Malmo shows us the way to end “ridiculous” car trips

No ridiculous car trips from Martin Lang on Vimeo.

I picked this film up on Copenhagenize this morning and I’d like to share it with the Los Angeles cycling community.

From Copenhagenize:

“The City’s bicycle office and transport department are also quite brilliant at promoting cycling. In fact, I asked one of the communications people at the City of Copenhagen’s Bicycle Office a while back who they were positively influenced by and he replied, “Malmö” without hestitation. Followed by the Dutch Fietsersbond. Which speaks volumes.

They have had a successful campaign running for four years now called “No Ridiculous Car Trips”. They discovered a few years back that 50% of all trips under 5 km were by car in the city and they decided to do something about it.

The campaign has been a massive success. In the film, above, you can hear all about how and why the campaign started. I like how they turn the tables in their marketing. Directing confronting that very simple fact that using cars for short trips in their city was – ridiculous.

They invited people to write down a description of their short car trip in the hopes of winning the Most Ridiculous Car Trip title – and a new bicycle of course”

To make a similar campaign work in Los Angeles, we’d need a Bike Plan that removes car lanes and installs proper protected bike lanes or paths to meet the demands of the new class of mainstream bike rider. We’d also need a similar regime of accountability as the planners in Malmo used, to show what is and isn’t working for their city. I’m hopeful that we can get these sorts of programs implemented in Los Angeles (or at least parts of it). I have a feeling that if you’re reading this blog post, you feel the same way too!