The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingBy The Office
Our guest author is Linda Ginenthal, PDOT's Program Manager of Transportation Options. She recently returned from the trip to the Netherlands, led by Commissioner Adams which was comprised of a delegation of various transportation officials and citizen advocates. Amsterdam is a world-class bicycling city. From October 30 to November 5, 2005 a delegation from Portland including: Commissioner Sam Adams; his Chief of Staff, Tom Miller; City of Portland Bicycle Coordinator, Roger Geller; Streetcar Board member and neighborhood activist, Chris Smith; Bicycle Transportation Alliance staffers Evan Manvel, Scott Bricker and Jessica Roberts; and Oregonian reporter, Jeff Mapes and I visited the Netherlands to see how they do it. What follows are my impressions and observations from the trip. I have pages upon pages of notes and ideas and realizations about bicycling, transit, walking and even driving in these cities and towns where the bicycle is king. This is my first installment... First Impressions The streets were just flooded with people - walking, bicycling, riding the tram (streetcar). I took advantage of the superb train system and rode the train from the airport to the Amsterdam central station and then an easy streetcar to my hotel. Having spent some quality time poring over the map of Amsterdam, I had a pretty good idea of where I was in town - but not how thoroughly the bicycle was the center of transportation. Everybody rides, and I mean everybody. I saw old people, women with babies strapped to their chest in front and one in the back, school kids, men in business suits, college students; the list goes on and on. I even saw a bike bus with about 20 young guys pedaling their rolling bar - kegs under foot - singing some hearty, drinking songs. There was no spandex; no bike helmets!; no drop handle bars; no skinny tire bikes. I did see what I would affectionately call a little, old lady wearing one of those plastic, rain bonnets riding around one morning in Appledorn, but that and a few rain coats was it for official rain gear. The “gear” I did see were these neat saddle bags that stayed on your bike to carry whatever you need. Bicycles had all manner of boxes, trailers, and child seats for cargo and kids, automatically attached bungee cords on the back rack. My favorite bike gadget was the skirt guards on the back wheel so your nice flowing dress or coat didn’t get caught up in the spokes - and, yes, I did see a couple in tails and an elegant dress biking to their destination. How lovely. So how does it all work? The typical bicycle is a one speed, coaster brake bike with an enclosed chain, back rack (for carrying stuff or a sidesaddle passenger), fenders and fully upright positioning. This makes for a really pokey, really comfortable ride. With an easy vehicle to ride, a pancake flat topography, and a compact city design you don’t need to be super fit to ride everywhere. One of the real measures of a bikeable city these bike experts said is that more women than men ride in Amsterdam - 55% to 45%. Leaving the train station and every train station we visited that week I saw an ocean of parked bicycles. Literally thousands upon thousands of bicycles locked to every available street furniture, tree and railing. Amsterdam had an enormous 3-story bike parking garage. I could hardly take a photo of any street scene anywhere without including a parked bicycle. That was their parking problem. (What if they all drove? Yikes! More on that later.) Why Ride a Bike? What the Amsterdam experts told us was simply this: it is the quickest, easiest, and most convenient way to get around. It doesn’t cost to park (you pay 3€ per hour or about $3.60 to park your car on the street) and you can park right out front of where you want to go. These factors plus the extremely bike-centric road design makes the bicycle truly an irresistible alternative to driving. Red is for bicycles. In every town we visited, every street had some accommodation for riding your bike. A well-designed street had a sidewalk next to a red bike lane next to a parking/planting strip next to a motorist travel lane. This is repeated for two-way traffic. When there was not enough space for all that, the speeds were set at 30 kph, and bikes shared the road with cars. Just like we have the super highway for cars between cities, the Netherlands has a fine network of bikeways between cities. Signs directing bike riders to in-city destinations, as well as routes between cities and towns are all red. It was an easy ride out to Huisen - an 18 km ride without a map! - because we had a functioning signage system to follow. (Ok not so easy on the one speed bike, but I got a good workout.) For the community, bicycling is an imperative for business. If only a fraction of the cyclists decided to drive their cars, the cities would be at a standstill. Businesses wouldn’t get enough people into their shops because they would be busy driving around looking for parking and stuck in traffic. Freight would be stymied with all these cars, as well. All the experts we spoke with understood this implicitly. Too many cars are the problem, not the solution to economic development. Bicycling and transit get more people to more places safely and efficiently with more money in their pockets to spend at the store. The Train, Tram, Bus and Taxicab You can get anywhere you want by train, tram or bus. Or if it is just too late at night, you can always find a cab. It is remarkable that every town we visited had excellent train service. The fares were reasonable and schedules nearly slavishly adhered to. Even late in the evening we could get a train every half-hour back to Amsterdam. While all the trains accommodate bicycles, Portland actually does a better job with this. We have those nice hanging racks on MAX and a bike rack on the front of all our buses. In the Netherlands, you don’t have much space and you must pay an extra 6€ to bring your bike on the inter-city train. Many people ride their bicycle to the train, park in the gargantuan bike parking garages, take the train, and have a second bike to go off to their final destination. Some had those handy folding bicycles. They fold up in a flash and can be carted around like a piece of luggage. The Pedestrian New development had thoughtful and adequate space for the pedestrian. The older sections of the city - not so much. The street in front of my hotel had a canal, a limited parking strip with trees, a skinny travel lane shared with motor vehicles and bikes, and a paltry few feet for pedestrians. Encroaching on the pedestrian space were building stairs, the ubiquitous parked bicycles, bags of garbage on garbage day, and some bollards that were suppose to define the space between the travel lane and sidewalk. What made it not as miserable for able pedestrians was the slow speeds from cars and bikes. I found I could walk in the travel lane if I watched out for other traffic without much of a problem. Using a wheelchair would be a serious challenge in the old parts of Amsterdam as would being a blind pedestrian. It would be hard to use your hearing to detect all the quiet bicyclists. All that being said, it was a treat to walk around all of the towns and cities we did. The pace was reasonable, and how could you not love the architecture and streets without the constant roar of speeding cars. Winding streets opened unexpectedly on to old plazas and town squares. Each town we visited had posted street maps of the town scattered about so you could find where you were going, too. But What About the Car? Well, clearly the car takes a back seat to every other mode of transportation. The way the regional chief of traffic police put it, “why focus on the bicyclist when the motorist is making all the problems?” In the Netherlands when a motorist and cyclist or a motorist and pedestrian crash, the motorist is presumed at fault until proven otherwise. It helps make the motorist pretty darn careful while driving around. Speeds on local streets are capped at 30 kph or about 18 mph. The safety professionals we met with were concerned that this was too fast. Neighborhood collectors were set at 50 kph or about X mph. At these speeds, a cyclist and a pedestrian have a fighting chance to survive a crash. In a city the size of Portland with a full 40% bike mode split, 6 cyclists were killed and 48 cyclists were injured in a span of 3 years. This is compared to Portland’s 3% mode split for bikes with an average of 3-5 fatals and 170 injuries annually. The lesson here is that more bikes, lower speeds, and a system that places bicycles at least on a par with other modes mean safer streets for everyone. Several cities we visited had car-free sections of their downtown. Surrounding these centers they built adequate paid parking garages for cars. The money from these parking garages was used to pay for some of the local bicycle infrastructure expenses including the free bike parking garages and racks. Cities were careful to maintain car access without encouraging car use. The thing that I found most fascinating about the car traffic in the Netherlands is the lack of annoyance with the bicyclists. The Groningen town bicycle coordinator said “Bicyclists are like water; they go the shortest way.” The expectation is that cyclists will probably “break the law” and that cars just need to watch out for them. And this does not seem to make for a hostile environment. No one is going all that fast sharing the road with bikes, pedestrians, streetcars, buses and cars. You just can’t drive, ride or walk that aggressively. It wouldn’t work. How Did They Get There? In the 1970s, the Netherlands, like all Western cities, experienced and responded to the realization of the world’s environmental degradation. The increase in car travel had pumped CO2 into the air. They also were dealing with the post-WWII boom in car ownership. Congestion and delays were a serious pressure on daily life. Hemmed in by a lack of land (literally - you can’t build a road on a canal), the Netherlands responded with policies, road designs and infrastructure improvements that discouraged driving and encouraged cycling and transit. By the 1990s, Amsterdam had an impressive 30% mode split for bikes and 27% for transit use. Today the bike mode split is an enormous 40% of all trips, transit is 20% and car travel is 40%. Amsterdam, with its 750,000 residents, has a 30€ million ($36,000,000) annual capital budget for bicycle infrastructure and improvements. On average, this represents 5% of the total expenditures for transportation capital projects. I would say this is a pretty cheap alternative given that 40% of trips are by bike. Delft with 95,000 residents spends 750,000€ ($900,000) annually on bicycling - not including big projects. Clearly the government at the national, regional and local level all value and preserve the bicycling infrastructure and education programs. Stay tuned next week for my musing on ideas for Portland and what we could take a look at trying out over here. Posted Wed, 11/16/2005 - 9:41am.
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by paul on Thu, 11/17/2005 - 3:11pm.
Linda, Like Sam's last comments that compared Portland's tram system, I'd urge you to consider all the various ways that Netherlands and Amsterdam differ from Portland before you start urging common solutions. You point to congestion, CO2 emissions, and environmental degradation as the reasons that they "got there." Some other far more likely reasons: altitude (already pointed out, pancake flat. density (highest in Europe) marginal tax rates (currently 60%, among the highest in Europe, meaning they have a massively larger public sector) A bit of sarcasm, meant in a friendly way, but I don't think you're suggesting we flatten the West Hills, ramp up our density to Amsterdam levels, or quadruple our marginal tax rate. It's great to look at Amsterdam for ways that we can move bicycle traffic more efficiently and safely, but to believe that there is even a remote chance that Portland will ever look like Amsterdam in the next half century is, I believe, not credible. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Commuter on Thu, 11/17/2005 - 3:38pm.
Your quote: The expectation is that cyclists will probably “break the law” and that cars just need to watch out for them. And this does not seem to make for a hostile environment. Great philosophy. I'll buy that for here WHEN BICYCLIST START PAYING SOMETHING FOR THE ROADS. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Jesse on Thu, 11/17/2005 - 4:35pm.
Every tax-payer pays for the roads through federal taxes--often the largest source of annual transportation dollars. In fact, bicylcists pay far more in taxes for an infrastructure that they don't use than cars do for bicycling. I'm not suggesting that we change the payment structure, just pointing out that the argument is a false one. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by commuter on Thu, 11/17/2005 - 5:01pm.
Gas taxes pay for roads, period. Federal gas taxes and state gas taxes. Federal income taxes do not pay for roads. How much gas do you burn riding your bicycle. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by erin fletcher on Thu, 11/17/2005 - 8:25pm.
Linda, great post, very inspiring. Erin » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Lenny Anderson on Fri, 11/18/2005 - 8:25am.
Someone help me by explaining the hostility I hear on the subject of bicycles as a means of transport. I own a car, buy gas, etc., but ride a bike to work most days. Bikes don't wear out pavement; we ride on quiet side streets or along a narrow strip on busy ones; are a risk to no one but ourselves. Motorists should welcome us...we could be in our cars sitting in front of you waiting to make a left! » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Michael James on Fri, 11/18/2005 - 12:04pm.
The vast majority, probably 80%, of Portland (the city, not region)'s residents live on the eastside or in inner Northwest or Southwest -- where it is almost as flat as the Netherlands. And most of those people work there too. As far as density, the density is for the country, which is admittedly not large, thus it is dense. But the cities throughout the Netherlands look to have somewhat similar density to many Portland neighborhoods -- single-family homes on small lots. Half of the trips here are 3 miles or under -- we're dense enough. And I'm not sure what marginal tax rates are doing to encourage bicycling -- discourage the ability to pay for two+ cars? Please explain. There are the naysayers. And there are the dreamers. In Oregon, supposedly, we love dreamers. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Matt Harding on Fri, 11/18/2005 - 3:01pm.
The big difference here is culture. Amsterdam, along with the rest of Europe, mostly avoided the post-WWII personal auto boom that occurred in the US. They grew up without the car whereas we grew up (and built up) around the car. If we want to increase bicycle ridership, we should start at the beginning by finding out what it would take for someone like the above "Commuter" to consider biking (Although that person is probably not the best example). Better infrastructure will help as will higher gas prices, but the true change will happen when people start asking themselves "Why couldn't I?" instead of "Why I can't". Once a person gets on a bike for the first time, the former question follows automatically. But this can only happen by finding out what the impediments are and breaking through them. For example I know of at least 3 people who would bike commute if only they had access to showers at work. As far as geography, Portland is a hilly town east and west (try going east on SE Salmon between 11th and 30th). It gets you in shape quick. Fortunately, any way you hit downtown, you are dropping in elevation. I used to bike commute from Tigard and really didn't sweat on the way in since it is mostly downhill. And FYI to "Commuter" because of the downhills, I was able to cover 7 miles in about 25 minutes. Don't fear the hills, enjoy them. Thanks to Linda for the detailed post, it was very interesting. Portland has a lot to learn. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Steve Schopp on Sat, 11/19/2005 - 6:52pm.
Sam, It's important to present the entire picture and let the public know the whole story. Cheaper by the web! Scroll down, take a short read, or click and check out the rest. We don't want to copy anything there. http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Netherlands/Provincie_Noord_Holland/Amsterdam-463377/Warnings_or_Dangers-Amsterdam-Crossing_the_streets_Traffic-BR-3.html Excerpts: The biggest risk to your health and bodily integrity in Amsterdam are bikes and trams. Amsterdam trams (streetcars)are generally very big and yellow (OK, some are blue & white and others bedecked in ads) and should be easy to avoid. About 10 tourists a years fail this test and end up being shipped to their point of origin in a bag/box. Watch out for the bikers and the tram! (streetcar) Vehicles in Amsterdam do not stop for pedestrians so you have to watch out when crossing a street. Especially the tram and the bikers have no mercy for a tourist getting in their way. Be extremely careful whilst crossing the roads. Watch out for Trams, they have no mercy and bicycles although the riders do normally ring their bell to let you know your in the way. Be very careful as you walk around, the locals have a rhythm with their bikes and you can easily find yourself on a bike path instead of the walking path. You are more likely to annoy them than anything, but if you are suddenly startled you may jump out of their way and into the path of a street car... very bad. There are a few deaths a year from tourists not paying attention to the traffic. Being a pedestrian in Amsterdam is the most dangerous thing for me. You need to have your five senses in continuous action if you don't want to be run over. When there are no cars, there is a bicycle and when there are no bikes, there's a tram. That?s absolutely crazy!!! Amsterdam bikes exist in almost every colour of the rainbow and obey no single traffic regulation. The bike is Amsterdam's most efficient mode of transport and most of the people on them are in a hurry to get from A to B, myself included. This means that most of us don't bother to ring our bells before we run you over. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by user on Sun, 11/20/2005 - 11:14pm.
Michael, I don't know the percentage of Portlanders who live on the inner east and west sides, but I don't think you do either. I seriously doubt it is 80%. The inner west side is hilly. What inner west side can you possibly be talking about? To say "most" of these people work there too is surely wrong. If it were, we would not have a downtown commute. The Sunset highway would not be a parking lot. Measuring the average trip is also grossly misleading--a commute counts as 1 trip, same as the multiple trips to the local store. I mentioned marginal tax rates because the poster wondered what led to the extensive network of bike friendly roads in Netherlands. One explanation is a very large public sector that pays for this. The same thing that explains their very generous health insurance system. We can be dreamers, that's fine. But we have to live in the real world, too. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Larry Cusack on Mon, 11/21/2005 - 8:34am.
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is King. Are there as many hills in Amsterdam as there are in Portland? What about bicyle theft? I live at a curve on a road, also steep,and fun one way for bicycling. The route is taken both up and down the hill. When exiting my driveway I must look in all directions, and then again, or the silent runner or SILENT BYCYLISTS, bycylists especially, seem to come from no where around the curves in either or both directions. Is it too much to ask that byclist share the road legally and courtesly. Bycylists, please share the road courtesly. We are an aging population. It is also hard to walk many places in Portland due to the runners. (Walk around the river downtown.) The runners expect walkers to yeild. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by Michael James on Mon, 11/21/2005 - 4:32pm.
The crash rate in the Netherlands is about 40% the crash rate of the U.S. It's dangerous if you're not used to it, but once you adjust to how traffic flows it's actually very safe. And gosh, using all your senses actually makes things much safer than here in the U.S., where distraction is a major factor in crashes. As for the flatness of Portland -- go to portlandmaps.com and use the drop-down for elevation. It's not completely flat, but it's flat enough to not cause major problems once you start biking a bit. And if you need to walk your bike up the four or five blocks of hill you hit on the east side, do so. Yes, those hills provide some exercise. But they're not prohibitive. Portland may not be 80% on the east side, but it's close. Look at the map of county commissioners in Multnomah County, http://tinyurl.com/aoopz, and you'll see that more than 3 of the 4 districts are east side. Throw out the 100,000 of the 700,000 people in Multnomah County who don't live in Portland, and you still have the vast, vast majority of folks on the east side. Flat enough. The inner west side that's not hilly is NW Portland and parts of Lair Hill, etc. -- yes, some of the west side is hilly, but it's not hilly to get to NW 21st, Portland's densest neighborhood. Culturally, the Netherlands actually has reversed some trends. They were investing in the car significantly through the 1970s, then decided they couldn't afford it. So biking rates that had been falling dramatically turned back up. From 20% in the 1970s to 35% today, or 30% in the 1970s to 50% today. And Sam's trip was paid for by private donors -- and a trip through your own eyes is worth a lot more than surfing the web. The world. Experience it. » reply
re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is KingSubmitted by user on Wed, 11/23/2005 - 9:57am.
Michael, I'm sorry, but your posts are very misleading. You wrote: The vast majority, probably 80%, of Portland (the city, not region)'s residents live on the eastside or in inner Northwest or Southwest Now you show this by displaying Lonnie Roberts's district?? This is Multnomah County, not the city! And wait ... you are suggesting that folks living out at 148th and Holgate and working light industrial in Hillsboro ride a bike? You write: And Sam's trip was paid for by private donors That matters because ...? You write: The world. Experience it. Thanks Mike. I was in Amsterdam last summer. Loved it. I'm sure we can learn some lessons. But I'm not purposely naive to the many ways that we differ from Amsterdam. Sorry that facts keep getting in your way. Research. Experience it. » reply
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re: The Netherlands - Where the Bicycle is King
Okay, the Netherlands is bicycle country. Great. It's also absolutely flat... created by holding back the ocean with dikes. And what is the average commute distance of these bicyclists?
My workplace is 12 miles from my home. Between my home and my workplace is a little bit of a bump called the West Hills. Even if I were physically able to make that ride, which I am not, with the hills it would probably take me two hours to ride to work. Once I got there, I would be a smelly mass of seat and would need shower and changing facilities, which do not exist.
Commuting by bicycle is, and will continue to be, a viable option for only the fraction of a percent who are currently able. To base more and more of our transportation planning on bicycle commuting is simply insanity.