The Arctic City Where Everyone Cycles

Omg how freaking obvious and fantastic “the contractor is bonused or sanctioned based on customer satisfaction“

I read about Oulu in Tom Babin's Frostbike. Valid points from Pekka in the book too.

Damn dirty hippies…

Well from the Dutch perspective, its all good and well that countries are adopting their cycling infra, but constant improvement is not in the cards for these countries.

It will be gone if we don't start using wind powered cars and stop farting by 2024. Shame on the ipod generation

I recently moved to three acres up the country. In rural Canada without a car!
This week I made a 20KM round trip to get the mail and beer and coffee cream.
Only in rather warm weather and clear roads. Not today after last nights snowstorm.

The path infrastructure is important. However, the secure bike parking infrastructure is important as well. Bike theft is a real issue in many places.

it rain to much in dk to cykel all year 😀

As someone who bikes to work in a city in the Netherlands, I can say that – for the most part – the infrastructure is good. But the fact that I have to dodge ghost driving maniacs on bike roads on a near daily basis makes it more dangerous than taking the car. The worst offenders are those who ghost drive in the dark, with no headlight on, too busy checking their phone and making a wild direction change as a result. I've had to avoid multiple such crashes, crazy as it sounds.

So getting people on the bike and providing them with the proper infrastructure is one thing, but dedicated policing must be taken into account. There's a reason the Netherlands has more deaths on a bike than when driving a car.

There is more to building a bicycling community than just installing bike lanes. Bike lanes are not reasons to bike, they remove reasons NOT to bike: streets without bike lanes are dangerous (car crashes) and they are a hassle (drivers abuse cyclists with honking and aggressive driving). So, if we remember our high school math, a double negative becomes a positive. << -(-4) = +4 >> Bike lanes remove a danger and a hassle, two ways they are a double negative that becomes a positive. Bike lanes reduce and eliminate both of these concerns but don't do a lot to encourage people to bike by themselves.

Encouraging people to bike means involving the local culture, which means people find reasons to bike. Their favourite music might be about bicycles, they meet and talk cycling at a cafe or if they meet to fix their bikes together. But there is more that can happen to encourage bicycling.

Everyone knows about how Henry Ford built assembly lines to build their cars more inexpensively. But it was bicycle makers who first used assembly lines. It made sense because bikes are cheap, people will not pay as much for a bike as they will for a car, so it was a necessity to build bicycles cheaper. But bicycles have other advantages for innovation. They don't need to meet the same high safety standards as cars because they are inherently less dangerous. So testing a new design of a bicycle does not mean building dozens of them just for crash testing and if they did the bikes would be less expensive as well. Bikes are simple enough that they can be custom built in a garage or a basement or the backyard shed. And that means everyone can customize features on an existing bike, modify an existing bike or make one completely from scratch. All the customized bikes can be tested for durability, functionality and style. And all custom bikes can be used as prototypes for production. This affects local economies. The innovation and creation of new bike designs is not limited to engineers and RND departments of corporations (like Ford). So bicycles don't all need to be shipped in from China. Each local community can make custom bikes and prototypes to suit needs they encounter locally. Blend this culture of innovation into the local cycling community and we grow local economies and diversify cycling to the point where when someone says they don't want to ride a bike, they will mean a road bike or a mountain bike but there will be bikes they do like. And that reinforces more cycling in the community.

That sounds great, especially since it's planned like that from the beginning.
A lot of cities now start taking away space from other modes of traffic to create bike lanes, which is way way worse and creates a lot of tension.
I absolutely hate my own bike being turned into a political weapon against my car. They whould be brothers, not enemies.

One important thing to "they will come" is to make sure the cycling network makes sense. A lot of the "pandemic" infrastructure was designed like "oh, hey, here is a little bit of space, we can fit a bike lane in here". Instead of thinking where do people actually want to go.

You can have hundreds of kilometers of biking infrastructure but if it is not connected or in places where it matters, people will still not cycle there.

If you built a highway for 1km and then before getting to another kilometer of the highway there would be a tractor track with a "drivers, get out and push your cars" sign, people would not use cars, I guess.

Thanks for the video! One important factor not mention in the video is the stealing of bicycles. I grew up in Ferrara, Italy (nicknamed "the city of the bicycles), and now live in Gothenburg , Sweden, and in both places this is a huge problem with no apparent solution. Ferrara in Italy is worthy to check since the bicycle culture is really imbedded in the inhabitants of that city. Gothenburg is a city where, (for most parts) is easy to go around with your bike……..

Did not mention hills my city is steep.

I'm not against cycling but you will NEVER catch me riding a bike in those temperatures. Simply never.

I'm a cyclist who lives in Los Angeles and have had no trouble riding in the street with traffic. It takes practice, you must have lights at night and you have to be a little aggressive at times but I now find it actually really fun. I don't think traffic lanes should be removed and have bike lanes put in that will be hardly used and make traffic worse.

Quite the success… and soo many cyclists. Yet one fears not congestion!

But but but you can't cycle in cold, snow, or rain!! Or… so I've been told by people who drive cars and have never tried.

Oulu is not arctic. The arctic circle is 66.6N, and Oulu is situated 65N.
Next time you upload a video, get your fucking facts right before you pollute the minds of impressionable cattle with misinformation. If you need to fire people, fire them. Hell, if you need to fucking immolate any idiots just go ahead and do it. But don't you fucking DARE get """facts""" wrong. Lies and misinformation are the weapons of demons.

It was a pleasure to hear about infantstructure providers receiving feedback from users about how their works are perceived.
Wish we had that everywhere!

I've been 100% riding my bike for transportation in a snowy Northeast US city for the last 5 years. I need to use studded tires to ride directly on snow. I wonder how these guys do it. If I don't have those tires I can't stay upright, but with those tires I can ride through every bit of snow that this 100 inch/year city gets.

As for CO2 plant more trees!! I can get somewhere faster in a car then a bike. Plus people on bikes think the are high and mightier than people in cars. I had to make a right hand turn and a bicyclist was in my blind spot. And almost ruined my car because he isn't sharing the road with me. I had my turn signal on but I bet he thought I can pass the 'witch" but I was about a half a foot to his bike.
And that isn't true "if you build it they will come" I have seen plenty of bike lane not one is being used by bicyclist. So, what is next? @JillWarren force people to ride bikes ban any and all car traffic? Sheesh 🙄🙄