Australian cities 'playing catch-up' on modern urban planning and bike lanes, Velo-City conference told

Updated

Australia is playing catch-up on urban planning, says an international consultant who thinks bike commuting makes financial sense.

Mikael Colville-Andersen says Australian cities are years behind others around the world in providing infrastructure for bikes.

"My perspective is global," Mr Colville-Andersen says: "You guys are playing catch-up when it comes to modern urban planning."

Based in Copenhagen, the urban mobility consultant has been in Adelaide this week for the Velo-City conference, which has brought together town planners and transport designers from around the globe.

Mr Colville-Andersen concedes he is not into riding a bike for recreation, but says he uses one to commute because it saves time, money and is good for his health.

Copenhagen is regarded by many as a model of integrated transport, with 36 per cent of commuters riding bikes and just 28 per cent using cars.

"It is rational and it makes sense. It is not some big eco-hippy trip we are going on, it is just people planning for bikes, making infrastructure for them because it makes financial sense," he said.

While some view transport planning as a dull profession, Mikael Colville-Andersen brought some glamour to it by posting what is now called "the photo that launched a million bikes".

It was an unintended consequence, simply a photo he took and posted on his blog of a woman riding her bike to work.

The image went viral as people around the world became entranced by the simplicity of Copenhagen’s cycling culture.

Mr Colville-Andersen then coined phrases such as "cycle chic" and "Copenhagenize" to describe cycling aimed at the mainstream commuter rather than the dedicated recreational rider.

Wrong people leading the charge

"The experience you have here in Australia compared to the rest of the world is you have a lot of avid cyclists doing the avid cyclist advocacy for cycling, which is wrong," the international consultant said.

"They like riding bikes, they are going to ride anyway, they are not the right people to speak for the 99 per cent.

"The way we work is looking at who could be riding a bicycle right now and we know people will ride if there is infrastructure and you guys don’t have very much of it at all in this country."

Some argue cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam are suited to cycling because of narrow streets and dense living, but cycling infrastructure is booming in larger cities such as Paris and New York.

Janette Sadik-Khan was the transport commissioner for New York for more than five years during a time when the city built 640 kilometres of bike lanes and made 10,000 bikes available for use through its Citibike program.

"The thing that I am most proud of is that we have the safest streets in New York City history," she said.

"Our streets were really in suspended animation for 50 years and people didn't really look at what a street could be and how you could change it to build in better ways to get around."

While in Adelaide, the international delegates were given a taste of the city's growing bike infrastructure.

They rode through the CBD including along busy Frome Street which recently has been redesigned with separated bike lanes.

The changes have been controversial among locals and have raised the ire of some drivers.

Mr Colville-Andersen has little time for their views.

"It is a paradigm shift and if people are against this tendency then 'suck it up buttercup' because this is what is happening now in Europe, America and South America ... and you guys are far behind in this country," he said.

More on the story on 730SA on Friday night on ABC1

Topics: urban-development-and-planning, exercise-and-fitness, community-and-society, adelaide-5000, sa, australia

First posted