bicycling, not discouraging it.  Biking in Copenhagen sounds as if it has growing pains--the alternative, more automobile traffic, is hardly an option.  And solving bicycling gridlock is far cheaper than addressing excessive cars on the roads.

If you've braved the bike paths of Copenhagen, share your thoughts.