Last night we ate dinner at Madkubben (seen in the photo here; it was awesome), a few minute walk from our hotel.
We've been marveling at the bicycling scene since the moment of arrival when our airport cab driver (upon dropping us at our hotel) kindly but sternly warned us to not stand in the bicycle lane. The throng of bicycles seen in this photo is pretty typical. Note the lack of car parking. That's typical too. Easy to see in this picture that the loss of parking the bike lane represents is easily overcome by the density of bike parking on the sidewalk. Here's some other observations:
- On average, street traffic has about as many bicycles as cars, perhaps slightly more bicycles.
- Main streets include dedicated bicycle lanes demarcated by a slight pavement elevation difference that motor vehicles never violate, whether for parking, driving or letting off passengers.
- Very few cyclists wear helmets.
- Most bikes are Chevrolets-like: basic, unremarkable, functional.
- Cyclists uniformly honor all traffic signals and they stay in the designated bicycle lanes just as the motorists stay out of them. My San Francisco friends outraged at the lack of this honor by SF cyclists, please take heart. My unproven theory here is that as the city traffic authority treats cyclists as first- rather than second-class citizens, those cyclists in turn will begin to act like first-class citizens and follow rules (at least as well as motorists do ;-).
