Report from last weeks Snicksnack session

We said that we were going to try to give you a report from last weeks Snicksnack session. And we thought that a Monday is a perfect day for doing that! (And in case you wonder, snicksnack isn't really used a lot, but it means chitchat.)

It was both nice and interesting. There were about 25 people attending it, it was quite gender balanced (a few more men than women) and the average age was... well, we have to guess here. Was it 50 years? Or more? 60? Yours truly sat in the back of the room and had a pretty good view of the event, but judge for yourself.

We can begin with saying that social planning and social planning events and debates will probably never be glamorous or trendy. Thing is, social planning is at its best when you don't think about it. When you can commute to work swiftly and safely in the morning, when you like where you live, when it's convenient to do your shopping, when you know that your kids are happy and safe... That's when social planning (and the society at large, naturally) works. Social planners are really unsung heroes!

(None of the people in the pictures are members of Ensliga Bergens cykelklubb.)

But anyway the event consisted of two lectures. The first lecture was about the bicycle planning strategy in the city of Gothenburg. A lot was said. For example that in 1999 there were 260 kilometres of bike lanes in Gothenburg and 13 years later, in 2012, there were 486 kilometres. That's an 87% increase. Impressive! If it wasn't for... this. Now, to be honest we did get a reply from the traffic department of the city of Gothenburg later on, but still... There are a lot more bike lanes in Gothenburg now than there was when we first began riding on the streets here and we notice and appreciate improvements every now and then, but that doesn't mean that everything is dandy. Just saying. Furthermore, though, we were told that the city of Gothenburg had (or has - we didn't quite get that) two goals:

1. To increase travelling by bicycle.
2. To decrease the number of bicycle accidents.

Goal #1 hasn't been reached, but goal #2 has. There are also thoughts to make all bike lanes one-way lanes (Hurrah for that!) and how to make bicycle parking optimal.

The second lecture was about bicycle(s)/-ing and economy, where the lecturer argued that we should use economic arguments for bicycling, and not just public health and ecological arguments. For example the city of Copenhagen, which really invests in bicycling, has calculated that for every kilometre ridden by bicycle the city saves € 0.15, but for every kilometre driven by car the city loses € 0.09. (Please don't take our word for it, though - check the numbers out for yourselves.) Food for thought.

And that was it, after the event was over we rode home.

It was a beautiful, but cold, evening.

Ride safe!