Getting to Copenhagen - a Symposium on Danish cycling practice

Picture by Mark Ames

This Friday, speakers from Denmark and London will make the case for how London might achieve a cycling modal share similar to Copenhagen, and create 'Living Suburbs.'

Britain has long been the land of the railway and the car, with a deeply entrenched attitude that cycling is for either the poor or the fanatically fit. How much more liveable would London’s suburbs be if cycling were mainstream, as it is in Scandinavia and the Netherlands? In Copenhagen 36% of trips to work are now by bike compared to 5% in London. The modal shift in behaviour achieved by the city took 30 years. Copenhagen may be small but it is can teach us valuable lessons. If we are to turn London’s main roads into living streets, we have to change our attitudes to cycling. 

Taking place at the Camden headquarters of New London Architecture, the audience will hear from, amongst others, Niels Tørsløv, director of traffic for Copenhagen council, Ben Plowden, director of surface transport at Transport for London, and friend of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, Mark Ames.

Attendees will then take part in a number of workshops, examining cycling-friendly solutions to a variety of London streets and boroughs, including Camden and Ealing.

The event is fully booked, but a full report of proceedings will appear here on the Embassy site. 

For those who can't make it to the London event, on December 4th, Nordic Horizons and the Scottish Parliament Cross-party Cycling Group will be hosting Cycling in Copenhagen, a free event looking at what the Scottish capital can learn from its neighbour across the North Sea.