Cyclists on Copenhagen’s North Bridge.

Yesterday we had a great cycling tour of Copenhagen. Its population – 1.5 million in the metro area – is similar to Amsterdam (and not coincidently also to Portland), but it has a completely different feel. Not nearly as many tourists in Copenhagen, at least not that I noticed. They have essentially the same amount of residents using their bikes to get to and from home/work/school: 36%. Which is about 6 times as many as Portland’s % of trips. Can you imagine 35,000 cyclists riding across the Hawthorne bridge every day??? Well Copenhagen has that on their most popular cycling bridge, called the North Bridge.

Our tour guide was Mikael Colville-Andersen, who is a film director/photographer and author of two blogs about cycling in Copenhagen, copenhagencyclechic.com and copenhagenize.com. I give Mikael high marks for these great web sites. If you’re into cycling culture, you should give them a look… they are the BikePortland.org of Copenhagen!

Mikael, our tour guide and Copenhagen’s “cycle chic” expert.

The Nihola, Copenhagen’s most popular cargo bike.

Some of the most interesting bikes here are the cargo style bikes that carry kids. No doubt you’ve seen “Bakfietsen” running around in Portland, well, Copenhagen has about 12 different styles of cargo bikes. The most popular one I’ve seen on the roads the last two days is called the Nihola… check out the photos.

In general I have noticed that all the bikes here are significantly better quality and more varied than in Amsterdam. Lots of cool bike pictures I’ll try to post later.

Our guide Mikael was full of facts:

- Copenhageners ride 1.2 million kilometers everyday.

- Daily bike commuters… 130,000!!!

- Only 35% of the population owns a car (Danish residents have to pay a 100% tax on auto purchases… that means your cute little Prius would sell for close to $60,000!!!).

- The town of Friedrichsburg has a Bicycle Counter on one of their popular trails with daily and yearly totals.