I don't understand this part: "(the region) has provided $1.6 million for the superhighway project. "
How is it possible to build 14 miles of this bike highway for this little money? (I'm an American). Here, you'd spend this amount just on "feasibility study" and buying off the inevitable opposition.
It wasn't "built". Almost all of it was already there. If was made into a route, had an orange line painted on it and (sometimes this seems like the most important part when dealing with bicycle projects in Denmark) marketed heavily.
One of the comments on the linked danish article is a woman who says she's been doing that commute for years - a long a different route that is shorter and worked very well for her, so she doesn't really see the point.
Maybe the region only provided part of the total project budget?
As another data point, a somewhat similar but larger project -- about 100km bike highway in an urbanised region -- in Germany is probably not going to happen due to costs of >110 million EUR. That's approximately 10x as expensive per km as the project in Copenhagen, if the $1.4 million is the total project budget after all.
$100k/mile seems more reasonable given typical suburban rd pricing (~$200k/mile). Hugely dependent on how much the right of way has to be refrigged first I guess.
I am not sure what the funding is, but Bike roads are much much cheaper than car roads. What makes a road expensive is how much weight it can handle, and when you move from a car to a bike you remove at least 95% of the weight the road has to handle.
You also save a lot of money because the road does not have to handle 80 mph speeds. Car roads get destroyed when wheels slam into small bumps or holes in the asphalt at very high speeds.
So while it may all look like the same asphalt bike roads are much much cheaper to both build and maintain.
Therefore, even if you never get on a bike you should be making your city build bike roads because, if other people chose to bike instead of driving, this will mean lower costs to the city and less taxes for you.
How is it possible to build 14 miles of this bike highway for this little money? (I'm an American). Here, you'd spend this amount just on "feasibility study" and buying off the inevitable opposition.