June 18, 2023. 

I am incredibly excited to head back to Denmark because living in Copenhagen was what first got me interested in planning. I grew up in South Georgia and went to college in North Carolina, both of which were very car dependent places. My hometown still doesn't even have a single bus line (despite having a population of 50,000 plus a 16,000-student university), sidewalks are almost nonexistent, and biking is very dangerous. Going to Copenhagen in 2015 was my first experience with walkable, bikeable cities with great transit. The feeling of freedom and mobility that I experienced while living in Copenhagen stuck with me, and I started to question why things are the way they are in the United States. I'm excited to learn what elements of Danish bike planning have already been and can be implemented in Portland. I hope to learn more about the history of Danish bike planning to bolster my hope that there is still hope for the U.S. I am also interested to know what the particular challenges to bike planning in Denmark. Vi ses snart, alle sammen!  

Sunday, June 25, 2023. 

Day 1 — Initial Observations

 My initial observation of biking in Denmark is that a wider range of people seems to bike than in Portland. Very young children are loaded up in cargo bikes or on car seats mounted onto bikes, and once they are old enough to bike, the kids are on their own bikes biking around Copenhagen next to their parents. You also see older people biking in Copenhagen than you generally do in Portland. The gender divide seems to be fairly even. People bike in whatever clothes they are wearing for the day, and I've hardly ever seen anyone biking in Lycra or other sportswear in Denmark. The general pace of biking seems slower than it is in Portland. That made me wonder how e-bikes can be successfully introduced into the biking ecosystem in Copenhagen. I ride an e-bike in Portland, and the largest section of my commute to campus is on the Clinton Greenway, which allows me to ride at my max speed of roughly 20 mph for long stretches of time. I don't think I would want to ride an e-bike in Copenhagen even if given the chance because I'd be worried about effectively stopping and starting with traffic in the city. 

Miguel and I sat in Christiania this evening to observe bike behavior in that particular part of town. Christiania is an interesting area for many reasons, but from a transportation point of view, it's interesting because there aren't any private vehicles. In fact, cargo bikes are often referred to as Christiania bikes in Copenhagen because they have been popular in the area since the 1970s and are pretty much the only way to carry stuff in and out of Christiania since cars are not allowed. While we were watching, we noticed far more men than women biking by (and more men in the area in general). Many people got off their bikes and walked them or left them at the racks near the entrances. I think this is because Christiania is a destination instead of a through-route and because people want to respect the community living there.  

Monday, June 26, 2023. 

Day 2 — Cycle Superhighways & Metro

I found the Metro presentations to be super interesting. I was interested to learn that there is a policy in Denmark that all new developments must be connected by rail to the city. I would have liked to have learned more about that and if the policy was prompted by the desire to not increase car traffic between new developments and the city center or by the practical consideration that it's easier to build a new rail line before development starts in earnest or by something else. I appreciated the conversation about balancing the decreased CO2 emissions of having a robust public transportation system that is competitive with cars in terms of travel times and convenience with the enormous amount of CO2 emitted by building a new heavy rail line. I was glad that Caleb asked the question about labor negotiations associated with the driverless metro and found it very interesting that the people who check for tickets are all trained to drive the metro in case of a system failure. I enjoyed Margo's work on increasing green space and biodiversity on the metro embankments. I appreciated the "why not" section of the presentation as much as I appreciated the sections about why this work is important. Practically speaking, it seems quite tricky to delineate whose responsibility the embankments and the associated upkeep would be. That reminded me of conversations we had in my bike/ped planning class in the spring about generating buy-in from community members for public plazas in part because they will be responsible for the future upkeep of any non-permanent additions (e.g., plants). 

(I wrote this one about Monday's visit because I got mixed up on the days) 

Thursday, June 29, 2023. 

Day 4 — Nørrebro Bike Tour & Traffic Safety Talk

Even though a lot of Copenhageners have basically their own mini park inside of their apartment blocks, parks are still important places for recreation, exercise, fresh air, and biodiversity. I really love Assistens Kirkegård, the cemetery in Nørrebro. I think it's a phenomenal idea to use cemeteries as green spaces, especially in areas that have limited green space (but honestly anywhere). I loved the mature trees in the area. I know that practically speaking there are issues with roots when you're digging up the ground to bury people, but I'm sure that there are trees that have relatively small root areas even when fully grown.  There was a noticeable drop in temperature when we biked into Assistens Kirkegård on Wednesday when it was sunny outside. I think it's important to keep in mind to get community feedback about what constitutes appropriate use of a cemetery as discussed by Rasmus, but I think everyone has something to gain by cemeteries becoming more welcoming places, including mourners. 

I think the Rose City Cemetery in Cully in Northeast Portland could be redesigned to be used as a park space as well as a space for mourners. It is a really gigantic green space in a part of town that doesn't have much green space (other than the Rose City Golf Course, which is public and can be used for non-golf purposes but might be a bit alienating to people who don't feel like they'd be welcome in that space). My friend and I walked through the Rose City Cemetery last summer while eating ice cream we got on Fremont, and it was very hot in the area because there weren't many trees or other options for shade. It didn't seem like it would be a comfortable space to spend time mourning or celebrating someone's life. The cemetery includes a Japanese Cemetery, and one of the reviews online mentioned that it is an important part of Black history in the area. It would be important to do community outreach to guide any sort of changes to the area, but my (admittedly uneducated) opinion is that more trees and possibly some signs or plaques with information of the history of the area would be a generally popular way to improve the area and make it more of multi-purpose space. 

Friday, June 30, 2023. 

Day 5 — Nordhavn Bike Tour & Urban13 Visit

I thought the Nordhavn visit brought up very interesting questions about development and sustainability. The area has a lot of sustainable elements, like green roofs, reuse and recycling stations, and very limited street parking. And Copenhagen is experiencing a major shortage of housing, in part because of the huge number of people moving to Copenhagen every month. At the same time, the construction sector is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. Even with green roofs and solar panels, the concrete needed for that much new housing has a huge impact on the environment. Nordhavn is denser than a lot of development in the US, but it’s still not super dense, especially when you take into account that a lot of the units being built are really large units meant for rich people. I don’t know what the solution is when there is a need for more housing in a particular area, but building new housing wrecks the environment. 

In the afternoon, we visited Urban13, a multi-use space under a motorway, and talked to Bettina Werner. The space was a really interesting use of space for different activities serving different sectors of the population in the area. The whole visit was fascinating, but I was particularly intruiged by Bettina's critique of the metro circle line. Earlier in the week we learned that Metro plans to build a new metro line that connects Nordhavn and the planned development on Refshaleøen, which as far as I can tell will entail tunneling under the strait. Tunneling has very high levels of carbon emissions, and I would imagine that there are even more environmental impacts for tunneling under the water. It’s important for new developments to have public transportation connections so that people aren’t driving to and from them. But is underground heavy rail the best option for transit connections? I would need more data to be convinced of that. I appreciated Bettina’s critique of the metro circle line and am starting to think more critically about the future plans to further expand the metro. 

July 9th edit — I took the metro at 3:00 a.m. this morning to get to the airport, and it was full of people, mostly people going home from a night out with a few going to the airport. The headways were 12 minutes. I would imagine that being driverless makes the metro easier to operate all night long, and I'm definitely thankful that it does. So take my earlier critique with a pinch of salt. 

Monday, July 3, 2023. 

Day 8 — Aalborg Bike Tour

Today we got into Aalborg and had a bike tour of the city. I was struck by how many fewer bikes we saw in Aalborg than Copenhagen. I feel like a small town like Aalborg would be the perfect size for biking, especially since it’s a university town. But I guess it’s also easier to drive when you’re in a town that isn’t as dense. I’d like to see Aalborg during rush hour outside of summer vacation in order to get a better handle on how people get to work and school.  

There were some really great bike facilities in the center of town, especially along the harbor. Those quickly gave way to mixed bike/car traffic (though I don’t actually know if bikes normally use those routes since we were the only ones in those bike lanes). When we took a wrong turn and went farther outside of the city, there was just a strip of paint on the road to demarcate the bike lane. That area felt quite unsafe to bike on. 

Tuesday, July 4, 2023. 

Day 9 — COWI Visit and Walking Tour

We started the day with a couple of lectures at COWI, a major Denmark-based engineering firm, and ended it with a walking tour of Aalborg. I found the lecture on bus rapid transit very interesting. In the spring I took public transportation planning with Dr. Golub, and that converted be to a BRT fan. Now that I know how great of an option BRT can be and how much less expensive/environmentally detrimental it is to build, I’m surprised that there aren’t more BRT lines in Denmark already. I thought it was very interesting that the final decision to build BRT in Aalborg was not because of the strengths that BRT has as a public transit option but because the state government decided they weren’t going to fund any more LRT projects. It highlights how political the process of transportation planning is. It was a smart move on the part of COWI to do a proposed plan and an EIA for both BRT and LRT at the same time so that either option was ready to go. I thought the bus grave to prevent cars from driving on the BRT route was so cool. I also cannot imagine it ever in a million years being implemented in the US. If there was an armed protester in Portland blocking off the new bus/bike lane, then I can only imagine how much worse things would be if we dug a hole in the road to trap car drivers. I love the idea though. I think that’s exactly the kind of changes we need to be making to discourage car travel if we’re going to save our planet. 

I also really appreciated the conversation about the challenges of choosing sustainable projects. Like René mentioned, it’s one thing to choose to no longer select projects that explicitly have to do with fossil fuels and another thing entirely to think about the emissions of construction as a whole when you’re an engineering firm. I would be interested to know more about the research into greener concrete that is currently being done, given the huge emissions associated with concrete production. 

Thursday, July 5, 2023. 

Day 11 — Malmö Walking Tour & Vision Zero Talk 

Today we had a walking tour of Malmö with Martin from Gehl Architects and had a talk with Lars Ekman from the Swedish Transportation Authority. I had learned some about Vision Zero in my bike/ped planning class, but I appreciated hearing it from someone in the country that the program originated from. Vision Zero is exciting to me because it represents a major paradigm shift that has been successfully implemented in some countries. It requires totally rethinking how we understand traffic safety and moves away from a focus on individuals to a focus on systems, which I think is necessary in a lot of different areas. I appreciated Lars’s transparency about the fact that he used to teach the older model of traffic safety but has now embraced Vision Zero. It’s a small example of how change is possible! I love how human errors and human fragility are taken as a given in the framework. No system will ever work if it relies on humans always being perfect. 

The conversation around corporate responsibility was very interesting. consumers have a huge amount of influence over the market, and in Sweden, consumers seem very concerned about ethics. While there are of course people in the US that are concerned about ethical consumption, I don’t think that’s as widespread of a cultural value as it appears to be in Sweden. Perhaps this is related to income levels? A lot of people don’t get paid enough to choose more ethically-made products because they’re more expensive. Or maybe it has to do with a mode of thinking that is more individualistic than it is in welfare states like Sweden. I think it might be necessary to use more regulation and incentives to get corporations to be more responsible and ethical.