In the last decade Plovdiv Municipality has built about 60 km of bike lanes in the city that connect all its ends. This is comparable in quantity to two other major Bulgarian cities - Sofia and Burgas, which also have approximately 60 km of bike lanes, and of course the difference in area and population brings Burgas first, followed by Plovdiv, and far back the capital.
But all of them, taken together, do not come close to 1/3 as a distance with the major European capitals - Copenhagen - 400 km; Amsterdam - 515 km; Vienna - 1200 km.
Obviously, this process will continue - at the moment this is one of the main directions on which every modern city works, and bike lanes are also an easy, fast and much cheaper way to expand population mobility.
Currently, for example, two new alleys are being discussed in Plovdiv - along the length of Blvd. Hadji Dimitar and along the entire length of Tsarevets-Moder. Undoubtedly, good ideas in bicycle infrastructure, however, suffer from one significant disadvantage: they are not part of a general transport plan in the city.
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The idea of getting people on wheels or giving them a chance to move on foot is not self-help - it is based on the desire to take them off their cars and combine the ways in which everyone can move within a metropolis. Only if the everyday life of the given person is easier and comfortable without a car, then the city will be able to solve its car problem.
That is why Capital spoke with the Danish urbanist and cycling specialist Mikael Colville-Andersen to discuss with him the progress of Plovdiv, which seems to be at the forefront of the Bulgarian experience.
Planning problems
Cycling in a city the size and relief of Plovdiv should be the fastest and easiest way. The distances are short, there are not many climbs and descents, and the movement of two tires is also the most flexible method of transport - if you flat a tire and hurry, you can simply tie it to a pole and get on public transport.
"A city like this must be one of the pioneers in Europe, to move these transformations, and it should have started modernizing 10 years ago," the obvious Colville-Andersen found. He has an explanation for why this usually doesn't happen - the lack of political will. "Politicians need to realise that this is a modernisation, not just a sweet sport or leisure activity," says the Danishman.
Colville-Andersen has a long experience with his company Copenhagenize Design Co., where he is a founder and former director. The Russian city of Almetevsk, for example, decided in 2015 to become the velosoce of Russia. After Mayor Irath Herullin began working with Copenhagenize Design Co., they were able to build about 200 km of road infrastructure for bicycles.
There are a few basic tips Colville-Andersen gives. The first is: be careful who you assign planning to these alleys. "Politicians and engineers are looking for every excuse not to make the right infrastructure. One major problem with road engineering culture is that most engineers learn how to drive cars around the city. Cities have to hire urbanites to build bike lanes because engineers base their mathematical data models from the 1960s. You send the wrong people to build alleys," the Danish urbanist said.
According to him, one of the main problems facing the current bike lanes of Plovdiv is precisely the defect in their planning. They must be designed so that a cyclist can get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
