An endless search for quick fixes results instead in repeated failures

The Netherlands in April during the "intelligent lockdown"
which was actually no lockdown at all.

A new record was set in the Netherlands today. 1560 new cases of Covid-19 were reported today - the highest level of new infections that we've ever had in one day. This is a higher rate of infection by some margin than any day during March and April during the first wave of the disease. The second wave of infections is truly upon us.

How did we get here ? The answer is obvious: without actually eliminating the disease, without actually ever having had a proper lockdown which could perhaps have helped to eliminate the disease, our government re-opened everything. Instead of taking this seriously, as did countries such as Taiwan, New Zealand, South Korea and China (started by trying to cover it up, but have taken effective action since January), our government decided to downplay the risks from the beginning and when they were forced to take action they took minimum action for a minimum period of time.

Dutch people are now travelling to other countries on holiday, drinking in bars, eating in restaurants, going to school and university, commuting to work, and spreading the virus between themselves as if there was nothing at all to avoid. There are still some rudimentary hand washing facilities at shops, but hardly anyone wears a face mask (I do and it leads to odd looks) and people just do not keep the mandated 1.5 m distance from one-another.

What happened in the Netherlands was that instead of taking proper action to fix this issue, our government looked for a shortcut. Rather than a short and sharp lockdown to eliminate the disease locally followed by ensuring that people who visit or return from another country really do go into quarantine, international visitors are merely requested to quarantine themselves while everyone knows that most don't bother. Testing and tracing have been stretched to the breaking point so they are no longer effective.

Failure resulted from taking a shortcut. From looking for a quick fix which it was thought would allow the economy to be minimally damaged. In reality this is far from over and we can expect further damage to the economy as well as further deaths due to an inadequate response. The quick fix was anything but a fix. The countries which took effective action now have the least disruption to their economies and to lives.

The Climate

Of course it's not just on the pandemic that our policies have failed. Our environmental policy is also failing. Another record was set just yesterday: The hottest September day ever in the Netherlands.

 

Already two years old and we have not begun to
respond in an effective way.

Our emissions are not decreasing. We're not even slightly close to doing this. Why ? It's the same story. Instead of taking decisive action to change habits and reduce emissions we are taking a minimum change approach, which can only make a very small difference to emissions.

Instead of tackling the over-consumption which has led to climate change, people are looking for a magic way to continue with their wasteful lifestyles. Many people would rather buy a new car than consider making the changes to their lifestyle required to live car-free. Though the difference in energy usage and emissions between different powered transport modes is not large, it's easier to sell the idea of continuing a wasteful lifestyle including much international travel by switching from flying to some other slightly less polluting mode such as train travel than it is to sell the idea of travelling far less.

Instead of travelling less, we travel more and more each year by every powered mode, so even the slow growth of some slightly less polluting modes doesn't in any way "offset" the more polluting modes because they are growing as well. All this growth, whether from car, airplane, boat, bus and train, simply adds to the total emissions.

The top 10%, those with earnings over $13700 per year,
are the big polluters. We buy and throw away too much.

Unfortunately, people like to buy stuff. Buying a "green" product makes people think they've done something good, even though it is always better for the environment to reduce consumption. Buying less, not replacing goods regularly, not going on holiday, not buying new clothes when the old ones can be repaired and worn again, doesn't impress the neighbours but it does reduce emissions. Every product has a footprint. Using what you have for longer, and using it less if it's a product which consumes energy, is far more powerful than swapping to something new and certainly more effective than buying "offsets" to assuage the guilt of over-consumption.

The quick fix of buying things to try to maintain an unsustainable lifestyle, of trying to continue to live in the exact same wasteful way but with "green" products, isn't a fix at all. To reduce our footprint on the planet, to maintain a liveable climate, we need to change how we live. We need to live with less.

Building cycling infrastructure

This blog is of course mostly about cycling infrastructure. Here too we see the quick fix mentality.

This isn't exceptional, it's the normal standard. Cycle-paths
like this need to go everywhere to enable mass cycling. 

Very few places outside the Netherlands have even tried to build the complete grid of cycling infrastructure which we have known for 40 years is required to enable the majority to cycle. Instead, almost everywhere, there's a piecemeal approach. Small steps are taken. There's no continuity in space or in time. Not only do pieces of infrastructure not join up, but they don't necessarily last long either. An extreme example may well present itself after the covid crisis ends, or perhaps even before it ends, as we can unfortunately expect many temporary pieces of cycling infrastructure which have popped up during this period to be removed. Why ? Because they were never really a sign of genuine policy change.

With the growth in popularity of Dutch ideas around cycling, many countries are putting on a show of attempting to replicate this success but unfortunately it seems rather like cargo cult infrastructure which has a vague resemblance to what has proven to be successful in the Netherlands but with shortfalls which make it far less useful or far less safe. There are cycle-paths built far too narrow to work efficiently which give way at every side-road, and bicycle roads where the level of motor traffic is such that it will dominate and result in nothing more than a differently decorated normal road, big expectations from building a single "Dutch roundabout" in a totally different setting from the Netherlands complete with an expection of a level of safety which could not reasonably be expected if the same thing was built in the Netherlands under similar circumstances, "Dutch" style "protected intersections" in much busier settings but without the single most important aspect of the design, i.e. safety enforced by traffic light designs which totally remove conflict, so that the the same outcome surely cannot be expected, and design guidelines which look like grab-bags of good and bad practice from multiple sources. Short-cuts have been taken. None of this is the successful approach which people have seen in the Netherlands but something far more superficial.

It's also common to see praise heaped upon brand new infrastructure, rather than waiting for a proven track record of safety. That's something that we sadly see here in the Netherlands as well. In reality we can't ever know much about an individual junction's safety until we wait long enough to see what the long term safety record is, though of course immediate problems should be taken as a warning that there is a problem. Official Dutch stats about, for example, roundabout safety are based on observing hundreds of "roundabout years".

Merely swapping one kind of junction design for another won't solve many, if any problems. The Dutch success with cycling (and while this country has failed with Covid, it has done better than anywhere else with cycling) results from taking a comprehensive look at traffic across whole cities, and indeed the country. Motor traffic has been relocated to an extent which almost be comprehended elsewhere and this goes a long way to explain how cycling has been made safe and convenient in the Netherlands (at the same time, driving has never been more popular, but that's another story).

Waiting for a vaccine

While we continue to take shortcuts and opt for quick fixes instead of solving problems properly, we will continue to fail. Waiting for a vaccine can also be a position of putting off doing the needed work now in the hope that something else will remove the need to do that work in the future.

A few inadequate cycle-paths and junctions are not a vaccine which will result in people abandoning their cars en-masse and result in mass cycling. This is not new. It's been known for 40 years that a complete grid of safe go-everywhere infrastructure which keeps motor vehicles away from cyclists is required to begin to achieve that goal (luckily, it doesn't take 40 years to do the same).

Electric cars are not a vaccine for the myriad problems caused by cars just as trains are not a vaccine for the problems caused by aircraft. The best way to reduce the impact of motorized transport is to use it less. Cycling comes for free.

Negative CO2 emissions can't be relied upon to vaccinate us against climate change because this is an unproven technology which has never been scaled up to the extent that would be required. We need to change our lifestyles and reduce our emissions, quickly, leaving fossil fuel under the ground, not rely on future generations using as yet not invented technology to solve problems caused by our selfishness.

There is also as yet no vaccine for Covid-19. Many groups are doing research but until there is a vaccine we can never be sure that there ever will be one. This magic bullet against the virus won't be a quick fix either. Production will take time to ramp up and distribution will be an enormous logistical problem (IATA article: "Just providing a single dose to 7.8 billion people would fill 8,000 747 cargo aircraft").

There is really no alternative to doing a proper job instead of opting for a quick-fix solution. Business as usual can't continue. Not for Covid, not for the climate and not for cycling either. And anyone who promises you that a vaccine will solve everything in a few weeks time is a liar or a fool.

Update

Just after this post went live, five days ago, the main news here in the Netherlands was that both Belgium and Germany, our closest neighbours, had taken measures against travel to and from the most infected parts of the Netherlands. Non-essential travel is forbidden, but it leaves open the question of who defines what is "essential" ? One of the problems that we've had this whole time is that people will continue to travel, continue to spread the virus because far too many people think they are the exception to the rule.

Five days later we now have a new record infection rate. Over 2200 people tested positive for covid 19 over the last 24 hour period. The peak in April was just over 1300 so we're not far off double that now, and as the trend has been steadily higher each day (except Saturday and Sunday when there are fewer tests), this is really not good news.

Perhaps you wonder why I get my figures from "someone on Twitter". The reason is that the Dutch government stopped reporting daily figures back in July and someone voluntarily took their place (read his story here). Actually, our government has really let us down over Covid. With this new peak in infections you may also wonder what action they've taken. The answer is surprisingly little. Last Friday it was announced that bars would have to close at 1 am, resulting in considerable push-back from bar owners, and that some kinds of group events should have no more than 50 people at a time. These measures came into force on Sunday, and mostly apply only to the worst affected areas. Today our prime minister added that the huge crowds, not limited to 50, of football fans at matches should not cheer or sing. I doubt this will be adequate.

Update 29th September

Just a few more days and we've passed a new milestone: more than 3000 infections in just one day. That's well over double the highest number that were seen in the first wave of infections. Our government's response ? Yesterday there was a press conference at which it was suggested that bars and restaurants should shut at 10 PM instead of 1 AM as before and that people might like to wear face masks when shopping. It's not compulsory though. Shops have to make their own decisions about whether to try to enforce this, so they mostly are not.

The response of the Dutch government to this disease is astonishingly inept. Just today, 13 people more are reported as having died of Covid, making a total of nearly 6400 so far. Let us remember that this is optional. Compared with other countries we're doing astonishing badly. Taiwan for instance has a bigger population than ours, with 23.8 million people compared with our 17.4 million, yet their total deaths due to the virus thus far are just seven. Not seventy, seven hundred or seven thousand, the last of which which would make their rate comparable with ours, but just one digit. 7. i.e. relative to the population the virus has killed more than a thousand times as many people here as it has in Taiwan.

People continue to become infected and ill in this country because our government is incapable of acting in the face of a crisis.

A second wave in the Netherlands was not unexpected. Indeed, watching our lacklustre response I've been expecting it for a while. My Dutch class began at the start of this month but I had already opted out in August because it was obvious where we were heading. But it's been obvious for much longer than that. In June I wrote a computer game based around this eventuality. It's a free download. You'll also probably need an emulator for the antique computer that it runs on.

Cycling's Recommended Minimum Daily Allowance. Do you ride your bike enough to maintain good health ?

Do you ride your bike enough to maintain good health ? I suspect that many people actually do not. A surprising amount of cycling is required if that's the main thing you do for exercise

Many sources suggest that half an hour a day of exercise is around the minimum to maintain good health.

My racing bike. A left-over from the 1980s, steel frame and
non-indexed gearing. Not the most comfy choice for me for
long rides, ideal for a quick spin around town & countryside

Because I work from home, I don't have a commute forced upon me, as was the case in the past. That means I don't automatically get a daily dose of cycling by going to work and back. Our deliveries are all made at least partially by bike, but while that means I'm riding a relatively heavily loaded cargo bike, the short round-trip distance of about 3 km doesn't take long enough. For that reason, I go out for a "commute" on at least some mornings even though I don't have to.

This morning I rode a little over 16 km, going through the town, stopping for traffic lights, heading out into the countryside against a stiff headwind and returning home again with a tailwind which of course can never add as much as the headwind already took away. It took me 31 minutes to cover the distance. I'm not about to set any records at that speed. That's not the point. This is moderate exercise, taking it fairly easy, expending enough effort to get slightly out of breath sometimes, enough to raise a bit of a sweat but certainly not enough to make my heart pound as if is going to pop out of my chest.

Recommended Minimum Daily Allowance - 15 km
At a moderate rate of exertion, 30 minutes of cycling at a rate conducive to maintaining health equates to covering about 15 km at an average speed of about 30 km/h. 15 km per day equates to about 100 km per week or about 5500 km a year. i.e. it takes about 5500 km of cycling each year to do enough exercise to maintain health.

Another day, with company, I rode another trusted old friend
on which I've ridden many thousands of kilometres over the
last 20 years.

If you ride a round-trip commute of around 21 km (13 miles) each day five days a week then that's just about perfect and will add up to about the annual target figure. If your commute is shorter, take a detour sometimes. People like me who don't have a regular commute to account for 5500 km (3300 miles) each year probably ought to get out on their bikes more often, which is what I do these days.

An inexpensive bike computer helps keep track of the total. It's December and we're heading into winter, but that's no reason to stop: Cycling in winter is particularly rewarding.

How this relates to other means of transport
If cycling is to benefit us as exercise as well as a form of transport it should be our first choice for at the first 5000 km that we travel each year. Until we've covered that distance we can consider the cost of the "fuel" used to cycle to be zero as the alternative would be to burn away the same amount of energy by wasting it at a gym or in some other sporting activity.

Motor vehicle enthusiasts occasionally make an absurd claim that the environmental cost of providing food to humans riding bicycles makes us so much less efficient than modern motor vehicles that we'd be better off driving a car than riding a bike. It's nonsense of course. Bicycles are the most efficient vehicles on the planet by some margin. This goes double for the first 5000 km because expending that energy through our bodies isn't optional. We don't need to eat extra to be able to ride those kilometres, we merely need to eat what is required to maintain a healthy weight while also taking a healthy amount of exercise.

Faster than light travel
Further to the above, cycling is the only means of travel which allows you to cover distances at infinite speed, taking no time at all to make your journey. No time at all needs to be allocated for most cycling journeys. How so ?

Let's begin by assuming that we will actually do that 30 minutes a day of exercise which is required to remain healthy. By exercising while you cycle you can fit in two 15 minute journeys each day (e.g. to work and back) without allocating any specific "cycling" time. It's just your minimum exercise. By comparison, driving a car might appear to get you to work in about half the time, taking 8 minutes each way, but afterward you'll also need to drive to a gym and back (5 minutes each way) and you'll also still still have to spend 30 minutes exercising, but in this case pointlessly staring into space on a machine in the gym instead of watching the world go by as you cycle. So overall, driving takes as much time out of your day as the actual travel time in the car, in this case 26 minutes (8+8+5+5), while cycling anything up to thirty minutes a day actually takes no time at all.

Disclaimer
I sometimes write about health and cycling, but I am not a doctor. In particular, I am not your doctor and I certainly cannot offer health advice to you personally. If you need health advice or you're thinking about changing your exercise habits please see a professional.

Update: What about the Dutch average ? What about e-bikes ?
It's often quoted that the average Dutch person cycles less than 1000 km a year. If so, they're obviously not doing nearly enough exercise on their bikes to keep themselves healthy. I'm not sure I know anyone who really cycles just 1000 km a year, though. It's almost impossible to ride less than a thousand kilometres a year if you use a bike for everyday journeys. I find I often cover twice that distance on my town bike each year even though most of the distance that I cover is on other bicycles, and I don't even have a regular commute these days.

Research has shown that average e-bike riders don't get much exercise at all. If you are trying to maintain your health by riding an assisted bicycle then you will possibly not get much benefit unless you turn the assistance down and also ride much more than 5000 km a year. If you ride less than that distance then you could consider turning off the motor altogether. Otherwise you can expect less of a health benefit than would result from riding a 100% human powered bike.

Health, Wealth and Happiness. The benefits of cycling last through your life

I made three short videos during the study tour two weeks ago. As it happens, all three of them show children and teenagers using the cycling infrastructure in one way or another.


A cycle-path through a residential area in Assen followed by a crossing which is safe for all to use


Teenagers in one corner of a park in Groningen. It was a sunny afternoon, so thousands of people had ridden their bikes to different corners of this and other parks. It's similar if you cycle to the beach.


In this video there's not so much cycling as walking. 6000 people, mostly from primary schools around Assen, take part each year in the local Avondvierdaagse. Participants walk 10 km each day on four consecutive evenings. Because of the number of people taking part they often cause a little disruption on roads and cycle-paths in and around the city, but this isn't the sort of thing that any reasonable person would complain about.

Most, if not all, towns in the Netherlands have an event like this, modelled after the internationally famous Nijmegse Vierdaagse. The Nijmegen event attracts an amazing 45000 participants who each walk a minimum of 50 km per day (reduced to 40 km per day for people under 20 or over 50 years old) for four days in order to earn their medal.

Why are children important ?
Why do I concentrate so much on young cyclists ? That's easy to answer. Today's children are the only possible source of tomorrow's adult cyclists and children are a common interest of the whole population. Children love to cycle and cycling is a transport mode which can offer children a greater degree of freedom and affordability than anything else that is open to them.

If we don't "get them when they're young", i.e. at the age when the affordability and freedom offer a unique combination then we must instead try to convince older people to take up cycling when they've already formed a habit of travelling by other means and when they can more easily afford other means.

Under 18s in The Netherlands make a huge proportion of their
journeys by bike. 0.8 journeys per day for under 12s, 1.7
journeys per day for 12 to 16 year olds. Adults cycle less but
even over 75s make an average of one trip every three days.

Countries which fail to achieve a high cycling rate amongst the young will struggle even more to achieve it amongst adults.

Promoting cycling for everyday journeys is not the same as promoting it as a sport. As others have noted before, sports like swimming or playing tennis are worthy but they are of no use to travel to school or to visit friends. But cycling requires something that other "sports" do not. While any road design will suffice in order to transport people to a swimming pool or tennis court, those same roads very possibly will not suffice so far as making cycling attractive and accessible enough that people who are not cycling enthusiasts will see riding a bike as something for them. To achieve a high modal share amongst young children and teenagers requires our streets and cycle-paths to be so subjectively safe that not only do children feel safe, but that all their parents expect them to be safe as well. This is how the point is reached where children are given the freedom to travel independently.

Adult obesity in OECD countries. Can they be compared
directly ? As some are "self-reported", methodologies
clearly vary between countries.

The avondvierdaagse youtube video (above) was made public a few days ago and one of the first comments asked "Where are the overweight children?". According to the figures I've seen, obesity levels in the Netherlands are somewhat lower than those of many other countries, but not actually near the lowest.

As for what proportion of children are obese, that's difficult to judge. Some figures put this as high as 7% of the total, which would mean you'd expect to see two obese children in each classroom. Is this true ? I don't actually know as I don't work in a school and I've never studied this. It seems high, though. To my eyes there are obviously fewer really large people here than in the UK and that's despite our province, Drenthe, being worse than average for The Netherlands as a whole. I am given to wonder whether differences in methodology of reporting obesity might mean that little can be learned from the comparison of figures which come from different countries. I've seen the same thing with cycling modal share figures, which are almost never gathered in the same way in different countries. In fact, there are often several different conflicting figures available for modal share even for the same town.

Dutch children have the same taste for overly fatty food and soft drinks as those who live elsewhere. However, unlike children elsewhere, the great majority of Dutch children walk or cycle to school. It doesn't stop with getting to school, though. School trips are by bike too (including regular weekly trips to play sports) and children make trips to go shopping, visit friends or buy fast food by bike as well. Without the cycling habit (12 to 16 year olds each make an average of about 1.7 trips by bike each day), it is very likely that obesity would be a bigger problem here than it is.

UNICEF Index of child
well-being. High cycling
countries in orange.

Health, Wealth and Happiness for everyone
In my view, adults owe the next generation the best start in life and the best future we can possibly provide them. If children can cycle then they already have a head start. The freedom of Dutch children is a good part of what makes this country score so well on the UNICEF index.

However, we could also do what is required to enable mass cycling purely for selfish reasons. Let's pretend for a moment that we're not bothered at all about children. Just for the next few paragraphs, think only of the adults...

Dutch doctors find that cycling helps to treat many ills amongst adults. Dutch companies gain a competitive advantage due to their cycling employees. The tax payer gains because when all the costs and benefits are worked out, it's cheaper to build high quality cycle facilities than not to build them. Motorists benefit because more cycling results in fewer traffic jams.

The advantages of cycling keep on adding up, but in order to reap these rewards it is necessary to build infrastructure which offers everyone a very high degree of both safety and convenience.

If we're to achieve mass cycling amongst adults we have to enable it for children so that the pattern is established and can continue through their entire life. Not only is cycling good for physical health, but also for mental health. Happy and healthy children have a better chance of becoming happy and healthy adults.

Teenagers ride home three abreast from their school 17 km away while young children riding a shorter distance in the opposite direction are overtaken by racing cyclists. All these people, and myself as well, need the same infrastructure i.e. that which is easy to understand and offers direct and safe journeys. This consistent high quality experience can be achieved where there are cycle-paths and where there are not. Why aim for anything less ?

A new version of the UNICEF report was published in April. The Netherlands is still in first place, Finland, Sweden and Germany are still within the top six.

Road noise and the Dutch cyclist

This video had explanatory captions visible on screen but youtube removed that facility. While traffic noise exceeds 90 dBa from right next to the road inside the noise barrier, ambient noise from the motorway is 50-55 dBa on the cycle-path at the closest point to the motorway, which is quieter than children playing further away and also quieter than slow cars on the access road. It's unmeasurable by the time I am a hundred metres from the motorway.

Noise pollution contributes towards a great number of different health problems. Noise from roads is a very common source of noise pollution. In some places it dominates the outdoor landscape. However, this does not have to be the case.

Motorways in the Netherlands are quite remarkably quiet compared with those in other countries. It is often possible to stand just a few hundred metres away without being aware that you are near a major road.

This has been achieved by use of special quiet road surfaces and noise barriers. Also, speed limits can be lower on motorways where they are near residential areas. This reduces both noise and air pollution from motor vehicles close to where people live.

In the video I measure the noise levels on and near a motorway. Right at the side of the road, figures of 90 dB(A) and above were quite common. However on the other side of the noise barrier, just 20 m away, figures of 50-55 dB(A) are normal. That's within the range of normal conversation and quieter than the noise made by a child in the park a much greater distance away. A little further away again, about 100 m from the road, it is much quieter and my meter can no longer measure anything at all.

How does this relate to cycling ? Riding a bike on a noisy road, whether or not it includes on-road cycle lanes, is always going to be a relatively unpleasant experience. The noise of motor vehicles close by will always reduce the subjective safety of cyclists. Cycling thrives where cyclists are kept apart from all effects of motor vehicles, including their noise.

Update later in the day
This is the location where I made the video:

View Larger Map

This is another road, the ring road of Assen, which has a 70 km/h speed limit and noise barriers:

View Larger Map

This road has a 50 km/h speed limit and noise barriers against the side of the road which is residential:

View Larger Map

Such barriers are not at all unusual. There are others around the city.

You may also be interested in the works of the Noise Innovation Programme, who have produced reports on such things as "State of the Art Acoustic optimisation" of roads. They also concern themselves with noise from trains and marshalling yards. I once worked in an office situated close to a very noisy marshalling yard in the UK, so it was interesting to read that piercing curve noise actually can be reduced, though we were assured at the time that it could not.

There are several other blog posts about noise, covering different aspects, and giving other examples of treatments as well as links to more information. Also there are blog posts showing Stiltegebieden or "Silent Areas" near Assen. These are places just a short distance away where you usually can hear nothing but birds and insects, and the sound of other cyclists passing. It wouldn't be possible if road noise had not been tamed.

Source of the noise
Note that the noise from cars shown in this video is almost entirely due to tyres wearing on the road. It's not produced from the exhaust pipes of cars. This is why quiet asphalt is effective. It's also why electric cars are not a solution to the noise from cars. Engine noise was already insignificant for any moving car. Reducing it does not reduce total noise pollution from moving cars, and stationary cars make no noise anyway.

Comparisons of typical noise levels of different things are here. I don't get to use my decibel meter often. The last time it came out of the cupboard was to test bells.

Brain injuries and the Dutch cyclist

An Australian reader pointed me at this document which is about head and brain injuries amongst Dutch cyclists. Yes, there are also some people in NL who think that helmets for cyclists are a good idea.

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.

Note that it doesn't say how serious the injuries have to be in order to be included. However, it does give total numbers of head/brain injuries per year as 550 + 1600 = 2150 which is more than ten times the total deaths of cyclists per year from all types of injuries. For the sake of making the maths easy, let's lazily (and very inaccurately) assume that every death when cycling is due to a head injury. We then find that the risk of death due to head or brain injury when cycling is actually around once per 900 lifetimes.

Also, note that the article points out that cycle helmets can only reduce the rate of deaths due to head injuries by 29%. So, if a helmet is worn by that typical Dutch cyclist, it will save his/her life every 3100 lifetimes or so.

Death occurs once in every lifetime. i.e. Other causes of death are more than 3100 times so significant as deaths due to cycling without a helmet and that applies even in this country where there is more cycling than in any other. It applies even if for the sake of simplifying the calculation we make the horribly inaccurate assumption that cyclists never die of any type of injury. This in a country where 93% of the population rides a bike at least once a week.

To summarize, deaths due to head injuries while cycling are not a major public health issue and should not be treated as such. Helmets are not the answer to cyclist deaths. Good infrastructure is what makes cycling safer.

A contrast with another cause of death:

A couple of days ago I saw some other statistics, about a much more common cause of death and injury. This covered the risk of car crashes to Britain's children. In this post is the alarming statistic that one in 27 children in Britain, more than one in every classroom, can be expected to be killed or injured in a road crash by the time they are 16.

Think about it. If the risk is similar in other age groups, then there is a chance of one in five that you will be injured or killed in a road crash during your lifetime. That's a risk due to motor vehicles which is many times greater than that faced by cyclists in the Netherlands not wearing a helmet.

Britain's roads are actually amongst the safest in the world, for drivers. However the risk of death or serious injury from road crashes elsewhere is higher in every other country than this one, where there are more cyclists than in any other country.

Previously I covered the efforts that car manufacturers have put in to make driving appear safe.

Also... 2.5 km per day may not sound much, but this is the highest average cycling per day per person figure for any country in the world. It's the average distance cycled for absolutely everyone, all age groups, through the entire year, averaged across an entire lifetime. By comparison, English speaking countries all hover around 0.1 km per day by bike per person (look it up if you don't believe me). In all places, keen cyclists of course cycle a lot more than the average. Long distance journeys by bike are also more common in the Netherlands than in any other country.

(and no, we don't sell helmets...)

The state of walking and cycling in the USA

"Over one-third of the U.S. population is under age 16 (cannot legally drive) or over age 65. Streets designed just to move cars are leaving behind the most vulnerable road users, often making them prisoners in their homes or completely reliant on others to drive them around. Less than half of states and major U.S. cities have adopted complete streets policies that require that roadways be designed and built with all users in mind." - So says the Alliance for Biking and Walking 2010 Benchmarking Report.

Cycling rates correlate well with rates of investment in cycling, not only within the USA, but also internationally. The success of the Netherlands has come due to investing in the needed facilities - and the facilities really are needed:

"States with the lowest levels of biking and walking have, on average, the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. In contrast states with the highest levels of biking and walking have, on average, the lowest rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. In addition, where rates of biking and walking are greater, more of the adult population is likely to achieve the 150 minutes of weekly moderate-intensity aerobic activity recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to CDC, physical activity can reduce your risk of dying early from the leading causes of death, like heart disease and some cancers."

2015 update
Progress is only possible with continued funding. Sadly, the Cycling Embassy of Denmark reports that funding for cycling in Denmark has been cut. There is no country on earth which can expect cycling to grow organically without support and that includes Denmark and the Netherlands.

The graph shows comparative figures for several cities giving an indication of how funding of cycling is linked to the resulting modal share. Amsterdam spends $39 per person per year and has a 35% modal share, Copenhagen spends $13 and achieves a 20% modal share, Berlin spends $6 for a 10% modal share, Portland spends #3.50 for a 4% modal share, the USA as a whole spends $1.50 for a 1% modal share (cycling and walking combined). Thanks to The Fietsberaad for the pointer to this report

Cycling as medicine

Fietsersbond, together with medical insurance company Zilveren Kruis Achmea, have a new book called "Fietsen als medicijn", or "Cycling as medicine".

A quick translation of part of the website:

"The book is about the relationship between the bicycle and health. Obesity, hart and cardio-vascular illness, diabetes and depression are at the top of the list of preventable problems. They cause much personal harm and result in high costs in health care. But there is one "all on one" house, garden and kitchen medicine: The bike. In the book, normal people tell how cycling makes them healthier and experts put the medical value of the bicycle in plain language, both for prevention and cure."

They go on with a few examples. e.g.

• Housewife Monique Ilbrink (120 kg / 260 lbs ) takes her children to school in a bakfiets. 'If I didn't cycle, I'd get fatter'"
• Former gardener Peter van de Ven cycled after his two heart attacks to become fit again. He is addicted to cycling and now seldom uses a car.
• Marco Meijerink tells how he can keep his insulin level better under control by cycling.
• Dr Willem Heckman uses the bike as an anti-depressive. 'A daily round trip of 40 km works just as well as a pill, but without side-effects'

There are other health stories on the blog, including how cycling saves employers money due to lower sickness costs.

Update January 2010: This book has now been placed in thousands of doctors' waiting rooms in the Netherlands.

Eating ourselves to death ?

The UK newspaper "The Independent" just ran an article entitled "Eating ourselves to death".

Obesity is rising fast in the UK. Deaths due to obesity have risen by 35% over five years, even though there is a lot of under-reporting (read the article). By the year 2050, the cost to tax payers of medical problems due to obesity through the National Health Service and other agencies is expected to rise to £50bn a year. That is a huge amount of money. Just maybe spending a small proportion of that sum on truly encouraging cycling might be a way of reducing this vast expense later on ?

It's pretty obvious from walking down the road here that there are far fewer obese people in this country. It's also obvious that there are a lot more active people.

In related news, the BBC recently had a story on how "Increasing activity levels in middle age can prolong life as much as giving up smoking". Another good reason to promote cycling. Dutch over 60s make a quarter of all their journeys by bike. They are relatively fit and trim, and they have a longer life-expectancy than British people - despite the higher smoking rate and availability of food as pictured here.

The image is of poffertjes (small pancakes served in this case with cream, strawberries and lots of sugar) and beer as eaten by a participant on one of our tours last year. Delicious, and not too unhealthy so long as you are getting plenty of exercise on a cycling holiday.

Cyclists are ill less often - Dutch companies gain competitive advantage

A new report from the Dutch Research and Testing organisation the TNO says that every 1% increase in the number of employees that cycle to work saves their employers €27M per year due to lower sickness costs. The research was carried on behalf of Tineke Huizinga, the deputy minister for traffic and works.

The article says that employees who regularly cycle to work take on average one day less sick leave per year than their non-cycling colleagues. If employers encourage employees to cycle to work more, then they can save more.

Across the Netherlands, 26% of all commuting journeys and 10% of business trips are already made by bike, though of course in some locations these figures are somewhat higher. The TNO suggests in the article that employers should be trying to increase these figures, but already that €27 M for 26% of commuters adds up to a total of 702 M Euros per year saved by Dutch employers due to their employees cycling.

The main reason given by those who currently cycle is that it is good for health, while for those who don't cycle the main reasons are the distance that they live from work, the weather, that they will sweat and the journey time.

The ministry of traffic and works is shortly to start a test of financial incentives for cycle commuting also in order to increase this percentage.

The Dutch spend more money on cycling infrastructure than any other country in the world, but even that amount is less than they are saving for businesses by having such a high cycling modal share.

Oh, and that figure is for the small Dutch population of 16M. If it scales, then a 1% difference in the UK is worth about 95 million British pounds, or in the US about 2/3rds of a billion US dollars - that's just for a one percent rise. If Britain could achieve the level of cycling seen in the Netherlands, it could save employers nearly 2 and a half billion pounds per year. For the USA it could be over $17 billion per year.

That's enough to pay for a lot of cycling infrastructure.

The Netherlands is one of a select group of nations which has
an overall positive current account balance. Being the world's
leading cycling nation has clearly not harmed the economy.

I have seen cycling organisations make similar claims when I lived in the UK, but it is something else for a government department to be behind this. The commuting statistics come from this document, which is well worth seeing for it's wonderful photographs apart from anything else.

Hospital parking

Like most car-parks in Assen, most of the time, the free car
park at the hospital doesn't ever seem to fill up.

My primary interest in in cycling, not driving. It's not often that I come to the defence of motorists. However, there have been stories recently in the UK about the cost of hospital parking which remind me about how it was when my children were born.

Due to a lack of viable options for taking my wife to hospital and bringing her and our newborn child home, I learnt to drive when my wife was pregnant with our first child. This meant driving to Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge, having to find the right loose change to pay for parking, being stressed about the possibility of getting a parking ticket and having to go out and feed the meter again at an inconvenient time while awaiting the delivery our of child.

The bike parking does sometimes fill up. Not today, though

It struck me then as a mean-spirited thing to do. It still seems like it too.

The parking situation at Addenbrookes is still in the news. While there might be a case for some pressure to get employees at the hospital to take alternative forms of transport, the patients are not generally going to hospital for fun, but because they have to. It's really not the time to try to change behaviour.

Over here in Assen, hospital car parking is free. There is also good quality cycle parking. On the day I took these photos neither were full. The problem complained of by residents around Addenbrookes doesn't exist here. In fact, while car parking often causes consternation for British people, it is rarely an issue in the Netherlands. There are adequate spaces where there need to be spaces, and relatively little need for parking because of people cycling for a large proportion of journeys.

There is a tendency in the UK for policies like this to be applauded by cyclists on the grounds that at least "something is being done" to encourage people out of cars. However I don't think it's helpful at all. Quite apart from the fact that it's a remarkable negative publicity campaign to go around hassling people when they are ill, I also believe it to be rather silly to get too excited about people being hassled out of cars on less than 1% of their journeys. These are not the journeys that need changing. What is needed to make a real difference is for people to be attracted out of cars on some proportion of the other 99% of their journeys. Perhaps once cycling is made into a safe and convenient option for normal people on an everyday basis, they'll also feel more like cycling for exceptional journeys such as to hospital.

In the Netherlands, more carrot is used than stick. It's lead to considerably more cycling than elsewhere, while driving has remained comparatively hassle free.

Read more articles about cycling and health and more about how parking in Assen is very often free of charge or inexpensive.

Car parking is also either free or inexpensive at other hospitals in the Netherlands. One hospital in Rotterdam offers a valet parking service which includes parking for €7 per day.