Whenever urbanists point to Dutch cycling infrastructure as a model to follow, skeptics respond with a list of reasons why Dutch cities are just too different to be relevant elsewhere, especially the U.S. and Canada. “This is all great if you live in a flat, tiny, crowded country without a real winter.” Do they have a point?
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35 Comments
Do you want to calculate density in your neighbourhood or city? Here’s the tool we used: https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/
While we don’t think cycling is necessarily impractical at lower densities, our benchmark for “Dutch density” in this video (based on Groningen and Nijmingen) is about 200,000 people fitting in the circle.
If you live in a larger metro area, try comparing the densities between different neighbourhoods (e.g., the central city versus the suburbs). If your city is smaller than the circle, or if it has a significant amount of water within the boundaries, the results won’t be comparable.
I have lived most of my life in bike friendly Copenhagen and relied on my bike for 90+% of my transportation. I have also lived a bit in Canada as well. One aspect of weather in Canada I found limited the usefulness of biking in my stays in Canada, is the uniqueness of air conditioning. I remember having to bring extra clothes to university and to Safeway to avoid getting sick. Bringing extra clothing just seems so much more of a hassle, than wearing the right clothes for the trip in the first place, but maybe that is just a matter of getting used to it.
When I lived in a college town in cold Utah, I only owned a bike up until I was 25. Since it was my main form of transportation I biked all the time in the snow and cold…in an area that at the time was less bike friendly. It's gotten a little more bike friendly and I'm seeing more and more e-bikes and regular bikes popping up that are obviously just for local transportation. I now live in a lower density suburb and biking would still be feasible…it's just a little harder with a number of stroads I have around our neighborhood and greater distances to main stores and my office. But I'll probably get an electric family bike one day soon as I miss the biking experience and how it helps you experience your local community more.
I live in a suburb near St Petersburg Fl. We have sidewalks and roads. The problem is that there is very little space, if any , to accommodate a bike path. The other problem with biking in a big American city is safety. It’s one thing to have to pass through a bad area in a car quite another to bike through. Friend had his e-bike a month and it’s already been stolen.
in the Netherlands a gallon of petrol cost $ 8.40 / 2 euro per Liter that is more than twice as expensieve (current usa price $3.56 per gallon) and a big reason dutch people use there bike.
never wanted to punch someone so bad 0:06
"we're not Amsterdam", yea, i know. i wish we were though
1:43 I dare you to cycle in Baltimore.
For a Dutch person it is hard to understand why there are so few bike lanes in the US or Canada. You guys love sports and have the space to put bike lanes between the current infrastructure. regarding the myths. In the Netherlands we also have cold weather and lots of wind (a factor that you do not mention), high humidity in the summer. Also we have a lot of rainy days and keep on using the bike.If its dark, cold, storm, very hot. It does not matter. Bike lanes are also cleared of snow and the municipality gives some bike lanes the same priority as major car lanes. However. Snow can be a problem with bike lanes that are shared with cars. Regarding low density zones. Not everyone in the Netherlands lives in a high density zone. If i draw a circle of 5km in my area you will find only 22.000 people and the bike infrastructure here is as good as in larger dutch cities. Also, i just found out that in a circle of 5km you can find 90! busstops. In a simular circle at the border of Fresno California with about the same population, you will find 15 busstops. The part i live in is the "hilly"part of the Netherlands called Limburg and if you would check Google maps you will find that it has lots of bike paths as well. if you would include bikepaths in the suburban area's, children would use the bike a lot more to travel to school and maybe, it will even gradually change the other amenities that you will find there. like bus stops at a central part of a suburb, and maybe a local grocery shop. This is also what Dutch People do often. Travel by bike to a bus stop or train station and then use public transport to travel to a place further away. At a certain time i even had a 2 bikes in 2 different cities to easilly travel to my work. It took me 45 minutes to travel with bike and public transport for 50 kilometers / 31 miles which is a lot quicker then by car in rush hour. Also a lot of Dutch companies offer people extra amenities like a company shower room, bike parking spots, and even help financing a new bike.
I wonder why you don´t show videos with the hard present sometimes in the Netherlands… And also the rain. And how people bike in spite of it.
i had to test it on my city in the Netherlands (alkmaar) 131,797 The circle also contains, 302 bus stops, 0 tram stops, and 3 metro and train stops , and i cycle daily for any thing and i mountain bike too enough forest beach and dunes around me to go too
"we are not the Netherlands" so we do not do it. Very simple. If you repeat that often, nothing is happening. Nowadays there are E bikes, you can climb the Alps with it.
The constant bike theft in many cities is a reason to not cycle. Especially when police do not prosecute bike thieves.
Where u see a problem expanding because there is water in the way, is where dutch didnt give up and stole land from the sea MURICA
before global warming we had cool snowie winters. Cycling trough snow is easy, only wen it gets compacted it starts to get somewhat slippery. The frost is more dangerous actually.
Using Vancouver for your climate example is not taking into account real Canadian weather. Vancouver is an anomaly. If you want to do a comparison then take a look at Winnipeg. (where I am) My primary mode of transportation is my bicycle during the Spring, Summer and Fall. For years I have used less than one tank of gas in the summer for my car. It is far too dangerous to use a bicycle in the winter for a number of reasons. The -20°C temperatures. Lack of snow clearing. The limited daylight (less visibility for motorists). These and other issues make it too hard to seriously consider using a bike.
I know and understand why everyone looks at the Netherlands for an example of biking but if I were them I would loke somewhere else. Looking to the netherlands is like trying to compete with the kid who only gets A's on tests, it will just get you down. Instead I would look slightly to the south, to Belgium (specifically the Flanders). They got some biking infrastructure to, not like the Netherlands or the kid with only A's but he is like the kid with an avarage B with sometimes an A but still gets from time to time but also has a few F's. That's the kid you should also try to be. They got hightend bikelanes in most places, sometimes still the painted on bikelanes (usually in lower speed and lower traffic area's) not as dense all the time, tho kinda one big city in a sense. Far from everything is perfect, like most "steenwegen", higher speed connection roads but the bikepath is just of the side with some concrete blobs protecting it. Similar with the public transport, it's there, works fine tho not that perfect like the Netherlands.
And if you are looking for some places to fight all the anti biking (and especially the anti public transport) look ate Switzerland:
– mountains
– extreme wheather conditions
– not insanely dense
World War II didn't exactly leave the Netherlands unscathed. The Nazis occupied the country with their tanks and all while allied bombing hit some places like Rotterdam (because of its strategic port) quite seriously. So if NL wanted to, they could have taken advantage of WW2 to redesign for the car, and they did for a while, but then decided that it wasn't as interesting as they thought.
After 1950 came the immigrants,hence the “growth”
It’s nice to see the Netherlands used as an example, but I don’t understand why one would limit oneself to this. In so many Asian countries bikes are used so much! Maybe they are not always the best examples of infrastructure, but if anyone thinks the heat is a problem: take a look in China or India!
As for rain and winter: if you don’t want to be cold or wet, then just bike in nice weather. I bike 11 km to work (6,5 miles). You will scarcely find me biking in January or February and I don’t bike in the rain (unless the rain comes unexpected). Those days, I take the bus. Having a good biking infrastructure doesn’t take away your car or public transport. It adds an extra choice!
This extra choice is healthier, safer, better for the environment, and saves you money. It’s hard to understand why you would not want this….?
With an ebike its soooo extremely easy to bike. I have a electric cargobike and going up hill isn't a problem at all.
ask any dutch person about biking in the winter. the snow isn't a real problem to bike over (it actually gives some grip). the biggest issue in in winter is glazed frost/ice (ijzel). that will get you to the ground in no time. still no reason to wear a helmet though ^^
The Netherlands are very flat, but there is a lot of wind. As a Swiss having family in the Netherlands I can tell you, that the wind makes cycling hard as well. But the Dutch still bike. I think they do it, because it is for free. You don't have to buy gas or a ticket. You don't have to look for the trainschedule. You just take the bike and pay the journey with you own body-power.
Interesting video! I personally prefer cycling to walking during hot summer days, because you catch some refreshing wind and you don’t have to carry heavy bags, you can hang them on your bike.
The one place that the US consistently gets bike and pedestrian space is college campuses. It would be interesting to analyze those spaces to show what works in the US.
The thing is NOT about replacing autos with bikes, it is about making our cities and towns more human friendly. To the extent that bikes fit into that ideal, then yea, improve our cycling infrastructure. Many people refuse to access areas and businesses that they can't park within a couple blocks because navigating cities is a real pain in the ass.
As a Dutch person living in The Netherlands, I own 2 bikes, which by the way is pretty common for Dutch people to own multiple bikes. Those are just "Regular" bikes, I never wore lycra or helmets and just use them for transportation. I don't even own a car, I mostly do everything on bike, no matter what weather, and transit between city's by train. I can even take my bike with the train if I pay extra. I do have a driver license and did own cars, but I would not have wanted it any other way. Cars cost allot of money, which I now can use for other nice stuff now. The maintenance of my bikes only costed like 200 euro's past 5 years. I only needed a new gear and some tires.
The Netherlands is no longer a cycling country. More than half of the bicycles sold are e-bikes. Those are motorcycles and that has nothing to do with the original bikes. Even young kids are now riding e-bikes (speaking of bad parenting). Laziness everywhere.
the netherlands has o lot of cities with a densenty between 50000 and 100000 Like, "Lelystad, Assen, Roermond, Heerlen, or Gouda)" and a lot even less than 50000 like "Middelburg" and all of them have the same bike friendly setup like the big counterparts. More tot the point, you can travel by bike from Vaals to Den Helder, By the way Cities in the southern part of the netherlands do have hills ( like Vaals , Kerkrade or Landgraaf and people still use bikes here. Fun part about Limburg? People go to Limburg to bike in the hills for fun, cant be don doesn excist, there is only, the will tot do so.
the netherlands was build for cars so this is a stupid argument
we rebuild it all
I live in a town in the eastern US in a mountain town with less than 10k pop. We had bike lanes added in a few years back and there are now tons of ppl cycling every day. Even MY 240 lb ass has cycled from my house to the post office downtown before. We get pretty extreme cold weather and extreme heat too due to the humidity levels and, since we live in the mountains, there's almost never a truly flat road/street. I think ppl who argue cycling isn't possible in their area due to the terrain and/or weather are being kinda silly. I also see more disabled ppl out and about now w electric bikes n scooters (and the less cars around, the safer it is for stuff like that too). However, if you live up a hollah somewhere so far it takes an hour to drive to town, obviously then cycling outside of recreation becomes a problem. I've been that person. lol But that's the exception, not the rule.
I think in the more mountainous parts of N. America, we gotta combine mtb tourism w cycling infrastructure. That's the main reason my town put in some bike infrastructure lol, they were connecting a long mountain trail that goes through the whole state. It's created a huge upswing in the amount of ppl cycling day to day to get around town even tho that likely wasn't the intended purpose of it.
Maybe also an infrastructure challenge. In the Netherlands my work (2,5km), school of my child (3km), daycare (7km), supermarket (0.8km), shopping center (1km) are all nearby.
Sweat. Lots of workingplaces in the N have showers especially for bikers that come from a longer distance to work.they forced their employers to install them. This element i missed in your excellent video,s. Btw i live in a new built dutch town, zoetermeer, with excellent bikelines even for dutch standards. Matter of culture in the minds of architects and pliticians.
Jacques dorenbos
Not arguing against the general thrust of the argument that not all Dutch cities designed for bikes are of higher density than American counterparts, but the Groningen example is not good. The total amount of citizens in the city is 202k (234k in the municipality, English language Wikipedia confuses the 2). Your circle clearly contains a lot of empty surroundings, meaning that the actual density of the city is quite a lot higher.