Cyclists get green light

A new idea will help cyclists reach their destinations faster in Copenhagen

Over the Easter holiday, the City Council began swapping out old traffic lights with new ones that communicate with buses' GPS systems in order to help the buses get through the city easier with a flow of green lights.

The council is now looking into providing a similar service for cyclists that would monitor the cyclists’ average speed so that traffic lights could adjust automatically to weather conditions.

“The cyclists will for example experience that the signals will be able to determine whether it is a windless summer day or if there is snowstorm and head wind,” the city's deputy mayor for technology and environment, Ayfer Baykal (Socialistisk Folkeparti), told metroXpress newspaper.

The city has not yet figured out how the lights would monitor bikes, but the ideas being pursued include using Bluetooth technology to communicate with cyclists' mobile phones and providing cyclists with a tag that could be put on their bikes and be read by monitors on the traffic lights.