The people wanted Lego bike lanes, and Lego finally listened

A thousand years ago, in 2019, a regional councilor in the Netherlands named Marcel Steeman tackled a seemingly impossible challenge: convincing the manufacturers of one of the most popular toys in the world to do something different.

He wanted Lego, the toy production company in Billund, Denmark, to add bike lanes to their small, brick-made cities.

For years, the streets in Lego’s city sets – once called baseboards – have space for cars, people, even small storm drains, but no designated lanes for vehicles without emissions such as cars. Worse, it appears that over time, Lego’s streets have become more hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. Compared to Lego sets from years ago, it looks like the cars got bigger – develops from four to six studs wide – and it seems that the roads become wider, while the sidewalks getting narrower.

“It really struck me that Lego City is such a car-oriented city,” Steeman told me in an email.

Steeman posted his bike track proposal on Lego’s “Ideas” website, where enthusiasts can share each other’s ideas and vote on them. Legally popular ideas can get the chance to climb the ladder and become part of an official Lego set – though only 33 have been produced in the program’s 13-year history. The ideas range from the elegant, like this incredibly accurate violin, to the idiosyncratic, like this map of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Others have gained enough support to settle for full-fledged Lego sets, such as this relaxation of Sesame Street’s famous brown stones.

Steeman’s idea caught the attention of Marco te Brommelstroet, an associate professor of urban planning at the University of Amsterdam, who tweeted under the name. Cycling Professor. And one of Brommelstroet’s tweets caught my attention and asked me to write a story that asked the question: ‘Where are the bike lanes in the Lego world?’

But as the idea gained more traction on social media, Lego remained frustratingly silent. And Steeman’s posts on Lego’s Ideas website are still being rejected. “I’ve tried a few times,” he said. ‘Sometimes [they were rejected] without reason, once with the reason that it was just a political statement and not a statement, and it really confused me. ‘

Imagine what Lego bike lanes can be.
Interpretation by Marcel Steeman

Several people who supported Steeman’s idea of ​​adding bike lanes to Lego’s street scene tried to contact the company, but to no avail. (A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on my original story or on this most recent one.)

Meanwhile, Steeman and Brommelstroet continued researching Lego’s history and discovered that in the 1980s and 90s, the company manufactured street plates with small bike lanes painted green. But eventually the tracks disappeared, and in the years that followed, the roads got bigger, and the Lego cars grew from four-studs wide, to six studs, to eight studs.

Not only that, but they also learned that the absence of bike lanes has something to do with Lego’s supply chain. Thalia Verkade, a journalist who collaborated on a book on mobility with Brommelstroet, discovered that Lego was using a subcontractor for the road plates, which was one of the last pieces made by a company other than Lego itself. According to Verkade, Lego tried to buy out the contract to bring the street plates back to their own facilities, Steeman said.

Around the same time, Matthew Ashton, an official Lego master, in a tweet family play that there will be a new form of roads to Lego’s city sets ‘in the not too distant future’. “A stone hanger,” Steeman said.

Steeman has been busy all his time as a regional councilor for the province of North Holland, where he regularly deals with mobility issues. When the pandemic hits, Steeman moves to work from home, sharing his home’s third floor with his 9-year-old son and all of his Legos. “There’s Lego everywhere,” he said, “and I have to tilt my camera up to save my face in the many digital meetings I have for my work.”

Just before the pandemic, Steeman got the rumor that Lego would revolutionize its road system by using adjustable sets and real bricks, not just the big flat plates, as a way to play with road designs. This could include pedestrian crossings and speed bumps – and maybe bike lanes?

Those redesigned street sets (# 60304) were finally released last year, along with a small shopping area (# 60306) that includes a crackle shop, a sports shop, a crossroads, some street lights and finally a thin blue bike lane.

The new official Lego set Shopping Street has a small blue bike lane along a major road and small shops.

Lego’s official shopping street (# 60306), released in late 2020.
Screenshot: Lego

Steeman was shocked, but rather than resting on his laurels, he immediately took stock of all the ways this updated street scene still lacks what he really wanted. The bike path was small, like very small, only two-studs wide, barely enough space for a truck. The subject also depicted a pickup truck parked in the middle of the bike lane. Nevertheless, he downplayed it as a ‘small victory’ and jumped back to work to advance his idea for a broader, more enjoyable bike path.

He generated a new version of his idea using the new road plates as a base. He also added some bike racks, a bike with a child seat, and the main, large, wide, blue bike lanes. He chooses blue as the color, knowing that it is the color used in Billund and in Denmark, where Lego is based. In his native Holland, bike lanes are painted red to prevent people from mistaking the water in the canals.

Reluctantly, Steeman uploaded his new version to Lego’s Ideas website in anticipation of another rejection. But instead he got another big shock. “To my surprise, the idea was accepted within a day,” he said. It was published on the Lego website and now Steeman can try to recruit enough support to make it a real set.

Lego gave him 60 days to get 100 fans; he did it within 4 hours. Now he has a little over a year to get 10,000 fans. The odds are against him – remember, only 33 ideas were ever accepted – but he is confident it can be done. And if he does not, he knows that the seeds have already been planted by Lego designers. A thin blue bike lane could eventually grow into something much bigger and safer from the smiling residents of Legoland. Anything is possible.

“Ultimately, I just want a global generation to grow up with a sustainable, healthy and above all safe alternative to the car – centered world we live in,” Steeman said. “And there’s really no bigger city on earth to start that revolution with than Lego City.”

He added: “So Lego was probably a little bit right when they said it was a political statement.”

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