The influence of spatial planning on bicycle use and health

The title is that of a report by researchers from the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam.

They looked at two new-build developments near Utrecht, Veldhuizen in Leidsche Rijn and Houten-Zuid (Houten itself being a largely new city, designed to be cycle friendly, as already discussed). These new developments are both still under construction, and both are further from the centre of a city making it more difficult to preserve a cycling culture due to journeys being longer. However, Houten-Zuid is judged to be much more cycle friendly than Veldhuizen.

The investigation showed that in Veldhuizen, 33% of shopping was collected by bicycle, 13% of commuters travel by bike, and 56% of people take recreational rides. These figures might look quite good for most countries, but they're a little disappointing here. In Houten, the figures are 51% for shopping, 24% for commuting and 77% taking recreational rides.

These figures need a little explanation. People who mix modes on their commute by cycling or walking in addition to taking public transport are not generally included in cycling figures in this country. To include them, add 9% and 14% respectively to the earlier commute figures. Also, sport cycling is excluded from the recreational figures.

Residents of Houten-Zuid rate their cycle facilities higher than residents of Veldhuizen. What's more, many residents of Houten-Zuid give the cycle friendliness of the location as a reason why they chose to live there. Cycle friendly design results in an area being more highly valued by its inhabitants.

Perhaps the most interesting result for me personally is this one, showing the preference for different modes of transport.

Having previously lived in a place in the UK where the local papers were always filled with letters from people complaining about cycles and cyclists, it is wonderful to see the overwhelming preference for bicycles of people living in both of these locations in the Netherlands.

I take the complete lack of anti-cycling sentiment in our local paper as suggesting that people in Assen have similar views.

Everyone appears to want to cycle, even if their circumstances currently make it difficult. As with anywhere else, where the conditions for cycling are better (as they are in Houten-Zuid), more people cycle.

The photo and the report contents courtesy of the Fietsberaad - the Dutch cycling experts group. Their story on the report, in Dutch, is here. Assen has a similar Vinex wijk, Kloosterveen, which features on the Study Tours we organise in the Netherlands for people interested in cycling infrastructure.

Car Free Living (or... do the Dutch cycle because they can't afford cars ?)

Here in the Netherlands it's not at that unusual for a household not to include a car. Adults without driving licenses are not particularly unusual. There are other practical ways to make journeys.

These things are all relative, of course, and mostly I make my comparisons to the UK where I lived for most of my life. The UK also has quite a lot of households without cars. The figures for car ownership and affordability compared between the UK and the Netherlands make for interesting reading.

Right up through the 1980s and early 1990s, The Netherlands had slightly higher car ownership than the UK, which was to be expected as cars were more easily affordable in The Netherlands than in the UK. However, in 1995 something changed. Car ownership here in the Netherlands stopped growing while it continued in the UK, surpassing the Dutch rate of ownership.

The 1997 figure for car ownership in The Netherlands showed a slight reverse, with 372 per thousand compared with 373 in 1992.

In 1994 in the UK, 30% of households were car free, and 11% were judged to be unable to afford a car. However, in The Netherlands, these figures were 42% and 7%, giving the widest gap between affordability and ownership amongst the EU15 in the table.

The figures together indicate one thing. More Dutch people make a deliberate choice not to own a car than citizens of other countries in this survey. It's not that they can't afford to own a car, but that they have less of a need of it.

By catering well for people who choose not to have a car, and creating an environment in which cycling is a very pleasant and efficient way of travelling, combined with good transport mode integration, an environment has been created where being car free is a more viable choice, both for families and individuals.

However, you don't have to read far into this data to see that the car is still very popular in the Netherlands. Dutch people like driving, and they like cars. Cars remain more affordable in the Netherlands than in the UK. Lots of Dutch people own cars. However, Dutch people are not enslaved by cars. They have a choice of transport modes which work well, and the main alternative choice is the bicycle.

2013 update
Note that Dutch car ownership figures have risen considerably since the statistics used above were published. By 2010, the Dutch owned 528 cars per thousand people while the British owned 519 so again the Dutch own more cars than the British. Both countries have car ownership rates which are above average for Europe (see the Wikipedia list of countries by car ownership rate). However while they own plenty of cars, the Dutch are still opting to use them less than people of other European nations.

2019 update
Dutch car ownership and use have continued to rise.

The figures are from page 63 of a report titled "Are you moving in the right direction?" which was produced by the European Environment Agency back in February 2000. This article is one of many articles with interesting figures which you can find on our cycling articles page. Unfortunately it is the most recent set of comprehensive figures that I've found. The fragmented figures I've found since then suggest a continuation on the same lines, though car ownership has grown all across Europe in the last ten years including in the Netherlands.

Everything nearby

The map of Assen on the left was part of the presentation given by the City Architect, Wybe Nauta, as a part of May's Study Tours.

Note that each area of housing within the city is built with its own facilities so that everything is within walking and cycling distance.

For instance, the blue areas show shops, which are spread throughout Assen, but note also the lack of out of town shops to compete with these and encourage driving.

Primary schools are much more numerous than secondary schools and are not shown on this map.

Population density has little to do with cycling share

Everything is, of course, linked by a remarkably fine grid of high quality bicycle paths which makes the experience of collecting your shopping, or going to work or school or travelling to sport facilities an attractive activity without using a car. The level of subjective safety is always very high. The city is considered to be compact - the map shown covers an area which is barely more than 7 km from west to east - however, population density is actually very low.

It's different for villages. They have some shops, but people also make longer journeys to get to shops in the cities and these trips are also often made by bicycle. However, the facilities for them are of course first class, so routes to secondary schools, for instance, are well used, and well maintained.

Where it has been made convenient and safe, as it is in the Netherlands, cycling is an attractive mode of transport. People cycle in the Netherlands for much the journey lengths and for much the same purposes as people drive cars in other countries (proven some years after this post when figures for journeys in London came to light).

Sport

It's not only cyclists who travel to sporting events by bike here. Also, you'll find that football players (soccer to those of you on the other side of the Atlantic), and hockey players, and enthusiasts of all other sports will turn up at their events by bicycle.

Why not ? It's the most practical way of getting about. What's more, all your friends do the same, and you'll see the world go by as you make your journey.


Young and old, rich and poor, male and female, black and white.

You don't need to be "a cyclist" to cycle. Everyone cycles.

The Hop

In many countries it is illegal to carry a passenger on a bike. Not here.

Carrying a passenger on a bike is legal in this country, and very common. Those who've been doing this since childhood have a very relaxed way of hopping onto a friend's bike as the lights change, which is what you'll see in the video.

A great way of transporting a friend who for some reason doesn't have their bike with them.

It's worth pointing out that at this junction, as is always the case at well designed junctions in the Netherlands, when cyclists have a green light to go straight on, car drivers wishing to turn right have a red light. As such, there's no chance at all of a driver to your left running you over as you do this.

There are many products available to help you safely carry all kinds of objects on bicycles, including younger and older children.

Pedestrians sharing with cyclists

"Look out! Pedestrians on the cycle-path. A situation so
uncommon that it has a warning sign

"Let op! Voetgangers op fietspad" - "Look out! Pedestrians on the cycle-path". This situation is so unusual that this cycle-path has a unique sign to warn cyclists that pedestrians sometimes use this cycle-path in considerable numbers.

This is the only one of these signs that I've ever seen in the Netherlands. I found it about 35 km east of my home.

There have never been pedestrians on this cycle-path when I've ridden in this direction, but they are apparently quite numerous when there is a football match in progress. The local football stadium is to the right of the water; that's why pedestrians sometimes use this path.

The Dutch don't build "shared use paths" where pedestrians and cyclists are expected to use the same space. It was made quite clear to us on the 2006 Study Tour just how much of a problem this caused in the one place in Den Haag where it was tried. The experiment has not been repeated.

Remote cycle-paths in the countryside with very light use by pedestrians don't have separate walking paths, on these the few people who walk along them use the space in the same way as pedestrians walk on countryside roads without pedestrian paths in other countries. However, anywhere that there will be significant numbers of pedestrians, they're provided with a separate path so that there is no conflict with cyclists.

Why does the UK persist in forcing pedestrians and cyclists to share, even though it continues to cause many problems ?

One might have though that shared use paths being universally unpopular and the regular conflict caused by them might have made planners twig that this doesn't work, but shared use continues to be proposed and built. Pedestrians and cyclists are not the same. They do not have the same requirements. This simply causes conflict and unpleasantness. Occasionally it's even dangerous. So why does it continue ? Is it just cheapness ? It's obviously cheaper to build one path than two. When cycling is so undervalued as it is in the UK, perhaps the planners are oblivious to the deleterious effects of making cycling less appealing. It's quite obvious that they've not realised that if all effects are added together, providing for cycling costs less than not providing for cycling.

Planning "Shared Use Paths" is a continuation of planning for very low cycle usage, rather than planning for cycling to grow. If you want cycling to grow, you need to provide space for cyclists. Low aspirations do not lead to growth because they do not provide for growth. To get growth you need properly segregated and good quality cycle paths which are not shared with pedestrians as well as properly designed segregation of modes without cycle-paths, which allow direct and convenient journeys to be made. That is what is found all across the Netherlands, with the exception of the spot where the photo was taken.

Later blog posts expand more on the subject of Shared Use Paths.

I'm always on the lookout for unusual signs, such as the equivalent of Cyclists Dismount, which I've still not found.

Sexbomb

I'm not generally a big fan of graffiti, but I thought this bit interesting. It's on a bridge support on the way into town, on a route which many cyclists pass daily.

No doubt it was written by one of the many teenagers who go this way, on their bikes, to school.

"Hi, sexbomb on the bike" - one of several messages written by someone trying to catch attention from someone else, while they cycle by.

Everything happens on a bike. Perhaps it occasionally leads to scenes like the previous post.