Welcome to Oulu, Finland.
It’s a cold winter's day, and this group of kids is cycling through the snow to get
to school.
And they’re not alone.
Roughly 1 in 5 trips here are done by bike.
As other cities were crafting their master plans around cars, Oulu made the decision
to plan around bikes.
In the 60s 70s, the tradition of cycling didn't die here completely like it did in so many
other western cities.
Today, it’s a sort of cyclist’s utopia with nearly 1,000 kilometres of cycling
superhighways and segregated bike paths.
Now, the rest of the world is slowly catching up.
There's been kind of a fundamental shift in how the allocation of space in our
cities is perceived.
As the pandemic cleared traffic from our roads, bike sales took off and cycling lanes popped
up in cities almost overnight.
But many of those measures are temporary.
Now, the question is – what would it take to make them last?
Say you want to cycle to work, that experience is going to feel very different depending
on where you live.
Take it from Jill Warren, she’s a lifelong cycler and the CEO of the European Cyclists’ Federation.
It can be a really pleasant and joyful and easy experience, or it can be hell on Earth,
frankly, and everything in between.
And that’s by design.
It’s hard to overstate the impact the automobile has had on our built environment.
Entire transport systems have been constructed around the aim of getting cars from point
A to point B.
That’s given people a lot of freedom in how they get around.
It’s enabled entirely new trade routes and connectivity across states and countries.
But it's also filled our roads with vehicles that are putting a lot of CO2 into the environment.
So switching to cycling seems like a logical choice, right?
Only, if you’re not a seasoned cyclist, then setting out on a road like this is well,
kind of terrifying.
The number one barrier is safety, frankly, perceived safety in particular.
If people do not feel safe cycling, they are much less likely to take it up in the first place.
So really, that safe infrastructure is absolutely key.
So, let’s get into it.
What exactly is safe cycling infrastructure?
You might be thinking, add a bike lane and they will come.
But not all bike lanes are created equal.
You have the ones that are added onto roads originally built for cars, and you have bike
lanes that are made for the bikes themselves.
As you can imagine, adapting infrastructure that’s designed for, and still being used,
for something else can get messy.
And you end up with what we have today – an array of different bike lane symbols, lines
and dividers.
There are sharrows, an incredibly creative name combining “share” and “arrow.”
They’re those painted symbols you might have seen on a road that means cyclists can
ride here, but cars can use the lane too.
Then you have striped bike lanes which create a little more separation with painted lines.
Cars generally aren’t allowed to park or drive on these.
Buffered bike lanes go a step further and put some extra space between cyclists and cars.
And then protected bike lanes provide even more separation by adding physical barriers between
the two spaces.
But the best of all is the segregated bike path.
It’s a standalone path made just for cyclists.
Cyclists don’t have to worry about dodging cars, and drivers don’t have to worry about
dodging cyclists.
We have 943 kilometres of totally separated segregated bicycle and walking paths here
in the city.
And as you can maybe see now from the video, I'm just passing under a national highway.
The most important motor traffic road in the whole country, and it's just this comfortable,
I didn't even notice it.
That’s Pekka Tahkola.
He’s an urban planner and was Oulu’s cycling coordinator from 2013-2019.
But the city’s history of cycling infrastructure stretches back to the 1960s.
As the city began growing rapidly, they hired their first transportation engineer and luckily
they chose the guy called Mauri Myllylä, who really understood the importance of walking
and cycling and what it does to the general and overall well-being of our society and
all the individuals.
And he pushed through numerous direct, comfortable and fast paths at the same time as the city
was expanding rapidly.
So for example, this path I am on was built in the 70s and from the city centre to Myllyoja
District in the East.
It's a five kilometre section ride from the city centre, where there is not a single crossing
with motor traffic at the same level.
Oulu’s success comes from more than just segregated bike lanes.
There’s a whole load of design choices that make it possible for someone to, say, do an
interview in the middle of a bike ride without worrying about crashing.
First, the city has invested in proper lighting.
99% of bike paths are illuminated.
And when painted signs on the road might be hard to see, traffic signs are projected onto the paths.
And you’re probably wondering about the snow.
Oulu is less than 200 kilometres from the Arctic Circle, so they get a lot of it.
The city takes a few different approaches to dealing with the winter weather.
Drainage is strategically placed along the paths to make sure when the snow melts, it
doesn’t just freeze back over them as a layer of ice.
Packed snow is ploughed with a toothed blade which creates grooved ridges that give traction
for bike tires.
And when there’s too much snow, it’s removed.
And fast.
Whenever there's two centimeters of snow, it needs to be gone within three hours.
Because what is unique to Oulu is that the contractor also receives a bonus or sanction
based on customer satisfaction.
So we measure customer satisfaction here, how satisfied people are to the maintenance
of the bicycle path.
And it's possible that the contractor could even double their profit from the contract.
All of this has helped build a city where it’s simply easier, or even faster, to travel
somewhere by bike than by car.
And it’s a useful case study for other cities who are investing in cycling infrastructure
of their own.
In the summer of 2021, most EU countries mentioned cycling in their pandemic recovery plans.
And nearly $2 billion has been earmarked for new cycling efforts.
I honestly believe that if you build it, they will come.
I think there are so many potential cyclists and people who would cycle more lurking out
there, just waiting for the right kind of infrastructure that they would feel comfortable
doing that on.
I mean, just look at the pandemic, how many people dusted off a bike, got it out of the
garage, went and bought a new bike because all of a sudden they could without fear of
getting killed, you know?
Of course, a shift towards cycling requires more than just building the infrastructure.
People need to feel safe and know how to use the system.
And of course, you need the political will to get it all done.
I think the biggest challenge is deciding, OK, we're going to have cycling and we're
going to do this.
because there's that fear of messing with the status quo, of the backlash from car drivers.
The debate over bike lanes is a heated one.
Cars have become a part of many people's daily lives, and cycling can be dangerous if the
infrastructure isn’t robust or well-maintained.
Some business owners have worried that bike lanes will reduce their access to parking
and deliveries, or that they’ll create more traffic and congestion.
But the pandemic has revitalised the conversation over how we should use our roads.
Some of us got a glimpse into what it would look like if we blocked off streets for pedestrians
and outdoor dining, and added cycling and walking paths.
But it was just that, a glimpse.
The pandemic measures were more or less patching over our current infrastructure that’s built for cars.
Oulu on the other hand shows us what’s possible when you design for bicycles in the first place.
And as cities around the world are given the chance to reimagine our roads, they’re faced
with a choice.
Is it time to update the system we have, or build a new one altogether?
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