Pedalling Dreams

How Copenhagen fell in love with cycling / Communities

- CHANDNI DOULATRAMANI

In the early 1970s, a Copenhagen-based cinema operator named Søren Sögreni wanted to buy a bicycle. He could not find one that appealed to him. Despite exponential growth in the use of bicycles in the first half of the twentieth century, the easing of fuel restrictions following the end of the Second World War had led to Danes opting to buy motor vehicles instead. As a result, cycling as a preferred mode of transport fell to an all-time low. Sögreni decided to make a bicycle himself, using tools he used at his job. So beautiful was the bicycle he designed, purely by instinct, that several young colleagues soon began requesting him to make bikes for them.

Sögreni began selling handmade customised bicycles in 1981. His designs were minimalist— simple and sleek, with clean lines and no-frills. Although he took advice from mechanics, he learnt mostly by experience. “I kind of started the fashion of bicycling in Copenhagen,” he told me. “Everybody had the same bike and not much to choose from. With the way I made the system here, anyone could choose anything and customize it, so that was a big difference.”

That fashion has resulted in Copenhagen becoming the most cycle-friendly city in the world. Bicycles outnumbered cars in Copenhagen for the first time in 2016. According to data from the Cycling Embassy of Denmark, a network of professionals in the bicycle industry, as of 2017, 41 per cent of all trips in the capital were made on bicycles and 62 per cent of residents cycled to work or college, as opposed to only 24 percent who used cars.