A Dutch-based cycling advocate writes about bicycle infrastructure, roundabout and path design, safety, and myths about cycling in the Netherlands.
HN commenters link it in debates over cycle path design, such as the Copenhagen left turn, and over Dutch car ownership and cycling policy.
True story: I moved from southern California to Holland in no small part because of how amenable the country is to cycling.
People like to think that cycling is popular here naturally because the country is flat and densely populated. However, it's easy to forget that during the postwar boom years, a major shift toward cars happened and it took a concerted effort of willful resistance and politically non-expedient measures to bring back the bike paths (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o). Clearly, 1897 was not the last chance the Dutch had to fix their transit system, and with the groundwork they've laid over the years, it now costs only €30 per person in funding annually! (http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/05/487-million-euros-for-cycling.html)
Yet I see very little chance of this happening in California, not because cyclists lack a voice, but because we need to create more disincentives to driving. This obviously is a political no-go considering that motorists are by far the majority demographic. It's saddening, though, that there is so much willful ignorance (or apathy) with regard to how we've externalized the true cost of driving, whether it's in the form of:
- damage to the environment
- subsidy to cheap gas prices by the DoD budget (and body count) for controlling the world's oil flow
- casualties from motor vehicle accidents
- health problems resulting from sedentary lifestyles
- zoning rules that require abundant free parking to be…
The obsession with helmets in many countries is born of an idea that violence on the roads is inevitable. It's a bit like responding to knife or gun crime by saying everyone should wear kevlar vests, problem solved! Rather than insisting that knives and guns are not used in public spaces.
Some people have real problems grasping this. Cars are seen as inherently dangerous, pedestrians and everyone else should (ideally) stay off the roads, and nobody should challenge our "right" to drive where and when we like. But driving is still a choice, albeit coerced since there are so few alternatives, and that choice has profound implications for others. Why should I wear protective clothing because you choose to drive a vehicle which puts me in danger? In the Netherlands, to respond to your point, they have largely eliminated motoring-related danger for cyclists.
If anyone is interested in the development of Dutch cycling infrastructure, this is an excellent video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o (How the Dutch got their cycle paths, 6m 29s)
David Hembrow has an informative blog about all things cycling in Holland:
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/
Easily my least favourite piece of infrastructure. The one on the video is alright because you have a full car's length between the road and the cycle path, so you are at a full perpendicular with good visibility over the bikes.
In plenty of other places, the space is much smaller, which puts the bike traffic almost directly in your blind spot as you cross.
For example, here: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3911559,4.6253401,3a,75y,110.46h,69.52t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1suX9VtcbHHB5t9glHsNcjew!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D20.484955728319036%26panoid%3DuX9VtcbHHB5t9glHsNcjew%26yaw%3D110.45783349412292!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQwMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
It's really hard to anticipate as you may not have full unobstructed visibility as you drive around, especially since cyclists can come quite fast.
https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/05/the-best-roundabout-design-for-cyclists.html
Congrats! You are one in 90 lifetimes! From http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/08/brain-injuries-and-dutch-cyclist.html
> Rather than reacting emotionally we have to look at the numbers to make sense of this. The overall risk to Dutch cyclists (it's on page two of the document) of a "head/brain injury" is 153 per billion kilometres ridden. That means that one such injury is one per 6.5 million kilometres ridden.
> On average, every Dutch person makes a trip by bicycle 5.6 times per week. This works out as an average across the whole population of 2.5 km cycled every day. That's the highest figure for any population in the world. If we assume that people cycle every day of their lives to the age of 80, and that they cycle that 2.5 km every day of their life, they will ride a bike for a total of 73000 km during their lifetime. Divide it into 6.5 million and you find a figure that a typical Dutch cyclist can expect a "head/brain injury" once every 90 lifetimes.
There is safety in numbers and there's little chance that you'll see any significant portion of the population mixing with traffic on main streets. If you can't expect children and families to ride there, it's not safe enough.
On side streets with little car traffic it often does make sense not to separate infrastructure, but traffic calming is then particularly important.
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/11/reality-vs-myth-dangers-of-dutch-cycle.html?m=1
That said:
> Every accident I had was one where I was in a designated bike lane, and the car crossed it to turn or enter a parking lot in an opening.
A "designated bike lane" that's just a strip of paint is also not enough for exactly that reason, and if the bike lane (even a protected one) is frequently interrupted by curb cuts into parking lots that's likewise not bike-friendly design.
Did you know that car ownership in the Netherlands has continued to rise?
This is a blog post of a cycling advocate, from 2019 but still relevant - [0]
Quote:
In 1992, 42% of Dutch households were car-free. By 2016 this had dropped to about a quarter. Car ownership has continued to increase since then. Higher car ownership leads to higher car usage. Almost anyone who can easily afford a car has one and there aren't many people at all who choose to go without if they can afford one: Amongst people of average income, just 12% of households don't have a car and that drops further to just 6% for high income households.
In other words, people choose to own a car if they can afford it, even if they cycle frequently at the same time.
[0] -https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/08/the-car-free-myth-netherlands-is-great.html?m=1