After a slightly longer trip than originally planned, a group of local officials and business representatives has returned from Europe with new ideas for improving biking options throughout the county.
The group returned to Madison Wednesday night after being delayed in Amsterdam for four extra days because of a volcanic eruption in Iceland which necessitated the closing of European airports.
The group, including Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and representatives from the biking industry and other local businesses visited several of Europe’s most bike-friendly cities to assess initiatives to encourage bike ridership.
“They wanted to look at some of the policies and infrastructure and see what they can learn from it to bring back some tangible ideas that we can put into place here,” Rachel Strauch-Nelson, spokesperson for Cieslewicz, said.
Local biking industry leaders, including Trek and Saris Cycling Company, came up with the idea for the trip in response to the popularity of biking in Dane County, which is home to some of the world’s largest bicycle companies, Falk said.
Everywhere they visited, Falk said, one thing was evident: in Europe, biking is a major mode of transportation.
“The single biggest takeaway was that in Europe, everybody bikes,” Falk said. “Three-year-olds bike. Eighty-year-olds bike. Teenagers with purple hair bike. Men in business suits bike. Women in high heels and skirts bike. And they bike every day.”
Falk said European cities have signs, bike lanes and biker-friendly intersections that are designed to make biking safe and easy.
Designing communities in this way, Strauch-Nelson said, is key to bringing European-style infrastructure back to Madison.
“One of the lessons the mayor brought back is good transportation policy shouldn’t put one mode of transportation in conflict with another,” Strauch-Nelson said.
Falk said although Dane County already has many bike trails, more can be done to improve biking transportation. She added she would like to see a county-wide network of interconnected biking paths that would allow for seamless transportation within and between Dane County’s 60 towns and villages.
