“Hitting a green wave? It’s the best feeling, especially when you’re in a hurry,” says actor Samuel Traum, unlocking his bike by a Copenhagen intersection thronged by two-wheeled commuters. “The opposite, a red wave, is the worst.”
For those of us who do not live in cycle-friendly Copenhagen, the green wave that Traum describes is a system started by the city authorities 16 years ago: in order to encourage bike travel, they synchronised traffic lights on several key roads so that a rush-hour cyclist travelling at about 20km/h (12.4mph) could catch green lights all the way.
