“HOURGreen wave? This is the best feeling, especially when you are in a hurry, ”says actor Samuel Trum, unlocking his bicycle at the crossbar of Copenhagen, clogged with bilateral passengers.“ On the contrary, a red wave, the worst. ”
For those of us who do not live in Copenhagen, the green wave that the injury describes, is a system that began with the city authorities 16 years ago: to encourage bicycles, they synchronized traffic lights on several key roads to make a cyclist in the clock, traveling about 20 km/h (12.4 miles per hour). Green lights.
Green waves are now going to spread to another 15 routes after the municipality has approved the new provisions about the bicycle in the budget this month.
“The idea is good because the lights are usually installed at the speed of the cars,” says Lars, a 33-year-old analyst conducting a bicycle down the Nèrrebrogade, where the first pilot project began. “I would like it to be expanded.”
As in many cities of Europe, Copenhagen became a city of cars after the Second World War. However, in the 1970s, he began to resist the movement with huge bicycle protests that pushed the municipality to create an extensive network of bicycle stripes. If every city had as much study The total carbon dioxide emissions found in June from private vehicles will fall by 6%.
But officials admit that even Copenhagen is struggling to reduce the use of a car among those who travel to the city outside. The construction of bicycle supermagsters helped passengers reach the outskirts on a bicycle, but red lights slow them down when they reach the streets. It is here that green waves will help.
“It is very important to have freedom on a bicycle to just drive at good speed,” says Barfod Line, mayor of technology and the environment, which every day writes Nèrrebrogade on the road to the city hall and claims that more green waves will encourage people to abandon their cars. “You may feel that the city wants you – and supports you – I'm going on a bicycle.”
The expansion of the settings of the traffic light encountered a small political rollback, and the inhabitants who experienced green waves talk about them. Barfod says: “The war between cars and bicycles is greater in parking lots than a change in speed.”
But during the peak hours, local residents say that Copenhagen’s bicycle culture was a victim of his own success. According to PII, a 65-year-old collector of funds who arrives in the city by train and the bicycle of the house, the lanes are too busy to enjoy a continuous green wave. “Sometimes it is so crowded that it will not reach the next light in time.”
Lars, who usually worries too quickly to ride a wave, thinks that the city reaches a complex compromise. “We are now at the point when we need to choose between cars and cycles. If you give the cycles more space, it will compromise with the ability of drivers to access various spaces. ”
Copenhagen against Amsterdam for the title of European bicycle capital, but other large cities, such as Paris and London, begin to catch up. The municipality was poorly scored in Recent rating About a bicycle for children on a bicycle on a share of roads with a speed limit of 30 km/h, although it began to add more.
After increasing the newsletter
Its recently approved bicycle package of 602 million Croons (70.5 million pounds), which will improve green waves and increase the flow of cyclists at rush hour, will also strive to build the longest bicycle bridge in the country and improve cycle lighting. The city installed 19 “bicycle barometers” to understand how the cyclists move quickly, and – as soon as it is better represented in the pulse of the city, it plans to ensure that the green waves of time begin when a large number of bicycles arrive at the beginning of the corridor.
Such systems can improve the transport stream of bicycles, says Gernot Sig, a scientist for transport at the University of Munster in Germany, but is not yet widespread, partly because cyclists often travel at different speeds. In some Dutch cities, such as Enscheede, traffic lights have more complex systems that discover incoming cyclists and arrange their priorities at a green rate.
Best of all – these are bicycle highways that do not interact with cars at all, says Zig. “The best idea to make bicycle stripes where you do not need to cross the streets.”
Pulling people out of cars and moving their bodies is an effective way to save life and protect the planet. About 20,000 people die on the EU roads every year, and the benefits of the best security standards threaten a boom in large cars that Pack more impact When they fall into the human body.
In cities, toxic particles that are erupted by vehicles when burning gasoline and crispy tires on asphalt caused further disappointment with automobile planning.
For Leena Ylä-Mononen, who moved to Copenhagen from Helsinki two years ago to head the European Environmental Agency, the city is an example of what others can achieve, even if it may seem terrible. It took her five months before she dared to get on a bicycle and move along the alleys, filled with so many people moving so quickly.
“To get into the stream, I took me some time, but this is really the most convenient way to move,” says Ila-mononen. “Of course, this is also because it is a flat city with not a large number of hills. But we have a wind, so you still have to diligently pedal. ”
