Most of my family (other than me) does a lot of biking. John, for example, biked from Arlington, Mass., to Syracuse, N.Y., last week just because he felt like it. It took several days.
My husband bikes most weekends in good weather. And he reads a biking magazine where he saw a story he thought would interest my Swedish readers.
Writes April Streeter at Treehugger (reprinted by the biking magazine), “If you want to find an unassuming place where bicycling is a way of life and nobody makes a big deal about it, head south. The south of Sweden, that is, where the small university town of Lund has a big bicycle habit. They just don’t advertise it.
“In Lund, 60% of the populace bikes or takes public transport to go about their daily tasks. And then there’s Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city — only 20 miles southwest of Lund. Malmö also doesn’t have a reputation for fantastic biking. But some [Swedes] say it is the country’s best biking city — ahead of both Stockholm, the capital; Gothenburg, the second largest Swedish metropolitan area, and a host of smaller bike-friendly burgs.
“Just across the Øresund sound from Copenhagen, Malmö has always lived a bit in the shadow of the Danish capital. But in the last few years it has done a lot to take a place among the great biking cities of Northern Europe, mostly by its investment in infrastructure and pure commitment to get people on their bikes. That has paid off — cycling has increased 30% each year for the last four years, while car trips under five kilometers have dropped.
“Now Malmö is upping the stakes by putting up 30 million Swedish crowns (about US$4.1 million) toward the building of a four-lane super cycling highway between it and its bike-happy northern neighbor city Lund.” See the article here.
Here is a slide show on Lund, at the NY Times.
Ramboll/Screen capture
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Yep, those Scandinavians know what they are doing. Thanks for bringing that beautiful slide show from the NY Times to my attention!
Thanks for commenting, Judith.
Biking has long been a way of life in many cities in Northern Europe with big upswing in recent years for reasons such as people becoming more health and environmentally conscious, biking is very convenient and it is actively promoted by the government that sees the benefits for society at large with less congestion, pollution and better health.
In the US biking also has seen an upswing thanks to grassroots initiatives and efforts by urban planners in larger cities such as New York, Portland and Boston that promote biking. However, bike commuting is still not very popular and even top bike commuting towns such as Portland and Eugene in Oregon don’t have more than 7% of people that commute by bike. But maybe initiatives such as http://www.recycleabicycle.org/ will change this?
Thanks for alerting me to the youth development nonprofit Recycle a Bicycle in NYC. BTW, if you brought your helmet, you could borrow a bike at the Hubway, http://www.thehubway.com/, outside South Station and leave it over by the harbor. I can’t recommend biking on the streets in between though. Too dangerous. A bike path is said to be in development.
The truth about cycling in Malmö!
http://thenorthernplights.com/2011/06/24/dispatch-5/
~The Dippylomat esq.
I have an old bike and a helmet. Come and join me on a bicycling tour.
Only if the terrain is flat! 🙂