In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
The Netherlands is often seen as a cyclists' paradise. Indeed, the country's ratio of bicycles to people is roughly the same as, ahem, of that of guns to people in the United States. (That is to say, humans are outnumbered.) And comprehensive networks of bike lanes that you can actually use to get from home to school or work, or to go shopping or simply on a "fun" ride, crisscross many Dutch cities and towns. Moreover, bicycle "infrastructure" includes facilities like parking garages that drivers take for granted.
However, even in such a velocipedic utopia, not all places are "bike friendly," according to Mark Wagenbuur, the "Bicycle Dutch" blog author. Recently, he was asked to speak in Wageningen, a small city with a university renowned for its work in agricultural technology and engineering. As he had never before been in the city, he spent some time pedaling in it before offering his perspective on its cycling conditions.
There, he reports, he found "a mishmash of various types of infrastructure that have developed over time." Not only did he find paths with different kinds of surfaces that weren't connected, he also found bike lanes where they "didn't need to be," like the one alongside a residential street with a 30 kph (19 mph) speed limit. To be fair, he points out, the street was once a major road, so the bike lane may have made more sense. But, as with any kind of infrastructure, it needs to be updated.
Also, he found "car parking lots galore" in a city that is "warmly welcoming car drivers" and noticed that, like other cities that aren't particularly welcoming to cyclists, it's also difficult to reach and navigate via mass transit. (Though there is a bus terminal, the nearest rail station is 8 km--about 5 miles--from the center of the city.) Furthermore, the pedestrian route from the bus station to the center of town includes crossing a busy Provincial Road with no crosswalk or traffic lights. From there, pedestrians traverse a dark underpass and a car parking lot.
Americans (and people in some other countries) might dismiss Wagenbuur as "spoiled." After all, he is comparing conditions in Wageningen to those of his home city and others in the Netherlands. But he has made a valid point: Wageningen can, and should do better, even if its cycling conditions are better than those of most locales in the United States.
A few days ago, Mark Wagenbuur re-posted an early post on his excellent blog, Bicycle Dutch. In it, he outlines the developments that led to the Netherlands' much-lauded bicycle infrastructure and culture.
Utrecht city center in 1929...
Perhaps most important, he shows that his country wasn't always the cyclists' paradise one encounters today. Before World War II, bicycles were the main mode of transportation for many Dutch people. Photos show streets relatively free of cars and cyclists riding among, but not competing with, trams. After World War II, however, increasing affluence led people to foresake two wheels for four. Another photo from 1968 shows a street as clogged with motor traffic as any in an American city (though, it's hard not to notice, the vehicles are smaller). It was during the 1970s, he says, that the movements that led to today's system of bike lanes and other facilities began.
..
...and in 1968
Activists and planners of that time also advocated for changes in city planning to encourage motor-free transportation and recreation. He shows motor vehicle-free central business districts, some in centuries-old areas of cities. As he points out--in contrast to the arguments of their American counterparts--business owners report increased business because a cyclist or pedestrian is more likely to stop by whereas a driver might pass by if they can't find a parking space.
But his post also points to another parallel with the US that might help to explain why such developments are slower in coming to America. For one, he mentions that in recent years, the amount of cycling in the Netherlands has stabilized--which isn't surprising when you realize that bicycles have outnumbered people for some time. (They do in my apartment, too!) Those statistics, though, have layers, and if you peel off one of them, you find that cycling has increased in urban areas but decreased in the countryside has decreased. I don't know what the numbers are for the US, but I suspect that there is a similar situation at work--or that, at any rate, most of the increase in American cycling has come in or near urban areas.
For another, he talks about the resistance to making city centers more auto-friendly. (One of the images is a rendition of a proposed highway that looks alarmingly like the ones in areas like Southern California and other auto-centric areas. Thankfully, it was never built.) While cycling declined for a couple of decades after World War II, remaining cyclists fought to make their country safer for riding. Also, making some city centers more auto-friendly meant, not only removing bike lanes or streets that were safe for cycling, but also some beloved buildings, some of them centuries old. When some of those structures were lost, people thought that perhaps the price of "progress" wasn't worth it.
While there is some interest in preserving historic structures in some American cities, on the whole the environment in the US is more amenable to large-scale development. Some of that has to do with citizens who still see building bigger buildings as "progress," but I suspect that it has at least as much to do with the fact that mega-developers have more influence on politics and the media, at the local as well as the national level, in the US.
Also, business and commercial districts in some American cities, especially the newer ones in the South and West, are auto-centric by design. In contrast, the older Dutch (and other European) city centers, with their narrower streets and smaller plazas, were created long before automobiles came along. So, I would suspect, making them more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly would mean, at least to some degree, returning them to their original state. Or, at least, making them bicycle- and pedestrian- friendly doesn't require as much of a radical redesign as would be required in most American cities.
Finally, there is the matter of geography. The Netherlands is a much smaller country, and places are closer together. So people need less convincing to see that bicycling is a practical way to get to where they need to go--and that riding is simply fun. If someone lives 100 kilometers away from work, as many Americans do, no bike lane is going to convince them not to drive. At best, such a commuter might be enticed to ride his or her bike to a train or bus station--if indeed there are safe and secure parking facilities at the station. Or if there is a train or bus line at all. That is another area in which Dutch and other European people are better-served than Americans.
So, Mark Wagenbuur has done a service by showing that his country wasn't always the cycling Nirvana we see today. More important, he shows that it was once before a country of cyclists, but planners and ordinary citizens learned from their mistakes in emulating American transportation and city planning. Perhaps we can learn from our own mistakes and, although we can't go about it in the same way as the Dutch (or Danes or other Europeans), we can make this country more amenable for cyclists and pedestrians. It's one of the steps we need to take in order to keep from cooking ourselves (and most other life) on this planet!
A. The Netherlands gets it right when it comes to cycling infrastructure.
B. Justine Valinotti is a direct descendent of Christopher Columbus and inherited his sense of direction.
Actually, neither is completely true--or false. I can't claim lineage (as far as I know, anyway) to the guy who didn't "discover" America, but my navigational skills are on par with his. It's a good thing I have a sense of adventure!
As for the Netherlands: Much of the world sees it as a cycling paradise. Indeed, there are more bikes than people, and its system of bike lanes and other structures are, well, a system, more or less: They actually make cycling a real transportation alternative, at least in the cities.
That said, even Dutch planners get it wrong sometimes. Mark Wagenbuur reminds us of this in a recent post on his blog, Bicycle Dutch.
Once or twice a year, he rents a bike at the Venlo train station and rides to his in-laws in Grubbenvorst. In times past, his route was perhaps not the most scenic, but was pretty direct--and, from his direction, relatively safe for cycling. Four years ago, however, the local government built a viaduct for cyclists that was ostensibly safe and convenient for cyclists.
The problem, from Mr. Wagenbuur's point of view, was that one of the roads he took on earlier trips was closed to cyclists--and the viaduct was designed, in part, to bypass that road. It forces cyclists to take a slightly longer--but considerably more complicated--route.
The blue line is Mark Wagenbuur's current route. The horizontal blue segment is the viaduct. His old route is in green. In red are possible connections that could make his route more straighforward. From Bicycle Dutch.
He admits that the additional distance isn't much--it adds only 36 seconds to his trip--but the detours and other turns are exasperating. I guess he's a bit like me in that way: I don't mind taking a longer route, whether it's for a commute or a fun ride. If I'm trying to get to a particular place (e.g., work or a doctor's appointment) at a particular time, though, I prefer to minimize my chances of taking a wrong turn.
As I've said in other posts, merely building bike lanes isn't going to convert people from four wheels to two. Those lanes have to be planned in order to provide safe, convenient and practical routes for cyclists. That happens more often in European countries, like the Netherlands, than in the United States. But, since Dutch planners are people (and may not realize that folks like me are navigationally-challenged), every once in a while they make missteps--like the viaduct Mark Wagenbuur described.
A snowstorm that dumped snow on the Midwest just barely grazed New York City the other day. We had a few flakes, but more sleet and freezing rain.
Even though we've had a few noticeable snowstorms during the past decade, on the whole, there's been a lot less of the white stuff than in previous winters.
Apparently, that is the case in much of the Northern Hemisphere. Mark Wagenbuur, the Bicycle Dutchauthor, posted about riding in the first snow to fall in Utrecht in nearly two years.
As he recounts, the snow recorded at De Bilt, the Dutch weather agency, on the 16th was the first in 700 days: a record for the station. The coating was light enough that the city didn't clear it, figuring motorists would drive it away. ("Drive it away" sounds like an exorcism or a fight against an enemy attack, doesn't it?) His video and commentary shows that, for all of the Netherlands' reputation as a cyclists' paradise, there are still intersections and other roadway features that aren't so bike-friendly.
Then again, folks like Wagenbuur cycle for transportation, not for recreation or sport, as his "about" page tells us. People who use their bikes as vehicles are more likely to see the defects in cycling infrastructure because we see our bicycles as vehicles and ourselves as, in effect, drivers.
Yes, you read that right. Oh, but it gets better: that city is in what is often seen as one of the world's most bike-friendly nations.
That country is the Netherlands. The city in question in Utrecht; the bike lane, alongside Vredenburg, is said to be the busiest in the nation. It was widened a few years ago; even so, it's not enough to meet the demand.
So many cyclists ride it because Vredenberg path is the main east-west corridor the city center. As in many older cities, there simply aren't many options available: Other streets dead-end at rivers, canals, railroad tracks or other natural or artificial barriers. (This is also true in some older areas of cities like New York and Boston.) In some places, it isn't possible to build bridges or other ways to navigate those obstacles--and, in some of the more historic and scenic areas of a city like Utrecht, it's too expensive or people understandably don't want to do such a thing.
Also, as the author of the Bicycle Dutch post points out, just as "we all know that more asphalt isn't the answer to too many cars," it's "probably also not the answer to too much cycling." In other words, old European cities like Utrecht have very limited amounts of space on which to build anything, so adding more pavement would defeat one of the purposes of encouraging people to ride: reducing congestion. The city is thus looking at other possible solutions, which including the closure of some streets to motor traffic and turning them into bike routes. Another suggestion includes using a former railway bridge as a crossing for cyclists.
At least it seems that the city is trying to create a comprehensive plan to make movement from place to another safe, convenient and sustainable. Too often, American cities build bike lanes or other transit facilities without a coherent scheme. That, I think, is why too many bike lanes are poorly constructed and maintained and don't offer useful routes, or even connections to other forms of transportation.
In this part of the world, this winter has been brutal and seemed endless--at least in comparison with the past few. On the other hand, much of Europe has experienced one of the mildest winters in some years. So, cyclists are enjoying the weather and the budding flora. Many European cities are lovely in the spring. But seeing this photo made me want to be in Leiden right now, astride my wheels:
