Sometimes people get very confused

On the way home tonight, just 5 km from Assen, I passed a guy who I thought looked like a tourist on a bike. He was riding a mountain bike and carrying a huge rucksack on his back (a very uncomfortable way to carry weight on a bike).

A short distance further on I stopped to buy vegetables from a roadside stall (50 cm long marrows for 40 cents each - I put one either side in the back of the Mango) and while I was doing this, the tourist passed me.

As I came into Assen I could see him approaching a junction that I ride through every day, and which I've featured before on the blog.

The traffic light for bicycles was green, as it usually is because the light defaults to green for bikes and only switches to red if a car has approached the junction and (either from the side road or in lanes which lead this way on the main road). The light for pedestrians was red. Again, this is as usual. Those don't switch unless you press the pedestrian button. The tourist stopped, looking at the lights for pedestrians.

Even though the timing of this light is set up to favour bikes, there is also a loop under the cycle path as you approach the junction, and as a final backup just in case nothing else works there is also a button for cyclists to press. The tourist was pressing the button. And waiting. And waiting some more. If he'd pressed the separate button for pedestrians, that would have had an instant effect on the pedestrian lights. However, as he was pressing the button for cyclists, and the light was already green, it did nothing at all.

As I reached the traffic light, it was still green for bikes, so I rode straight over the junction. In my rear view mirror I could see the tourist was still waiting, and perhaps also nodding his head at me disapprovingly for "going through a red light."

So, why write this ? Well, sometimes people find what we have here in the Netherlands a bit confusing. This chap obviously did. One of the reasons why we organise study tours is to show how things really work as I've noticed that sometimes people simply don't understand. I've occasionally read some utter nonsense in the past from people who did things as extreme as not finding out in advance that "fietspad" means cycle path and not footpath, or from people who are outraged at the number of "wrong way cyclists" on one way streets because they don't know what "uitgezonderd" means.

I have a fear that this chap will return from his holiday with tales of how he visited the Netherlands, and even Assen which that David Hembrow bloke goes on so much about, and "found out" that traffic lights there were hopeless for cyclists and that the locals have to ride through on red because the lights never go green for cyclists.

Anyway, here's the same junction, in a video I made a couple of years back, heading in the opposite direction. You can clearly see the red pedestrian lights as well as the green cycle lights in the video:


The same traffic light also featured in another blog post. And if you're wondering, given that this one has now cropped up three times, it's not the only traffic light in Assen, and it's not the only one which defaults to green for bikes either.

Another new "superhighway" for bikes

Wilfred Ketelaar has been documenting the progress of work on the route between his home in a village west of Groningen and the city itself.

The first photo shows the previous situation. By the standards of many countries this would be a very good cycling facility. It's separated from the road, and fairly wide. However, it doesn't meet current Dutch guidelines. According to the provincial website this cycle path is narrow and too close to the road.

The first step was to start to prepare the new cycle path foundations alongside the old cycle path.

Note that there is to have a much greater separation from the road as it's positioned completely to the right of the old path, and the new cycle path will be somewhat wider than the old.

Another view of the works a little later when much of the concrete has been poured. The new surface is 3.5 m wide, and extremely smooth concrete. I have the same surface on a path of the same quality on my commute. It's smoother than the road. Smoother than some racing circuits I've been on - like a linear velodrome to your destination.

While works go on, it is necessary for cyclists travelling in this direction to cross the road and use the cycle path on the opposite side.

The speed limit on the road alongside the cycle path is temporarily limited to 50 km/h to avoid dangerous situations when cyclists have to cross.


And so it goes. Soon there will be yet another new "superhighway" for cyclists. This one being the green line between Z and G in the top right corner of the map (click on the map for more information).

This particular "fietssnelweg" is being marketed locally as merely a "fietsroute+". A list of what this entails is to be found in a previous blog post.

Also, I showed just how much separation from the road you get on another post about my local fietsroute+.

This sort of infrastructure makes longer cycle commutes far more practical. You can cycle quickly if you want to.

It's really an awful long way away from what Londoners are being fobbed off with

Cyclists Dismount ! At last I've found one...

Perhaps it's a surprise that I'm so enthusiastic about this sign, but I've been looking for years for this most elusive of Dutch cycle path signs, and at last I've found one.

Yes, "Fietsers Afstappen" means, literally, "Cyclists Dismount." And it's combined with nasty big metal fences. Remarkable. When I first saw it, I had a strange thought that maybe I'd merely dreamed about emigrating but that I really still lived in the UK...

Actually, I've been aware of it for a few months, but it's taken this long for me to get around to going there to take a photo. It's not on the route to anywhere for me.

The situation is a bit unusual. A new recreational cycle path crosses the access to the water of the local rowing club. I guess it's going across rowing club land. You can also see it on Google Maps Streetview:


Two years ago I blogged about the relative absense of such signs on the Dutch cycle path network. On the Study Tour Back in 2006 I offered €10 to the first person in our group from the UK who saw one of these signs, knowing that even though we were going to places I'd never been before I had very little chance of losing my money (and yes, I kept my money).

I've now lived in the Netherlands for nearly three years and cycled tens of thousands of kilometres in that time. I know that there are other Fietsers Afstappen signs, as occasionally Dutch people email me their photos of such signs. Often this is accompanied by text describing how "terrible" it is. However, this remains the only permanently mounted "Fietsers Afstappen" sign that I've ever seen with my own eyes.

In Britain, "Cyclists Dismount" signs are a ludicrously frequent feature of cycle facilities. I once started to make a web page showing all such signs in Cambridge, but gave up when I realised how much time this was going to take...

I still think "dismount" signs, all of them, are a blot on the cycling landscape. However, when they are as uncommon as this they make practically no difference at all to cyclists. Unless, of course, you ride past one of the few which exist every day. When there are 29000 km of separated cycle paths, built up over a number of years, there are bound to be some which fall below the expected standard. There are various initiatives in the Netherlands to identify bad cycle facilities and have the problems caused by them addressed. This is one of them.

Good news from Rostock

The Fietsberaad reports that:

The German town of Rostock has managed to more than double bicycle use over the past ten years. According to local authorities by means of an active bicycle policy, emphasising taking along a bicycle in public transport.

The formerly East German town - with well over 200,000 inhabitants - infers the growth of bicycle use from a survey by Dresden University among 638 households, a mobility study carried out every five years.

The data prove that the percentage of cycling rose from 8.7 per cent to 20.2 per cent from 1998 to 2008. The percentage of public transport in combination with cycling and walking increased from 58.5 per cent to 64.6 per cent. Use of cars for commuting purposes fell by 5 per cent to 35.4 per cent.

Local authorities see the cause of this – besides the increase in fuel prices – in the vastly improved bicycle facilities. In addition to measures like lowering curbs (in Germany cycling on the pavement is quite common), more bicycle parking facilities, allowing contraflow cycling in one-way streets and improved signposting, the use was also strongly affected by allowing bicycles to be taken along in public transport and Bike and Ride measures. The image of cycling has been positively targeted as well. Campaigns have been conducted to tempt recreational cyclists as well as promote commuter cycling.


Compare with a city in the Netherlands with a "low" rate of cycling

's-Hertogenbosch strives to become a "cycling city"

Mark Wagenbuur produced this video showing the ambitions of s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands to become a true "bicycle city". Mark puts it as follows:

The city of 's-Hertogenbosch articulated a new "cycle ambition" in 2009. The bicycle policy for the city is a long term plan to update cycle infrastructure (for both riding and parking) and for promoting cycling. Building for the new plan is already taking place. The city wants to become a real cycle city. The modal share of 33% in 2009 was far more than what other cities in the world have (Copenhagen barely reaches 25%) but it is just average in the Netherlands. 's-Hertogenbosch has the ambition to call itself a cycle city but wants to do so only when the modal share of cycling of all journeys in the city reaches 44%.

(Note that the relatively high figures for cycling modal share shown above are not reliable. They result from not including walking as a transport mode and only considering cycling within the city.)


Mark has also produced videos showing eleven different routes into the city centre. You can view them all from links on this video (click on the grey boxes).

I covered the plans from Den Bosch previously, but Mark's done a much better job. I have several other posts with Mark's videos, others about 's-Hertogenbosch and others about planning.

Going to the beach

Last Saturday, Judy and I rode past the local beach while planning a cycling holiday route. As usual, virtually everyone there had arrived by bike, and as the weather was so nice, lots of people were there.

I've covered cycling to the beach twice before.

Our car

Some readers may be surprised to learn that we own a car. After all, we don't write much about it, and I've occasionally mentioned how I'm not a particularly enthusiastic driver.

While we own a car, we don't actually use it much. Really, really, not much, at all.

We bought our car from a German who moved near our old home in Cambridge. He wanted a right hand drive car, and we thought a left hand drive car sounded ideal for after we'd emigrated. So we bought it from him and drove it (occasionally) in the UK for a short period, getting used to sitting on "the wrong side", before we emigrated.

We moved into our new home in Assen on the last week of August 2007. We arrived here in our car which we took on the ferry with us. Until yesterday, the last time the car was driven was in the first week of September 2007, when we took a few empty boxes and an old carpet from our new home to the local dump. After that it stood still.

After a year or so I thought to try the engine and of course nothing happened because the battery was dead. We didn't do anything about it at the time, because, well, we'd lived without it for a year, and it really wasn't a problem at all not to have a car in this city. We do all our shopping by bike, I commute by bike, our children go to school and visit friends by bike.

This year the car started looking a bit less healthy. A bit of green stuff was growing around the windows, and on opening the door there was an unpleasant smell inside. It makes no sense at all to have the thing simply rot away on the drive-way, so we had to do something with it.

A few days ago a local garage collected it and fixed it for us. Yesterday I took it (with a temporary number plate) from the garage for an inspection so that we can get a proper Dutch registration plate, and eventually a number will be allocated and we'll be able to get it properly on the road.

I think the novelty will mean we will use it a bit. But I have absolutely no desire to drive every day.

So far it has been surprisingly cheap to register the car for use. The costs of driving are not particularly high in this country, and petrol is about the same price as in the UK. Driving is easy in the Netherlands. However, you just don't "need" a car here.

It's very easy to live "car free" in the Netherlands. We managed it, almost by accident, even though we owned a car !

Our car still has a "Give Cyclists Room" sticker on the back. I organised a group purchase when we lived in Cambridge. It seems a bit redundant here.

And yes, there's also a bike in the back of it. I rode one of our cheapo folders to the garage to pick the car up yesterday morning.

So there you go. We have a car. A practical, boring, cheap one, which (even though it wasn't something I'd thought of when we bought it) has enough space on the roof to transport a Mango. And today I'm again leaving it on the drive-way while I ride my bicycle to work.

A couple of months later I got around to buying some petrol for the car, and working out what this actually entailed. Read about it here.

In the background of the first photo you'll see cars of our neighbours. They all cycle too, of course, for at least some of their journeys. It's quite possible to be both a driver and a cyclist. There is no "them and us" between cyclists and motorists in the Netherlands.