In Copenhagen we can see a completed Cycle Snake designed by architects at Dissing and Weitling, a 235- meter long cycle track which curves and winds over the harbour.
The project met much criticism, but it does safely connect the area of Kalvebod Brygge. US$ 5.74 million was spent on it.
Would a recently proposed project called London SkyCycle, a 220km ( 136mile) cycletrack network be ever accepted? As far as we can see the extremely pricey project ((approx. US$ 365 million) would accommodate 12, 000 cyclists per hour and improve the journey time by half an hour. This cycling network concept reached Paris as well, the basic idea being to connect the downtown to their railway central stations.
Generally, the entire construction seems to be huge and isolated. From the distance, it reminds a motorway. It is also hard to say whether perhaps such an investment would not harm local businesses, since cyclists quite often stop at nearby shops.
The Mayor of London did not agree with the project believing that introducing more safety measures and better roads is what London really needs. This was said despite a series of tragic accidents in 2013, where six cyclists died in a two-week period.
The main question is how to encourage people to use bicycles as a frequent mean of transportation and to simultaneously assure them the safety to move along dedicated paths. Presently cycling in London on narrow streets often shared with car drivers is not the perfect solution. It is difficult to say whether more road restrictions would help with the traffic issue. Slower driving would probably not eliminate the problem. A quick comparison to Copenhagen’s Cykelslangen shows that traffic problems were well solved. The question is whether a similar solution could be applied to a much bigger and far more expensive project that would involve the already overcrowded city of London.
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