Danes on Bikes

I miss my bicycle.  Years ago, I lived in Gainesville, Florida, and as a poor graduate student, a car was out of the question.  I had just moved from Baltimore, where I got by without a car because downtown was compact enough to walk around, and when venturing out, I could take water taxis to Fell's Point, a free shuttle to UMBC, or the light rail to the northern suburbs.  Then I moved to Gainesville, and for $300, I bought a bike that I loved.  Gainesville was small enough to navigate with a bike, and I did:  I bought my groceries home by bicycle, rode to a nearby wildlife reserve, maneuvered around the alligator ponds, and I even rode it to the DMV for my driver's license. 

 

When I moved back to California, I shipped the bike home, and started a job near downtown San Jose.  I mapped out the safest route from Cupertino, and found that I had wide bicycle lanes guiding me along the entire route. I saved so much time, as I had two workouts daily and could skip the gym.  Fast forward years later, and I'm in Los Angeles.  We're considering buying bicycles and I'm researching the models.  But the those thoughts scare me . . . driving down Beverly Boulevard, which hasn't been paved since, well, Eisenhower was president . . . to Beverly Hills, where I get could hit by a skinny 90 pound woman talking on her cell phone while driving her Hummer . . . it wouldn't be her fault I guess, cause her face had been stretched so tight she couldn't see me . . . and then getting ticketed in West Hollywood, which apparently bans biking on sidewalks.  I'm not very motivated to move to two wheels.  Two feet seem safer.

 

A few days ago I listened to a BBC report on how Copenhagen aims to become the world's "best city" for cyclists.  I'm steaming green with envy.  About one-third of Copenhagen's residents already commute by bicycle; now the city wants half of its commuting trips to be by pedal in 2015.  It's an ambitious plan, but keeping in mind its hosting of the United Nations Climate Conference in December, and considering Denmark's leadership in wind technology, its a logical shift for this city of 520,000.  The Danes are putting their money where their mouths are:  the city is retrofitting two bridges to make them more bicycle friendly, and cycling lanes will be widened.  But this is what grabbed me:  bicyclists have priority over automobiles . . . and pedestrians!  Biking is not a hobby:  it's a way of life.  Meanwhile, Copenhagen often tops the lists of "most livable" cities in the world.

 

More bicycles are also a sight that I'd love to see in my City of Angels.  Granted, Copenhagen is a compact city, and such plans don't come in a vacuum; Copenhagen has groomed its citizens' lifestyles for such a change since the 1970s.  Los Angeles, unfortunately, is the city where cars are equated with freedom.  But as I look outside at the hazy horizon, sit in traffic at 2pm in the afternoon, and avoid walking down Sunset because I can feel the particulates when I breathe, I wonder:  freedom from what? 

 

We're always debating how to widen streets or add more freeways, while figuring out how to sequester disappearing state and federal dollars for a subway that will be built in, say, 2030.  So let's start with some simpler measures:  allow bicyclists to ride on the sidewalk (who walks in LA, anyway?); let's get some bike lanes installed on our major streets; ban left turns during rush hours; and instead of cash for clunkers, why not breaks for bikes?  Let's get rid of the sales tax on bicycles, and perhaps even give a small rebate to those buy bikes.  We could conquer a few issues at once:  air quality, traffic, and of course, obesity.