The importance of the mundane, why the mundane must go everywhere and why "mundane" must be very good.

Chatting in safety on "just average" Dutch cycle-path. It's
4 m wide and widely separated from the road. There are
Excellent junction designs along here.

Occasionally we've covered exceptional examples of cycling infrastructure on this blog. It is not only this blog, or only the Netherlands that produces such infrastructure. Such projects, big and impressive, often large bridges, tunnels or cycle-parking facilities, are photogenic and prestigious. They can also be the subject of press releases from the city in which they are built, or the designers and they're very popular amongst bloggers, on facebook and twitter. However, an emphasis on such things paints a false image.

Riding to school. No hands required on the sort of mundane
infrastructure you can expect to see everywhere. 3.5 m
wide and widely separated from the road with
good junction designs

It can be a pleasure to use exceptional pieces of infrastructure, but I'm uneasy about the amount of attention which such things achieve. The whole world doesn't look like the exceptions, not even to a cyclist in the Netherlands. After all, the very word exceptional means "deviating widely from a norm". By definition, almost all infrastructure is not exceptional but is actually just average and most journeys will be made for the most part on that average infrastructure.

Boringly average infrastructure. Four metres wide, great
junction design and kept clear of ice in winter.

Prestige projects are very popular with politicians who want to make a name for themselves, and they can be great to have as an extra. However, it is the quality of design of the everyday, mundane infrastructure which forms the largest part of most peoples' journeys which is most important to encourage a high cycling modal share. This is what most people will use for most of their journeys.

Similarly, some places make quite a lot of noise about having a few good cycle paths, or a network which covers part of a city. Nice photos can be taken on those cycle paths and they seem good so long as we gloss over the problems which occur at junctions and that they don't take people to all their destinations. Giving too much credit to a place which has an inadequate network also misses the point. A proper finely spaced grid of high quality routes which cover everyone's journeys is a prerequisite for a high cycling modal share. Exceptional pieces of infrastructure spread spread thinly across the country are only useful to a minority for some of their journeys and if the "good" cycle-paths are exceptional enough to be noteworthy, they're in the same category.

Not a "superhighway", just a cycle-path 3.5 metres wide
providing a direct route between city centre and suburb. It
is very important that cyclists get to use direct routes.
Good quality is far more important than a flashy name.

So let's hear it for mundane, common, ordinary, unexceptional and boring infrastructure. Forget the the idea of exceptional stuff, it is the mundane which needs to be good and it's that mundane yet really extraordinarily good infrastructure which needs to go everywhere.

How much extremely good infrastructure do you need ? That depends on how much cycling you want to see. It should be no surprise that expenditure on cycling is proportional to modal share.

The truly exceptional thing about Dutch cycling infrastructure is that in this country, "mundane" infrastructure is of extremely high quality, is excellently maintained and is absolutely ubiquitous. This mundane infrastructure in the Netherlands is what makes the high modal share possible because it keeps cyclists away from cars and trucks for all of every journey. This very high quality infrastructure is available to everyone so that they can make a large proportion of their journeys by bicycle without any nasty surprises, ever. This extremely high quality grid of cycling routes is kept open even during road works or when there has been snow. Anyone who wants to cycle is enabled to do so as much as they wish to. This maximises the modal share for cycling, whatever the demographic mix of any particular area. Old, young, rich, poor, locally born people and immigrants all cycle in the Netherlands.

High quality routes can also be roads if cars are removed from
by unravelling motor and bicycle routes. Read more
and watch a video about this particular bicycle road.

The importance of having a tight grid of high quality routes to encourage the use of bicycles was a lesson learnt way back in the late 1970s and early 1980s and still just as valid today. Don't let your city get away with offering just a few prestige projects or just a few particularly good routes. Don't let them get away with offering indirect routes which don't go to all destinations efficiently. Such proposals may sound good, they're great for boasting about, they're great for photo shoots and publicity purposes and politicians love to have their names associated with big projects. However, a few pieces of exceptional infrastructure cannot cause an appreciable change because for most people making most journeys in other parts of the same city, the experience of cycling will remain the same as it was before they were built.

One of thousands of small bridges
for cyclists doing what it needs to do

Average Dutch infrastructure is what is featured most on this blog. It's also what we demonstrate most on our Study Tours to show how the infrastructure works and why it enables cycling so much. We take the routes that normal people take to destinations that normal people go to. We use the infrastructure that normal people use. There is no point in cherry picking a few particularly good pieces of infrastructure as this only creates a false image. It wouldn't show how people actually cycle on a daily basis and what is important to make this high rate of cycling normal.

So what is this "grid", then ?
It's simple in concept. Within a few pedal strokes of home, everyone needs to be able to reach infrastructure on which they not only will be safe but on which they will feel safe. It must take the cyclist to every destination in a convenient manner and it must be contiguous. No stops and starts, no need to "take the lane" to cross large junctions.

Main cycle-routes should be separated from each other by no more than 500 metres. Secondary routes fill in between to get the spacing down to about 250 m and neighbourhood routes fill in the gaps where needed.

Conceptual version of "the grid". Cover
your whole country like this.
Red = main cycle routes 500 m apart,
green = secondary, blue = local links.

In practice, the grid is of course not arranged on strict North-South / East-West lines, but curves with the landscape, runs alongside canals and rivers with bridges to cross periodically, goes across the countryside and through the towns and cities that people live in.

However, the everyday experience is as if it were such a strict grid. For instance, from our home we have less than 200 metres to cycle in a quiet culdesac (30 km/h limit) to reach either of two high quality four metre wide cycle-paths which take us to every possible destination by bike. See the actual map of primary and secondary cycle-routes in Assen in a previous post about "the grid".

Red carpet for pedestrians

Groningen's great success in cycling has lead to problems which are not so common elsewhere. One of these is the enormous number of bicycles which need to be accommodated.

Sometimes the pavements (sidewalks) are so attractive for cycle parking that there is little space left for pedestrians to walk on.

In some of the busy areas where cycle-parking puts pedestrians under pressure, Groningen uses red carpets to indicate places where you may not park your bike in order to preserve some space for walking.

The film shows how this works in practice:

Note that the textual captions on this video are only visible if viewed on a computer and not on a mobile device

Our study tours include a visit to Groningen where you will see the red carpet in use.

Timelapse and last chance

Timelapse
Our friend Sander Markamp made this time-lapse view of Groningen. Bicycles are not the theme, but it's Groningen so you'll see lots of them anyway. I thought many people would like the video:



Study tour deadline
In the next few days we'll stop taking bookings for the September Study Tour. For more details, or if you already know that you'd like to come along, please visit the Study Tour webpage. Some of the locations in the video are visited on the tour.

Solving the problem of pavement car parking in residential streets

Ruysdaelstraat in Assen in 2009

Ruysdaelstraat in 2012

Residential areas frequently suffer from problems caused by car parking. This can take the form of cars parked on the road getting in the way of other drivers, cars parked on the road causing cyclists to have to swerve around parked cars (can be dangerous especially for less confident cyclists) or cars parked on the pavements (sidewalks) causing nuisance and danger for pedestrians.

Detail of parking space. Note that the
kerb is angled. It's designed to enable
driving over only at a slow speed.

Such problems can be addressed by redesign of the street, and there are many good examples of this in the Netherlands, including on many streets in Assen such as that shown above. The first picture, from Google Maps, shows how the street used to look up until very recently. The second was taken today as I cycled along this street.

These houses and the street which they are built alongside, date from the 1930s but existing trees on just one side of the road were recently taken up and replaced with trees on both sides of the road combined with parking bays.

Note that while the direction of motorized traffic was changed recently, this street has been one-way except for cyclists for some years. Routes for cyclists are unravelled from those for drivers. This is a useful through route with a bike, but not with a car. This makes yet another example of how segregation of modes is achieved without building cycle-paths.

Other examples:

This street in the newly built suburb of Kloosterveen uses the same design to keep cars off  a series of streets which together form a direct route only by bike. This is the only photo in this blog post of a new development.

A different way of achieving a similar result can be to use concrete setts through which  the grass can grow.

In some areas, bollards are used to control parking, This is a one-way street with cyclists excepted.

The same street, showing how there are again angled kerbs to climb a low speed in order to park one's car.

Sometimes, parking bays are built on-road, alternating from one side to another. This is again a street which makes a good through route for cyclists (linking up with the bridge shown in this video) but which goes nowhere for drivers. In this case, the permitted side of the road for parking alternates, which makes the road meander and serves to slow traffic.

All the streets in these photos have 30 km/h or lower speed limits. In this case with a smooth speed bump with a cycle by-pass on both sides and parking bays for cars on one side of the street. Again this street does not offer a useful through route by car.

The only street in Assen converted into a Woonerf. Here the speed limit is walking pace. Note that cars can park on one side only.

An older treatment showing parking bays on both sides of the road to achieve a similar result.

Another example of cars parked between the road and the pavement (sidewalk)

The bays can be made quite attractive, improving the green look of a neighbourhood rather than  resulting in residential areas looking like car parks.

Work continues right now on the process
of transforming older residential streets

This process of improvement is continuing right now on streets across Assen as more residential streets get this treatment. Where possible there is always enough car parking so as to avoid parked cars becoming a problem. This is how drivers are persuaded not to leave their cars in places which cause problems for cyclists and pedestrians.

In the Netherlands, people are not discouraged from driving by providing inadequate car parking spaces (as has been done to disastrous effect in the UK) but are provided adequate spaces to park their cars while cycling is made attractive by making cycling routes more convenient.


Dutch homes provide secure cycle parking by law but most other countries do not. In either case it's a good idea to use a secure bicycle lock on any parked bicycle.

The highest modal share for cycling in the world works due to carrots, not sticks.

Parking hell at the beach

Sometimes it's difficult to find anywhere to park... but I'm not complaining.

The first Fietsroute+ in Groningen

Not all major cycle-routes are given a particularly grand name in the Netherlands. While other countries use terms such as "superhighway" for mere cycle-lanes, in this country, more modest terms are used for very good and direct cycle-paths. One of these terms is "Fietsroute+", favoured by the Groningen-Assen region.

My mother helping me to demonstrate
the Assen-Rolde Fietsroute+

The first Fietsroute+ was constructed in 2007 to cover the 10 km distance between Assen and Vries. For a couple of years, this featured on my commute, and the wonderful smooth surface and continuity of the path helped with riding at high enough average speeds that a 60 km round trip was quite feasible. This particular routes has also featured in several blog posts including about the required standards for a Fietsroute+ (worth reading) and how it is used by many secondary school students. Another Fietsroute+ heads East out of Assen, covering the 6 km distance between Rolde and Assen.

However, both of these are in Drenthe, not in Groningen and this post is about the First Fietsroute+ in the province of Groningen.

Two years ago, Wilfred took some photos of the construction of a new Fietsroute+ to make the 13 km distance between his home in Zuidhorn and Groningen more attractive to cyclists. This cycle-path was finally completed and officially opened in May as the first Fietsroute+ in Groningen. The local government produced a publicity film for it in which the entertainer Arno Van Der Heyden introduces the new fietsroute+, demonstrates how to cycle along the route, and interviews the burgemeester of Zuidhorn, a passer by, and the cycling project leader about the new cycle-path:


Like the other Fietsroute+ routes, as well as other major routes without that designation, it's designed to be safe, wide to avoid conflict, and smooth and direct to cope with higher speeds than an average cycle-path. The combined population of Zuidhorn and surrounding smaller villages is only around 18000, yet 1500 people per day cycle along this route. Their numbers are boosted by people for whom this section is part of a longer route. It is hoped that the quality of the new cycle-path will attract yet more people out of cars.

However, this wasn't the only publicity. There was another event, an opening "race":

The winner of this "race" was professional cycle racer Bauke Mollema. Bauke Mollema grew up in Zuidhorn and rode to Groningen each day to go to school. He tells an amusing anecdote about how when he made his school journeys along the old path, they would ride with two students next to each other and it too cramped for three, while with the new improved path five abreast will be possible. I've seen how school children and students cycle, and I've no doubt that this will happen.

Bauke is a local hero. This year he took part in the Tour de France, though sadly he had to stop after the 11th stage due to problems from injuries suffered on the sixth stage. Better luck next time !

Progress continues to be made so that cycling becomes steadily safer, faster and more attractive. Seven routes are currently shown as either completed or in progress on the Groningen-Assen website, and another fietsroute+ is also planned to be built along the line of the railway to Winsum, some 15 km North of Groningen:

It is only by continual improvement that cycling can be expected to grow. Standards are so high as they are in the Nnetherlands because they need to be higher here than elsewhere merely to preserve the modal share which already exists, let alone to make it grow. While it is relatively easy to convince the first few percent of the population to cycle because they are the least demanding, if the modal share is to become higher, it becomes steadily more difficult because the target is no longer "low lying fruit". Rather, to maintain and build on a high modal share for cycling, the target audience is necessarily those people who are not easy to convince to ride a bike. They may have longer journeys, be more easily scared off from cycling, come from from demographic groups who are less likely to cycle, or perhaps they simply more likely to prefer an alternative such as driving a car.

This is why development of ever better cycling facilities is not a luxury but a necessity not only in the Netherlands but also elsewhere. Campaigners can make no progress by asking only for what is good enough for themselves. Such campaigners are themselves the low-lying fruit and they are already riding. For progress, the standards have to improve and this isn't achieved by aiming low. The benefit of good quality cycling facilities is for everyone, even professional cycle-racers.



In related news, Bauke became a father last week. Gefeliciteerd Bauke en Jane !

A reasonably speedy delivery

The cycle-paths on this route are all
wide and smooth like this. On weekend
mornings, all the racers are riding.

Earlier this week, a customer in Meppel ordered a few dynamo lighting parts. It's within cycling range, so I asked if he minded waiting until Saturday so I could deliver them in person.

I made the delivery this morning and I took photos on the way.

Catching up with another racer

The customer's apartment turned out to be 44 km from our door. As with most journeys in the Netherlands by bike, almost all the distance was covered on cycle-paths, save for our residential road and the pedestrianized area (with bikes allowed, like in this example) in the middle of Meppel where the customer's apartment was located. It took an hour and twenty minutes of riding against a slight headwind to reach my destination.

Another racing cyclist on the cyclepath
As usual, I didn't see any bikes on the
road. There is no benefit from that.

I took the same route back, so I had a slight tailwind. With the tailwind it took an hour and ten minutes to get back home. That's an average speed of over 37 km/h (23 mph) including riding back through the pedestrian area slowly, slowing down at junctions and at one point coming to a near standstill to pass a horse. The return journey was also almost entirely on the same cycle-paths, though as I got close to Assen, to avoid waiting for an open bridge which had built up an impressively long queue of backed up cars, I took the nearly car free service roads on the other side of the canal from the main road and cycle-path for a few km. It is peak season for tourism by boat and it's really nice that by bike you often have alternatives to waiting and can continue your journey when the bridge is open.

Older stretch of cycle-path with less
separation, resurfaced and very smooth.
More racers heading in the opposite
direction to me.

As well as being peak season for canal boats, July is also peak season for racing bikes. The Dutch are very enthusiastic followers of cycle-sport, and the Tour de France is everywhere at the moment. Cycle racing is something that people not only like to watch but also to participate in in large numbers. At this time of year, the cycle-paths have far more lycra clad cyclists on them than is the case in winter. While the majority of cyclists who I saw today were not lycra clad and not riding racing machines, I decided it would be interesting to take photos of these cyclists as I rode this morning.

Another thing which was holding up
cars on the main-road was this tractor,
which I overtook from the other side
of the canal

It's surprising how often people from overseas who don't understand this country write that the Dutch are "slow cyclists" and that cycle-paths make them slow. Someone tried to make a a comment on my blog this week in which amongst other incorrect things he claimed that the Dutch cycle "at 6 mph". If his comment had had some facts in it, or was the basis for reasonable discussion, or indeed if it had been on-topic for the post which he sent it to then I would have approved it. However, this was an off topic post by someone who had not read what they were writing under and how was trying to misinform and stir trouble.

In part, I've written this blog post as a response, to try once again to point out that simplistic arguments like "Dutch cyclists are slow" are so very short of the truth. It would be nice to think that people contemplating writing the same sorts of things would first read the myths and excuses page, but those who have their own fixed view of the world tend not to bother.

Also plenty of cyclists on the almost car
free road on the other side of the canal
from the main road and cycle-path

So, something about the speeds with which people really ride their bikes. In general, speeds are of course slower in any city than in the countryside. Anyone who really wants to ride fast goes out of the city and rides there. IME, the average rolling speeds for city cyclists tend to be above 20 km/h. Small children, pensioners and people with disabilities tend to be a little slower, groups of school children tend to be in no hurry at all, but of course there are also many club cyclists on racing bikes and other people who like to go quickly. There are at least as many cycling enthusiasts per capita in this country as in any other country.

The actual average speed by bike in the city of Groningen has been measured and it's 14.2 km/h, or just short of 9 mph. This is not especially quick, but this is for an average person and it is not the rolling speed, but the overall speed for a complete journey including stops. By car it's much slower - 9.6 km/h. This is perhaps the source of the "6 mph" speed quoted by some VCers. It applies to cars, not bikes, but anyone who came here and insisted on riding their bike on the road would have their speed reduced to this level.

Any lack of speed perceived is not because "the Dutch are slow" but because in the Netherlands, even people who are slow still ride bikes. This is a country where the demographics of cycling include everyone, not just fitter than average people.

Another cyclist spotted this morning.
In Dutch law, wheelchairs and scooters
like this are classed as bicycles. Cycling
facilities are inclusive of everyone.

Right across the Netherlands, bikes are faster for shorter journeys than cars. This is the result of deliberate policy and it is very important. If cycling were not both extremely convenient and extremely safe, then it would certainly not be so popular as it is.

My journey was fast and convenient because of the cycle-path network in this area. I was home today in time to have a shower and sort through my photos before lunch and then continue on with the day. Making a delivery in this way has less to do with running our business than giving me an excuse to go for a ride and get some exercise, which is of course beneficial to everyone. The health benefits of cycling are recognized in this country just as in any other, but because cycling is always a pleasure in the Netherlands, these benefits are realised to a greater extent than in other countries.

The yellow thing at the bottom of the photos is my Mango velomobile. It's a good part of what makes it possible for me to ride faster than younger and fitter people on "hi tech" carbon racing bikes. Streamlined bikes like these are the fastest practical production bicycles in the world. They are more common in the Netherlands than in any other country and this is in no small part due to the Dutch cycle-path network providing such a good habitat for people who like to ride fast.

Lastly, I leave you with a video made by my friend Harry featuring his and Wilfred's Mangos, demonstrating how it's possible to get through Groningen on the traffic free streets and cycle-paths at a higher average speed than 14 km/h while remaining responsible and not causing anyone any problems:

If some of the maneuvers at junctions in the video seem unconventional, it's probably because you're watching one of the many simultaneous green junctions. However, on my trip there were no traffic lights at all, while there would have been several sets to negotiate if I'd driven instead of cycles. It's quite common in the Netherlands that you avoid traffic lights when cycling.

Click for my picasaweb album of racing cyclists on cycle-paths. This is where they ride in NL, not on the roads.