Oregon Active Transportation Summit

For the 8th consecutive year, Finland was named the happiest country in the world. Helsinki is annually recognized as one of the most livable cities in world. Helsinki was named 6th in the global Copenhagenize Index of bike friendly cities.

From that report: "Once again among the world’s top 10 bicycle-friendly cities, Helsinki continues to evolve with purpose, prioritizing safety and social responsibility as leverage to develop cycling and carry out its urban transformation. Cycling is increasingly becoming a natural part of life for more and more residents, reflecting the city’s steady progression towards making active mobility an inclusive and dependable choice for everyone."

Helsinki has seen a 7.8/1 Euro return on return of construction of bicycle infrastructure. In this presentation/workshop, participants will learn how to adapt (available) data from their cities into a tool to help them measure their city's own ROI. This will be the interactive part of the presentation/workshop.

Helsinki's vision is not to be the most bike friendly city but the most functional city in the world. Thus, all transportation modes have a part to play. Through investment and developments in cycling, walking, and transit, each mode plays their part leading to rapid improvements. This leads, among other things, to the most recent year that saw zero traffic deaths in the city.In winter, Helsinki sees a large in cycling modal share drop from 12% to 2%.

Here is where we leave Helsinki and travel to Oulu; a northern Finland city (pop. 216,000) that is recognized as the winter cycling capital of the world. Cycling modal share drops there from 28% down 22% in winter. They achieve this largely through world class maintenance and almost total separation from vehicular traffic to bikes. There is a K-12 school - Metsokangkaskoulu - in Oulu with a student population of 1200 students. Of those 1200, 1000 travel to and from the school by bike, every day of the year. There are concrete strategies and design policies in palace to ensure this happens. For example, there are 9 access points onto the campus. Only 2 are accessible by car.