Malmö, Sweden just made my short list of future vacation spots
And it’s a pretty short list.
Malmö is a city of 300,000 just a short hop from Copenhagen but a city well worth visiting in its own right. Full of history, sports, museums, architecture and boasting its own token castle as well as a thriving theater scene, Malmö also hosts a booming bicycling culture that will give cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm a fierce bike ride for their money.
Malmö already has 255 miles (410 kilometers) of bicycle paths, outpacing Copenhagen’s network by a few miles. Bicycling has accelerated the past several years to the point at which 40 percent of all work related activities and 30 percent of all transports occurs via bicycles. Sensor systems at key intersections flip traffic signals to green if automobile traffic is light and a bicyclist approaches.
Now Sweden’s transportation authority has approved a four line bicycle superhighway (or a bicycle-bahn?) between Malmö and Lund, a nearby university town. The 10.5 mile link would be for the most part adjacent to rail tracks, feature exits but no intersections and offer wind protection from hedges. Bicycle service stations would also be included on this link. The proposed highway would also have links to bicycle and pedestrian paths to other towns in this southern tip of Sweden.
Article here.
–EBR
February 7th, 2012 at 11:06 pm
Yay! Eric is still alive!
February 14th, 2012 at 7:30 pm
It’s a 10 mile rail trail. We have literally hundreds of these in the USA.
February 21st, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Ok Richard Masoner – do you think that comparable cities (population wise) such as Cincinatti, Lexington, Corpus Christi, Riverside (Ca) and Pittsburgh have 255 miles of bike lanes?
February 24th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
We do have rails-to-trails segments but the thing about this is it is purely utilitarian — it is purely for getting from A to B. And it prioritizes the bicycle entirely, just as a freeway prioritizes the car entirely. No intersections, hedges, etc. We don’t have that in the U.S.A. anywhere I am aware of, and we certainly don’t have hundreds of them.