Green Wave for Cyclists (Grøn Bølge)
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
Copenhagen times traffic signals on key cycling corridors to a steady 20 km/h so cyclists keeping pace hit consecutive green lights. A city evaluation of the Nørrebrogade and Nørre Farimagsgade waves found average cyclist speed rose from about 15 to 20 km/h and red-light stops fell from as many as six to zero or one — with added delays for buses on the same streets. A 2026 budget agreement set aside more than DKK 600 million for cycling, the city's largest cycling budget yet, and extends the green wave to 15 more routes.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →📊 Impact
Average cyclist speed rose from ~15 to 20 km/h and red-light stops fell from up to six to zero or one on the evaluated corridors, at a cost of ~27–50 seconds of added delay for buses.
🎓 Lesson
The bill fell on the bus, not the car. The city's own evaluation found car traffic either unchanged or slightly improved by the green wave, while buses on the same streets lost up to about 27 seconds in one direction and about 50 in the other. Timing signals for one mode is a decision about whose delay counts, and Copenhagen published the answer instead of only the gain — then kept choosing the same way, budgeting more than DKK 600 million for cycling in 2026 against a ten-year average of about DKK 160 million a year.
Sources
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2007. 3 of 3 sources carry a publication date, from 2013 to 17 October 2025.
When the sources were published
- Supercykelstier · regional governmentKøbenhavns Kommune — Evaluering af grøn bølge (2013)
- Ritzau · platformKøbenhavns Kommune press release via Ritzau
- The Cool Down · pressThe Cool Down (press, citing The Guardian)
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 9 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 9 addressable claims, 3 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 9
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-50aea53873a6df0c
quantitative
average cyclist speed rose from about 15 to 20 km/h
Sources carrying this claim
clm-eba50f3b6873f476
descriptive
red-light stops fell from as many as six to zero or one
Sources carrying this claim
clm-45d47cb502f6f240
quantitative
A 2026 budget agreement set aside more than DKK 600 million for cycling, the city's largest cycling budget yet
Sources carrying this claim
clm-dae300b94d9447ac
quantitative
extends the green wave to 15 more routes
Sources carrying this claim
clm-cc91d820b43a11d4
quantitative
Average cyclist speed rose from ~15 to 20 km/h and red-light stops fell from up to six to zero or one on the evaluated corridors
Sources carrying this claim
clm-849fbf0c1786820b
quantitative
at a cost of ~27–50 seconds of added delay for buses
Sources carrying this claim
clm-54d80c49f3d7e2d3
descriptive
The city's own evaluation found car traffic either unchanged or slightly improved by the green wave
Sources carrying this claim
clm-f05da02ff697abcf
quantitative
buses on the same streets lost up to about 27 seconds in one direction and about 50 in the other
Sources carrying this claim
clm-a1c81a0a3039195f
quantitative
budgeting more than DKK 600 million for cycling in 2026 against a ten-year average of about DKK 160 million a year
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
Erratum on this revision's envelope. The snapshot, its hash and its permanent link are untouched.
- createdAt previously read 2026-08-26T20:00:00Z. The batching script that produced this revision advanced createdAt into the future to satisfy the strictly-increasing order the validator requires per entity. The value never recorded a real event; the corrected value is the moment the revision provably existed in the repository. Corrected to 2026-08-26T14:41:50Z on 2026-08-27; evidence: first appears in commit 9d65ace88e, committed 2026-08-26T14:41:50Z.
sha256:9d6a20fb1dade0fe780232ea307dc9323c8de393c8d25a7d9d09d60201cdc65f
- 9
- of 9 claims mapped
- 3
- source dossiers
- 2
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- City of Copenhagen (Københavns Kommune)
- Actor types
- city-government
- Funding model
- Not recorded
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
3 source dossiers
Københavns Kommune — Evaluering af grøn bølge (2013)
- Stable source ID
src-7914ea7062110c65- Publisher
- Name not classified · supercykelstier.dk
- Type / language
- pdf · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-26
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Official evaluation notat with before/after speed and stop data for the Nørrebrogade/Nørre Farimagsgade green waves.
Københavns Kommune press release via Ritzau
- Stable source ID
src-8c4dec48abf468c6- Publisher
- Name not classified · via.ritzau.dk
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-09-04
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-26
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
City statement on the 2026 cycling budget (DKK 602.4m) expanding green waves to 15 streets, quoting Mayor Line Barfod.
- Claims linked
The Cool Down (press, citing The Guardian)
- Stable source ID
src-c7e4175079ecf8df- Publisher
- Name not classified · thecooldown.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-10-17
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-26
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-26
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
October 2025 coverage confirming ongoing operation and the 2025/26 budget expansion.
- Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
Continue exploring
Compare this project
Four cities count cyclists. Only one of them gives the count back.
Counting bicycles is the easy part, and every one of these does it well. The ladder runs from a number nobody acts on to a signal plan that hands the cyclist the green light.
| Project | Since | Status | Outcome | Evidence | Run by | Cost | What happens to the count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan Vélo Digital Infrastructure MeshParis, 🇫🇷 | 2021 | Live | Ongoing | Official | City government | not public | Published. Permanent counters feed hourly totals into the open data portal on a rolling window, so anyone can audit whether the new lanes moved anything. |
| Vivacity AI Traffic-Sensor NetworkLondon, 🇬🇧 | 2018 | Live | Ongoing | Official | City government, Private company | not public | Classified on the device and the video thrown away — a deliberate privacy design, and a count split across two dozen boroughs that each bought their own. |
| Traffic Pilot — City-Wide Signal PredictionFrankfurt am Main, 🇩🇪 | 2022 | Live | Ongoing | Official | City government | not public | Handed back as advice: the app reads live signal phases and tells the rider what speed catches the green wave. |
| Green Wave for Cyclists (Grøn Bølge)Copenhagen, 🇩🇰 | 2007 | Live | Succeeded | Official | City government | not public | Built into the signal plan itself. The lights are timed to the cyclist rather than the cyclist to the lights — and the buses on those streets wait for it. |
Explore the wider context
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Green Wave for Cyclists (Grøn Bølge)” — Copenhagen, Denmark. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/copenhagen-green-wave/ (last verified 2026-08-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.