Velotopia (meaning a paradise for bike-riders) is currently being built in Amsterdam, the Ruhr in Germany and South Korea
Bike culture as a way to live more lightly and cleverly on the planet has always made sense to us at AG (we’d be very happy with a velotopia). Here’s three initiatives that show how cities are beginning to make major infrastructure developments, catering for bike-travel, and as global “signature” projects.
Amsterdam: Bikes Underwater
Amsterdam has always looked a little crazy at its main train station, with baroque forests of stacked bikes everywhere. But, as Bicycle Dutch reports, they’ve just built a new underwater bike park:
The parking facility can house 7,000 bicycles and there are also several hundreds of bicycles from the OV-Fiets shared bicycle system. As part of the much bigger project to upgrade the Amsterdam central station area this garage will help reduce the number of parked bicycles on street and in sight, which many people in the Netherlands perceive as clutter nowadays.
And from the Guardian:
Cycling experts – and Amsterdammers glad that the city waterfront is no longer a building site – greeted the project with enthusiasm. Marco te Brömmelstroet, a self-styled “cycling professor” and director of the Urban Cycling Institute at Amsterdam University, said the key to its success was in linking up forms of mobility.
“It’s a lovely project, because it’s not a cycling project,” he said. “It makes visible the real (and often invisible) success factor in Dutch mobility and spacial policy: the bike-train combination. Before, there was a temporary multistorey bike rack, which immediately flowed over. It became one of Amsterdam’s most photographed objects and the municipality was embarrassed about [it].”
There are lessons for other countries in encouraging more “last-mile” cycling by providing proper facilities at train stations, said Lucas Snaije, a research and advocacy manager at the cycling advocacy foundation BYCS. “Prioritising cycling is an incredible means of making cities more inclusive, and it also promotes community, trust and wellbeing,” he said.
From Daejon to Sejong in South Korea: 20 miles of solar-power-making bike HIGHWAY
South Korea’s 20 mile solar-power-making bike roof, from Interesting Engineering
From Interesting Engineering:
It's true that a bicycle lane in the center of a highway is an unusual location for one, especially with three lanes of traffic on either side of it, yet it works. Much like the $3.7 million SolaRoad in the Netherlands, a 230-foot road replaced by solar panels, which powers the highway's lighting system, this bike highway is a win for green energy. Its lanes produce more than enough electricity to power the lighting of the highway and the electric vehicle charging stations…
Under the overhead solar panels, cyclists use subterranean tunnels to enter and exit the path, which boosts safety tremendously since they can get on and off the bikeway without being involved in the regular traffic. Once on the route, they're shielded from the traffic on each side by barriers, and while that doesn't provide pleasant roadside views, it does offer sun protection. \
This video shows the travel from Daejeon to Sejong by bike from the air:
The Ruhr Valley, Germany: 62 miles of bike highway
From Intelligent Living:
Anyone who loves riding bicycles will very much enjoy this beautiful, car-free bicycle highway that’s currently under construction in Germany. The first 3-mile stretch of the road opened in 2015, connecting Essen and Mülheim an der Ruhr. Once the highway is complete [from these sites, it seems still ongoing - Ed.], it will stretch over 62 miles and will connect ten western cities, including Bochum, Hamm, and Duisburg, as well as four universities.
A bridge on the Ruhr RS1 cycle expressway over the Berthold-Beitz-Boulevard in Essen. RVR/Wiciok
It’s in German, but this promotional video transmits the optimistic vibe: