Malmo: Biking, Transit, and Walking in a New Town

We arrived in Malmo Friday morning after a 45 minute train ride from Copenhagen. Malmo is a significantly smaller city with a third the population of Copenhagen. We explored the city for a few hours before taking the train to the city center to get our bikes. Two traffic planners from the city gave us a tour by bike. They showed us before pictures of specific streets and intersections we were on. There used to be a lot more car-centric streets. The city reduced lanes and implemented cycle tracks.

In Malmo cycle tracks are bidirectional instead of unidirectional in Copenhagen. There is also no grade change between the sidewalk and cycle track. In some areas because the track is bidirectional the bike lane is only on one side of the street and the sidewalk is on the other side. In Copenhagen the bike lane never ends. You can cycle on any arterial and use the main roads to get to your destination. In Malmo, it's a little different. The bike lane does in fact end and you will find yourself biking on the road next to cars or with a dashed line separating you from a vehicle similar to the United States. On Saturday some of us biked to the mall with a green roof, then to Ikea, and back to the hostel. We started off on a cycle track, but as soon as it started to get slightly more rural we were biking on the street without any protection, grade change, or separation. We moved onto the sidewalk and had to bike around pedestrians. There were bike paths off of the street that seemed intentional for pedestrians, but not necessarily for cyclists. There were less people out biking than I expected. However, yesterday the weather was not ideal and the wind added difficulty to biking long distances.

The planners we met with mentioned that Malmo will be moving towards implementing unidirectional cycle tracks like Copenhagen. This raises the question: how will people adapt to new infrastructure and ways of biking? I think bicycle infrastructure can be intuitive and easy to adapt to. When you plan for a specific demand or user, it will be used accordingly. I found it interesting that unidirectional tracks were the norm before the automobile rose in popularity and dominated the city. I think Americans forget that many European cities with good bike infrastructure haven't always been good at bike infrastructure. Seeing examples of recent street transformations in cities that are known for biking is inspiring.