The Netherlands Cycling Embassy

Yesterday, 97 people attended a meeting hosted by the Fietsberaad about the possibility of the Netherlands having its own Cycling Embassy.

I felt quite honoured to have been invited, and I went along with little idea of what to expect. It's actually a very exciting proposal. For too long the Dutch have kept this secret to themselves - not because they've tried to be secretive, but because they've simply not promoted the wonderful things that have happened here. If all goes to plan, then in the future it will be easier to find information about what the Netherlands has done to achieve the extraordinary rate of cycling which the country has, with all of the benefits which go with it.

For me personally, it was also excellent to catch up with some of the other bloggers who I've only communicated with online. Marc, Mark (we first met and went on a bit of a tour of Utrecht, see video above), Marco and Henry.

Also I met several other people that I've been hoping to meet.

We had a series of excellent presentations, including from Lise Bjorg Pedersen from the Danish Cyclists Federation who originally came up with the idea of their Embassy. She was very supportive of the idea of the Netherlands doing more with their position as world leader in cycling.

Another presentation which I found particularly interesting was that by Roelof Wittink of the Interface for Cycling Expertise who have been doing similar work, mostly with developing nations, for over a decade. In particular, some numbers from his presentation grabbed my attention. Globally, no less than 6 trillion US dollars per year are spent on transport. Of this, 2 trillion are spent by developing nations. Of this, 90% is spent on land transport, and 80% is spent on new roads. Even in places where car ownership is still under 10% of the population, many of these countries are already suffering extreme congestion. It clearly is not a sustainable path, and the I-CE would like to see it reduce to 50% of the expenditure to increase support for sustainable urban transport. That's one of the reasons why the I-CE is so important. With their help, India, for instance, is trying to avoid the problems it could otherwise end up with.

I'm also keeping my eyes on the initiative in the UK to set up an "embassy". It's long been a hope of mine to help to ferment change in the UK, and for Britain to regain the cycling culture that it lost.

Somehow a collective memory has been lost. Many British people don't realise that even within their own lifetime, before motoring took over from everything else, people didn't make excuses about hills and the weather. Rather, it was normal for British people to cycle virtually as much as the Danes and Dutch do now:In many places where it has currently nearly disappeared from everyday life, cycling could come back. It merely needs support. That is what the idea of the Embassy is all about - to supply support, along with the best example in the world of how to achieve a high cycling rate. Together we can work to overcome the domination of motor vehicles.

That's what this blog, and the study tours which we started the blog to support, are about.