A city with happy bicyclists and pedestrians often equals a happy city. According to Marek Salermo, former racing cyclist and current City of Helsinki bicycle traffic planner, riding a bike could be a year-round occurrence in Helsinki.

Former racing cyclist MAREK SALERMO owns ten bikes, two of which reside in his office. He’s the bicycle traffic planner for the City of Helsinki, so his work and lifestyle go hand in hand.

Salermo started riding a bike in Denmark, where he lived for five years as a child. Since then he has worked as a professional racing cyclist in Belgium for three years and majored in traffic planning at the Helsinki University of Technology. At the moment, he works in strategic planning to improve biking conditions in Helsinki.

“I don’t have time to design actual bicycle lanes, so I focus on creating guidelines for making traffic better for cars, bikes and most of all pedestrians,” he says.

Salermo once said that “during the times of mass automobilisation in the 1960s, the bike was positioned as a vehicle for children and elderly people” and that this idea still lives on. In order for cycling to become trendier, the image of riding a bike needs to be changed.

“In Finland, biking-related communication focuses too much on the dangers. In addition to increasing actual safety, it’s important to increase the sensation of safety among bikers. In Helsinki, many accidents take place due to ill-designed bicycle lanes that cause bikers to appear unexpectedly in front of cars or pedestrians. Most of the time the best place for bicycles is alongside cars. Bikers should feel confident and safe enough to use the driveway, where motorists can properly see them and thus better take them into consideration.“

Wintertime riding

Many people switch from bikes to other vehicles in October – even if snow is nowhere to be found. According to Salermo, wintertime biking in Helsinki is possible, but it requires improving wintertime street maintenance.

“I believe that communication can also make a big difference. At the moment there’s a general consensus that biking is a seasonal activity. That should be changed. Biking events should be organised around the year, so that the media could bring forth cycling in the winter, too.”

The bicycle is often seen as the vehicle of a better future. Does Salermo also consider himself a researcher and designer of what lies ahead?

“When biking is increased in the right way, a city automatically becomes a better place to live. It has been said that the bicycle was invented both too early and too late. Too early because it didn’t have enough time to establish itself in our traffic culture before cars were created, and too late because nowadays it’s often considered an old-fashioned and unconvincing vehicle.”

“If the bike got designed today, it would win a Nobel prize as a solution for a myriad of urban traffic issues. Right now, we just need to renew the reputation of biking and value it for what it is: a quick, silent and clean way to move about that requires little space and uplifts both the body and the mind.” †

Teksti Anni Puolakka & Jenna Sutela / OK Do Kuva Paavo Lehtonen

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OK Do is a creative think-and-do tank tackling emerging questions in the intersection of design, art and science.

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