This week, a delegation of 14 people representing Northwest Arkansas made its way from one Copenhagen hotel to another for the opening meeting of the Citybuilders Symposium hosted by People for Bikes. The group is here to learn what a world-class bicycle culture and transportation infrastructure can mean for a city, how it brings people together and creates an environment where others want to live.
We hope to bring back best practices, adapt them and apply them to our region. Northwest Arkansas has a magnificent “superhighway” in the Razorback Regional Greenway, but there’s a long way to go before the residents of our region can comfortably and safely travel east to west, make short trips or, hopefully, commute to work and school.
As our group headed out on our maiden ride through Copenhagen, we were overwhelmed at the number of people on bikes. We’ve never seen so many bikes; both on the road and parked, there are thousands! One of the biggest surprises here so far has been in the profile and attitude of the people who use the biking infrastructure. They don’t view themselves as cyclists. They wear their normal daily business or casual attire, and they use bikes in much the same way that we use our cars.
We wound through streets, practiced turns and learned the light system. The group then made its way to the “cyclesnake,” a world-class bike-only bridge over a canal. On the other side, we gathered to talk about the bridge and why it was needed. Suddenly there were four times as many cyclists as there were just minutes before, but traffic continued moving at a constant and polite pace. The group leader checked her watch. “It’s 4:30. Rush hour,” she said. “The daycares close at 5:00, so the Danes leave work about now.”
Sometimes our bike commutes in Northwest Arkansas can include worries about safety or whether there’s time to clean up and change, but the Copenhagen commute has none of these elements. Being in an urban area means shorter commutes, and the Danish biking infrastructure that we'd heard so much about surpassed all our expectations.
Even though the lanes were at times packed with other cyclists and we regularly passed through road construction and traffic signals, thanks to the well-considered design, the ride felt relaxed and protected. The dedicated cycle path and coordinated light signal system are initially tricky but quickly intuitive.
As we watch families commute -- kids in cargo bikes, parents chatting -- we can't help but reflect on our daily routines back home. We’ve made so much progress in the past few years in improving our options for recreation, transportation and for connecting public spaces. We can't wait to see what’s next for Northwest Arkansas.
Worth Sparkman is a public relations manager at Tyson Foods, and Kay Lewis is a consultant at J.B. Hunt.
