City commuting: Stockholm vs. Helsinki

7 Comments 14 November 2010

Copenhagen winter cycle chic chick | Photo by Mikael Colville-Andersen

We recognize that Coming Thru is not a political blog or talking too much about city planning or traffic management, but it does affect us. I’ve mentioned earlier that there is a very active group of people here in Finland, who are working hard in order to improve the conditions for all Finns.

Luckily, the guys doing this promotion and activism are smart and are going for the voters instead of the decision-makers and they’ve done a series of four posts of photos comparing the cycling conditions of Stockholm and Helsinki, two very similar Nordic capital cities (of Sweden and Finland, respectively).

The posts are in Finnish, but photos are universal and you can really see the difference of the city routes and planning.

Stockholm vs. Helsinki, Part I

Stockholm vs. Helsinki, Part II

Stockholm vs. Helsinki, Part III

Stockholm vs. Helsinki, Part IV

How are things in your city? Is the planning wise, are they doing anything to fix it?

Author

Markus Sandelin

Markus Sandelin - who has written 201 posts on Coming thru!.

Markus is a bike commuter gadget freak who is learning the ropes of the bike world, you can find him all around the web - but you can start with his twitter at @banton.

Contact the author

« Exclusive video: Cycling in November sucks

November sucks: Slippery when wet »

Newbloke

I’m very lucky to live in a Cycling Demonstration Town, Lancaster, UK. We cyclists feel safe and quite important here!

PS. My typing is still invisible tome.
Markus Varha

Glad to hear that! We’ll have to come check it out one day.

What browser are you using? We use a service called Disqus and it _should_ work on every browser..
Pingback: Tweets that mention City commuting: Stockholm vs. Helsinki | Bicycle Commuting | Coming thru! Bike Blog -- Topsy.com()
johanna macdonald

I hadn’t realised how tricky it is to be a cyclist in HKI until I cycled around the UK. But then the true horrorshow: cycling in Tampere! They give you a very wide sidewalk and a sign suggesting that it’s shared by cyclists and pedestrians; no dividing line–either real or socially-agreed-upon so people just wander and wheel about taking lots of personal space; and cobblestone streets with drivers who love to hug the kerb. What is the *point*.
Hugo

I’ve found Helsinki to be much more cycle friendly than Manchester.
johanna macdonald

Actually I’ll totally give you that; Manchester was my last stop and I was flummoxed by how bike-defying the downtown was. Some nice paths when you get farther out though!
marcos

I lived in Stockholm 2 years and in Helsinki 2 years and there is no comparison between them, helsinki has some good places but a lot of “nonbikeables” places, and you can bike in ALL stockholm. But the big diference is the car drivers: in stockholm they respect you in most of cases and in helsinki they even dont stop in the crossroads! Sometimes looks like they really try to kill you…

About Comingthru

Coming Thru (or Coming Through - as that URL was taken) is a daily updated bike magazine - a collection of writings and links that relate to biking in its every form. The idea started from when Maarten met Markus decided to finally start collecting the things we like about bikes and talk about our everyday adventures in dodging moving objects at high speeds.The site is run by a collage of cyclists, most notably by Canadian Johanna MacDonald, Belgian Maarten Patteeuw and Finnish Markus Sandelin.

It all started in the spring of 2010, after a record breaking snowy winter when Markus bought a house 25 kilometers from the office and decided to handle the commuting with a bicycle. It turned out the bike wasn’t up to standards for that kind of stress and the first weeks were more tragicomic than glorious. Thus the idea began to brew to actually document this journey.

Daily Edition Theme by