In this video, I followed my brother and his two daughters, 4 and 6 years old, on their bicycle ride through Copenhagen. As my brother explained: "Bicycling is simply the most practical way to get around in Copenhagen".

While many parents in Copenhagen carry their young kids around in cargobikes, my brother's kids are bicycling themselves. And they enjoy it!

Shouldn't this be possible in all cities? Getting around safely by bicycle at all ages? I think it is a good planning aspiration for any city - and don't forget, Copenhagen used to be totally car-dominated! If Copenhagen can transition to one of the bicycle cities of the World, so can yours!

For the past 4 months, these are the daily bicycle commutes by brother's family:
- The 4-year old has a 1 km bicycle commute to/from the daycare
- The 6-year old has a 2 km bicycle commute to/from preschool

The bicycle commutes are done with the parental supervision, as shown in this video. The 4-year old bicycles in front of the parent, and the 6-year old bicycles behind.

The bicycle route in this video more or less matches the bicycle commute of the 4-year old.

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The video is filmed with a chest mounted GoPro camera on a cold December day, 11 am, on Wednesday 28 Dec 2022. Unfortunately, the cold weather caused the light sensor to malfunction, so the image is getting brighter and brighter, until one can hardly see what's going on. So, I took the chance to insert some Google Street View images. Video highlights:

0:05 Starting the bicycling
0:23 Bicycling on Strøget, the main pedestrian street, which started its transition to becoming fully pedestrianised in 1962. More pedestrians meant more business for the shops, so this commercial success help spur on the promenade transition. If I am not mistaken, today Copenhagen is the capital city with the highest fraction of fully pedestrianised roads.
1:08 Entering a inner courtyard short-cut, which allows us to stay off the roads with traffic ;-)
1:45 Entering Strædet, the smaller parallel promenade to Strøget. Strædet allows cars and bicycles, but they have to yield to pedestrians.
1:55 Turning onto the first road with motorised traffic
2:08 Climate change road grills to cater for heavier rains
2:27 Bicycling on road along canal, where Copenhagen was founded. Copenhagen = København = Købmande (merchants) + Havn (harbour). So, this is where the merchants used to pull their ships to the shoreline.
3:21 Street sign stating one-way street, but bicycles are allowed to go in both directions. A common sight in Copenhagen, and one of the reasons it is so much more convenient to bicycle in Copenhagen. Faster to get around, and parking the bicycle is easy and fast, too.
3:39 Cars passing from the back on this single lane street without bicycle lane
4:02 Crossing the most dangerous street on this bicycle ride, a T-junction without traffic light on a street with more traffic including busses.
4:20 Crossing busy junction with traffic light
5:06 Beautiful view to the Danish Parliament, called Christiansborg, but in short form Borgen (the castle), which is also the name of the popular political Netflix series "Borgen" (along the lines of "House of Cards", but loosely based on the politics of Denmark)
5:35 The 6-year old girls turns to me and says "It is actually quite wonderful to bicycle" (in Danish "Det er faktisk ret dejligt at cykle"). Forgot to translate nice remark in the video captions.
5:42 Passing by the National Museum entrance
5:58 The 4-year old proudly exclaims: "I bicycle really fast!"
6:11 Parking the bicycles at public bicycle racks. The trip ends here.
6:38 The map showing our bicycle route (red line) through downtown Copenhagen


Enjoy the video!