On our full day in Malmö, we met with a few city officials. In the morning, we learned about their transit network and the plan behind their bike network. In the afternoon, they took us on a tour to see the city. That evening, we also had the privilege of throwing a 50th birthday party for Marc! It was a lot of fun, we found lobster decorations and each room prepared a light dish. We all went from one room to the next sampling the food and drink in a progressive block party style party.
In the areas of Sweden I saw, there were a few notable features of the bike infrastructure that I observed.
Bike lanes are bidirectional.
Bike lanes are built into the sidewalk.
Bike routes frequently cross car travel lanes.
What this means is that in areas of Sweden, and Malmö particularly, bike infrastructure is not specifically tied to the road. It is like it’s own separate road for only bikes that goes through the same spaces between buildings on one or both sides of the road for cars. There are perks to this system, because cyclists are separated from cars and their paths are more intertwined with slower moving pedestrian traffic. This system works alright in Malmö, according to city officials, because it is a smaller city. There are some drawbacks to the system, though. In many places, the bike lane is only on one side of the car lanes, there are more places in which the bike lanes need to cross over car lanes of travel. This didn’t always feel very comfortable and often times it made it confusing to know which way to go. Bidirectional bike lanes maybe a good option for a growing city, for when they can be built on both sides of the road they can easily be made into one direction lanes when the demand grows. The biggest issue I found with these lanes was that because they were built into the sidewalk, the city was harder to navigate as a pedestrian and the roads felt over built. In order to make sustainable modes of transportation easy, comfortable, and appealing, bike infrastructure should be made from space that was previously used for less sustainable modes of transportation such as driving.
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