On the program of this FutureMag, this week, the bike makes its revolution in the cities. We will set out to discover these pioneer cities which are changing to make more room for it. Special bicycle expressway, lights synchronized with the average pedaling speed, car park futuristic… Direction Strasbourg, Copenhagen and Tokyo.
He is not always welcome, he has to slalom between the exhaust pipes, weave his way between the buses and avoid the pedestrians. And yet, the bicycle could well transform our cities suffocated by the car. On pedals, the city dweller does not pollute, makes no noise and is on average faster than a motorist on a journey of less than 8 kilometres.
In Strasbourg, Copenhagen or Tokyo, we followed the wheel of those who innovate so that the bicycle becomes the engine of the metropolises of tomorrow.
The difficult development of cycling in Paris
For 10 years, the number of cyclists has exploded to Paris, and if the Parisians got back in the saddle, it is thanks in particular to this small gesture. Taking a bike with your blue card or transport card is now possible in Paris thanks to Vélib', free use bikes like there are Call A Bike, Next Bike or City Bike services in many other cities. of the world.
Véronique Michaud, secretary general of the Club of Cycling Cities and Territories, is its biggest fan.
“It's true that the arrival of self-service bicycles, especially in France, just ten years ago in 2005 in Lyon, completely changed the situation: there is a before and an after. This translates for example quite simply in Paris by a practice multiplied by three between 2001 and 2010, but we also observe this explosion of cycling in Europe in many foreign cities. For example, in Germany in a city like Hannover, bicycle use has doubled in the last ten years.”
But these new city dwellers on pedals arrive in an already saturated city. The automobile retains its place as king and the little queen must sneak in hoping to cross these few centimeters of bitumen gained on the car, that is to say the cycle paths.
Courageously, Véronique Michaud embarks on a Vélib' on one of them, and a few turns later, a market has been established on the cycle track. And even on a deserted track, Véronique doesn't let herself get carried away by speed.
“We arrive quickly after a fairly steep descent and we end up with the green bike light to reintegrate very quickly into traffic.”
In Paris, bicycles are involved in around a thousand accidents a year, but the town hall has an ambitious plan: 150 million euros are planned to double the number of cycle paths in the French capital by 2020.
“In fact, we suffer from an excess of cars, we were extremely efficient, in fact, in developing cities, adapting cities to the car in the 50s and 60s and again in the 70s. , we can take inspiration from the automotive system, which is efficient, which has been very well deployed, to do the same thing with the bicycle.”
The example of cycle paths in Strasbourg
Taking inspiration from the four-wheeled competitor to develop the bicycle is an idea that has made its way in Strasbourg. Since the 90s, cycle paths have woven their web in the city centre, but today the Eurometropolis wants to go further by creating, as for cars, a cycle ring road. Jean-Baptiste Gernet, the Community Councilor in charge of active and innovative mobility, travels the first cycle ring road in Strasbourg.
“We are on a section of ring road, that is to say which allows you to bypass the city center and go quickly from one end of the city to the other without necessarily going through its center when it is not necessary . We also assumed the responsibility of taking up space in the car and reducing the space of the car a little to allow the cyclist to have a layout that goes in both directions and is separated from pedestrians, so there is less disruption to pedestrians, cyclists can also go perhaps faster and they can ride in pairs, side by side, because the path is wide enough for that.”
And just like by car, Strasbourg residents must be able to reach all strategic places by bike and even cross the border on the other side of the Rhine without being relegated to the sidewalk. Today the road bridge between France and Germany is often congested. The solution: a new bridge with tram and cycle path that will connect the two countries by 2016.
“We are on journeys from the center of one city to another which will be four to five kilometers, and we estimate that on journeys of this length there, these journeys that we can make easily and quickly by public transport and by bike and therefore we also try to favor these exchanges there and its modes of transport there compared to the car. You can be in traffic jams and in the end take almost twice as long to get from one point to another.
The exemplarity of Copenhagen in terms of transport by bicycle
Tomorrow will cyclists be faster than motorists? A little further north in Europe has long been a reality. In Copenhagen at rush hour, bicycles also know their traffic jams, even if they are more humane, without horns or exhaust pipes.
In the city center more than half of the journeys are made by pedalling. This is how Denmark dethroned the Netherlands on the podium of the countries that love cycling the most.
And if the people of Copenhagen get into the saddle, it's not just because they sacrifice for the environment.
“There, I don't go far but I take my bike every day to go to work. It's the fastest way to get around. It's a fantastic way to get around town and it's less stressful than public transport. It's the only way to cross the city anyway. The light is green, I have to go.”
Speed is the recipe for the success of cycling in Copenhagen and it is thanks in particular to this man Klaus Bondam, a former politician who was once nicknamed “The Bike Mayor”. Today he is the head of the powerful Danish Cycling Federation, and he shows us how the bicycle has overtaken the car.
“I'm 51 today, and I still have the same feeling every time I get on my bike, the same feeling of speed as when I was a child. I don't get stuck in a traffic jam. I don't depend on train or bus schedules and I go exactly where I want and when I want. That's what I love about cycling.”
Under the wheel of Klaus, a track of a new kind called the green wave. Here, the traffic lights are set to the average speed of cyclists, i.e. 20 km/h. A network of green lights on the ground indicates that you have to press the pedals a little harder to pass all the traffic lights on green. It's a small revolution, the city beats to the rhythm of bicycles and not cars.
“It's a real change of mentality. What is very important for a cyclist is to have a regular pace and not have to stop as soon as the light is red and start again right after, because you use a lot of energy when you ride a bicycle. . It's much better if you can do the trips in one go.”
A few kilometers of cycle paths further on, Klaus Bondam shows us a new infrastructure that has made Copenhagen proud and cyclists happy: a bridge over the port that winds between the walls, called “the bike snake”.
“It's a very good example. This bridge opened last year, and before people had to carry their bikes to climb stairs, it was very strenuous but more than 5000 people were doing it every day. As soon as the bridge opened, more than twelve thousand people started using it daily.”
This bridge cost more than 5 million euros, but the Danes no longer hesitate to invest in bicycles. The government has pulled out its calculator, and cycling policy is making money.
“For each kilometer traveled by bicycle rather than by car, we save 1 euro for Danish society by extending life expectancy and quality of life. So by getting people to cycle with the right infrastructure, you get a huge return on investment.”
As a result, the city of Copenhagen wants to convince more and more motorists to abandon their cars. And it will look for them further and further away, thanks to a network of bicycle highways. A bicycle highway is an expressway that connects the suburbs to the city center with a very smooth surface, as few intersections as possible and even gas stations. Well, not very impressive but which allow you to leave fully pumped up. Despite the pollution of the nearby highway, many Danes, like Kimi and Martin, use it on their way to work.
“That's about a 10 km journey that I cycle every day. It's the best way to get to work and get home. It takes a long time with public transport, at least an hour. Whereas with my bike it only takes me 30 minutes, so it's faster, there's no doubt.”
And those highways bring Kimi and Martin right downtown. This is how Copenhagen hopes to go from 45% to 50% of home-work journeys made by bicycle throughout the city.
“Of course, 25 km is quite a distance for someone like me, but in Copenhagen and all over Denmark, we now expect to see the electric bike on these bike highways. We are convinced that it will develop enormously in the years to come.
Thanks to this enthusiasm, today there are more bicycles than inhabitants in Copenhagen. The Danes sometimes have several frames, one for sport, one for going to the opera, one for going to work.
It's not easy to park your bike, the sidewalks are crowded, the parking lots are full, and the municipality is looking for new innovations to store all these two-wheelers.
Innovative bicycle parking lots in Tokyo
A solution may well come from Japan. In Tokyo, more than nine million people own a bicycle, and parking it is often a headache.
“To choose where to park my bike, I prefer an authorized place, but there really aren't many.”
"If I park my bike here, as it's a place where it's completely forbidden to park, there are agents who watch and if the controllers pass, they can board the bike and you have to pay a fine, which costs more than 20 euros.”
What if all those bikes disappeared from the sidewalk… Shotaro Yano, project manager of the Giken company shows us an amazing parking lot.
“Here, I will now drop off my bike. We equipped the bike with a kind of electronic badge placed near the front tire. And when the badge is recognized by the detector, this triggers the opening of this hatch. And in that opening, when I push the front tire in, the machine will pinch that tire. Then I just press the start button and that's enough to start the storage.”
To understand where the bike swallowed by the machine went, you have to go down 11 meters underground. This is where a robotic arm cleverly stores the bikes in a minimum of space.
“Here, you can park up to 204 bikes, and to fit that many bikes into a very limited space, we used what we call pallets, those kinds of plates. And we arranged them alternately on each half-floor. To be able to place a maximum of bicycles in such a narrow place, this is the best process.
Thanks to the electronic badge, the machine returns the right bike to its owner in about ten seconds. To park your bike in these futuristic car parks, you have to pay a subscription of 13 euros per month.
“Building a car park like this costs around one million two hundred thousand euros. It is true that we intend to make financial profits, but on top of that there is the fact of making the city more beautiful, of having car parks near the stations or very close to all the day-to-day amenities. It's something that can't be converted into money but gives us a lot of credit, I think.”
Parking lots in Tokyo, highways in Copenhagen, all these innovations offer bicycles a new place in our cities. In London, the architect Norman Foster even imagines an aerial network of 220 km of cycle paths, far from automobile pollution, above the railway tracks. The bicycle of the future will perhaps be freed from cars and cyclists will contemplate the city from the air.
On arte.tv/futuremag, you can store your old bicycle at garage, We have tested the latest generation electric bikes for you. And find our tour of the most innovative bikes of the moment, electric but also connected, intelligent and design, there is something for everyone.
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Issue of 19/09/2015, freely transcribed by the Velo galaxy team.