The City of Copenhagen wants to be the world's unrivaled bike capital by 2015 and is doubling its bicycle budget of $15 million a year to $30 million to get there. That's $30 million per year for biking! We learn this from the Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog (What Do You Give Cyclists Who Have Everything?, December 13, 2007). The City held a couple of public forums entitled "The City in 2015 - How Does it Look?" and invited residents to provide ideas on how to spend the additional money. For a list of some of the ideas visit the link to the story.
Wow. Can you imagine us spending $30 million a year to make the Washington, D.C. area a biking Mecca? What would our region look like with that kind of investment? We can dream...
Chris Hamilton is the Commuter Services Chief for Arlington County, manager of CommuterPageBlog and a biking/Metro commuter from Rosemont in Alexandria.
Great post, Copenhagen is a fantastic model for DC. DC can be as bike-friendly as Copenhagen (with a few more hills) but it will take lots of pedal power.
So what does the Washington region spend on biking each year? Could you add up all up?
Which regions would you include?
Mont Co, Price Georges, DC, Arlington, Alexandria, FFX
Could you add up the bicycle planning staff budgets, capital projects and safety and marketing events?
Also, we'd need to include the bicycle non-profits, park authorities, and the NPS, and whatever state efforts..
The number would be pretty meager compared to all other modes.. but it might be a good idea to add it all up.
My WAG is that we spend between $2 Million and $5 Million a year on biking in this region.. and only a small percentage actually goes to new capacity capital projects..
Posted by: J Price | December 19, 2007 at 05:02 PM