Bus stop bike parking. Enormous need on weekdays, less on weekends. Mass parked bikes in The Netherlands are not "abandoned".

2006 situation at Marsdijk bus stop in Assen. Note old inferior
road crossing at the western side with traffic lights for bikes
which no longer exist. Courtesy Bing Maps.

When we first moved to Assen there was a lot of work taking place at the North of the city. A road was being rebuilt to provide better access by motor vehicle to the North and the cycle-path alongside was also being rebuilt to provide a far better route by bicycle to the North.

There was also work going on to provide more space for business in the same part of the city, so new office buildings were constructed

Google Maps image marked to show current day cycle-parking
in red. The new office building (blue spot) required extra
car parking. Overall there are fewer car parking spaces
now than in 2006, but far more bicycle parking spaces.
Note also the improved road crossing. Cyclists no longer stop

At the same time, the facilities for buses were being improved. The existing bus-stop which could take just one bus at a time was expanded into four bus stops. At the time, the cycle-parking for the bus stops was considerably enlarged as well.

The bus services from this stop have been successful and therefore because people cycle to this bus-stop, more cycle-parking was required.

The cycle-parking has been expanded since it was originally built by taking away car parking spaces. The full extent of cycle-parking now is as shown in the image where cycle-parking is highlighted in red. Some of this was built over spaces which had been constructed as car parking only a few years previously.

This bus stop is on the Study Tour route so we have shown it with varying amounts of cycle-parking to quite a few visitors to Assen. Because we always operate the tour on week days, the cycle-parking is usually full with bicycles which belong to commuters (you can catch a bus from here to Groningen or other towns and cities). However, if you visit the same location on the weekend, the cycle-parking is almost empty.

There is a persistent myth about how massed bikes at Dutch railway and bus stations are "abandoned" however this is not true. The rates of usage are enormous compared with other countries and actually the people who manage cycle-parks like this are very efficient at removing abandoned bikes so that legitimate users can find a space.

The video shows the same cycle-park both on a week day (Wednesday of the last Study Tour so some participants are in the video) and on a Sunday so that you can see the vastly different rate of use:


Click for bigger video
Explore the area on Google Maps:

Bigger map. Google Maps data currently dates from 2009 so does not show the most recent changes in the area. There's a bus lane here, but it is not combined with the cycle-path. I've never seen a combined bus and bike lane in the Netherlands.

There are hundreds of spaces here, and their presence demonstrates which you can't take bicycles on buses in The Netherlands. It's nice to be able to do so, but it only works if very few people use a bicycle to get to the bus stop. In The Netherlands you can't rely on that.

The long red building is both a football club and Chinese restaurant.

Update November 2013

This cycle parking was upgraded again in November. The parked bikes are now sheltered from the weather.

Today the September open Study Tour is viewing this bus stop amongst many other locations in Assen.

Ten Bus Stop Bypasses for Bicycles. Bikes, buses and bus passengers can be in harmony only when separated (floating bus stop)

This video shows ten of the bus stop bypasses for bikes in Assen. They're not especially good "cherry picked" examples but simply the ten nearest my home. Most are alongside normal roads, one is alongside a bus road. All are within a couple of km and they were videoed in half an hour early last Friday morning. They're entirely typical of normal cycling infrastructure quality in this area. Note that these are all designed to  be convenient for cyclists to use. They do not narrow or have raised sections to slow cyclists because cyclists are already slow compared with motor vehicles and we need to encourage efficient cycling not to slow cyclists down.

Large and small vehicles can never "share" equally. In order to encourage true mass cycling, where the entire population uses a bicycle for a proportion of their journeys, conditions for riding must be subjectively safe. Where bicycles mix with motor vehicles, this feeling of safety is reduced. Where bicycles mix with large motor vehicles it is reduced further.

Don't combine buses and bikes

Dutch bus-stop with no obvious bypass.
Bicycles don't travel on this road at all
but are behind the noise barrier. Watch
this video to see how it works.

Buses and bicycles should never be combined in one lane. This is not only because of the subjective safety issue, but also because the two modes move in fundamentally incompatible ways. Cyclists try to maintain a constant speed because this maximises efficiency (greater efficiency makes riding a bike being practical over a longer distance and reduces the time taken - further aided in the Netherlands by cycling routes being unravelled from motor routes and avoiding traffic lights). Buses, on the other hand, stop regularly to take up and let off passengers.

Where bus and bicycle infrastructure is combined on a long road it often leads to leapfrogging as buses repeatedly overtake bikes and cyclists are given a choice either to wait behind the bus, wasting time and making cycling less attractive, or overtaking the bus while it is stopped, which can be dangerous for the cyclist.

Decades old and unimproved, the least
good example of a bicycle bypass in
Assen still has a place for passengers
to stand before crossing the cycle-path.
New-build doesn't look like this.

Segregate bikes from buses and also from passengers
Bus passengers also clash with cyclists. If a cyclist tries to pass the bus on the "wrong" side between the stop and the bus then this puts cyclists directly into conflict with those who are boarding or alighting the bus. This is avoided in the Netherlands as shown in the video above, though you'll note that in the oldest example, pre-dating modern practice, cyclists are routed on the wrong side of the bus shelter which could cause conflict. No modern bus stop would be designed like this, with conflict built in, but note that even in this example there is somewhere to stand after leaving the bus and before crossing the cycle-path.

Why doesn't Britain copy the best examples ?
After making the video above and while writing this piece I discovered that new bus stops claiming to deal with the problem that the Dutch were had already tackled more than 30 years ago were being introduced in London. Unfortunately, instead of copying from the best tried and tested examples, attempts have been made to design something new. Time will tell whether these are good examples, but there would seem to be reasons to expect them not to be as successful as normal Dutch practice:

New design for London. This will cause clash between cyclists and bus passengers. Why didn't they copy from best practice in NL ?

Bus passengers clashing with
cyclists in Royal College St
(Thanks to @AlternativeDfT)

New bus-stop for Royal College Street, London. It was obvious from the design that conflict should be expected here between cyclists and bus passengers because bikes are being routed between the bus and the bus stop without even a small place for bus passengers to stand between the bus that they're entering or leaving and the bicycle path with through traffic.

Also note that at just two metres wide, the bicycle lanes shown here are narrower than any of the examples in Assen. The high kerbs and the planters between the cycle-lanes and road reduce the safely usable width of the facility.

Even the oldest example shown in my video from Assen is 2.3 m in width. That's on a relatively quiet residential access road and it is just one small weak link in a very dense grid of high quality cycling facilities within a small city. It deals with far fewer cyclists than could be the case in a larger city with fewer facilities.

(a few days later, The Alternative Department for Transport blog included an interesting blog post about how this bus-stop has worked out in practice)

Another compromised design for London. Sharp bends on the cycle-path which is not wide enough. Opened several months after this blog post was written and immediately caused problems due to bad design. Why doesn't London copy best practice from the Netherlands ?

A second example from London is the proposal for extension of Cycling Superhighway 2 in London. This looks as shown in the brightly coloured illustration above.

Dutch example from 1981. Not angular
and you could expect the cycle-path
to be of usable width.

From the picture it initially looked like this example could turn out better than Royal College Street as there is at least supposed to be somewhere for passengers to stand as they leave the bus. In that sense, it's similar to 30 year old Dutch designs. Similarity only goes skin deep, though, as the illustration shows an overly angular design and this could make it difficult to ride around easily, quickly and safely. There also appear to be dangerous high kerbs. It's not obvious why these kerbs are necessary at all, but they could at least be safe like these ones. Lastly, the plans for this cycle-path again suggested it would be just two metres wide.

It can be difficult to pass other cyclists safely within just two metres and if the route is well used this will be a problem. Given that "superhighways" in London are few and far between and that even with the low cycling modal share of London there is a huge population to draw cyclists from, this route probably will be well used.

The real bus stop bypass in London
under construction. "barely 1 m wide"
(Thanks to @AsEasyAsRiding)

Unfortunately, it's not actually been built even two metres wide. Mark Treasure tells me that it's "barely 1m wide at narrow point". A one metre wide cycle-path, with a post in it which narrows its effective width further, deep kerbs either side and passing a bus stop where bus passengers may or may not be aware of an approaching cyclist is very very far from best practice so far as bus stop bypasses are concerned.

The idea of a bypass is to make cycling convenient. It should not cause cyclists to slow down or place them in danger. It should not cause conflict between cyclists and bus passengers. It should also not cause frustrated cyclists to use the road in order to bypass the bypass.

(Hackney Cyclist wrote a very good blog post giving more details of the HS2 route extension)

"40 years behind" is a choice
London is "40 years behind" by choice not by accident. Even now, after supposedly having "gone Dutch", the city is still designing and building inferior infrastructure as seen in the two examples above.

This simply isn't good enough.

Why is London still not learning from the best examples ? Why is the city still trying to find its own novel ways to solve problems which were identified decades ago in the Netherlands and the solutions to which have since been refined to a very high standard ?

Instead of continuing to make costly mistakes, why not send planners to find out what proper cycling infrastructure looks like ?

Thanks to @EdinburghTom

Go North, find an even worse idea...
An amusing blog post from The People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire reminded me of another idea for passing buses which has appeared in Scotland recently. The rightly much criticized "Nice Way Code" suggests that cyclists should never pass buses on the left and on the right only "if you must".

Sadly, the "Nice Way Code" campaign has consumed a considerable fraction of the not very generous funding for cycling in Scotland. Instead of making it easy for bikes to pass buses safely and without conflict, they're using cycling money to tell cyclists not to pass buses.

This is just one of the many errors made by the "Nice Way Code", an organisation which sadly is backed by both CTC and Sustrans amongst other organisations who really should have known better.

Campaigners need to campaign effectively.
There is also excitement this morning about the British government having announced the "largest ever investment in cycling". This is apparently a figure of 77 million pounds to be spread amongst eight cities "in an effort to put Britain on a level footing with countries [...] such as [...] the Netherlands".

Unfortunately, this sum of money isn't nearly enough to achieve that aim. The Netherlands spends roughly €30 per person per year, every year in order to improve the cycling infrastructure and continue to expand the network. The total funding available over the next two years is about £148 million and this will allow investment in just eight cities to be at around £10 per head for just two years. This low figure of £10 per head is the figure which CTC actually asked for a few months ago and it's also the figure which will be debated in parliament on the 2nd of September.

Why is there so much complacency amongst campaigners ? Why such low ambitions ? Why do they offer support for inadequate policies and why do they not fight for what is really needed ? When you are already decades behind you cannot catch up by doing a third as much so why are campaigners putting their names to calls to do so little that the UK will inevitably remain in "dark ages" so far as cycling is concerned ? Low aspirations will not result in mass cycling and campaigners working with such aspirations are very much part of the reason why the UK is behind.

"Armadillos" in Assen. These have sometimes featured on
the study tour as an example of what not to do. They get
bumped by passing vehicles.

Update January 2014
The "armadillos" in Royal College Street are a failure. If we had been consulted we could have told TfL in advance that this would happen. It's not something you find often in the Netherlands because it doesn't really work. There are just a few old examples like that shown in the photo on the right. When copying from the Netherlands it's important to look for good examples.

This is not a good example, it's one of those things that you should not copy. Probably the oldest cycle-path in Assen. It works OK in this location because it is alongside a residential area (apartment blocks) and there are very few vehicles turning across the cycle-path. But in time this will be replaced (it was supposed to have happened in 2010).

Update March 2014
The "Armadillos" shaken loose over the last few months by large vehicles which have been accessing a site on this road have been re-fitted and broken examples replaced. Much tidier now.

You'll see from the photo that the cycle-path is generous enough that it doesn't feel cramped and also that cars pass at a reasonable distance. Nevertheless, this is outdated infrastructure. We were originally told there would be a proper cycle-path in this location by 2009.

Each Assen concrete block "Armadillo" is 1 metre long, 25 cm wide and 12 cm tall. When some were loose, I tried picking one up. It was heavier than I thought I could lift without damaging my back. These are not the insubstantial plastic used elsewhere. Nevertheless, this is not adequate.

Also see Hackney Cyclist for more and The Alternative Department for Transport for more about Royal College Street. This post was updated to include the words "floating bus stop" because this newly invented term has become commonly used to refer to bus stop bypasses.

Love London, Go "slight head start at the ASL" ?

LCC original

A few days ago over on the Pedestrianize London blog, Paul James put together a very good critique of the 'lack of ambition and "Dutchness"' of the London Cycling Campaign's plans for Parliament Square.

For his post, he edited the LCC image to create something which looked considerably more Dutch.

Paul's version

In particular, Paul deleted the on-road advanced stop lines (aka ASLs or Bike Boxes) and the on-road cycle lanes. Quite right too, as these are something which are not really "Dutch". They exist, but they're rare, and shouldn't be found in a modern design for a busy street like this.

"We favour ASLs"
Discussion followed, with several people saying that they preferred Paul's vision. Mike Cavenett, Communications Officer of the LCC, explained thus: "We favour ASLs because they give confident cyclists an advantage (however, slight) at traffic signals. They're not a substitute for proper bike tracks, they're complementary. Confident cyclists can use them and ride on the carriageway, while less confident ones will use the kerbed tracks that are part of every busy street."

It's quite extraordinary that the LCC should "favour" advanced stop lines as part of a campaign called "Go Dutch", because ASLs are actually rare in the Netherlands. When this post was discussed elsewhere, and a suggestion was made that mistakes were being "copied from the Dutch who invented the things in the first place" this made me think about the last time that I actually saw an ASL in the Netherlands. These days, ASLs are British much more than they are Dutch.

A traffic education
"Happy families" game
from the Netherlands
shows how ASLs don't
really eliminate
hassle from motorists.

It does depend on where you go, of course, but while we're surrounded by high quality cycling infrastructure in Assen, there isn't an ASL anywhere in this city. There also isn't one on any of the routes I follow regularly into the countryside, through other cities, villages and towns. The closest I'm aware of is 30 km North of here in Groningen. They're not all that common in that city either, and are not found on the main routes for cyclists that I usually use or on large junctions as they are being suggested for in London. Dutch cyclists manage quite well without ASLs because of more advanced traffic light and roundabout designs, as well as many opportunities to take routes which avoid signaled junctions.

Just because something can be found, somewhere, in the Netherlands, that doesn't imply that it's a good example worth copying and branding as "Dutch" elsewhere.

The Bristol ASL and bus incident
As it happens, an ASL in Britain was in the news this week, though I've not heard anyone comment on this particular aspect of the story. The ASL appeared in CCTV footage of a bus driver, Gavin Hill, who used his vehicle to deliberately seriously injure a cyclist:

Bristol, Britain's "Cycling City". Note how an advanced stop line completely failed to help a cyclist who was the victim of a deliberate attack by a bus driver (click on the underlined text if you wish to see the rather shocking video).

The street on which this incident happened already has cycling infrastructure as "favoured" by many campaigners in the UK in the shape of an Advanced Stop Line. However, this infrastructure played no part at all in keeping the cyclist safe. Actually, ASLs and other paint on the road do nothing to reduce conflict on the streets. Indeed, in encouraging cyclists to try to get past cars which are in the lanes which lead up to the ASL they can actually promote conflict. I'm not the only person to have noted that if you find your way into an ASL in the UK, it's likely to have a car in it.

Dutch, Danish, or something else ?
ASLs were not the only aspect of the LCCs design which was discussed in the comments on Paul's blog post. Richard Lewis, who produced the design for the LCC, also joined in: "The un-Dutch lanes. I agree that the tracks and lanes are hardly Dutch in design. This is because they are mainly Danish.

So is "Go Dutch" actually "Go Danish" ? It shouldn't be. In my view, Danish junction design at major intersections is less good than Dutch design because it promotes conflict and causes cyclists to have to make multi-stage turns more than Dutch junctions. Danish junction design has proven to be lethal. However, I'm quite sure that the Danes wouldn't put an ASL here either.

Richard carries on to say "I've actually done a 'hybrid' of both". There's an explanation of why: "Essentially this is because Dutch designs are actually so good that British engineers won't go near them, and because Danish designs are pretty good (and getting better over time) but are also much more transferable. " Actually, though, these proposals are neither Dutch nor Danish nor a hybrid, but something new and unproven.

Instead of the LCC asking for best practice, they are still asking for something less. Compromises are being made before even starting a process of negotiation. I wrote before about how this timid approach will never lead to the needed change. It's akin to Rosa Parks having asked merely for the signs on the bus to be in a fixed position.

Bow Roundabout
It's not just at Parliament square that the LCC are making proposals for advanced stop lines at busy junctions.

In a recent article ending with the words "we need action to tackle road danger and make out city as inviting to cycle in as those in the Netherlands", the London Cycling Campaign suggests the following layout at Bow Roundabout:

LCC's proposal for Bow Roundabout (page 28/29 London Cyclist Feb/Mar 2012)

Until I read the article that it accompanied, I thought this diagram was a demonstration of what not to do. It may fit well with the preconceptions of people who think that ASLs "give confident cyclists an advantage" but this is an overly complex junction design which makes a mockery of proper cycling infrastructure and everything that sustainable safety principles argue against. This confusing jumble of different types of infrastructure puts cyclists directly into conflict with drivers as they attempt to reach those advanced stop line bike boxes.

I am completely at a loss to explain how this type of infrastructure could be thought to make London more like a Dutch city. The Dutch don't design two speed infrastructure.

In my view, what is being proposed here is actually worse than the proposal from Transport for London.

Representing the members
Last year, the LCC held a vote to discover which theme its members would like it to campaign on. Four different choices were given, and "Going Dutch" won by a mile with nearly 60% of the total votes cast. However, the leadership of the organisation had long been opposed to Dutch style infrastructure (much discussed on the late and lamented Crap Waltham Forest blog) and from the start, the proposal for "Going Dutch" was couched in particularly vague language and discussed in a way which indicated a lack of enthusiasm for what the membership had voted for.

Even before the vote, as long ago as July, there was discussion on the LCC's own website about the language then being used for the proposal. Many people were not happy with the way that "their" option was being presented. The impassioned first two paragraphs of the first response that you can read at that link sum it up well:

"Road space" is such a woolly term. The LCC has worded it like this to be attractive to your mum/gran/son who sees the pretty picture of a segregated cycle track, whilst suggesting a simply more blue paint to appease the lycra warriers who want to keep the right to cycle at 20mph in A-roads round central London. I really don't know what I'm voting for here. The title "Going Dutch" should by principally about segregation. Please LCC don't shy away from this word. He goes on to say: We need roads that my mum/gran/son will be drawn to cycle in. The ONLY way to avoid the BATTLE on the roads is to be segregated, like in Holland. NO to blue paint. NO to wide roads. YES to physical barriers protecting cyclists along main roads.

He didn't say so specifically, but I'm pretty sure that writer was not asking for more ASLs, and it's quite clear that he was not asking for on-road cycle-lanes.

In the last few weeks, the staff of the London Cycling Campaign, several of whom have publishing, marketing and fund-raising backgrounds, have done a good job of what they do well. They've produced a lot of text, achieved a lot of press for their campaign, and boosted membership of the organisation. While it looks great, what has been produced is a bit hollow. They still don't really seem to understand either how Dutch infrastructure is designed and works, or what "Going Dutch" meant to the people who voted for that option and who pay their salaries.

Instead of asking for what its members asked for. i.e. replication of Dutch conditions for cycling on London's roads, the LCC continues to promote less than ideal solutions, such as (but not limited to) Advanced Stop Lines (Bike Boxes) and on-road lanes. Woolly terms like "clear space" continue to appear in LCC literature and there is a lack of ambition for real change.

Rather than designing for the 8-80 age range, so that all Londoners could cycle just as all types of Dutch people cycle, the LCC is still designing for the 18-38 age range who are least concerned about subjective safety. With their current ambitions, a more accurate name for LCC's 2012 theme could well be "Love London, Go slight_head_start_at_the_ASL".

If you want to support a campaigning group which is really dedicated to bringing Dutch infrastructure to the UK, support the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain. To find out for yourself what Dutch infrastructure really looks like and how it is used, book a study tour. In three days we present a condensed view of our experience of living in and cycling tens of thousands of kilometres in both countries.

As I couldn't find it online, the picture of Bow proposal came thanks to the anonymous (unless he doesn't want to be) person who sent me a copy of the LCC's beautifully presented "Love London, Go Dutch" press pack. If cycling could be boosted by mere "branding" there would be no problems.

Bus stops which don't cause problems for cyclists (bus stop bypass, floating bus stop)

This is old infrastructure dating from
the 1980s which no longer exists in
Assen. It was already understood how
to prevent conflict between cyclists,
bus drivers and bus passengers

Buses and bicycles do not mix well. While buses are very large, cyclists are very vulnerable. While average speeds through a city can be similar, buses stop and start regularly, pulling into and out of bus stops as they do so, while cyclists gains their efficiency by not having to stop and start.

The best bus stop bypasses are those
you don't even notice while cycling
like this example in Assen. A four
metre wide cycle-path behind
the bus-stop, with cycle-parking.

Putting cycles and buses in the same space is simply bad design. Conflict is caused as cyclists get repeatedly cut-up by buses pulling into bus-stops, cyclists then have to either wait behind or overtake the bus in order to be able to continue at a reasonably consistent pace. This can happen many times on long streets leading to frustration amongst both the cyclist and the bus driver, and that sometimes contributes towards dangerous incidents, of a type which you don't have to look too far to find on youtube these days. It's very disappointing to find combined bus/cycle lanes are part of London's "Superhighways".


To see all the explanatory captions this video must be viewed on a computer and not a mobile device. Note that the first example no longer exists. There is a programme of constant improvement in Assen.
There are ways of removing conflict between buses and bikes, and much of this can be achieved at the bus-stop itself, even on roads without cycle-paths, by giving the cyclist a better option than to ride with the bus.

That's as close as I could get to where
the bus-stop used to be. Note huge
sewage pipes. Everything is being
renewed at once.

The first example in the video is of an older bus-stop. Examples like this have existed in the Netherlands for at least thirty years (definitely by 1981). My video showing the first type dates from 2008. This stop doesn't actually exist any more as the entire road was considered to be a little past its time, and is now in the middle of a major face-lift which will deprioritize it as a through route for motor vehicles.

The second example in the video, with the cyclist completely segregated from the road, is on a relatively new cycle-path from here to Groningen, part of what was at one time my commuting route. In the video I'm travelling at approximately 35 km/h. I have ridden here at 40 km/h. The cycle-path is designed to support high speeds.

A third example, not in the video:

This stop shows how much the same thing can be achieved on a road (in this case in Eindhoven) where there is inadequate space to have a cycle-path, a bus-stop lane and the road itself. The bus-stop is between the cycle-path and the road, taking up a space in what would otherwise be a row of resident's car parking spaces. When the bus stops, it blocks the road, but not the cycle-path. The road can be narrower than before because it does not need to be wide enough to allow for buses passing cyclists or one driver passing another. In this case also, the cycle-path is continuous along the road on both sides:


Grotere kaart weergeven

In all these cases, which are not exceptional but typical of bus-stops in general in the Netherlands, subjective safety of cyclists is enormously improved over cycling in a lane with the bus because the bus is far from the cyclist. Being next to a bus is precisely the sort of thing that puts people off cycling. The examples with full segregation obviously work better than the older example with the on-road cycle lane. However, the example with the online lane is something which takes up little space and costs little money and should be relatively easy to get support for in other places. Note that being away from the bus also improves journey times for cyclists by removing the need to stop and start for buses.

See more examples of well designed bus bypasses.

This post has been updated to use the term "floating bus stop" because this newly term (2014) has become commonly used to describe bus stop bypasses

Bus and bike access only. Don't bring your car.

Bus-road on the left, cycle-path on the right. There is no conflict between cyclists and buses. Also no conflict with car drivers on this route.

The new housing area of Kloosterveen on the edge of Assen has not yet been completed, however most of the transport infrastructure is in place. This photo shows the route from the western edge of the development into the countryside. It is for cyclists and bus passengers only. The cycle path is on the right in this photo and the bus lane (one bus in width, but for bidirectional use) is on the left. Note that while the bus road is not heavily used - there are only buses every few minutes - cyclists are not expected to share space with the buses. This would lead to conflict between cyclists and bus drivers, and a reduction in subjective safety for cyclists.

The sign makes it quite obvious what will happen to a normal car being driven over this obstacle, as does a close look at the second photo.

There are more routes out of the city by bike than by car, which is part of what makes cycling such an attractive option.

This is the cycle path you eventually end up on if you follow the route from the city centre to the new housing estate and keep on riding out the other side.

Earlier I featured another example of a bus road next to a cycle path, and posted about the lack of fears that cyclists have about buses in an environment where cyclists and buses only very rarely mix. There are also other integrated transport posts which might also be of interest.

Discover public transport

We recently had this leaflet through our door. It offers the opportunity to "discover public transport", by giving each member of the family a one day pass to the local bus network.

The leaflet also points out that folding bikes are allowed on the buses for free as hand luggage.

Being able to take a bike on the bus is a very useful option. I prefer to cycle, but I've done this three times already this year to get to Groningen for work when it's raining too much for the 60 km round trip by bike.

Who's afraid of the big bad bus ?

Scene from a Dutch suburb built in the 1980s: The dreaded Bendy Bus. Many cyclists really dislike these, and they have been blamed for an increase of injuries in London. Quite apart from the real danger, it is quite obvious that the articulated nature of them leads to a reduction in subjective safety for cyclists, and we already know how important that is.

Over here, buses rarely get close to cyclists as we're on the cycle path (red) while the buses are on the roads, with the speed bumps to try to keep them and the other motor vehicles under control.

Note also the way the road rises up a little at the position of the crossing for pedestrians (and cyclists just off the right of the photo). Just enough to give drivers a hint that they should slow down at this location, but without causing cyclists (on the cycle path) any problem at all.

Getting "knocked down by a bus" is not all that uncommon where buses are mixed in with cyclists. Large vehicles don't ever really mix very happily with bicycles, and that's one reason why I have never thought much of shared bicycle / bus lanes. The only time I've ever had to ride in a bus lane in the Netherlands, it had been converted into a bike lane because of road works.

The lonely bicycle

I see this bicycle nearly every day. It transports someone to the bus stop each work day and it waits here faithfully, panniers at the ready, for its owner to return. Rain or shine, hot or cold, unless it's a weekend or a holiday, this bike is here. Occasionally it's joined by some other bikes, but usually it's on it's own in this spot.

The bike is parked just a couple of hundred metres from our home. If we needed to take a bus from here we'd simply walk to the bus stop. However, by providing bike parking at every bus stop, it makes the bus useful to a far larger number of people. Click on the tags below for more examples of integrated transport and cycle parking.

Integrated Transport

We hear a lot about integrated transport, but what does it mean ? I've always assumed this referred to being able to switch between modes as convenient. So, it's useful if train stations and bus stations are in the same place. It's also rather useful if you can leave your bike somewhere sensible if you wish to take a train or bus.

This is done wonderfully well in the Netherlands. In virtually every town, the train station is located in the same place as the bus station. There is also nearly always a bicycle shop including cycle hire of two kinds - OV-fiets (public transport bike) for regular commuters to take each day they arrive in the city and the regular kind for people who just rarely hire bikes and want one for a few days when visiting.

You'll also find plenty of cycle parking at the railway stations, and also at bus-stops in town - the bikes shown in the picture are at a large bus-stop in a residential part of Assen - and even at bus-stops out in the country.

The same large bus stop on google maps streetview:

Grotere kaart weergeven
And as seen from above:

Click to see on Google Maps Since this blog post was written, more car parking spaces have been converted into cycle-parking. The greenish area in the centre top of this image and the cars parked to the top left of that area are now areas of extra cycle-parking.

For more examples of ample bicycle parking so that bikes can be used with other forms of transport see my videos of cycle parking at Assen Station and at Groningen Station, or see all the Integrated Transport, bus, Cycle Parking or Commuting stories.

There are also some examples of parking on the photos page.

Leaving nothing to chance

Bus road next to cycle-path

A high level of cycling doesn't maintain itself.

Nothing is left to chance here. Cycle paths are designed in first in new developments and cyclists are not expected to slum it by sharing space with buses.

The picture shows a bus waiting at a bus stop on a bus road. This road is not a through road for cars, and has quite light use by buses, but cyclists are provided with a separate wide cycle path so that any possible subjective feeling of lack of safety is avoided. There is also a pedestrian path because cyclists and pedestrians don't mix very well either.

Note that the bus road is not a new road. This was the main route for all traffic until the 21st century when private motor vehicles were redirected to a different route and only buses and cyclists could remain on this route. Unravelling of routes reduces conflicts and reduces the need to slow down and stop. This can give both cyclists and public transport an advantage over private motor vehicles.

It's essential that cyclists are always catered for. Subjective safety should always be maintained. Having buses pass you or pull in or out on the road you're cycling on does not lead to a feeling of subjective safety and that's why combined bus and cycle lanes are not sufficient fort any place which wants mass cycling.

Other examples
When there are road works, the cycle route still has to be maintained. Temporary bridges are put up. While cycle paths are being resurfaced, an alternative route is provided by redirecting cyclists onto safe and convenient routes.

Note also the bicycle parking at the bus stop. There is very nearly always cycle parking at bus stops just as there is very nearly always a bypass for cyclists to avoid danger at bus stops. There is no need for buses to impact negatively on cyclists.