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Oslo is a city that is changing quickly. After electing a left-wing majority government in 2015, the city has implemented a number of sweeping changes to make their streets safer and to increase cycling numbers. It’s still very much a work in progress, with new street design guidelines there’s a lot of good progress in the right direction.
Will Oslo become the next great cycling city?
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References & Further Reading
Street Design Manual for Oslo
https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/Street-Design-Manual-for-Oslo?language=en_US
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27 Comments
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It was great visiting Oslo, and it was incredible to see how much it had changed in the 5 years since I was last there. I had to be selective in what I showed and the video was still 20 minutes long!
Lots of great stuff is happening there and I can't wait to see what happens in the next 5 years
Salt only works to about -15C, so if the weather gets colder than that for a reasonable proportion of the winter, grit is the better option. We do that in northwest Ontario also generally.
I kind of prefer it actually because you don't get salt stains on your shoes, although of course the grit can track inside it's not as damaging
man every day I feel like this matters less and less. No matter how right you are about urban design, it's that thing about the bike share programs. They exist. Everywhere. People use them. But just go outside. Whether you live in Los Angeles or small town America, there are as many cars as there are trees, and yet just hundreds or maybe thousands of bikes. People are just fucking stupid and like buying cars because it's the ultimate status symbol in western culture.
Can you make a video about Tel Aviv?
20:24 I'm guessing none of them will be about a Belgian city.
I prefer the transit in Gotham City, Ontario. (It's actually Toronto. And I hate it.)
thank you for being clear about how VPN "protects" you actually.
One of the important facts about Norway and car infrastructure is that drivers are required to undergo much stricter, more expensive, and rigorous driver's training than a lot of other places (look up the cost– it's wild!). Laws for drunk driving are also incredibly strict. I think some of the shared bike/car facilities would scare me in the US, but in Norway you can rely on drivers a bit more to be safer overall… When I lived there it was almost shocking how quickly cars would screech to a halt if you wanted to cross at a non-marked crossing. I never felt unsafe walking on roads where there was no sidewalk (which were far more plentiful where I lived there than elsewhere in the US), but I can't imagine doing the same in the US. I wonder if this informed a good amount of the things in the Oslo transportation plan that seem like they don't go far enough. Meanwhile in the US, our drivers are pretty murderous, we truly need to do far more to compensate for horrible drivers.
It blows my mind how much infrastructure European cities have. Pedestrian bridges and tunnels, raised cycling paths, streetcars and trams, ect. I live in a rich, relatively urban, city of 200k in the USA, and just building a quarter mile of curb separated bike path would take 20 years and 100 million dollars, relegating most such projects to once in a generation feats for a city. My city studied a very simple streetcar which had only a mile or two of track, and after a decade of feasibility studies the projected cost ballooned to over a billion dollars, and was eventually cancelled.
How do these European cities do this stuff? It is impossible in the USA.
I'd love to get your thoughts about the increase in e-scooter programs next time you’re in Ontario! I live in Brampton, and in the last month as the weather warms up I’ve seen e-scooters from two different apps at various intersections. They seem like a great idea, but I've almost been hit cycling in Brampton before and am very nervous about trying them. Is this a good 'baby step' in making alternate forms of transit more accessible, or is it destined to fail in a city with some of the worst driving in Ontario?
Come to Bonn in Germany.. they built lots of bike infrastructure the last couple of years.
Too be honest, dedicated cycling infrastructure just means more unappealing asphalt in our cities. I'd rather focus on public transit to reduce car usage than on bicycles.
Feels like this could be Montreal in a few years if we keep progressing as we have been lately. Which is pretty poor compared to European cities but not bad at all for a Canadian city!
WHOA! Im not Norwegian but I got the entire PDF file of that in my phone. Its great and detailed ☺️☺️☺️
Another W for leftwing governments
Hi , you told that you went to Netherlands to allow your family to bike, also you are travelling to diffferent cities to show people bikability of cities, the result could teach governements and municipalities how to re-adjust themselves to be better city for biking, your goal is perfect , but can you make a video for coutries like (Iran), that , biking is illegal for womens!! if they do biking, their bike will be taken by police and they should pay penalty and even sometimes go to jail.thanks
come visit vienna, austria!
Great content! Thank you for taking the effort! Would love your thoughts on Austria and Vienna in particular 🙂
Anyone who has ever worked in fisheries management knows that a heavily fortified headquarters is an absolute necessity.
Ah, I wish there were no war and things that I can be in jail if I write them here, so you maybe event would come here in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. This is a large city with really high hills, and almost no cycling infrastructure, and with cold winters, yet there are a lot of cyclists! It's really strange how many of them are here! I just love cycling, and I commute to my work, as many other people here, and most of the time you are stuck with cars. On hills! Most of the roads in the city centre are narrow, and sidewalks are crowded with people, and there is no cycling infrastructure, so you should cycle with cars. And many drivers can't just wait until you climb that hill, so they honk or try to get aroung you, usually very close to you. But even with those things, there are just A LOT of cyclists. So it can be a great story for your channel, but yeah, it's not the best time to come here.
I'd love you to check out Helsinki, maybe also the business parks of Vantaa near the airport. Last summer I watched many of your videos with american business parks/stroads and then I visited Vantaa for car repair, it actually looked really nice in comparison.
Hello please come to Poznań, Poland is a great city which is moving forward for a better bicycle infrastructure, I think that many people are curios to see what do you think about this city, personally I highly recommend to visit
Oslo seems so peaceful and small. Maybe this is my perception of someone living in a chaotic Brazilian city. Even the worst bike paths there are good next to the bike paths here in Brazil.
Would really like you see Helsinki bike infrastructure. The situation is similar to oslo as we are evolving. The city has a plan for a baana(bike highway) network spanning the whole city. You should go see the first baana an old railroad track going trough the city in a ditch that was converted to a bike highway 10 years ago.
I feel like you did this intentionally 🤣
4:22 "very easy to follow"
cyclist: goes off the road
I can recommend Marburg in Germany. The city tries to get rid of cars, but it really doesn't seem to work yet. That's a real shame because literally anything is in walking distance. Thankfully, there are no cars whatsoever in the medieval parts of the city.
Any chance we’ll see you go to Japan? I’d love to hear your opinions on transportation there as well as other things such as Japanese Kei Cars