Having lived in Copenhagen I can only attest the surge in living quality when a city adopts a no-compromise bicycle strategy. Back in car-loving Munich I feel set back a century. With city council members putting forward arguments like that bike lanes will “destroy retail businesses”. It’s frustrating.
Ps: here’s the short film the article talks about. Shows the fantastic transformation of Utrecht. https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E
There's a lot of wrong-headed antipathy towards improving cycling infrastructure, which is really frustrating, given that it's a low-cost way of making a big difference to quality of life.
Yeah the business destruction argument is the most perplexing. It's like shop owners thing that people prefer shopping on noisy dirty streets to quiet pedestrian areas. I don't know how you can come to that conclusion.
Living dead center in Utrecht it's actually quite easy to do so. In the mornings you can simply drive through the pedestrian zone at a walking pace as long as you have business there like unloading or going to your house. Outside of the pedestrian zone of the centre you can still drive your car, but it's just not something a lot of people do. Given the medieval street pattern it's still pretty convenient.
The real hard thing is that Google & Co don't mark every street as reachable by car or truck and you also need to drive over a bus / taxi lane to get there. So people that are used to just set up Google Maps and drive will never get there as the roads are not accessible according to the map they use. Which is a huge pain in the ass anything larger than a parcel needs to be delivered to my house.
Unfortunately, usually it’s more about the (unfounded) assumption that car users are proper money-spending shoppers and cyclists and pedestrians are unemployed hippie communists.
You hear this argument all the time so I’m not sure whence the downvotes. Whatever the exact phrasing, the gist of the argument is that car users are assumed to have more purchasing power and should thus be given priority.
Besides, on a bicycle it's easier to stop and park your bike if you see an interesting shop. When driving there is much more friction as you need to find a parking spot and park there first.
Is it though? Bikes are stolen far more often than cars and you can't carry as much on a bicycle either. Furthermore, you can't really go shopping with the family as a group unless you have specific gear to allow you to do that, because kids aren't going to travel these distances.
I like bicycles, but actually going to a store with a bike is an annoying experience. One that I wish could be improved.
I don't know where you live, but a lot of time this argument is given by people who live in car-centric cities or neighbourhoods. If you live in a walking/biking friendly neighbourhood (like I did for a few years), then the grocery store/community center/other family centric shops are within a 15 minute walk for everyone living in the neighbourhood, a distance pretty much any healthy person age 6-60 can cover via walking/biking. Whether you are walking or biking you can take a rolling cart with you, which is easy to push (walking or in front/behind your bike) and which will hold as much grocery as you need for a family.
Like you have to understand that a city designed from scratch for cars and one designed for walking/biking look very very different. Biking in one is hard and driving in the other is just as hard.
But sometimes you want to go shopping with the family to shops that you normally don't/can't visit. Everything that's within 15 minutes walking distance isn't going to be those shops. Regardless how you design a city, most shops even in a small city are going to be outside of that 15 minute walking distance too. The main problem I think is that there isn't always somewhere to put your bike safely when you go into the shops.
That kind of thinking stems from having the car as a first choice, it's easy to go 50km with a car instead of 7km. If bicycle and walking become the first choice for short travels under 7 km then you will see that you can reach most things by bike, and are still able to take the car to do those far away shopping sprees.
Yes bicycle parking is important, but it's relatively cheap, mostly because it does not need that much infrastructure.
The difference between bikes and cars is in the mean/variance of time to park.
For a bike it takes about 1 minute or more to stop, detach/unlock your lock from the frame and lock your bike to a bike stand, then take off your helmet. You reverse this when you get back on the bike. The variance is also not that high on this number.
For a car, the mean time varies greatly from location to location and the variance is much higher. You might get stuck several minutes searching or waiting for a parking spot or you might get a spot immediately and be walking to the shop in under 15 seconds.
These differences have some effect on how much people want to bike/drive. I think one way of encouraging biking more would be to work on lock designs and bike stand design so it takes less time to park your bike.
I have both a fast electric bike and a normal bike. For the electric bike it indeed takes a minute or three to unlock, enter pin code on bike, put on helmet etc. That's why I prefer my normal bike for short distances, takes me 10 seconds to lock, and I can usually park it within 10m of where I want to be. There is really no faster way to get around in any Dutch city for say <2km, than a plain old bike. If I would go to the local supermarket it would take me longer to find a parking spot that the entire bike ride there.
It sounds like you're describing a much different biking culture than is the one in the Netherlands. For a minor stop here it will take less than 10 seconds to park a bike.
Usually there's bike parking or a stand on the street right in front of the shop, no need to look for anything, nobody wears helmets when biking in the Netherlands, and if you're not parking for a long time you just lock the back wheel by pulling out the key- no chain involved at all.
So what this looks like in practice is hopping off your bike right in front of the shop/cafe/bar/restaurant and pulling out the key- that's it.
I don't know if it's generic, but in my town (Eindhoven, also NL), the argument is that a less car friendly city centre makes the shops harder to reach, encouraging people from neighbouring towns to go elsewhere where it's faster to get to and cheaper to park.
It's a reasonable argument that the city is now trying to address by making free parking on the city border plus a free bus into town.
I love Utrecht. It's a college town with the cultural and intellectual vibe that always engenders. It's a very modern town but you can turn a corner and walk half a block and suddenly it feels as though you just took a time machine to the 16th century. Best of all worlds.
Utrecht officially became a city in the year 1122, the oldest known records about Utrecht is that it was a roman outpost since 50ad. So I don't think it was designed for cars ;-)
No, the river is the Rhine. Traiectum is the noun for transire (verb), going through. It was a place where you could cross the river, hence a strategic place to build a castellum, as the Rhine was used as a natural border (limes) for the Roman Empire.
The u stands for uut (old Dutch), meaning downstream. Although I am not 100% sure if U doesn't simply stand for uit, which means 'from'.
I live in Utrecht. During peak hours there are so many bikes on the street that small traffic jams form near traffic lights. I cannot imagine the disaster if all these people would have taken their car instead. It simply wouldn't fit.
I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car. But most people don't, as taking the bike is the faster and more convenient option.
> that small traffic jams form near traffic lights
The fact that a traffic jam of bicycles is perceived as exceptional really tells how we have moved past the acceptance phase of the cancer that is automobile congestion.
> I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car.
This is an excellent rebuttal to the opinion 'but what happens when I need to move furnitures/go camping/<do some other activities that really requires a car>': these activities are not a part of people’s daily routine. If people stop unnecessary driving such as sending their children to schools ten minutes of walk away in an SUV, then it actually makes it easier for everyone else who does need to drive.
Dutch cities were not made for cars. Cars are the guests.
Thats the difference between the US and the Netherlands: by the time Dutch people started to buy cars in the 1960s cycling had been a popular means of transportation for half a century.
The parent post was claiming the cities were not made for cars, and that is accurate. Dutch cities grew organically over the centuries, if there was any design it would have been for pedestrians, horse drawn boats and carriages.
That's actually not accurate. The Dutch were as car mad as anywhere between 1950 and the 1970s.
The cycling culture that developed subsequently was hard fought for by activist groups throughout the late 60s and 70s, before being implemented across the country by various city councils in the 1980s and then developed further with national level infrastructural improvements in the 1990s.
There's lots of good documentaries on YouTube about the change, highly recommended if you're interested in urban planning or in the possibilities for introducing cycling infrastructure.
In Utrecht one can see many roads which have multiple cycle lanes and pedestrianised parks along the middle. These roads were originally developed as 4 lane highways for automobiles before modernisation.
It's still true people were using a lot of bicycles even when there were a lot of cars in city centers. They were just more prone to get an accident with a car as cars were allowed to drive faster and basically could come everywhere.
We got the bicycle amenities not because we wanted to stimulate people using them but because too many people (especially kids) died riding them.
I've commuted by bike in both San Francisco and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam it's a lovely (and safe) experience, whereas in San Fransisco it was positively hazardous. The key difference being the thoughtful lane designs in The Netherlands where you have dedicated bike lanes physically separated from the car traffic. In San Francisco you are often mixed with or adjacent to car traffic or parked cars - leaving you susceptible to parked car doors suddenly opening, or being caught in a moving car's blind spot.
Cycling is safe in The Netherlands because practically everyone is a cyclist so it isn't a stretch of anyone's empathy to look out for them. Also ... cyclists are everywhere so you had better be watching for them.
I’m also Dutch, and the only place I see the Dutch Reach being mentioned is on Hacker News every few years in articles like this one. Never ever has come up in my daily life here in NL.
I'm Dutch as well, and it was taught to me as part of driver's education. I still open my car door that way, also because it has the added advantage that you're better positioned to hold the door if there's a gust of wind.
The "Dutch reach" is some weird myth that you need some trick in order to not be a clueless asshole. No one I know in the Netherlands does this - they just look.
Please stop propagating this excuse and just start paying attention when in traffic.
> leaving you susceptible to parked car doors suddenly opening
Dutch driving instructors teach 'the Dutch reach'. You get into the habit of opening the car door with your left hand, so you'll automatically look for cyclists that may be passing by.
Unfortunately it works less well with the American style magnifying outside mirrors. The non magnifying give you a bit better overview in that case as cyclists (and pedestrians) come from everywhere where you don't expect them.
I was taught to first look in the mirror to see oncoming traffic from behind and then look over your shoulder and afterwards open the door. Yes you can force that by using your opposite hand but that is just a trick to force you to look which you should do anyways no matter what hand you use.
I've always lived in the Netherlands, but I've never seen anyone opening a door that way.
We do, however, look in the rearview mirrors before opening the door.
I would say Amsterdam is one the least bike-friendly cities of The Netherlands. The streets are small, bike lanes are narrow and bike lanes are very crowded. That's not to say your opinion isn't valid, it's just that your experience would very likely be even better in any other city than Amsterdam in The Netherlands.
It can be a bit overwhelming during rush hour though, two way bicycle traffic of multiple cycles next to each other going at different speeds. Makes crossing Vredenburg almost like a real life game of Frogger on foot.
I think the other thing that's not mentioned much is that most Dutch cities are commuting at quite low speeds. I'm lucky to average 10mi/hr.
There's a huge change in the energy of a crash as you start going faster. A 15 mi/hr biker has 2.25x the energy of a 10mi/hr biker and so if you crash it's so much worse.
At 9mi/hr, you're pretty much always walking away from the crash.
The bigger factors here beyond raw speed are age and weight of the rider. Kids can have the most crazy falls at any speed and bounce right up whereas an elderly or overweight person falling from a stand-still position can get severely injured. Hip and shoulder fractures are (unfortunately) quite common in octogenarians that still cycle.
I'm quite big and somewhat overweight but taking Judo lessons as a kid saved my ass many times falling (off my bike). I would recommend it to everyone to learn to fall.
The electric bike craze for elderly people isn't helping as they now travel about twice as fast as they used to.
Judo is a really good tip for cyclists. Falling and cycling go hand in hand to the point that everybody that cycles will fall at least once in their life in an uncontrolled manner, and during the training phase likely much more often than that.
Agreed on the electric bike craze, I get passed on my trusty old twelve speed with some regularity by 70 year olds doing 30+ kph (which suggests at least some of these have their limiters removed). Falling at that speed at that age is certain to end bad.
I rode a recumbent, not a trike. I still have half an Ikea in my right leg due to the accident, and I also almost flipped a recumbent trike so please be careful, they are not as stable as they seem.
That's pretty common, and a great way to break stuff. I've broken a leg on a recumbent so it's not like I'm above failure either. But I refuse to ride with clips in traffic.
It really depends on the situation. Kinetic energy is only part of the picture, sure, higher speed is worse. But most crashes aren't direct impacts into immovable objects.
One of the most common injuries for cyclists is the ubiquitous broken collar bone. This often happens to folks when they're coming to a stop, or even when they're motionless, and they lose balance and tip over. The unavoidable reaction is to put one's arm out to mitigate the fall. If the arm doesn't bend at the elbow, energy gets transmitted straight to the collarbone and may cause a fracture.
Another common injury is concussion. These are, of course, worse at higher speeds because they usually occur when the cyclist goes over the handlebars. This can happen so fast that there is no time to protect the face-- hence the term "face plant". But a head injury can also happen when tipping over at zero speed.
Not totally disagreeing about the speed aspect, just the usage of the kinetic energy factor to imply how much worse the accident "could be". Velodrome cyclists regularly wipe out at 40+ mph. Serious injuries and death can occur, but that is highly dependent on the specifics of the crash. The overwhelming majority of the time, higher speed means nastier road-rash.
I cycle commuted in London in the late 90s and 2000's and we pushed then for two items - to be seen by other road users as real road users (ie not something just to be brushed aside) and for dedicated cycle lanes that would improve safety.
I started cycle commuting again about a year ago (Boris Bikes) and guess what we have dedicated "cycle superhighways"
And the problem it turns out is us cyclists
There is always a traffic jam on the dedicated pathway - the blue cycle lane. And so some (usually but not always male) cyclists jump on and off the lane and engage in dangerous overtaking manoeuvres.
Worst, is that the blue lane runs along normal roads and so has traffic lights at the same positions - and that I guess 25% of cyclists ignore completely a red light and plough through - and twice I have seen these idiots hit pedestrians and two weeks ago came across the fire brigade washing the blood away
We campaigned and rode to be taken as real roads users - and when we got real roads with real traffic light we ignore the real
rules of the road
Cyclists need to have number plates and fines for breaching traffic laws.
I wonder why that is, I see very, very little of that mentality in the Netherlands.
There's also a very interesting phenomena where right now in London the people who bike are "Cyclists" where they're much more likely to be enthusiasts, people who want to really go fast, people who have Bicycling as part of their identity. In the Netherlands, it's just a way of getting around and not an ideology.
The other contributing factor could be size. London is so much bigger than most Dutch cities. If you're commuting across London, speed probably matters much more to you.
Yeah, many of the cyclists in London wear fancy clothes and ride fast bikes. It's an identity thing.
There is an sad/interesting gender gap too because many of the cycle commuters are male. There should be a real push by companies to make cycling more female friendly. That means having easy changing rooms/showers at work and giving women a little more time to get ready in the morning.
I love biking in London, going fast to the Aldi and carrying my groceries back on the special bike lanes, but there are still issues to resolve.
The gender issue is real - I would put the ratio of female to male cyclists on the commute at about the same as in the software teams at work. Perhaps there is a similar thing going on
Case in point: tourists. The Dutch cycle a lot but not so much that it becomes a goal in itself. But for tourists it is different: they don't get to do it that often so they will maximize their exposure during the little time they have in NL. Where these worlds collide (for instance: the dunes) it can get pretty annoying with tourists treating the cycling paths much as though they are highways and endangering people with small children with reckless overtaking at ridiculous speeds, and then getting upset when they do not have a clear path.
Cycling is all about sharing the space in a nice way. It would be much better if these tourists took their anger home and advocated for better cycling infrastructure in their own countries.
I don't have the feeling that the mentality of cyclists and car drivers in The Netherlands is different, they just relaxed the situation by giving everyone enough space.
I currently work in Utrecht. Walking around the city center, even in pedestrian zones, I need to be careful not to run into a bike. Passive-aggressive close passes are the norm. Last week I saw someone clean glass shards off a bike path. Nice gesture, right? Guess what happened next... a middle-aged lady whizzed by over that path, swearing "get off the bike lane you *#($@!!"
Speed might matter but so do traffic laws - it is a change of mentality that is needed - that this is not exercise and that the journey takes X minutes so leave early.
we all do this for cars in london. we just need to for cycles
I think that is it - I am (middle aged fat happy) trying to get fitter and 3 miles across London each morning helps. But it's not a race track and it has taken me a long time to accept it for what it is - a commute in traffic, with minor exercise benefits
I suspect a lot of people (younger and fitter) don't see it as such.
And I get that. A long long time ago when I would cycle in car traffic, I upgraded my bike from an old cheap MTB to a nicer road bike. On the flat I saw a 5 mph increase in my top speed the very next day. And my commute time did not change a bit.
It was not how fast I was capable of travelling but how many risks I was prepared to take that decided if I could shave more time off the commute.
And this is it - it takes a certain amount of time to cycle a mile on the flat open road. In traffic it takes more time, and only by dialling up the risk-o-meter to 11 can you get it back down to "open flat" time. And that risk-o-meter means other people's blood so it's not acceptable.
If I want my exercise then it's running on the pavement and press ups in the park.
Requiring cyclists to have number plates is just going to discourage cycling.
It will cost millions to organise, will the DVLA take on this new responsibility? Do scooters count? Roller blades? A 5 year old rolling around their neighbourhood?
It will push more people back into their cars resulting in a more unhealthy population running over more pedestrians, and to top it off, motorists have to be registered and that doesn't seem to discourage breaking traffic rules en masse.
So basically, costs a lot of money and result in more deaths - for what benefit?
>>> and that doesn't seem to discourage breaking traffic rules en masse.
Seriously I drive and I cycle. I have in twenty years never seen one person jump a queue and take a red light past a line of other stopped cars. I see it daily on a bike.
The degree of rule breaking is orders of magnitude greater.
And no I don't think it's a waste - although I do think it will take deaths before the impetus grows. I mean I had a valid number plate made in two minutes by a caravan sales person today, the ANPR cameras not only exist but actually are in place on the junctions, and if you really want you can start crowd sourcing it on the most dangerous sections.
PS
Scooters clearly should not count - they should just be banned and anyone over the age of 30 on one simply jailed for twenty years till they grow up ;-)
Ridiculous. Cycling is a means to get around. That a bunch of hipsters now see it as an identity thing is no reason to punish everybody from age 6 up that participates in traffic.
And cyclists already get fined for breaching traffic laws (and for endangering themselves or others).
What you are describing is a result of a mix of 'militant cyclists' and others that see cycling as a way to set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd as well as an incomplete separation of traffic flows. It has nothing to do with regular cyclists, and chances are that if cycling becomes normalized that the hipsters will move on to skateboards or some other way in which they can differentiate themselves enough to be noticed.
I don't think it is a question of identity - I think it is plain selfishness and thoughtlessness.
The way such behaviour was eradicated in car driving was decades long campaigns to make such behaviour socially unacceptable plus the stick of fines and traffic enforcement.
Yes it would be great if cycling becomes normalised and better infrastructure is laid down - but in my view if we waved a magic wand and we had 10x more cyclists tomorrow, then we would have 10x more people behaving as recklessly - there may be some social pressure applied but it's hard to see how whizzing past at 12 mph.
Ps
I did see someone take this into their own hands and I wish I had got his name - he was cycling along with a megaphone in his hand - and when a pair of idiots whizzed through the lights he was stationary at he raised the megaphone and in the middle of London's rush hour bellowed out "Yes, I'm colour blind too, let's all run red lights!"
Now if everyone did that we would have no need for license plates.
I am not so convinced. It's a Good Thing that this is becoming a problem - more cyclists, more dedicated lanes. This is all positive. The fact that we are now seeing cycle traffic jams and cyclists who are a danger to other road users is also a positive - it means we are becoming a significant presence on roads.
This also means we need to be treated like all other road users as well. And so fines are likely to modify behaviour.
I would say that plates and fines would be part of a wider campaign to reduce the worst behaviour but I still argue it would be a huge positive to treat cycles like other dangerous fast moving transports.
I drive regularly through Amsterdam, also during the rush hour, have never seen a 'cyclist traffic jam' nor cyclists being a danger to other road users to the extent that a hit-and-run would require a license plate.
I've also biked in lots of other places besides here locally. License plates for vehicles serve the dual purpose of identification of the owner and taxation. And it makes some sense because the damage a vehicle can do is substantially higher than the damage that a cyclist can do. I draw the line at scooters, they are twice as fast as cyclists; weigh three to five times as much and are typically driven by people who really don't care who lives or dies on the road and are a major cause of injury and death for other unprotected users of the road, such as cyclists and pedestrians. Accidents between pedestrians and cyclists, especially in the city are very rare and usually do not result in grave injury, on top of that the need to ID the rider is absent because likely the cyclist will fall to the ground in any accident where there is risk of injury to others.
Finally, cyclists do not carry mandatory insurance, as is the case with scooters, e-bikes, mopeds, motorcycles and cars. The speeds and masses are higher that the legislator has recognized the potential for damage to property and other participants to an extent that normal liability insurance no longer is sufficient. License plates for cyclists is a solution in search of a problem.
I think part of the problem at the moment is that cyclists have been marginalised so much that the law hasn't really applied to them (example, most traffic lights in the UK don't detect cyclists, there was at one little used junction on a prior commute that I had to jump the lights on, because the lights never changed in my favour).
I would hope that as the infrastructure improves, so too would the outlook of cyclists regarding the rules.
If people have a 10-20 minute bike commute as most seem to me have in Utrecht, they probably accept a slower pace. In London I’m guessing a lot larger fraction have a 45 or 60 minute bike commute which is a) more of an exercise hour so m and b) is more sensitive to delays because of the long times involved. A city planned for cyclists is not only about good biking infra, but also about density and planning to make a large enough fraction of the people live within 20 minutes by bike from work so they can have an enjoyable short commute.
Dutch cyclists break the laws all the time. Neither are they are particularly polite on the bike lanes (I have had a cyclist wish cancer upon me), but slight mishaps are usually met with a smile and a "sorry!" No one goes too fast, because no one wears helmets. It's cultural, I suppose -- but a culture that grows in conjunction with the infrastructure.
Living in Utrecht I can say: it's amazing, going to work? 10 minutes, going to the station? 10 minutes. Basically anything is within maximum 20 minutes cycling distance. In the rare occasion I do take the car, the city is still surprisingly accessible.
The only thing I hope they will change in the future is removing motorised vehicles from the bicycle lanes, scooters/e-bikes are just too fast and break the whole flow of traffic. Seeing that scooters are already banned from the cycling lanes in Amsterdam I think it will happen soon in Utrecht.
The Netherlands is free to set any laws it wants about where scooters are allowed, but if you're talking about the 25 km/h limited pedelec E-Bikes they're allowed on the bicycle lanes by an EU-wide legislation that The Netherlands is subject to.
This is for a different kind of accessibility; the one for the people you're not thinking of with your bike lanes.
As somebody who likes walkable, bikeable areas; I find that a lot of "cities for people" folks are, ideologically, a couple hops away from culling the disabled to make way for their utopia. I'm only half-joking.
And frankly, assisted or not a bike-like vehicle going 25 km/h shouldn't normally be a problem on a cycling lane.
They do have to be bike-like though, if you take a scooter slap some pedals on it and fill it to the brim with batteries and try to use that on a bike line then there are likely going to be problems, luckily this doesn't seem to have happened yet.
As another Utrechter I'm really impressed with the large bicycle garages on either side of the new railway station. It really makes cycling from and to the station a great experience.
There are quite a few grand new railway stations that have been built in the NL: Rotterdam central station, Utrecht central station, Arnhem station. Recently I was moved when I realised that they're the cathedrals of our time. Shared architectural spaces that are big communal efforts and will be of great value for all for decades to come.
I ride my e-bike at 15-20mph. The assist stops at 20 and I only ever exceed it downhill. Are there really not a ton of athletic cyclists going faster than this under their own power? Around here, serious riders would find that laughably slow.
I find the electric assist is not so much about going faster as making transportation into a non-event and avoiding exertion.
Dutch cycling culture is pragmatic rather than macho. Of course many people can go faster, but you don't want to arrive sweaty at work. Commuters don't usually use racing bikes either, but bikes optimised for comfort and carrying capacity. Biking for sport is a thing, but very much separate from daily cycling. It's the same difference as walking to get somewhere and running for sport.
The issue with ebikes is on hills. Sure, regular bikes have no problem on flats and especially on downhills but if you are going uphill it can disconcerting when an ebike flies past you at 20mph.
I’m a pretty serious mountain biker and that is the main reason ebikes are being banned on a lot of trails.
Here in the Netherlands the bike paths are almost entirely occupied by people old and young biking on cheap bikes as a form of transportation, unlike in America where biking is dominated by 30-55 year old men on $1000+ bikes wearing criminally tight pants, sunglasses, and aerodynamic helmets. Nearly nobody is going 32km/hr on the bike path in the Netherlands, yes. 25km/hr, sure, there are a few (pizza delivery guys on e-bikes and scooters) but most people are not going this fast.
On the bike path inside cities you'll mostly see people going 16-10 km/h. You won't see a helmet on anyone except a confused tourist or the police. You'll also see grandmas, children, and just about everyone on a bike. Many of these bikes would horrify an American bike enthusiast with their copious rust and "deferred maintenance" to put it lightly, but they serve millions of people just fine with few accidents.
Though this article is true, there's nothing exceptional about the Utrecht bicycle infrastructure. The great thing is that the bicycle infrastructure throughout the entirety of The Netherlands is of extremely high quality. In the suburbs the bicycle experience is actually much more pleasant than in cities: the lanes are wide, there hardly is any congestion and you can really go anywhere on bicycle lanes without being forced to do some weird manouvering (which is very common outside of The Netherlands). Utrecht is just a good example of the incredible bicycle infrastructure in The Netherlands as a whole.
> have brought on much-larger windfall of social benefit
One of the things I love about Amsterdam is how the city changes in the evening. It gets quieter because there are less cars. People can go to pubs without driving (cycling under the influence is illegal but tolerated). And almost the entire city is accessible within 20 minutes.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadBut there is a city with that name, that clearly must court cyclists more ardently than the most devoted retailer of paints and brushes.
Ps: here’s the short film the article talks about. Shows the fantastic transformation of Utrecht. https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E
I recently read a nice article laying out some of the misconceptions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/0...
The real hard thing is that Google & Co don't mark every street as reachable by car or truck and you also need to drive over a bus / taxi lane to get there. So people that are used to just set up Google Maps and drive will never get there as the roads are not accessible according to the map they use. Which is a huge pain in the ass anything larger than a parcel needs to be delivered to my house.
I like bicycles, but actually going to a store with a bike is an annoying experience. One that I wish could be improved.
Like you have to understand that a city designed from scratch for cars and one designed for walking/biking look very very different. Biking in one is hard and driving in the other is just as hard.
Yes bicycle parking is important, but it's relatively cheap, mostly because it does not need that much infrastructure.
For a bike it takes about 1 minute or more to stop, detach/unlock your lock from the frame and lock your bike to a bike stand, then take off your helmet. You reverse this when you get back on the bike. The variance is also not that high on this number.
For a car, the mean time varies greatly from location to location and the variance is much higher. You might get stuck several minutes searching or waiting for a parking spot or you might get a spot immediately and be walking to the shop in under 15 seconds.
These differences have some effect on how much people want to bike/drive. I think one way of encouraging biking more would be to work on lock designs and bike stand design so it takes less time to park your bike.
It's a reasonable argument that the city is now trying to address by making free parking on the city border plus a free bus into town.
The u stands for uut (old Dutch), meaning downstream. Although I am not 100% sure if U doesn't simply stand for uit, which means 'from'.
I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car. But most people don't, as taking the bike is the faster and more convenient option.
The fact that a traffic jam of bicycles is perceived as exceptional really tells how we have moved past the acceptance phase of the cancer that is automobile congestion.
> I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car.
This is an excellent rebuttal to the opinion 'but what happens when I need to move furnitures/go camping/<do some other activities that really requires a car>': these activities are not a part of people’s daily routine. If people stop unnecessary driving such as sending their children to schools ten minutes of walk away in an SUV, then it actually makes it easier for everyone else who does need to drive.
Is was only in the 70s and 80s when there was a revolution in the introduction of cycling infrastructure.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011...
The cycling culture that developed subsequently was hard fought for by activist groups throughout the late 60s and 70s, before being implemented across the country by various city councils in the 1980s and then developed further with national level infrastructural improvements in the 1990s.
There's lots of good documentaries on YouTube about the change, highly recommended if you're interested in urban planning or in the possibilities for introducing cycling infrastructure.
In Utrecht one can see many roads which have multiple cycle lanes and pedestrianised parks along the middle. These roads were originally developed as 4 lane highways for automobiles before modernisation.
We got the bicycle amenities not because we wanted to stimulate people using them but because too many people (especially kids) died riding them.
There is also a behavioural solution which should be exported everywhere: https://www.dutchreach.org/
Please stop propagating this excuse and just start paying attention when in traffic.
Dutch driving instructors teach 'the Dutch reach'. You get into the habit of opening the car door with your left hand, so you'll automatically look for cyclists that may be passing by.
The intent is that it forces you to twist your body to see what’s coming behind you before you open.
Mind you, I can't remember the last time I was in a car, so I could be getting it wrong.
«I can't remember the last time I was in a car» ← the real benefit of living in a city made for humans!
There's a huge change in the energy of a crash as you start going faster. A 15 mi/hr biker has 2.25x the energy of a 10mi/hr biker and so if you crash it's so much worse.
At 9mi/hr, you're pretty much always walking away from the crash.
The electric bike craze for elderly people isn't helping as they now travel about twice as fast as they used to.
Agreed on the electric bike craze, I get passed on my trusty old twelve speed with some regularity by 70 year olds doing 30+ kph (which suggests at least some of these have their limiters removed). Falling at that speed at that age is certain to end bad.
One of the most common injuries for cyclists is the ubiquitous broken collar bone. This often happens to folks when they're coming to a stop, or even when they're motionless, and they lose balance and tip over. The unavoidable reaction is to put one's arm out to mitigate the fall. If the arm doesn't bend at the elbow, energy gets transmitted straight to the collarbone and may cause a fracture.
Another common injury is concussion. These are, of course, worse at higher speeds because they usually occur when the cyclist goes over the handlebars. This can happen so fast that there is no time to protect the face-- hence the term "face plant". But a head injury can also happen when tipping over at zero speed.
Not totally disagreeing about the speed aspect, just the usage of the kinetic energy factor to imply how much worse the accident "could be". Velodrome cyclists regularly wipe out at 40+ mph. Serious injuries and death can occur, but that is highly dependent on the specifics of the crash. The overwhelming majority of the time, higher speed means nastier road-rash.
I started cycle commuting again about a year ago (Boris Bikes) and guess what we have dedicated "cycle superhighways"
And the problem it turns out is us cyclists
There is always a traffic jam on the dedicated pathway - the blue cycle lane. And so some (usually but not always male) cyclists jump on and off the lane and engage in dangerous overtaking manoeuvres.
Worst, is that the blue lane runs along normal roads and so has traffic lights at the same positions - and that I guess 25% of cyclists ignore completely a red light and plough through - and twice I have seen these idiots hit pedestrians and two weeks ago came across the fire brigade washing the blood away
We campaigned and rode to be taken as real roads users - and when we got real roads with real traffic light we ignore the real rules of the road
Cyclists need to have number plates and fines for breaching traffic laws.
sorry.
There's also a very interesting phenomena where right now in London the people who bike are "Cyclists" where they're much more likely to be enthusiasts, people who want to really go fast, people who have Bicycling as part of their identity. In the Netherlands, it's just a way of getting around and not an ideology.
The other contributing factor could be size. London is so much bigger than most Dutch cities. If you're commuting across London, speed probably matters much more to you.
There is an sad/interesting gender gap too because many of the cycle commuters are male. There should be a real push by companies to make cycling more female friendly. That means having easy changing rooms/showers at work and giving women a little more time to get ready in the morning.
I love biking in London, going fast to the Aldi and carrying my groceries back on the special bike lanes, but there are still issues to resolve.
Cycling is all about sharing the space in a nice way. It would be much better if these tourists took their anger home and advocated for better cycling infrastructure in their own countries.
I currently work in Utrecht. Walking around the city center, even in pedestrian zones, I need to be careful not to run into a bike. Passive-aggressive close passes are the norm. Last week I saw someone clean glass shards off a bike path. Nice gesture, right? Guess what happened next... a middle-aged lady whizzed by over that path, swearing "get off the bike lane you *#($@!!"
we all do this for cars in london. we just need to for cycles
I suspect a lot of people (younger and fitter) don't see it as such.
And I get that. A long long time ago when I would cycle in car traffic, I upgraded my bike from an old cheap MTB to a nicer road bike. On the flat I saw a 5 mph increase in my top speed the very next day. And my commute time did not change a bit.
It was not how fast I was capable of travelling but how many risks I was prepared to take that decided if I could shave more time off the commute.
And this is it - it takes a certain amount of time to cycle a mile on the flat open road. In traffic it takes more time, and only by dialling up the risk-o-meter to 11 can you get it back down to "open flat" time. And that risk-o-meter means other people's blood so it's not acceptable.
If I want my exercise then it's running on the pavement and press ups in the park.
It will cost millions to organise, will the DVLA take on this new responsibility? Do scooters count? Roller blades? A 5 year old rolling around their neighbourhood?
It will push more people back into their cars resulting in a more unhealthy population running over more pedestrians, and to top it off, motorists have to be registered and that doesn't seem to discourage breaking traffic rules en masse.
So basically, costs a lot of money and result in more deaths - for what benefit?
Seriously I drive and I cycle. I have in twenty years never seen one person jump a queue and take a red light past a line of other stopped cars. I see it daily on a bike.
The degree of rule breaking is orders of magnitude greater.
And no I don't think it's a waste - although I do think it will take deaths before the impetus grows. I mean I had a valid number plate made in two minutes by a caravan sales person today, the ANPR cameras not only exist but actually are in place on the junctions, and if you really want you can start crowd sourcing it on the most dangerous sections.
PS Scooters clearly should not count - they should just be banned and anyone over the age of 30 on one simply jailed for twenty years till they grow up ;-)
And cyclists already get fined for breaching traffic laws (and for endangering themselves or others).
What you are describing is a result of a mix of 'militant cyclists' and others that see cycling as a way to set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd as well as an incomplete separation of traffic flows. It has nothing to do with regular cyclists, and chances are that if cycling becomes normalized that the hipsters will move on to skateboards or some other way in which they can differentiate themselves enough to be noticed.
The way such behaviour was eradicated in car driving was decades long campaigns to make such behaviour socially unacceptable plus the stick of fines and traffic enforcement.
Yes it would be great if cycling becomes normalised and better infrastructure is laid down - but in my view if we waved a magic wand and we had 10x more cyclists tomorrow, then we would have 10x more people behaving as recklessly - there may be some social pressure applied but it's hard to see how whizzing past at 12 mph.
Ps I did see someone take this into their own hands and I wish I had got his name - he was cycling along with a megaphone in his hand - and when a pair of idiots whizzed through the lights he was stationary at he raised the megaphone and in the middle of London's rush hour bellowed out "Yes, I'm colour blind too, let's all run red lights!"
Now if everyone did that we would have no need for license plates.
This also means we need to be treated like all other road users as well. And so fines are likely to modify behaviour.
I would say that plates and fines would be part of a wider campaign to reduce the worst behaviour but I still argue it would be a huge positive to treat cycles like other dangerous fast moving transports.
I've also biked in lots of other places besides here locally. License plates for vehicles serve the dual purpose of identification of the owner and taxation. And it makes some sense because the damage a vehicle can do is substantially higher than the damage that a cyclist can do. I draw the line at scooters, they are twice as fast as cyclists; weigh three to five times as much and are typically driven by people who really don't care who lives or dies on the road and are a major cause of injury and death for other unprotected users of the road, such as cyclists and pedestrians. Accidents between pedestrians and cyclists, especially in the city are very rare and usually do not result in grave injury, on top of that the need to ID the rider is absent because likely the cyclist will fall to the ground in any accident where there is risk of injury to others.
Finally, cyclists do not carry mandatory insurance, as is the case with scooters, e-bikes, mopeds, motorcycles and cars. The speeds and masses are higher that the legislator has recognized the potential for damage to property and other participants to an extent that normal liability insurance no longer is sufficient. License plates for cyclists is a solution in search of a problem.
I would hope that as the infrastructure improves, so too would the outlook of cyclists regarding the rules.
The only thing I hope they will change in the future is removing motorised vehicles from the bicycle lanes, scooters/e-bikes are just too fast and break the whole flow of traffic. Seeing that scooters are already banned from the cycling lanes in Amsterdam I think it will happen soon in Utrecht.
As somebody who likes walkable, bikeable areas; I find that a lot of "cities for people" folks are, ideologically, a couple hops away from culling the disabled to make way for their utopia. I'm only half-joking.
They do have to be bike-like though, if you take a scooter slap some pedals on it and fill it to the brim with batteries and try to use that on a bike line then there are likely going to be problems, luckily this doesn't seem to have happened yet.
Compared to my commute in London now, 45 minutes on a cramped, hot, loud tube.
I find the electric assist is not so much about going faster as making transportation into a non-event and avoiding exertion.
I’m a pretty serious mountain biker and that is the main reason ebikes are being banned on a lot of trails.
Here in the Netherlands the bike paths are almost entirely occupied by people old and young biking on cheap bikes as a form of transportation, unlike in America where biking is dominated by 30-55 year old men on $1000+ bikes wearing criminally tight pants, sunglasses, and aerodynamic helmets. Nearly nobody is going 32km/hr on the bike path in the Netherlands, yes. 25km/hr, sure, there are a few (pizza delivery guys on e-bikes and scooters) but most people are not going this fast.
On the bike path inside cities you'll mostly see people going 16-10 km/h. You won't see a helmet on anyone except a confused tourist or the police. You'll also see grandmas, children, and just about everyone on a bike. Many of these bikes would horrify an American bike enthusiast with their copious rust and "deferred maintenance" to put it lightly, but they serve millions of people just fine with few accidents.
One of the things I love about Amsterdam is how the city changes in the evening. It gets quieter because there are less cars. People can go to pubs without driving (cycling under the influence is illegal but tolerated). And almost the entire city is accessible within 20 minutes.
I always try and think about designs for a "ski lift" for bikes, just as a thought exercise. Is anything like that being actually made?
Nowadays it's easier to just mount an electric motor on your bike.