Page 276 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 3

Environmental Sustainability and Cycling as a
Transport Mode: Best Practices

to be used for the first time in the mid 1800s, first infrastructure works were
launched to facilitate the use of bicycles in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The
bicycles became the widespread symbol of freedom and equality in 1920s and
1930s. People from all social classes had started riding bicycles side by side on
urban trips. This reveals the feature of cycling as providing social sustainability
and equality. Towards the end of the 1950s, with the increasing prosperity and
purchasing power, it was observed that Copenhagen city residents turned to
using cars instead of bicycles for urban transportation. Like in other developed
countries of the world, Danish urban planners believed that the future belonged
to cars, motor vehicles and ever wider highways. By the 1970s, the base of the
transformation of today’s cycling culture was constituted as a result of the oil
crisis and the subsequent protests by citizens for relieving Copenhagen from
the domination of the motor vehicles, and the ‘Car-free Sunday’ application to
free some streets from private vehicles on weekends. The city’s policy makers
launched studies to encourage the use of bicycles as a means of transportation
by taking into account the protests. In addition, rising fuel prices and taxes
imposed on cars along with the oil crisis caused people to question the use
of private vehicles; the return of bicycles was triggered by the increasing air
pollution in the city, observing the effects of climate change and the desire to
meet people’s daily mobility needs with bicycles on their way to work. By the
1990s, the cycling path infrastructure in the city was rapidly developed and a
free bicycle sharing system ‘Bycyklen’ infrastructure was established. Another
important policy implemented for the adoption of bicycles as a safe means of
transportation in Copenhagen is the construction of a network allocated for
cycling paths, which separated cyclists from vehicle and pedestrian movement
(Cycling Embassy of Denmark, 2020; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark,
2022). Figure 3 shows the distribution of cycling routes in Copenhagen.

Figure 3. Cycling Routes in Copenhagen (Google, 2022b)

Year 2 / Issue 3 / January 2023 261