Real bicycle culture

Amsterdam: It’s billed as the cycling city of the best cycling nation in the world and it’s not hard to see why. There is simply a culture of cycling which is quite wonderful. It’s just a natural thing there for people to use a bike to get around.

A major part of this is the provision made for cycling – there are cycle streets, cycle paths – people are catered for on bikes. It’s part of the culture because it has been accommodated – there is space for cycling, so it becomes a pleasant way to get around. More people get moderate daily exercise just from cycling to and from places resulting in a healthier population and better air quality as there’s less pollution from cars.

Why can’t we aim to develop a similar culture by building and incorporating such infrastructure here in NE Lincs?

Click to enlarge the photos:

The bike parking near the central rail station.

A cycle road, separate to the walkway and the road for vehicles.

 

In the queue of cyclists waiting for the change of lights on the cycleway in the busy centre of the city.

A father with his children in their cargo bike. It’s perfectly safe to travel this way because there is safe cycling infrastructure all over the city.

Another cargo bike.

This is a minor quiet one-way road where cars are guests and are expected to give priority to cyclists.

Steps in and out of a rail station with provision for wheeling a bike at the side. It’s little things like these that add to the bicycling culture. Nice to see the bike being wheeled here is a Brompton! 🙂

Bikes everywhere!

You can ride right through the Rijksmuseum (State Museum), recently reopened with a cycleway through the middle of it!

And to finish with a nod to Cycle Chic, the ubiquitous ‘girl on a bike’!

 

Dutch cycling city nominees 2014: Enschede

This is the third in a series of articles on Bicycle Dutch, looking at this years contenders for Cycling City 2014, and featuring Enschede, in the east of the country.

You can read the full article here.

Dutch cycling city nominees 2014: Velsen

This is the second in a series of articles on Bicycle Dutch, looking at this years contenders for Cycling City 2014, and featuring Velsen, near the port of Ijmuiden.

You can read the full article here.

 

Dutch cycling city nominees 2014: Zwolle

This is the first of a series of articles on the excellent Bicycle Dutch blog, looking at the contenders for Dutch Cycling City 2014. The first in the series is Zwolle, a city approximately 60 miles north-east of Amsterdam.

You can read the full article here.

The Groningen story

This is a great video by Clarence Eckerson Jr of Streetfilms, telling the story of how the northern Dutch city of Groningen developed its excellent cycling infrastructure. In my opinion, Groningen is a comparable place to NE Lincs in terms of population and geography, and serves as a great example of what can be achieved with a long-term vision of using cycling to make where we live a better place.

It’s no secret that just about anywhere you go in the Netherlands is an incredible place to bicycle. And in Groningen, a northern city with a population of 190,000 and a bike mode share of 50 percent, the cycling is as comfortable as in any city on Earth. The sheer number of people riding at any one time will astound you, as will the absence of automobiles in the city center, where cars seem extinct. It is remarkable just how quiet the city is. People go about their business running errands by bike, going to work by bike, and even holding hands by bike.

Read the rest of the video’s accompanying article here.

Why do so many Dutch people cycle?

This video and article appeared on the BBC in August, and looks at the reasons why so many people want to cycle in the Netherlands. Watch the video here.

There are more bicycles than residents in The Netherlands. In cities like Amsterdam and The Hague up to 70% of all journeys are made by bike.

This is because of a vast network of cycle paths that are clearly marked, with smooth surfaces, separate signs and lights, and wide enough to allow side-by-side cycling and overtaking.

So with rising levels of obesity, high fuel prices and increasing congestion, what is stopping the UK from going Dutch?

Cycling in the US from a Dutch perspective

Cycling for the rest of us

The home page of The Cycling Embassy of Great Britain is very succinct and to the point:

“Cycling should be the simplest, easiest and most convenient way to get around in most places in the UK, and yet the reality is that it’s not – the roads are busy, and feel unsafe or unpleasant to ride on, and what cycle paths there are seem to take the long way round, or run out just when you need them most.

The Dutch and the Danes have demonstrated that it is easy to provide safe, attractive and efficient routes for cycling, away from fast traffic, which anybody and everybody – men and women, old and young, and rich and poor – want to use.

We at the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain want to see an end to cycling being pushed to the margins; we want to see a network of direct, well-designed, separated cycle routes that are safe even for young children to use.”

And the video that accompanies the above statement perfectly demonstrates the difference between cycling in the Netherlands and in the UK. The comparison is stark!

We completely support the CEoGB in making these points. Hopefully, as more and more people realise what we could have here in NE Lincs and call for it to happen, then the message will get through and we’ll see things improve.