Steph Loves Bikes: Left Turns (Copenhagen)

Our co-director, Steph Nappa, is writing this series to share her experiences and lessons learned from her study abroad in Europe. You can also follow along on Instagram with #stephlovesbikes. 

I’m very glad we were told how to do left turns before we went out on the road. In Copenhagen, left turns require two steps the way they do for pedestrians. This does take longer, though not by very much as the lights change very frequently here. I think it feel a lot safer. I don’t have to cross lanes of traffic to get to the left side of the lanes, and I don’t need to worry about oncoming traffic either. The intersections here are built to accommodate this two-step approach. There is extra space in front of the crosswalks for bikes to pull off of the main bike path and wait for the signal change. I think this system works well, though I am interested to compare this to the system in Amsterdam, which I have been told is more chaotic.