A day at the races: Motor racing events have no effect on cycling in the Netherlands. It's the quality of infrastructure for everyday journeys that influences people towards cycling. Similarly, cycling events elsewhere don't increase cycling levels because they're not supported by infrastructure

I've never had much interest in motor sport. When I was a child I remember being taken to see motor racing twice and having found it noisy and unpleasant. I now live in Assen. The city's TT circuit is world famous, known as the "Cathedral of motor sport". This facility attracts many thousands of visitors to the area, but motor racing was not one of the things that attracted us to the area and until yesterday I'd never been to the track for a motor racing event...

Thousands of local people arrived by bicycle

The Dutch DIY chain Gamma holds an annual Racing Day at Assen's circuit. It's free to attend this event if you have tickets from the shop or their website. When I bought some DIY materials a few weeks ago the cashier pushed a couple of free tickets into my hand so we decided to go and check it out yesterday.

As with any event in or around Assen, thousands of local people arrived by bicycle. But with this event attracting over 100000 people in total from across the Netherlands (more than Assen's population), it shouldn't be any surprise that a lot of people arrived by car and motorbike.

But far more people arrived from all around the country by car and motorbike

Just as noisy as I remember the being as a child.

Assen recently built a new motorway junction by the TT circuit and this helped to keep cars away from the city and from cyclists but of course when lots of people try to drive to one place at the same time, that tends to cause problems. There were so many visitors that the police put out a warning that the car parking was full and suggested that visitors find alternatives. There was at least one injury on the way to the event and a huge traffic jam afterwards due to a crash on the motorway.

Curious about where those black circles came from ?
Wonder no more. Tyres are clearly too cheap.

None of this had any effect on our 6 km cycle journey to the circuit. Our route was shorter than the shortest possible driving route, mostly unravelled from that for drivers and we had far fewer traffic lights to wait for than would have been the case by car. For us this was far more convenient than driving and clearly lots of local people thought the same as these are the reasons why people cycle to events. After we'd had a years' usual dose of fumes and particulates, we had just so uneventful a cycle ride back home again.

Three children and their parents wearing "Kawasaki racing
 team" jerseys cycling home from yesterday's event on one
of Assen's many safe cycle-paths.

My verdict: Well worth the price of admission ;-) In fact, it was actually quite a lot of fun - especially watching smaller older cars being driven fast around the hairpin on three wheels (not all of them finished the race intact). After watching this event, I got back on my bike and cycled home - just like thousands of other people.

Cycling is popular, motor racing is popular too
When I've been to the TT circuit before, it's been because there have been occasional cycling events there. The 2009 Vuelta a Espana had its prologue on the TT circuit, and that one-off event (for which we also got free tickets that time through a bank) attracted a fair crowd of 40000 people. But that's not so much compared with the 100000 people who can be attracted to the same location for motor sport events.

Motor racing is incredibly popular. So is private car ownership.
But cycling is always safe and is more convenient for many
journeys so Dutch people cycle a lot. In Assen, more journeys
are made by bicycle than by car.

Dutch people like cars a lot. They also like bikes. Many people have access to both modes of transport. Both modes of transport have their uses. Many people take part in or watch both related sports. An interest in any one of these things does not have to exclude any of the others.

Dutch cycling is not in the blood but in the infrastructure
It is sometimes forgotten by camaigners elsewhere that the Dutch cover 3/4 of all their km traveled by private automobile. The Netherlands is a wealthy country with a fairly high rate of car ownership. There are enough cars and there is enough driving in the Netherlands that cars could be utterly dominant to the extent that they would make cycling unpleasant. Indeed, that situation had already arisen by the 1970s in the Netherlands, when people owned far fewer cars than they do today. Domination of cars led to an increase in cyclist injuries and a steep decline in cycling.

In the early 1960s, British people cycled more than the
Dutch now. Without support, cycling declined sharply.
With support it would have remained significant, just as
it did in the Netherlands.

Dutch people now cycle for a higher proportion of journeys than people of any other country not because cycling is "in the culture" but because cycling been transformed through a change in infrastructure so that almost any destination can be reached conveniently by bike without having to deal with motorized traffic. Dutch cycling infrastructure has made it possible for cycling to survive alongside a rise in motoring, removing danger and noise and enabling journeys to anywhere by bike, even motor racing circuits.

Go back a few decades and you'll find that British people cycled for a higher proportion of their journeys than Dutch people do now. As cars came to dominate roads, the UK suffered the same steep decline as the Netherlands did, but because no measures were taken to prevent that decline the decline continued. The same happened across most of the world. For instance, in New Zealand.

Nations once thought to have "cultural" cycling can suffer declines just as well as can those where cycling was forgotten about decades ago. Twenty years ago, Denmark stopped emphasizing cycling, bringing about a decline. The fastest decline in cycling ever seen is that happening now in China, where cycling was once far more significant than in the modern day Netherlands.

Cycling can survive only where it is supported. Unfortunately, recent plans in the Netherlands do not offer the same support to cycling as was offered 20 years ago and this is putting Dutch cycling in danger. If cycling is no longer the most convenient and safe option then people will drive more. This is demonstrated by all the places where that has already happened - a very long list of places which includes the Netherlands.

But while there are always reasons to warn about a possible decline, we're not at that low point yet. Cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands is of the best overall quality in the world, good new examples of infrastructure are very good indeed, and stand out cities (Assen is one of them) demonstrate good practice which all other countries would benefit from emulating.

Want to see change ? Change the infrastructure, don't run events
Just as how motor racing events in Assen don't make people in Assen drive everywhere, cycling events elsewhere won't make people cycle. What does change peoples' behaviour is infrastructure. Assen has a comprehensive, finely spaced grid of very high quality cycle-routes which allow anyone of any age to make their journeys safely by bike. If you build the same in your city you will see a change in behaviour.

A previous event in Assen: Every year there is a driving demonstration on city streets. People mainly attend this event by bicycle. No sign whatsoever in Assen of a sporting legacy leading to an en-masse switch to formula one racing cars...

This isn't a sponsored post. Our free tickets came in the same way as the other 100000 attendees free tickets - through buying DIY materials. Gamma's Racing Day is an entertaining event and I can see why it's popular.

What people miss about the Netherlands

An online TV station for Dutch speaking people who live and work in other countries recently ran a survey to ask what Dutch people most miss about their homeland.

The winner was Herring, which people like to eat raw. However, "Cycling" came in at sixth place overall. This was presented in the results as 6th of out of ten.

Actually, "Cycling" came in at 6th out of 213 categories nominated by the public, and another ten related categories helped to water down the "cycling" vote.

The other ten categories about cycling were "The bike", "Cycling without a helmet in the dunes", "Cycle-paths", "Mostly cycle-paths and cycling", "Going along with friends and family by bike", "Wonderful cycling with a warm jacket against the headwinds", "The cycling, my bike, riding through Amsterdam", "Good Cycle-paths", "The bike", "Family, croquettes, real chips, licorice, cycling and the Dutch language".

I think it's notable what sort of cycling people are thinking about. Recreational riding with friends and family; having a nice time on cycle-paths through the dunes and not just any cycle-path, but specifically good cycle-paths.

Cycle-paths go together with cycling in one of the categories. i.e. to cycle you need cycle-paths. What is meant of course is the very dense grid of high quality cycle-paths as seen in The Netherlands. The practical type of bike that most people ride in the Netherlands is a factor. Helmets are not wanted.

In response, a similar survey was run on the English language Dutch news website www.dutchnews.nl.

This website's audience is English speaking people who currently live and work in the Netherlands. They picked up the top ten categories from the Dutch language survey and asked what people from other countries who currently live and work in the Netherlands think they'll miss most if or when they leave the country. The winning category stands out by a mile.

I've mentioned it before, and I think it still remains true, that people cycle in the Netherlands because it's pleasant to cycle in the Netherlands. Dutch people taken to another place will often stop cycling because conditions don't make the experience of doing so nearly as pleasant elsewhere. People who come from another country to live here are likely to start cycling.

That people cycle in the Netherlands is predominantly because of the enhanced subjective safety brought primarily by cycle-paths and also by segregation of modes without cycle-paths. It's really not "rocket science" and it's certainly not some vague nation of "the culture". The good cycling infrastructure of this country makes a difference to how people live and increases the standard of living of people who live here.

You need the contrast between one place and another to understand this. I've lived in three different countries and found that each has special things to offer. The Netherlands is probably unique in that a slice of the population not selected for being interested in cycling would place cycling in a top ten list of this sort.

Of course, some Dutch people with little, or no, experience of living in other places take what they've got here entirely for granted. They really don't know how lucky they are.

The website also carried out the same survey for Belgian people. In Belgium, frieten (chips / fries) were the winner. Cycling did not appear in their top ten. However this is not surprising. The Belgians don't cycle anything like so much as the Dutch do so they won't miss it so much either. Every country has things which people miss. Beer and really good Indian vegetarian food come top of my list of things that I miss from the UK. It's been decades since I lived there, but I still miss the weather from the New Zealand. The Netherlands has its high cycling modal share despite the weather, not because of it.

Yes, good cycling infrastructure really does lead to people cycling more. Immigrants cycle far more in The Netherlands than most people think (also distances and fuel usage)

All around the world there are people who try to reduce their impact on the environment by cycling. However, people who cycle for this reason are never very large in number. In most places only a minority find conditions to be such that they are willing to "make a sacrifice" by behaving differently from the majority. The Netherlands is different in that the average person cycles. They may not do so as much as cycling extremists (this fraction of the population exists here just as elsewhere) but because average people are much more numerous, their contribution is far greater. 100% of the population using a bike for over a quarter of all their journeys is far more significant than 1% of the population using a bike for 99% of their journeys.

Comparison of popularity of different transport modes for Turkish, Marokkan, Surinam and Antillian immigrants and the Dutch native population. From page 52 of this report.

Key: Ritten = journeys. Aandeel = share. Auto = car as driver or passenger. OV = public transport. Motor of Brommer = motorbike or scooter. Fiets = bicycle. Lopend = Walked.

On average, the native Dutch population uses a bicycle for 27% of their journeys. The total average number of journeys per day is 2.74, and people use a bike for 0.74 journeys per day.

Dutch infrastructure makes cycling
available as a practical means of
transport for everyone

By comparison, immigrants from nations with much less cycling cycle less than the native Dutch. However, these figures are also very interesting. I think it notable that Turks in the Netherlands use a bike for 9% of their journeys, Marokkans for 11%, Surinamese for 13% and Antillians for 15%. While these are lower figures than for the Dutch, they're still significantly higher than cycle usage in their countries of origin.


Not many people realise how successfully integrated immigrants are to the Netherlands with regard to cycling. Each of these immigrant groups comes from a nation with almost no cycling yet after exposure to the Dutch environment and infrastructure, immigrant groups in this country compare favourably with the other top cycling countries. This demonstrates how powerful it is to have infrastructure which attracts people to cycling. Source.
Integration is difficult. It's relatively easy for us due to our European background, but it's still extremely difficult to move to another country and to fit in. However much some people might like to think that immigrants don't try to fit in, there is proof here that at least so far as modes of transport are concerned, immigrants in the Netherlands can be shown to have gone some considerable way to integrating, even if they never cycle to the same extent as the native population.

The person in this photo most
likely to be regarded as member
of an out-group is the racing
cyclist, not the woman in front.

If immigrants can't resist the temptation to cycle when they come to the Netherlands from countries with almost no cycling then it's quite logical to assume that if the infrastructure was taken to countries with almost no cycling then the population would be equally attracted to cycling. Cycling sells itself, so long as people don't have to ride alongside motor vehicles.

Conclusion
Cycling is not "in the genes", it's in the infrastructure ! Even Dutch people often make this mistake, but the success of the Dutch cycling infrastructure is obvious wherever it exists and whoever gets to ride on it. Dutch people who leave this country and no longer have the infrastructure usually stop cycling.

Exactly the same infrastructural developments which encourage cycling amongst the Dutch native population are effective amongst people with no existing habit of cycling: If you build it, they will come. The effect on the wealth of the nation as a whole, and on the environment, from convincing people en-masse to cycle for a significant proportion of their journeys is enormous. The means to achieve this can be seen in the Netherlands and if duplicated elsewhere it will have a similar effect.

Distances travelled and fuel usage
Over the last few days, two of our vehicles have gone past mileposts of one form or another. It's quite clear that we've "gone Dutch" as well.

I've ridden the Mango 16000 km (10000 miles) since it was new 22 months ago. That's only an average of 700 km per month, which won't impress anyone who's working towards a world record. I work just one day a week in Groningen now, so I'm not riding the Mango to commute quite so often as I was.


On the other hand, our car needed its APK (annual inspection) this week. This was a chance to take note of how much we've been using it. For the first three years that we lived here, it wasn't used at all, but fourteen months ago we started the process of getting it on the road. Since then, between us, we've driven 2400 km (1500 miles).

Let's work out some simple numbers: 16000 km if driven by car instead of ridden by bike, based on earlier figures, would have cost us about €1700 euros, and produced about 2700 kg of CO2 emissions.

The Mango isn't the only bike that I ride. Local journeys with the Xtracycle or town bike to the post office and supermarket also add up at a surprising rate. The rest of the family also have their own bikes and use them daily.

If all four of us had travelled the whole time by car, and we were using it as "dad's taxi" to take our teenagers everywhere they wanted to go, then it would have covered a considerably greater distance and the costs for us, the country we live in, and the environment that all of us share would have been considerably greater.

A similar effect can be seen in reverse. When Dutch nationals emigrate to the UK or USA, they typically end up making few journeys by bicycle, approaching local norms. The environment in other countries discourages cycling, and the Dutch are just as easily discouraged by unpleasant cycling conditions as people born elsewhere.

America - land of the bicycle (or, do the Dutch cycle because they're Dutch ?)

Two quotes from bicycle history publications:

"The bicycle industry thrived in the United States at the end of the 19th century. As many of ten percent of all Americans owned a bicycle. In 1896, 250 bicycle factories manufactured around one million bicycles in the USA - nearly half of total world production."

"1896 was the year in which cycling soared to a height of popularity among the middle classes of the motherlands of cycling. Britain and France had about a million cyclists each, Germany had half a million, and estimates from the USA range from two to four million."

At the beginning, the Netherlands was rather behind in bicycle usage. The first cycle path in the Netherlands was built quite early but the organisation behind it came into existence only after an Englishman who moved to the Netherlands found there wasn't an existing club to join.

It looks like a modern "Dutch bike" but actually it's an
American bicycle built in 1904. It's never really possible
or helpful to say that something with as many contributors
to its design came from one just one country. Important
innovations in bicycle design were made in many
countries.

Once upon a time, the USA was the world leader in cycling. Many of the features of Modern Dutch utility bicycles can be seen on the bicycle to the left, made in the USA in 1904, and now displayed in an excellent bicycle museum here in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands was quick to embrace the bicycle, but as you can see, it was not always the case that it was a leader in cycling. After the Second World War, policy in the Netherlands became dominated by catering for motor vehicles. In some places, existing cycle paths were removed to make more space for cars. The cycling rate in this country dropped precipitously, and the downward spiral would have continued had it not been turned around after protests which were not about 'cycling' but about the safety and rights of children.

There is nothing about the culture of the Dutch that makes them cycle. It's the environment which invites people to ride bikes. Dutch people who emigrate give up cycling and foreigners who settle in The Netherlands cycle far more than they did in the country they came from.

Many places in the Netherlands were transformed twice during the 20th century: First to accommodate motor vehicles and then to exclude them again (1 2 3 4).

The Netherlands' modern day success in cycling came not by accident or because "the Dutch have always cycled". Rather, it came through continued deliberate effort in policy, campaigning and infrastructure design.

The first paragraph is paraphrased from page 12 of the Dutch Bicycle Master Plan 1999, one of several interesting documents linked to from here. The second paragraph is similarly paraphrased from page 122 of "On Your Bicycle" by Jim McGurn.

Holland... in England

The Fens in the East of England have often been compared with the Netherlands. The landscape of the Fens is low-lying and there are very few hills.

Many of the engineers and labourers who drained the Fens and made them inhabitable brought their experience of how to do this from The Netherlands, just 200 km away across the North Sea. Many people of Dutch descent stayed in the area. Not only is the landscape incredibly similar to a lot of the Netherlands, but Fen people actually have a genetic connection with the Dutch.

What's more, part of the area is actually officially called South Holland. The local council of this area has a tulip as part of their logo.

Several years ago, Jonathan Meades made a very amusing programme called "Double Dutch", pointing out (amongst other things) the similarities between Holland and "Holland":

You can also see parts 2 and 3 on youtube.

But, there is also a big difference. While cycling rates in this area of the country are not as low as in some other parts, they are still incredibly low compared with the Netherlands.

When we lived in the area, I would sometimes cycle the 90 mile distance between our home in Cambridge and my in-laws home in a rural Lincolnshire village. On these journeys I'd ride through this "Dutch" landscape past dykes and canals and windmills, with no hills to climb. However, I'd rarely see other cyclists. Such a lack of cyclists would be unthinkable on a similar journey in similar landscape here in the Netherlands.

So what's causes this difference ? As well as not seeing other cyclists there are also next to no cycle paths. None at all on my route, which is entirely different to when I make journeys of the same length here in the Netherlands and have decent quality infrastructure the whole way. As ever, how much people cycle comes down to the infrastructure. Good quality infrastructure creates both actual and subjective safety. There is a reason why you don't see large groups of cyclists out and about by bike, or pensioners or children going places by bike in Lincolnshire on anything like the scale that you do in the Netherlands. The difference comes about because nearly all cycling in this area is on roads and no good alternative routes are provided with cycle-paths. Some of the roads that cyclists have to use are really quite nasty, such as the A16 and A17 with their 100 km/h speed limits. Not everyone gave me quite so much space when they passed as they give the Google Maps car in this image:


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View Larger Map

When I crossed the Fosdyke bridge (in the second photo) this road bridge was the only method for many km across this river, and cyclists had no alternative but to ride on this very busy road. It's part of Sustrans' NCN 1, and the British part of the North Sea Route. Cycling tourists are actually encouraged to come here, and the tourism board even creates Dutch language literature which compares the possibilities of cycling in Lincolnshire (as well as other parts of the UK) favourably with The Netherlands.

The reason why "Holland" and Holland are not the same comes down to the rather more successful policies, campaigning and infrastructure design on this side of the North Sea.

In The Netherlands it feels, and is, safe to cycle even when there is fog.

See also blog posts about the strange and very non-Dutch pedestrianized zone in Boston, Lincolnshire and about how the same traffic calming concept is implemented in villages in Lincolnshire as in Dutch villages, but how it differs greatly in practice from the same idea as actually built in The Netherlands