Reading passage
At eight o'clock on a weekday morning in Copenhagen, the traffic looks different from that of almost any other capital city. Streams of people on bicycles flow along wide, separated lanes, passing buses and queuing cars. The bicycle, once seen as a toy or a poor person's necessity, has returned to the centre of urban life. Around the world, city governments are rediscovering what the Danes and the Dutch never forgot: for short journeys, the bicycle is often the fastest, cheapest, and healthiest way to travel.
The bicycle dominated city streets at the start of the twentieth century, but the arrival of cheap cars pushed it aside. By the 1960s, many cities had removed cycling space to make room for motor traffic, and riding a bike had become dangerous and unfashionable. The turning point came with the oil crisis of 1973, when fuel prices jumped and governments began to question car dependent planning. Denmark and the Netherlands invested seriously in cycle routes, while most other countries watched without acting.
Decades later, the results of that investment are visible. In Copenhagen, sixty two percent of residents commute to work or study by bicycle, and the city maintains more than four hundred kilometres of protected cycle tracks. These tracks are physically separated from cars by kerbs or parked vehicles, a design that research shows is the single most important factor in persuading nervous beginners to ride. Where protected lanes appear, cycling numbers typically rise within months.
Safety is the concern most often raised by people who do not cycle, and the statistics support a surprising answer. Studies in several countries have found what researchers call the safety in numbers effect: as the number of cyclists in a city doubles, the risk per rider falls by roughly a third, because drivers grow used to watching for bicycles. Helmets and lights help individuals, but the greatest protection comes from simply having more bicycles on the road.
The health case for urban cycling is equally strong. A major British study that followed more than two hundred and fifty thousand commuters found that those who cycled to work had a significantly lower risk of heart disease and early death than those who drove or took public transport. Regular cycling also improves mental health, and it cleans the air for everyone: a person who switches from car to bicycle for a five kilometre commute avoids producing roughly three hundred kilograms of carbon dioxide a year.
Cycling also makes economic sense. A good city bicycle costs less to buy and maintain in a year than a car costs in a month, and cities benefit too, since cycle tracks are far cheaper to build than roads or rail lines. Space is another saving: the area needed to park one car can hold at least eight bicycles. Meanwhile, the bicycle industry itself supports hundreds of thousands of jobs in Europe alone, in manufacturing, sales, repair, and tourism.
Electric bicycles are now removing the remaining excuses. Hills, headwinds, long distances, and arriving at work sweaty once kept many people off two wheels, but a battery assisted bike flattens the hills and shortens the journey, while still providing moderate exercise. Sales of e-bikes have grown rapidly, especially among older riders, and delivery companies in dense cities increasingly find that e-bikes beat vans through traffic.
Obstacles remain, of course. Bicycle theft discourages riders in many cities, and few offices provide the secure parking and showers that commuters want. Bad weather is another frequent objection, although experienced cyclists point out that proper clothing solves most of it. City councils are slowly responding to these needs with secure bike stores at stations, theft registration schemes, and small grants for workplace facilities. As more cities adopt the idea of the fifteen minute city, in which daily needs lie within a short walk or ride from home, the humble bicycle looks set to shape urban life for decades to come.