This post is the last of a series of travel journal entries, sent to us by Bike Gallery owner and CEO Jay Graves, who visited Amsterdam and Copenhagen as part of a study tour in partnership with the Portland Metro Council’s Connecting Green Alliance (Jay is a member of Metro’s Blue Ribbon Committee for Trails). Scroll down to read some of Jay’s previous musings on what fascinates him about these two European cities, which are renowned for their bike-friendliness, and how they can serve as a model for Portland.

A cycle track in Copenhagen.

Before we move onto the last two days I need to make a correction… I mentioned earlier that Copenhagen has a 100% tax on auto purchases, but in fact I was wrong: it’s actually 180%!!! So your little Portland Prius would actually cost you new around $84,000. How’s that for reducing the amount of cars and drivers on our streets?

Friday… we met with folks of the Denmark Department of Transport in Copenhagen for an overview of the national cycle route. Part of their job is to coordinate the National Bicycle Strategy and help municipalities with local issues.

We learned that the beloved cycle tracks of the city also have a national presence. Although for future planning purposes they really focus the cycle tracks on the city where the greatest population is. A very unsettling fact is that, nationally, cycling has dropped 20% in the last 20 years… yes, 20%!!! But in Copenhagen, cycling has increased by 50%. Study findings countrywide show that the bicycle is an effective means for transporting people inside the cities but when the trip gets to be much more than 7 or 8 miles the number of cyclists willing to go that far drops dramatically.

We also learned about the North Sea Cycle Route, a 6,000 mile long bike route circling the North Sea. It’s part of EuroVelo, the European cycle route network. About 10% of the routes are car free and the rest are cycle tracks/on road.

On Friday afternoon we visited the American Embassy in Copenhagen to hear about the U.S. ambassador’s 38 day/2,500 km bicycle tour of the country. The goal was to connect with the local politicians and riding a bike just seemed like a great way to get in touch with outlying communities.

Mikael’s magical Yahoo Bike.

After our visit to the embassy, we took a train trip to the “country side” of Copenhagen. We headed north about 15km outside of town for a ride back along suburban cycle tracks. Mikael was our tour guide again and he rode up on the most unique bike. The bike was actually an Electra Townie, but it was outfitted with a camera on the handle bars that took photos of where he rode every 60 seconds. There was a little Nokia phone inside the mechanism that downloaded the photos almost immediately to a Yahoo web site. A solar powered battery pack was attached to the rear rack with some more electronics. It was all very cool, techie and I want one! Check out all my photos.

Seems Yahoo has a “Wear Purple” promo going on where they gave (yes, gave, as in free!) this bike to 20 web bloggers around the world. Check out their cool website and the bike.

Train car with bike storage.

One other important thing I needed to add was about mass transit in Copenhagen. Unlike Amsterdam, the trains do in fact have space for a total of 14 bikes and they run very frequently so if one train is full, another one is just a few minutes away. They are serious about making longer trips accessible for cycling. Copenhagen’s approach would be a very real scenario for Portland if we want to support the riders with long commutes or cyclists getting over the hill.

Saturday morning was our wrap-up meeting and then we had the rest of the day free to tour the city on bikes. I feel extremely fortunate to have been asked to accompany this group on this study tour. By the way, you might wonder how this trip got paid for? I don’t believe any tax dollars were used to send the Blue Ribbon Committee on this trip. However, we received significant support from the German Marshall Fund and the Oregon Community Foundation. Their support for this trip demonstrates Portland’s important and significant role in leading the country to a new/healthier/more efficient/cleaner future.

A couple other tidbits … other than a few taxi rides to and from the airport in Copenhagen we either used mass transit (three times) or rode our bikes for the entire trip. I was pleasantly surprised to see that our agenda included time to get from place to place… but then again, bikes are the most efficient way to get around!

After taking this trip, I would say that we Portlanders have the opportunity to easily double if not triple our bicycle ridership without spending/taxing to the extend that these two European cities have done. But in order to achieve higher numbers we would need to have, among other things, some restrictions on cars and I just don’t see us doing that in the near future. But hey, we can hope for the future!

Thanks for reading and please let me know if you have any questions about the trip.

Click here to browse all pictures of Jay’s visit to Amsterdam and Copenhagen.