Recommendations from Odense to Modernize any City’s Bicycling Infrastructure

We met with Connie Juel Clausen, one of the City’s transportation planners. She gave us some good advice that they have learned over the last 10 years.

• create more connected and protected routes – make riding a bike as easy and comfortable as driving (door to door)
• remove barriers across major highways and railroads (tunnels and bridges)
• integrate bicycle for all levels (kids, seniors, tourists, workers, bosses, politicians)
  • e.g. SRTS, SRTParks, and trips to work and shopping
  • shared bike and scooter programs (for tourists and workers who drive to make short trips during lunch for errands, etc.)
    • they have at least 4 scooter companies (lime, bolt, tier, and voi)
    • they use geo-fences to manage scooter parking (can’t park in a park but can scoot through the park, e.g.)
  • both campaigns and infrastructure and bikes to try

Getting more of their city councilors out on bicycle has helped them understand issues and mobility benefits. They will send their new councilors on trips abroad (to Netherlands, or Belgium to see what new things are popular for bike networks).

Their city planners, similar to what we heard from planners in Copenhagen, do create nudges and tricks to get more people to ride their bike. Some of these campaigns the city has funded or sought sponsorships to fund in Odense include:

• partnerships with swimming pool facilities, museums, and theatres – free entrance fees if you ride your bike (the city seeks funding from major employers like Sydbank, or breweries to fund this program)
• partnerships with daycare and kindergartens by providing kid cargo bikes so they can take the little kids on field trips (to the pools, museums, and theatres cited in the bullet above) and get in free since they biked there. Application process, so city gets the bikes to daycares and kindergartens who are most interested in using them, and taking the program on – maintenance of the bikes, etc. The city purchased 20 of these kid carrier bikes that can carry 4 kids each.
• traffic gardens – on certain areas on school property/playgrounds – and then the kids can use during recess if they rode their bike to school. – these traffic gardens are super fun with pump tracks, miniature cities, bridges, tunnels (made with a giant diameter sewer pipe section) etc., so the kids really want to play there during recess so they really want to bike to school. These are grant-based so schools apply and city runs the design/construction process through an agreement with the schools. Schools maintain them and own them after.
• The city also purchased 20 cargo bikes for shopping centers – so folks can try out grocery shopping by bike – these bikes are available to check out and borrow for up to 3 days at a time, so people can try them for a few days for free – they ran an application program among neighborhood associations to get these bikes into neighborhoods who most wanted to run a program like this.
• The city purchased 20 side-by-side bikes for senior housing so a staff member can take a couple of residents on outings via bike. They ran a small application form and were able to donate these bikes to facilities that were most interested – that way they didn’t have to run the program, or maintain the bikes and they were guaranteed that the bikes went to staffers that would use them.