According to the Fietsberaad:
Travellers using the Meppel railway station now have a completely new cycle park. There are more than 1100 spaces in the watched cycle park and on the roof of the building another 650 can be parked.
Next to the building are another 800 spaces. The new manned cycle park also offers repair services, sales and cycle hire. Part of the station also forms a site for OV-Fiets bike share bikes.
This cycle park was built between April 2010 and November 2010. It's another example of expansion is a part of the national "ruimte voor de fiets" ("room for the bike") plan which has so far built 157000 unwatched parking spaces, 30000 watched spaces and 13000 cycle lockers in 350 cycle parks.
Previously I had a post about the golden cycle stand, which was the 200000th erected as part of this plan.
Meppel is a small city of just 31000 people. The cycle park now has spaces for 2550 bicycles, which is enough for one in 12 of the population to park a bicycle at the rail station. You can work out a comparable ratio for your own town. Regular increases of cycle parking numbers at railway stations in the Netherlands is a given. It's going on all the time.
To make a comparison, it's easy to divide the population of your own town or city with the number of cycle parking spaces you have available, either at the railway station or at other destinations. You can see how other Dutch railway stations compare.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Higher income brackets cycle as well in Amsterdam
Direct from the Fietsberaad:
Amsterdam can barely cope with the growing numbers of cyclists, as a survey of mobility in the Dutch capital over the past 25 years demonstrates. There are as yet no bicycle jams, but partly due to the arrival on the scene of carrier bicycles, the width of bike paths is increasingly a problem. And of course parking guarantees a headache.
In busy squares, at train and metro stations, but also near university buildings, shopping centres and leisure spots in narrow Amsterdam streets an increasing amount of public space is taken up by parked bicycles, according to the report ‘Mobiliteit in en rond Amsterdam, Een blik op de toekomst vanuit een historisch perspectief’. Data demonstrate that at these locations often several dozen percent of all bicycles are parked outside the official parking spaces. In June of 2007 for instance 1,390 bicycles were parked at the back of Amstelstation, whereas capacity ran to no more than 1,100. This comes down to an occupancy rate of 126%. For the west side of Centraal Station (including the bicycle flat) this was a staggering 136% in October of 2008. The overall estimated number of bicycle parking spaces (stands, staples and parking facilities) is currently 200,000.
The heaviest streams of cyclists are mainly headed for the central part of the town centre. But bicycle numbers in the immediate vicinity of the town centre and the surrounding ring are impressive as well. The large numbers of cyclists do not cause substantial delays due to traffic jams. But a number of busy routes does have a problem with the width of the bike paths, partly due to the increasing use of carrier bicycles.
The busiest cycling routes are Marnixstraat (1,970 passing cyclists in the evening peak hour), Weteringschans (1,920) and Weesperzijde (1,900).
Nevertheless the bicycle can easily compete with car and public transport in the inner city, according to local authorities. The percentage of car trips by Amsterdam residents has fallen in all distance categories. Bicycle use has greatly increased in all distance categories under 10 kilometres. This has happened, however, not only at the expense of the car, but also of public transport. Over short distances cycling is apparently more attractive than public transport.
Bicycle ownership among Amsterdam residents has greatly increased over the past 25 years (63% versus 73%). Ownership in Amsterdam is below the overall Dutch average (73% versus 88% ). The increase in bicycle ownership was greatest among residents aged 45 and over, among people aged over 65 it has almost doubled (from 27% to 48%). The average number of bicycle trips per person per day is however higher in Amsterdam (0,9 versus 0,8). People there use their bicycles therefore more intensively than the average Dutchman. The largest increase in the number of bicycle trips per person per day occurs in the group aged 45 to 59. This may be due to car parking policies, but also to health advantages or a more positive attitude towards cycling in general, is the impression of the writers of the report. The group aged 12 to 15 also cycles more and is incidentally the group with the highest bicycle use. Among residents in higher income brackets the cycling percentage in the overall number of trips has more than doubled (from 15% to 33% ).
In Amsterdam people park their bicycles at home in a storage facility (46%), in the street (36%), in their home (10%), in the courtyard (5%) or a parking facility (2%). In the districts outside the ring road the percentage of bicycles parked in a storage facility is considerably higher than in the neighbourhoods within the ring road. Within the ring road over more than half of all bicycles are parked in the street(53%), whereas this is rare outside the ring road(4%).
Amsterdam can barely cope with the growing numbers of cyclists, as a survey of mobility in the Dutch capital over the past 25 years demonstrates. There are as yet no bicycle jams, but partly due to the arrival on the scene of carrier bicycles, the width of bike paths is increasingly a problem. And of course parking guarantees a headache.
In busy squares, at train and metro stations, but also near university buildings, shopping centres and leisure spots in narrow Amsterdam streets an increasing amount of public space is taken up by parked bicycles, according to the report ‘Mobiliteit in en rond Amsterdam, Een blik op de toekomst vanuit een historisch perspectief’. Data demonstrate that at these locations often several dozen percent of all bicycles are parked outside the official parking spaces. In June of 2007 for instance 1,390 bicycles were parked at the back of Amstelstation, whereas capacity ran to no more than 1,100. This comes down to an occupancy rate of 126%. For the west side of Centraal Station (including the bicycle flat) this was a staggering 136% in October of 2008. The overall estimated number of bicycle parking spaces (stands, staples and parking facilities) is currently 200,000.The heaviest streams of cyclists are mainly headed for the central part of the town centre. But bicycle numbers in the immediate vicinity of the town centre and the surrounding ring are impressive as well. The large numbers of cyclists do not cause substantial delays due to traffic jams. But a number of busy routes does have a problem with the width of the bike paths, partly due to the increasing use of carrier bicycles.
The busiest cycling routes are Marnixstraat (1,970 passing cyclists in the evening peak hour), Weteringschans (1,920) and Weesperzijde (1,900).
Nevertheless the bicycle can easily compete with car and public transport in the inner city, according to local authorities. The percentage of car trips by Amsterdam residents has fallen in all distance categories. Bicycle use has greatly increased in all distance categories under 10 kilometres. This has happened, however, not only at the expense of the car, but also of public transport. Over short distances cycling is apparently more attractive than public transport.
Bicycle ownership among Amsterdam residents has greatly increased over the past 25 years (63% versus 73%). Ownership in Amsterdam is below the overall Dutch average (73% versus 88% ). The increase in bicycle ownership was greatest among residents aged 45 and over, among people aged over 65 it has almost doubled (from 27% to 48%). The average number of bicycle trips per person per day is however higher in Amsterdam (0,9 versus 0,8). People there use their bicycles therefore more intensively than the average Dutchman. The largest increase in the number of bicycle trips per person per day occurs in the group aged 45 to 59. This may be due to car parking policies, but also to health advantages or a more positive attitude towards cycling in general, is the impression of the writers of the report. The group aged 12 to 15 also cycles more and is incidentally the group with the highest bicycle use. Among residents in higher income brackets the cycling percentage in the overall number of trips has more than doubled (from 15% to 33% ).
In Amsterdam people park their bicycles at home in a storage facility (46%), in the street (36%), in their home (10%), in the courtyard (5%) or a parking facility (2%). In the districts outside the ring road the percentage of bicycles parked in a storage facility is considerably higher than in the neighbourhoods within the ring road. Within the ring road over more than half of all bicycles are parked in the street(53%), whereas this is rare outside the ring road(4%).
Monday, 31 January 2011
Petrol price vs. cycling rate for a range of countries
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| Note that even though this is almost flat between Great Britain and the Netherlands, this is the best case graph for people who think there's a correlation between car fuel price and cycling. This is because this graph concerns only the price of petrol. If you compare diesel prices then it doesn, those are somewhat lower in the Netherlands vs. other countries. Diesel costs less here than in the UK, for instance and perhaps unsurprisingly, diesel cars are common in the Netherlands. |
However, I don't believe this to be the case. If you remove the USA, and Australia to a lesser extent, many other countries have very similar petrol prices, but markedly different rates of cycling.
The graph shows the rate of cycling as a percentage of journeys in several countries in the world, plotted along with the January 2011 prices for petrol.
There are three areas of this graph which show a story.
On the left you can consider the USA, Australia and Great Britain. All three of these countries have a cycling rate of around 1%, but the petrol prices are spread widely - between 60 cents and €1.47 per litre.
You can then consider the largest part of the graph, Great Britain through to Finland. In all of these countries except Austria and Switzerland, the petrol price is very similar: between €1.40 and €1.48 per litre. However, the cycling rates vary across nearly the whole spectrum, 1% of journeys at the low end and 11% of journeys at the high end. The two end positions are taken by Great Britain with petrol at €1.47 per litre and Finland where petrol costs €1.48 per litre.
Lastly, take a look at the top three: Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. If you look hard enough here, then you can see an upward trend in both petrol price and cycling rate. However, petrol in the Netherlands is actually only 11% more expensive than Finland (€1.62 vs. €1.48) while the cycling rate is 2.5 times as high (27% vs. 11% of journeys).
But what about diesel ?
But actually, this doesn't tell the whole story. Because we've considered only petrol and not diesel, we've simplified the issue. When I last covered this, I noted that while petrol was more expensive in the Netherlands than in the UK, diesel was 14% cheaper in the Netherlands than in the UK. Considering both petrol and diesel together, the price of fuel is actually more equal between nations than it appears on my graph. For the driver of a diesel engined car (roughly half of new cars sold in Europe run on diesel), the fuel to run it is actually cheaper in the Netherlands than in Britain - yet these two countries span the widest range possible of cycling rates.
I think it's fair to say that there's no real relationship shown here between the price of fuel for cars and the cycling rate. Even when fuel for cars is expensive and congestion results in journeys being slow and inconvenient, people will continue to want to drive if driving remains the least bad option.
The cost of taxation and insurance are also not factors which make driving more expensive in the Netherlands. Insurance for new drivers in particular is much cheaper in the Netherlands than in the UK.
Many myths and excuses exist for why the cycling rate in other countries is lower. The only thing which really explains why the Netherlands stands out so far above other countries is that the experience of cycling is so different. In the Netherlands, cycling takes place away from the threat of motor vehicles on good quality cycle paths and roads which prioritize cyclists. Never is it necessary to take on busy motorized traffic by bike, or even to ride up the side of rows of stationery vehicles. This leads to an outstanding level of subjective safety, and as a result all types of people cycle.
To see the policies, infrastructure and campaigning which have lead to the Netherlands having both the world's highest cycling rate and also the world's safest cyclists, click on what works.
Fuel is actually free of charge for car commuters in the Netherlands
Because the Dutch government encourages businesses to pay their staff 19 c per km free of tax for commutes, the cost of petrol / diesel is actually zero or can even be negative for most car commuters. Yes, people are actually paid to drive in this country.
Cycling rates for the graph are taken from here and here. Prices for petrol (current in January 2011) come from here, here and here.
I covered the same excuse previously. However, it keeps coming up again, so I think it's worth repeating.
Cycling rates for the graph are taken from here and here. Prices for petrol (current in January 2011) come from here, here and here.
I covered the same excuse previously. However, it keeps coming up again, so I think it's worth repeating.
Friday, 28 January 2011
Houten - A typical day in a cycling town
A few days ago, Kever53 subscribed to my youtube channel. I had a look at his videos and found this great one which shows off Houten.
You'll see all types of people cycling, including the sporty, Mums with children, children on their own. Young, middle-aged, and elderly.
It's like a microcosm of the Netherlands as a whole. Everything's connected by cycle paths, housing, shops, schools, railway station, beach, and at the end you see how the old village centre is also connected.
Houten is a town of 38000 people in the Netherlands. It's an ancient city, but in 1966 was designated as an area of growth and started expanding rapidly. Houten is known world-wide as a town which was designed to prioritize cycling. The result has been a high rate of cycling and a very low rate of injuries on the roads and cycle paths.
Many things which were tried out first in Houten have spread across the country. However, Houten's achievement is still significant. Three years ago, Houten won the title of "Fietsstad 2008".
I've blogged about Houten before. You can find these posts here.
Monday, 24 January 2011
"The busiest cycle street in the world" ? Why do we keep hearing exaggerations about Norrebrogade / Queen Louise's Bridge in Copenhagen?
An industry seems to have grown up around promoting Copenhagen as the world's top cycling city. Sadly, some of the claims made do not stand up to much scrutiny.
For instance, Nørrebrogade is claimed to be "the busiest cycle street in the world". It's certainly the busiest cycle street in Copenhagen. Being 3 km long and taking a straight line path right through the city, it and the bridge on it are a funnel for cycle-traffic which uses this as one of the most direct routes to several locations. Very many of the photos of cyclists from Copenhagen are shot on this road because it's the busiest.
A recent widely reproduced press-release from the city claimed that 36000 cyclists use the road every day. Some websites go further and claim 38000 per day. Usually you have to assume that such printed figures are correct, and that's what I did too. However, in this case someone pointed to me that it's unusually easy to check it for yourself. This count was made on the same street as a famous public bicycle counter which many of you will already have seen photos of. The counter displays both the current date and the number of cyclists who have passed since the 1st of January, so a a simple calculation can be done by dividing one number by the other. Take the photo on the left as an example (click on it to see it in greater size at its owner's website). It shows 1559492 cyclists had passed by the 4th of June 2010, which was the 155th day of the year. That's just 10060 cyclists per day on average by half way through 2010. It is a respectable figure, but not close to the claims so often put forward for the street.
So what's going on here ? I don't know. It's surely good marketing to have "the busiest", but don't we need a bit more than that ? Before Christmas I emailed the two people who were responsible for a document about the street to find out where the numbers came from, but have not had an answer (see below).
Counters in many different places in the Netherlands record higher numbers than this. For instance, eight locations in Utrecht have more than 10000 cyclists per day, and one of them has more than 22000 cyclists per day. In Groningen, six different places have counts greater than 10000 per day, two of those are above 14000 per day. Bear in mind that Copenhagen's population is more than three times that of Utrecht and six times that of Groningen. Counters in larger Dutch cities almost certainly record higher figures.
It's just marketing.
Danish professionals, including the Cycling Embassy of Denmark give a slightly different perspective.
This is the inside back cover of one of their recent publications, giving some numbers. The Danes now cycle for 16% of their journeys. Sadly, this is lower than the 18 or 19% measured just a few years ago and which I have quoted in the past. The difference is significant. It's equivalent to one in eight cyclists giving up. This is not something to celebrate - it's terrible news. We need to know the cause of the decline and work out what can be done about it.
Some of the other figures are also interesting. 36% of Danish adults ride a bike to work "at least once per week". The percentage of daily commutes is not given, but it will of course be lower. 45% of Danish children "often" bike to school. Clearly this isn't the percentage who cycle every day, which again is not given and will be lower. "Often" is open to interpretation but could be less frequent than once per week. This is a startlingly lower rate of school cycling than is seen in the Netherlands, and that's important. Cycling has to start with children.
Note also the claim that 2/3rds of children under 11 use helmets when cycling in Denmark. This is not something which would be highlighted if it wasn't thought to be important. However, it is again very different from the Netherlands, where despite occasional ill-judged campaigns, helmets are still only rarely seen except on sport cyclists. It's another sign of cycling under pressure. People are scared for the safety of their children, and perhaps this has some connection with the reduced rate of cycling.
Lastly, note that 2.2 metres is the new standard width of cycle lanes in Denmark. That's somewhat narrower than the 2.5 metres which is standard here for single directional cycle paths, and it's again a thing which puts cyclists under a little bit more pressure.
It all adds up to a bit of a murky picture, similar to what I pointed out before. Copenhagen, and in the wider sense, Denmark, has a relative lack of subjective safety and this is stifling bicycle use, even in the top city of the world's second cycling country. Helmet promotion campaigns like this are only likely to contribute to the decline in Denmark.
I'm not happy about any of this. Cycling is extremely fragile, even in the two great cycling nations of the Netherlands and Denmark. It doesn't take much to stop people from cycling. If care is not taken, cycling in the Netherlands could also decline. We need ever better standards for cycle provision and no negative marketing. We all need to be able to learn from what has caused the decline in Denmark.
It's clear that Danish cycling policies are not succeeding as we all wish they would. This problem of declining cycling has not occurred in the Netherlands, and that is as good a reason as any why The Netherlands remains the best place in the world to turn to if you want to see what successful policies look like.
Update 25/1/2011
There's been quite a lot of discussion in the comments below this blog post of the discrepancy between counts which made up the first part of the post. Copenhagener got close to the answer by finding the cycle counts for a day in September 2009. However, I was also sent very helpful emails from Klaus Grimar, Project Manager, and Soren Zebitz Nielsen, Student Assistant, both of the Center for Trafik (Department of Traffic) in Copenhagen, explaining the numbers. They gave permission to reproduce the first long email, and also a shorter summary which you will find in italics below:
The survey that resulted in the number of 37.000 cyclists on Norrebrogade on the bridge where the counter is placed was conducted manually in early September 2009. We know that early September is a peak period for cyclists with good weather and due to the start of the academic year for the universities in the city. The number of 37.000 cyclists represents the average number of daily cyclist on a normal work day in both directions on the street during the peak season.
As an average in both directions on a normal working day throughout the year, the daily total number of cyclists on the street is around 28.000.
The counter relies on a sensor placed below the asphalt on the bicycle path only. We know that during the rush hour some faster cyclists overtake slower cyclists using the road, and some even the walkway. We find that the counter does not register all cyclists when the bicycle traffic is dense. It is our experience that the automatic counter generally counts around 10% less cyclists than the actual number during the peak hours and around 5% less in normal hours.
The idea of the counter is not to be an official measurement, but more to give the cyclists an idea of the approximate magnitude of bicycle traffic on the street as they pass by and a feeling that each individual cyclist contributes to make Copenhagen a City of Cyclists. The numbers counted by the automatic counter cannot be relied upon for academic purposes.
However there is no doubt that there has been an increase of around 7000 cyclist daily on the street of Norrebrogade as a consequence of the project there, since the manual surveys of bicycle traffic before and after the project were made using the same method and the traffic was counted at same time of the year in the surveys before and after the project was initiated.
Thanks to Klaus and Soren we now know that the widely reported "average" picked up by the marketing people and the media was actually a peak, and we also know the official average for a working day over the year, including a compensation for the cyclists missed by the automated count (other places could perhaps use the same compensation), but still not the average for all 365 days of the year. I'm of course very pleased to see that the improvement in conditions for cyclists on this street resulted in an increase in cycle traffic in this location. However, it has to be viewed alongside the unfortunate decline in cycling overall in Denmark.
See previous articles about Copenhagen. There are also previous articles about helmets, and particularly amongst them, this one which points out that the "danger" of cycling really has been blown out of all proportion next to that of driving. Others have pointed out that a lack of sufficient investment could be behind the lower cycling share in Copenhagen vs. Dutch cities.
September 2012 update
This year, some people I know from Cambridge visited Copenhagen and wrote about their experiences.
They also took some photos, including the one on the right, which while it's supposed to be representative of a street along which "up to 35,000 cycle trips per day" are made, actually shows that something unpleasant has happened on the "busiest cycle street in the world". The photo shows the state of the sign on the 27th of May 2012. By that date, the 148th day of the year, 1261731 cyclists had passed the sign. In other words, in the first five months of 2012, the number of cyclists riding past this point averaged 8525 per day.
This number is not only a long way short of 35000, but compared with the numbers which I used to make the calculation at the top of this blog post, it's evidence of a 15% decline in cycling in Copenhagen compared with a count from two years previously. Both counts were made by the same permanently installed counter in the same place and both over the first five months of the year. This 15% difference cannot be explained away as an artifact caused by just a few days of bad weather - it's equivalent to 22 days of cycling being lost in just half of one year.
A 15% decline over two years in the busiest street in the city sounds catastrophic. Why has this happened ? Why did Copenhagen choose to hype the cycling rate on this street if it were actually in decline, and why do they continue to hype the amount of cycling in this street in the light of such a decline ? A 15% drop is in line with an acknowledgement by the Cycling Embassy of Denmark last year that cycling had dropped from between 18 and 19% to 16% of journeys within Denmark, but they were referring to a different decline which had happened over a much longer period than two years.
The article from Cambridge also reports a statistic that "Copenhageners make half of their urban trips by bike". However, this has no basis in fact either. We need to start with a little history:
In 2002, "slightly less than one fifth" of journeys within the city were by bike. A target was set in the same year to increase commutes only to 40% by the year 2012. This target was missed. There was some reported growth in that official figures show that commuting by bike rose from 32% in 2002 to 35% in 2010, but instead of acknowledging that the 40% target for 2012 wasn't going to be achieved, Copenhagen instead announced a 50% target for 2015. It would take an extraordinary and unprecedented growth in just a few years to achieve this.
The 50% target sounds great of course, and that is what is supposed to do. It's an artifact of marketing for Copenhagen, not of the real cycling modal share. At best it's only a target, and it's a target not for all journeys but only for commuters. No-one should reproduce this figure as an achieved modal share, because it has never been any such thing. In 2009 when I estimated that Copenhagen's true bicycle modal share was around 22%, the head of Copenhagen's bicycle programme wrote a supportive comment on this blog. If the same rate of growth has been continued for the last three years then we would expect that the true modal share for Copenhagen in 2012 is around 23-24%. However, this is rather difficult to determine because the numbers are no longer easy to find.
While the figures for 2002 (in this document) were truly for all modes, the figures issued for 2010 which appear to show dramatic growth do so in large part because they have omitted to mention the approximately one fifth of all journeys within the city which are made by walking. Assuming that around a fifth of journeys still being by foot, the diagram on the right would indicate that approximately 26% of journeys are now by bike in Copenhagen, which is more in line with my estimate. However, note that these figures are for trips "starting or terminating in" the city and we don't know how this phrase is defined nor how the figures were calculated. We have to be wary of tricks, especially when we're looking at figures from a place with a history of exaggeration.
People from other countries looking for inspiration are often drawn to Copenhagen because of the deluge of publicity from the city. However, they need to look further than headline figures ("half of their urban trips" etc.) which form part of a marketing effort from Denmark. There was a time when the annual bicycle reports and policy documents from Copenhagen were the envy of the world, and a time when they presented good data which could be compared one year with the next. However, these official documents are no longer what they once were.
The Danish people deserve much better than this. Selling the "cycling city" of Copenhagen as a brand does not help people to cycle in the city. From the evidence that is available it appears that cycling is dropping and not rising, both in Denmark as a whole and on some main streets of Copenhagen if not across the whole city. Less hype, more substance and maybe even a little humility is required before Copenhagen can achieve its potential. More investment is needed to give the city any chance at all of meeting the old target, let alone the new one. The environment needs to be transformed to be truly safe for cycling.
Bad infrastructure designs need to be abandoned and no longer presented to the world as something to copy. In particular, the "Copenhagen left turn" is not, and never was, a good design. Drivers turning right should not be encouraged to merge with cyclists as they approach traffic lights. Advanced stop lines (aka "bike boxes") are not advanced cycling infrastructure - they create conflict which should be avoided and they should not be promoted. Unfortunately these ideas are still being presented to the world as something to emulate.
Not just Copenhagen
These days, it is not only Copenhagen which is doing this. Earlier this year, Amsterdam also presented numbers which excluded pedestrians to make the figures sound better (I wrote about that too). In the last few days I read an impressive claim from someone in Utrecht about a claimed commute only cycling modal share for people who both live and work within the city of around 60% (though the actual cycling modal share for all journeys within the city is apparently around 26%).
Many cities across the world publicize commute only figures. This includes Cambridge in the UK and Portland in the USA. Neither of these cities gets remotely close to the modal share for cycling which is normal in the Netherlands, nor to the wide demographic of cyclists which is not only a curiosity of Dutch cycling but necessary for any place to achieve a high modal share.
Why exaggeration is harmful
Cambridge's campaigners were left wondering how it was that a city where infrastructure "does not seem to be of the same elevated standard found in Assen" should have achieved the high modal share which Copenhagen claims. The answer unfortunately is very simple: they haven't. Rather, they are telling impressive sounding stories which are not necessarily based in fact.
Wherever it is done, playing with statistics in this way harms us all. Without reliable figures, how can any comparison be made between countries or even within the same city on different years ? If facts are obscured by smoke and mirrors, made up figures are shouted from the rooftops, half the audience is distracted by photos of pretty girls on bikes, and a good many people are simply more interested in a nice sounding story than whether what they are being told is factual, then how can anyone tell what works from what does not work.
Extraordinary claims need to be looked into and challenged, wherever they come from. Exaggeration needs to stop.
Update December 2013
A Danish newspaper reports that cycling in Copenhagen has "stagnated" and that the 50% target for 2015 can't possibly be met.
The only way to a higher cycling modal share is to build better infrastructure. We are still willing to help Copenhagen to "Groningenize" itself.
Update 2014
Earlier this year I read reports of how Copenhagen and Denmark in general had learnt from their decline and were changing course. I wrote about this change of direction because of it being extremely good news for Danish cyclists. It is only by recognizing a problem that it can be fixed and it appeared that the Danes had learnt their lesson and were going to fix their problems.
Unfortunately, only a few short weeks after that happened, Copenhagen started fresh claims of having "the busiest cycle street in the world". This time they claim to have over 40000 cyclists per day travelling over the bridge. I'm not going to link to a source because frankly this sort of hype does not deserve any encouragement at all. Copenhageners: Please stop exaggerating your achievements. This is particularly unhelpful when independent figures show a decline between 2010 and 2012.
In any case, a high number of cycles in one spot is not actually a sign of success. It's not something to celebrate. The funneling effect indicates that there are a lack of routes and may actually put people off from cycling.
When similar things happen in the Netherlands, there are other routes which cyclists can be encouraged to use. This is possible because of the high quality grid of cycling infrastructure which covers the whole country. The importance of this has been understood since the 1980s and this is perhaps the most important lesson from the Netherlands yet to be learnt elsewhere.
International marketing of Copenhagen needs to take second place to actually solving the problems facing cyclists in Denmark.
Update July 2016
The hype over this location and of Copenhagen in general, continues. Five and a half years have passed since I debunked the claim that 37000 cyclists per day ride over the Dronning Louises Bro in Copenhagen and in all that time, no-one has been able to provide a justification for that claim. Rather than attempting to justify the previous claim, the same players have moved on to claim a rise to 42000 cyclists per day passing over the same bridge. Exaggeration doesn't help Copenhagen's cyclists and it doesn't help anyone else either. What is happening is that the facts are being obscured.
What's more, even if the claims were true, they're not necessarily something to be proud of. Thousands of cyclists forced into a detour to take the same route because there are relatively few options available to cross a river may make for nice photographs and good headlines, but it does not make for efficient cycling.
Funneling is bad for cycling. It's better that cyclists can choose from a finely spaced grid of high quality routes which enable each person to choose a relatively lightly trafficked and more direct route to their destination. That, though, is of less use if your primary goal is to market your city internationally by use of impressive looking photos and ever more exaggerated figures.
No-one celebrates traffic jams for cars. They shouldn't celebrate traffic jams for bikes either. Big queues of bicycles are a sign of failure. A comprehensive cycling grid allows more efficient journeys to be made.
For instance, Nørrebrogade is claimed to be "the busiest cycle street in the world". It's certainly the busiest cycle street in Copenhagen. Being 3 km long and taking a straight line path right through the city, it and the bridge on it are a funnel for cycle-traffic which uses this as one of the most direct routes to several locations. Very many of the photos of cyclists from Copenhagen are shot on this road because it's the busiest.
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| Counter on Dronning Louises Bro / Queen Louise's Bridge Norrebrogade Copenhagen. The claims made for counts of bicycles here do not stand up to scrutiny. |
So what's going on here ? I don't know. It's surely good marketing to have "the busiest", but don't we need a bit more than that ? Before Christmas I emailed the two people who were responsible for a document about the street to find out where the numbers came from, but have not had an answer (see below).
Counters in many different places in the Netherlands record higher numbers than this. For instance, eight locations in Utrecht have more than 10000 cyclists per day, and one of them has more than 22000 cyclists per day. In Groningen, six different places have counts greater than 10000 per day, two of those are above 14000 per day. Bear in mind that Copenhagen's population is more than three times that of Utrecht and six times that of Groningen. Counters in larger Dutch cities almost certainly record higher figures.
It's just marketing.
Danish professionals, including the Cycling Embassy of Denmark give a slightly different perspective.This is the inside back cover of one of their recent publications, giving some numbers. The Danes now cycle for 16% of their journeys. Sadly, this is lower than the 18 or 19% measured just a few years ago and which I have quoted in the past. The difference is significant. It's equivalent to one in eight cyclists giving up. This is not something to celebrate - it's terrible news. We need to know the cause of the decline and work out what can be done about it.
Some of the other figures are also interesting. 36% of Danish adults ride a bike to work "at least once per week". The percentage of daily commutes is not given, but it will of course be lower. 45% of Danish children "often" bike to school. Clearly this isn't the percentage who cycle every day, which again is not given and will be lower. "Often" is open to interpretation but could be less frequent than once per week. This is a startlingly lower rate of school cycling than is seen in the Netherlands, and that's important. Cycling has to start with children.
Note also the claim that 2/3rds of children under 11 use helmets when cycling in Denmark. This is not something which would be highlighted if it wasn't thought to be important. However, it is again very different from the Netherlands, where despite occasional ill-judged campaigns, helmets are still only rarely seen except on sport cyclists. It's another sign of cycling under pressure. People are scared for the safety of their children, and perhaps this has some connection with the reduced rate of cycling.
Lastly, note that 2.2 metres is the new standard width of cycle lanes in Denmark. That's somewhat narrower than the 2.5 metres which is standard here for single directional cycle paths, and it's again a thing which puts cyclists under a little bit more pressure.
It all adds up to a bit of a murky picture, similar to what I pointed out before. Copenhagen, and in the wider sense, Denmark, has a relative lack of subjective safety and this is stifling bicycle use, even in the top city of the world's second cycling country. Helmet promotion campaigns like this are only likely to contribute to the decline in Denmark.
I'm not happy about any of this. Cycling is extremely fragile, even in the two great cycling nations of the Netherlands and Denmark. It doesn't take much to stop people from cycling. If care is not taken, cycling in the Netherlands could also decline. We need ever better standards for cycle provision and no negative marketing. We all need to be able to learn from what has caused the decline in Denmark.
Why has cycling in Denmark declined since 1992, while it has continued to rise in the Netherlands ? Why is this question not being asked more widely ? This graph ends at the "18%" point. Since that time, the proportion of journeys by bike has dropped further to 16%
It's clear that Danish cycling policies are not succeeding as we all wish they would. This problem of declining cycling has not occurred in the Netherlands, and that is as good a reason as any why The Netherlands remains the best place in the world to turn to if you want to see what successful policies look like.
Update 25/1/2011
There's been quite a lot of discussion in the comments below this blog post of the discrepancy between counts which made up the first part of the post. Copenhagener got close to the answer by finding the cycle counts for a day in September 2009. However, I was also sent very helpful emails from Klaus Grimar, Project Manager, and Soren Zebitz Nielsen, Student Assistant, both of the Center for Trafik (Department of Traffic) in Copenhagen, explaining the numbers. They gave permission to reproduce the first long email, and also a shorter summary which you will find in italics below:
The survey that resulted in the number of 37.000 cyclists on Norrebrogade on the bridge where the counter is placed was conducted manually in early September 2009. We know that early September is a peak period for cyclists with good weather and due to the start of the academic year for the universities in the city. The number of 37.000 cyclists represents the average number of daily cyclist on a normal work day in both directions on the street during the peak season.
As an average in both directions on a normal working day throughout the year, the daily total number of cyclists on the street is around 28.000.
The counter relies on a sensor placed below the asphalt on the bicycle path only. We know that during the rush hour some faster cyclists overtake slower cyclists using the road, and some even the walkway. We find that the counter does not register all cyclists when the bicycle traffic is dense. It is our experience that the automatic counter generally counts around 10% less cyclists than the actual number during the peak hours and around 5% less in normal hours.
The idea of the counter is not to be an official measurement, but more to give the cyclists an idea of the approximate magnitude of bicycle traffic on the street as they pass by and a feeling that each individual cyclist contributes to make Copenhagen a City of Cyclists. The numbers counted by the automatic counter cannot be relied upon for academic purposes.
However there is no doubt that there has been an increase of around 7000 cyclist daily on the street of Norrebrogade as a consequence of the project there, since the manual surveys of bicycle traffic before and after the project were made using the same method and the traffic was counted at same time of the year in the surveys before and after the project was initiated.
Thanks to Klaus and Soren we now know that the widely reported "average" picked up by the marketing people and the media was actually a peak, and we also know the official average for a working day over the year, including a compensation for the cyclists missed by the automated count (other places could perhaps use the same compensation), but still not the average for all 365 days of the year. I'm of course very pleased to see that the improvement in conditions for cyclists on this street resulted in an increase in cycle traffic in this location. However, it has to be viewed alongside the unfortunate decline in cycling overall in Denmark.
See previous articles about Copenhagen. There are also previous articles about helmets, and particularly amongst them, this one which points out that the "danger" of cycling really has been blown out of all proportion next to that of driving. Others have pointed out that a lack of sufficient investment could be behind the lower cycling share in Copenhagen vs. Dutch cities.
September 2012 update
This year, some people I know from Cambridge visited Copenhagen and wrote about their experiences.They also took some photos, including the one on the right, which while it's supposed to be representative of a street along which "up to 35,000 cycle trips per day" are made, actually shows that something unpleasant has happened on the "busiest cycle street in the world". The photo shows the state of the sign on the 27th of May 2012. By that date, the 148th day of the year, 1261731 cyclists had passed the sign. In other words, in the first five months of 2012, the number of cyclists riding past this point averaged 8525 per day.
A 15% decline over two years in the busiest street in the city sounds catastrophic. Why has this happened ? Why did Copenhagen choose to hype the cycling rate on this street if it were actually in decline, and why do they continue to hype the amount of cycling in this street in the light of such a decline ? A 15% drop is in line with an acknowledgement by the Cycling Embassy of Denmark last year that cycling had dropped from between 18 and 19% to 16% of journeys within Denmark, but they were referring to a different decline which had happened over a much longer period than two years.
The article from Cambridge also reports a statistic that "Copenhageners make half of their urban trips by bike". However, this has no basis in fact either. We need to start with a little history:
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| All trips within Copenhagen 2002. Bicycles "slightly less than one fifth", cars just over half. |
The 50% target sounds great of course, and that is what is supposed to do. It's an artifact of marketing for Copenhagen, not of the real cycling modal share. At best it's only a target, and it's a target not for all journeys but only for commuters. No-one should reproduce this figure as an achieved modal share, because it has never been any such thing. In 2009 when I estimated that Copenhagen's true bicycle modal share was around 22%, the head of Copenhagen's bicycle programme wrote a supportive comment on this blog. If the same rate of growth has been continued for the last three years then we would expect that the true modal share for Copenhagen in 2012 is around 23-24%. However, this is rather difficult to determine because the numbers are no longer easy to find.
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| All trips within Copenhagen 2010. 33% for bicycles, 40% by car, 27% public transport. They missed out walking. |
While the figures for 2002 (in this document) were truly for all modes, the figures issued for 2010 which appear to show dramatic growth do so in large part because they have omitted to mention the approximately one fifth of all journeys within the city which are made by walking. Assuming that around a fifth of journeys still being by foot, the diagram on the right would indicate that approximately 26% of journeys are now by bike in Copenhagen, which is more in line with my estimate. However, note that these figures are for trips "starting or terminating in" the city and we don't know how this phrase is defined nor how the figures were calculated. We have to be wary of tricks, especially when we're looking at figures from a place with a history of exaggeration.
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Any claims for growth in cycling in
Copenhagen have to be judged against the steady decline in Danish cycling since 1992 |
The Danish people deserve much better than this. Selling the "cycling city" of Copenhagen as a brand does not help people to cycle in the city. From the evidence that is available it appears that cycling is dropping and not rising, both in Denmark as a whole and on some main streets of Copenhagen if not across the whole city. Less hype, more substance and maybe even a little humility is required before Copenhagen can achieve its potential. More investment is needed to give the city any chance at all of meeting the old target, let alone the new one. The environment needs to be transformed to be truly safe for cycling.
Bad infrastructure designs need to be abandoned and no longer presented to the world as something to copy. In particular, the "Copenhagen left turn" is not, and never was, a good design. Drivers turning right should not be encouraged to merge with cyclists as they approach traffic lights. Advanced stop lines (aka "bike boxes") are not advanced cycling infrastructure - they create conflict which should be avoided and they should not be promoted. Unfortunately these ideas are still being presented to the world as something to emulate.
Not just Copenhagen
Many cities across the world publicize commute only figures. This includes Cambridge in the UK and Portland in the USA. Neither of these cities gets remotely close to the modal share for cycling which is normal in the Netherlands, nor to the wide demographic of cyclists which is not only a curiosity of Dutch cycling but necessary for any place to achieve a high modal share.
Why exaggeration is harmful
Cambridge's campaigners were left wondering how it was that a city where infrastructure "does not seem to be of the same elevated standard found in Assen" should have achieved the high modal share which Copenhagen claims. The answer unfortunately is very simple: they haven't. Rather, they are telling impressive sounding stories which are not necessarily based in fact.
Wherever it is done, playing with statistics in this way harms us all. Without reliable figures, how can any comparison be made between countries or even within the same city on different years ? If facts are obscured by smoke and mirrors, made up figures are shouted from the rooftops, half the audience is distracted by photos of pretty girls on bikes, and a good many people are simply more interested in a nice sounding story than whether what they are being told is factual, then how can anyone tell what works from what does not work.
Extraordinary claims need to be looked into and challenged, wherever they come from. Exaggeration needs to stop.
Update December 2013
The only way to a higher cycling modal share is to build better infrastructure. We are still willing to help Copenhagen to "Groningenize" itself.
Update 2014
Earlier this year I read reports of how Copenhagen and Denmark in general had learnt from their decline and were changing course. I wrote about this change of direction because of it being extremely good news for Danish cyclists. It is only by recognizing a problem that it can be fixed and it appeared that the Danes had learnt their lesson and were going to fix their problems.
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| Independent EU statistics for cycling in Copenhagen for 2010 and 2012. Cycling dropped from 31% to 26% Car usage rose from 29% to 33%. |
In any case, a high number of cycles in one spot is not actually a sign of success. It's not something to celebrate. The funneling effect indicates that there are a lack of routes and may actually put people off from cycling.
When similar things happen in the Netherlands, there are other routes which cyclists can be encouraged to use. This is possible because of the high quality grid of cycling infrastructure which covers the whole country. The importance of this has been understood since the 1980s and this is perhaps the most important lesson from the Netherlands yet to be learnt elsewhere.
International marketing of Copenhagen needs to take second place to actually solving the problems facing cyclists in Denmark.
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| High cycle counts can be indicators of a problem: A lack of bridges to cross a river forces people to make detours and creates queues of cyclists. Lots of bikes in one place may look impressive, but it's a sign of failure not of success. Don't celebrate traffic jams for bikes! Read more about funneling. |
The hype over this location and of Copenhagen in general, continues. Five and a half years have passed since I debunked the claim that 37000 cyclists per day ride over the Dronning Louises Bro in Copenhagen and in all that time, no-one has been able to provide a justification for that claim. Rather than attempting to justify the previous claim, the same players have moved on to claim a rise to 42000 cyclists per day passing over the same bridge. Exaggeration doesn't help Copenhagen's cyclists and it doesn't help anyone else either. What is happening is that the facts are being obscured.
What's more, even if the claims were true, they're not necessarily something to be proud of. Thousands of cyclists forced into a detour to take the same route because there are relatively few options available to cross a river may make for nice photographs and good headlines, but it does not make for efficient cycling.
Funneling is bad for cycling. It's better that cyclists can choose from a finely spaced grid of high quality routes which enable each person to choose a relatively lightly trafficked and more direct route to their destination. That, though, is of less use if your primary goal is to market your city internationally by use of impressive looking photos and ever more exaggerated figures.
No-one celebrates traffic jams for cars. They shouldn't celebrate traffic jams for bikes either. Big queues of bicycles are a sign of failure. A comprehensive cycling grid allows more efficient journeys to be made.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Dollars and Pounds
I learnt two things this evening.
Firstly, funding for cycling in the UK has been cut. This blog post revealed this little piece of information hidden in a 99 page document full of hot-air about what the government claims to be doing for cyclists. In the past, government funding for cycling in Britain has struggled to get past the 1 pound per person per year level. i.e. 60 million for the whole population. It's now been cut to around 13 million. That's around 20 pence per person per year. It's enough to do... precisely nothing. In a city of 100000 people, it's 20000 pounds. That's not even enough to employ someone to think about doing something.
Cycling Officers at councils in Britain (in my experience hard working, good people who tend to find themselves as lone voices in a council which isn't actually very interested) must be worried about their jobs right now. It's a real shame.
By way of contrast, cycling in the Netherlands is funded at a rate of around 30 euros per person per year, which is about 150 times as much. That's what it costs to do a good job, and actually Britain could afford it as well.
Secondly, I heard from a correspondent that it is possible that cycling will be banned at a university in Canada because they've pedestrianized roads and now the pedestrians are frightened by the cyclists. They're looking at ways to "slow cyclists down", which is of course precisely the opposite of what you need to do to make cycling into a more attractive option.
If you can't get students to cycle, then who will ? They're absolutely the easiest demographic of all to attract to cycling: young adults, well educated, fearless and with not too much spare cash. All the "top cycling cities" in every country are university cities. That goes for Groningen, Copenhagen, Cambridge (UK), Davis (CA). If cyclists are banned, you convert cyclists into drivers.
Both countries have fundamentally the same problems. Neither wants to treat cycling as a serious means of transport and neither wants to spend an adequate amount of money on cycling.
Click through for some examples of what actually helps to bring about a cycling culture.
In the past, more was written about the experience of being a cycling officer in the UK. And this is not the first time that cycling policy has been abandoned in the UK.
Firstly, funding for cycling in the UK has been cut. This blog post revealed this little piece of information hidden in a 99 page document full of hot-air about what the government claims to be doing for cyclists. In the past, government funding for cycling in Britain has struggled to get past the 1 pound per person per year level. i.e. 60 million for the whole population. It's now been cut to around 13 million. That's around 20 pence per person per year. It's enough to do... precisely nothing. In a city of 100000 people, it's 20000 pounds. That's not even enough to employ someone to think about doing something.
Cycling Officers at councils in Britain (in my experience hard working, good people who tend to find themselves as lone voices in a council which isn't actually very interested) must be worried about their jobs right now. It's a real shame.
By way of contrast, cycling in the Netherlands is funded at a rate of around 30 euros per person per year, which is about 150 times as much. That's what it costs to do a good job, and actually Britain could afford it as well.
Secondly, I heard from a correspondent that it is possible that cycling will be banned at a university in Canada because they've pedestrianized roads and now the pedestrians are frightened by the cyclists. They're looking at ways to "slow cyclists down", which is of course precisely the opposite of what you need to do to make cycling into a more attractive option.
If you can't get students to cycle, then who will ? They're absolutely the easiest demographic of all to attract to cycling: young adults, well educated, fearless and with not too much spare cash. All the "top cycling cities" in every country are university cities. That goes for Groningen, Copenhagen, Cambridge (UK), Davis (CA). If cyclists are banned, you convert cyclists into drivers.
Both countries have fundamentally the same problems. Neither wants to treat cycling as a serious means of transport and neither wants to spend an adequate amount of money on cycling.
Click through for some examples of what actually helps to bring about a cycling culture.
In the past, more was written about the experience of being a cycling officer in the UK. And this is not the first time that cycling policy has been abandoned in the UK.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Utrecht bicycle counts
A new video from Mark Wagenbuur shows the average number of cyclists per day on some of the busier cycle routes in Utrecht.
Mark says: The number of cyclists is counted regularly in Utrecht (Netherlands). The city council monitors the bicycle volume to see if cycling policies and infrastructure are still adequate.
Because of the huge numbers of cyclists the counting is done automatically. Devices are put up temporarily on a huge number of counting points each year. Some of these are shown in this video.
The video then shows some of the streets that see more than 10,000 cyclists passing on every working day in this Dutch city with a population of 300,000.
The figures are from the website of the city of Utrecht. Cyclists are counted in almost every city and town in the Netherlands in a similar way.
This map, from a previous post shows the cycle counts across Utrecht:
At that time, the following points in the city had more than 10000 cyclists per day:
Smakkelaarsveld 22200
Nachtegaalstraat 15270
Lange Jansstraat 14850
Amsterdamsestraatweg 13970
Weg tot de Wetenschap 12130
Twijnstraat 10540
Voorstraat 10220
Prins Hendriklaan 10200
Like everywhere else that counts cyclists, these counters are subject to some margin of error. For example, cyclists who cross at the same time may not all be counted. The diagonal placing of the tubes is an attempt to make them work better with people cycling side by side.
There are many more posts about Utrecht.
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