Came back from sunny Munich on Saturday. Left 35 degrees behind to land in the pouring rain. I was stunned at the amount of cycling in Munich. The road infrastructure for bikes was excellent. Shared pavement, bike lanes, shared roads, trams with rules in place to give preference to the cyclist. Before going to Munich I was unaware of the high numbers cycling. I was impressed by the numbers of elderly people cycling. It is worth pointing out that the city is exceptionally flat, although we managed to stay in a hotel on a hill.
I had some difficulty adjusting to the left hand road system, not the cars, the bikes in the cycle lanes. It was uncanny how often I crossed a road and found myself standing or walking in the cycle lane. Shame on me!
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Meanwhile in Munich - the bike is king with 17.4% modal.
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Posted 11 years ago #
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*Rueful snort/grunt*
First thing that sprung to mind when I saw that photo was the feeder rides from POP and the Bike Breakfast.
My poor UK brain can't comprehend that a junction can be so all is full of velo without organising it in advance.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@Uberuce
Yes it takes a lot of getting used to as a UK pedestrian on holiday. Your brain is still trying to understand the left hand drive traffic system while you tend to be distracted by the volume of cycles. That is in addition to the many sites/buildings you also spend time viewing. I stopped taking photos of cyclists at junctions as it was such regular occurrence.
It is also worth noting that Lycra was not to be seen and very few cyclists wear helmets.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Meanwhile City of Edinburgh Council is 'planning' for 15% by 2020.
Is it possible??
Posted 11 years ago # -
A lot of work has been done in Munich to popularise cycling. The city authorities have for some years been running an energetic pro-cycling marketing campaign, Radlhauptstadt (in Engish, in German) and this has been documented for some years by the consistently interesting Muenchenierung blog.
I was last in Munich a few years ago and there was separated infrastructure all over the place. It was obvious that it wasn't as comprehensive or high quality as Dutch infrastructure but it's miles better than ours.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Munich has really worked wonders and Edinburgh should really be trying to emulate what they are doing there. I've been going there with work for the last 15 years or so and the amount of cycling has been steady increasing on each visit. Does appear to have really taken off in recent years perhaps this is due to the increased marketing since the infrastructure has always been pretty good.
The links from @cc above are worth looking at if only to contrast with the 'marketing' cycling is getting in Edinburgh...
Posted 11 years ago # -
I go to Hamburg every once in a while and similar scenes can be witnessed there. They have hills and probably more rain than Edinburgh as well.
Posted 11 years ago # -
This has just appeared in the Enews TdeF story
"
Edinburgh City Council has pledged to have 15 per cent of commuters cycling to work by 2020.The number of cycling commuters is estimated to be around seven per cent.
"
I'm not aware that the 15% was supposed to be just commuters - though that is clearly a more realistic target.
THOUGH - doubling in eight years?? (Don't know where the 7% came from.)
UPDATE
The target in the ATAP is 15% for commuting. I thought that was the 'all journeys' - that's 10%, which might actually be harder!
The 7% is from the Scottish Household survey - small sample. Presume CEC will be doing more detailed studies in the next few years(?)
Posted 11 years ago # -
That's the parking spot of the Director General of the European Southern Observatory (big telescopes and soon even a bigger one in Chile). The headquarters are in Garching by Munich and the director general is Dutch but it's still pretty cool.
dg-bike by Bill Harriman, on FlickrOriginal photo from here
ESO also has a few bikes for people to get quicker to other buildings. I did an internship there twice some 10 years ago I always managed to get a bike for my commuting. It was great.
I remember a friend got a fine for not having lights. Does it happen here as well?Posted 6 years ago # -
If it did it could fund a lot of cycling infrastructure :-)
Posted 6 years ago #
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