Has Britain progressed in the last six years ?

This is the first of a three part series. See also "Has London progressed in the last six years?" and "Has Assen progressed in the last six years?"

A view from the ferry - The white cliffs of Dover are infinitely more attractive than the view of Dunkirk at the opposite side of the channel.

I spent most of the last two weeks of October in the UK and it gave me much to think about. It's three years since I last wrote about my thoughts after visiting the UK. As I've now lived in the Netherlands for twice as long as I had when I wrote the previous impression, it's time for an update.

In the first week, we first visited my family in the South West (Somerset) and then Judy's family in the East of England (Lincolnshire) before returning home to Assen. With four people aboard, a motor car is by far the most straight-forward and economical way of making the journey. I'm a reluctant driver but convenience won out in this instance. That's why we drove our car nearly 2500 km in one week in October - a huge increase on last year when all our journeys by car added up to just 2044 km.

The driving experience

This is the road which awaits both drivers and cyclists arriving in Dover by ferry. It's not inviting by bicycle and few people cycle here. When hundreds of vehicles leave the ferry at the same time and each is trying to get out of Dover faster than the next one, it looks a lot busier than this.

Driving across several countries was interesting. Our route took us across a good part of the Netherlands, from one side of Belgium to the other and through a small part of France before crossing the channel and driving a considerable distance in England. There are many contrasts.

British drivers genuinely are treated
worse than their counterparts elsewhere
but not necessarily in the ways they
think. I don't understand why parking
spaces in the UK are so narrow and
awkward to use. In many car parks it's
almost impossible for drivers and
passengers to use their doors without
risk of contact with an adjacent car,
wall or concrete post. None of these
cars is ours, BTW, so don't blame me
for the slightly crooked parking.

I've come to expect dangerous stunts from Belgian drivers and was not disappointed on this occasion (apologies to Belgian readers). However, British drivers have easily the worst lane discipline, seemingly being allergic to the "slow lane". Driving in that way effectively reduces a three lane motorway to two lanes and leads to more congestion.

Britain has the lowest motorway speed limits. 70 mph is a mere 112 km/h while speed limits in France, Belgium and the Netherlands are generally 120 km/h or 130 km/h. Britain also seemingly has the worst traffic jams. We found ourselves in heavy traffic, often slowing down or stopping, for the entire 370 km distance between Dover and Somerset along the M20, M25, M4 and M5. This was on a Sunday afternoon and early evening, not at a peak time.

However, it's not all bad for the British motorist. British petrol was the cheapest that we found on our journey. It was slightly cheaper than in Belgium and about 10% cheaper than in the Netherlands at the moment. We made sure we filled up our petrol tank before boarding the ferry to return home. So let's have fewer complaints about the cost of motoring and perhaps more about the ridiculously pokey car parking spaces in Britain.

Finally, with regard to driving, only Britain has Cat's Eyes. These are a wonderful invention which improve the safety of Britain's roads after dark and in bad weather. Other countries should take note !

Counting bikes

In Burnham-on-Sea, Sustrans simply
gave up and told cyclists to make an
inconvenient detour onto the beach.
I tried cycling here as a child. Bicycle
tyres sink into the sand and salty sand
damages your bike.

We didn't cycle at all on this trip but Judy and I did try to count every cyclist we saw. Our total came to just 20 in six days.

As you might expect, sporty "cyclists" in the UK almost always ride on the road. It's too inefficient to do otherwise. We also saw very few children cycling to school, which makes a huge contrast with the freedom on offer to Dutch children. Those children that we saw riding to school were mostly on the pavement (sidewalk), which is illegal. Some adults also used the pavement; they passed us very carefully and two of them gave unprovoked apologies for their presence on the pavement but clearly they felt safer riding slowly in this way than by "taking the lane" on the road.

Amongst those who dare to cycle at all, fluorescent clothing and helmets are the norm, even for adults, even in small towns, even when riding on the pavement. In fact it seemed you don't even need a bicycle to require special safety equipment. Children riding scooters (relatively commonly seen, perhaps because they're considered to be a more socially acceptable way to travel on two wheels on the pavement than by using a bicycle) often wear helmets. It is clear that a lack of subjective safety has a roll to play in the submissive attitude of the average British cyclist versus their confident Dutch colleagues.

A short trip to the sea-side
Weston-super-Mare's population is about the same as that of Assen but like all British towns, it is far more motor car oriented than any Dutch town. There is some cycling infrastructure in Weston, but it is very compromised and doesn't reach the city centre. This infrastructure also doesn't reach so far as other nearby towns. Weston is not unique in this, it's quite close to normal for the UK.

Ice-cream bicycle. One of a number of
bikes displayed temporarily in the
Weston-super-Mare museum.

Just like three years ago, there were a handful of people cycling in Weston-super-Mare. However they were once again a marginalized minority. Cycling is not normalized in British towns as it is in Dutch towns.

We heard of an exhibition of bicycles in a local museum and this was quite amusing to look at. Sadly, though, even this small exhibit featured more bicycles than we saw being ridden around the town itself.

Part of the route to Weston. Does this look like an inviting place to cycle ? I've done it before on my own and also with Judy. However we didn't ride along it this time with my family. Unsurprisingly, we saw no-one else cycling here either. Cheap petrol on the left.

My mother enjoys riding quite long distances in the Netherlands, and the distance between my mother's home and Weston is not far at all, just 17 km. Unfortunately, making this journey by bicycle would have meant riding on an A-road, which apart from the danger simply doesn't lead to cycling being a lot of fun. The distance between my mother's house and my sister's is even less, but it may as well be a thousand miles due to the design of the roads. Cycling is not attractive on roads like this.

A-roads are designed only for cars
For most of the distance between Somerset and Lincolnshire we used motorways, but the final part of the journey was on A-roads. We saw no cyclists at all during the relatively long distances that we travelled on A-roads. Cycling campaigners in Britain have fought for decades to retain the right to ride on these roads but in practice only very few people are interested in exercising this "right". Traffic volumes and speeds (60 mph = 100 km/h) are simply much too high. Such challenging conditions are common in the UK and taken pretty much for granted by long distance cyclists in that country but I have never found their equal in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands we often ride long distances but never have the stress of "sharing" the road with high speed motor vehicles because there is always either a cycle-path or the road has very few cars.

A coffee stop at a place with cycling infrastructure

Wilford at least had some cycling infrastructure, but this also was tokenistic. Next to a  large and busy road was a narrow cycle-path which within the 100 m of path visible in this photo manages to give way to a pub entrance, include signposts for drivers mounted right on the narrow cycle-path and then gives up altogether at the traffic lights, ejecting cyclists into an advanced stop line. To make a right turn here cyclists were either supposed to cross to the third lane or make an unassisted crossing of four and a half lanes of traffic which would be changing lanes a few metres before the junction. Neither of these is close being a safe and convenient situation.

We stopped for coffee at a town called Wilford. This location actually had cycling infrastructure but it was very far from ideal. Nevertheless, even bad infrastructure like this often proves to be more attractive for cycling than riding on the road and while cyclists remained a small minority at this location we did see several cyclists here in the space of about an hour. All of them were riding on the badly designed cycle-path rather than the busy and unpleasant road.

Small villages and country roads dominated by cars
One of the things which remains remarkable to me about the UK is how competitive minor roads are with motorways so far as motor vehicle travel times are concerned. In the Netherlands there is a huge difference in the journey time that would result from taking mostly 60 km/h country roads vs. 120/130 km/h motorways. Country roads in the Netherlands are designed so that they deter usage as a through route. The result is that country roads in the Netherlands are remarkably empty of cars and villages are quiet places to live.

A minor road in the countryside in Lincolnshire. It's so narrow
that vehicles clearly leave the road regularly to pass each
other but even here the speed limit is 60 mph (100 km/h)

Britain has not tried this approach. In Britain, the speed limit not only on rural A roads but also even minor countryside roads is usually 60 mph (100 km/h) while the speed limit on the motorway is only slightly higher at 70 mph (112 km/h). As a result, journey times on rural roads, even minor roads, provide very good competition to journey times on motorways and people use them a lot to make their journeys as making a detour to a more major road will only add time. Even when such roads pass through villages and right next to homes, the speed limits remain much higher in the UK.

On rural and village speed limits, touring cyclists and villagers could have a common cause. If lower speed limits on country roads and through villages (a good start might be to leave the same numbered boards in place but swap to using km/h instead of mph) were achieved, even at the cost of higher speeds on the motorways, this could encourage drivers away from the small roads and onto the motorways, and this could help to make the countryside a much more pleasant place to live and cycle.

View of Stamford in Lincolnshire. A very pretty town which is
sadly dominated by traffic which is directed through the centre.
Stamford's population is but a third that of Assen, but it has a
hundred times the traffic problems. We saw no-one attempting
to cycle through this town as we passed through it.

It's remarkable to my eyes, adjusted as they are now to the Dutch norm, that the huge adverse effect of high volumes of traffic are seemingly ignored in British villages and towns. Surely towns which rely largely on tourism would be more attractive to tourists if they did not have a constant stream of noisy motor vehicles going past them. However, this is often the situation in the UK. Our GPS directed us to drive through Stamford because the main route goes right through the town. This is really a very pretty town, we once went there on an excursion from Judy's parents' house. However it's unfortunately somewhat blighted by traffic.

In some ways I find it remarkable how this has been allowed to happen, but actually it's not so different from what happened in the 1960s in the Netherlands and what the Netherlands could still be like if action had not been taken. The difference now is due to the Dutch having decided to change their environment starting decades ago. Many scenes from modern British towns still look very much like photos from Assen before the town was improved starting in the 1980s. It's not just Assen that has done this, but every Dutch town.

Why is Britain still following the wrong path ?
Despite Britain having a bit of a problem with its current account balance and even though only one in seven of the cars sold in the UK are made there, car sales still seem to be thought to represent "growth" and "economic confidence" even though a "significant proportion" of them are bought on credit. Car sales are booming and the result can be seen everywhere in the form of traffic jams in which those imported cars burn imported fuel at an ever increasing rate. This is not good for Britain's fragile economy.

People who choose to cycle in Britain remain marginalized by both the conditions on the roads and planners who simply do not take their needs into account. Those cycling facilities which exist remain piecemeal and substandard, designed neither to maximise efficiency nor safety of cycling and giving up where they are most needed. It's quite obvious why enthusiastic cyclists often ignore such facilities, though it's also quite obvious that many people find even inadequate facilities more attractive than riding on the road.

When we got back to Assen it didn't take us long to count 20 bikes. Just one group of school children visiting a museum near the city centre had more than 20 bikes between them. Schools in the UK don't dare to make school trips by bike.

Unfortunately, despite the already very low level of cycling in the UK, the British government is actually expecting that cycling will decrease further while they expect car usage to continue to rise. This is being justified in part due to the aging of the population, which makes no sense at all when the UK doesn't remotely approach its full potential for cycling for any age group, not even the youngest. In any case, aging of the Dutch population has been accompanied by a rise in cycling from an already high level, made possible because of an ever improving standard of infrastructure and planning in the Netherlands.

Every mass cycling event demonstrates the huge suppressed demand for cycling in the UK yet there has been no growth in recent years. Riding a bicycle makes sense to most people only when they can be confident about their safety and expect it to be convenient.

Many promises have been made to cyclists in the UK in the last six years, but none of them have led to continued progress in cycling. In part this is because cycling is still seen as a minority activity rather than being something of vital importance to the next generation.

We run infrastructure study tours and can
demonstrate to any British planners and
politicians exactly how and why the Dutch
infrastructure is so effective.

Real change requires real commitment of funds. Given that it costs less to build cycling infrastructure than not to build it, this really should not be difficult to arrange. Change will also require political emphasis and for planners to learn how to improve conditions such that everyone can cycle.

Driving is seen as the only way to travel in Britain because it is by far the easiest option. This is due to policies which have prioritized the car over all other modes of transport for decades. It was a choice, and this choice could be changed.

For now, Britain still sees more roads for more cars as a good thing. The country is still trying to build the dream of the 1950s.

Building roads encourages more use of cars, the profits from which are largely made in other countries, the running of which requires imported fuel and the health effects of which cause thousands of deaths each year due to crashes and air pollution.

Building of cycling infrastructure leads to health benefits for the entire population, in particular to healthier happier children, less noise and air pollution, and it even helps to reduce the outward flow of money from the country.

Having lived for six years in a country which benefits so obviously and so greatly from all these things, it's rather sad to see that other nations, including the one in which I was born, can't see how these things would also benefit them. Where is the political leadership to change countries for the better ?

A view from the ferry on the return journey. At Dunkirk, France welcomes visitors with a splendid view of the largest nuclear power station in Western Europe, Gravelines. It's right next to the dock. The news in the UK during our visit was largely about the British government's recent decision to guarantee profits to a French/Chinese consortium who will build a new nuclear power-station near my mother's home. I can't say I'm enthused about this on any level.

Part two covers my second week in the UK, in London, including experience of riding a Boris Bike.

This is the first of a three part series. See also "Has London progressed in the last six years?" and "Has Assen progressed in the last six years?"

In other news, India seems to be copying the British approach. Note that while Petrol is often a few pence per litre cheaper in the UK than in the Netherlands, diesel is generally cheaper in the Neherlands than in the UK. The cost of motoring is not why the Dutch cycle.

A study tour in five minutes... Assen to Groningen with Clarence Eckerson Jr.

Journey from Assen to Groningen with David Hembrow from STREETFILMS
The second excellent film from Clarence at Streetfilms following his visit to Assen and Groningen (see also his first film).

Click for more information about some of the subjects of this video:

1. Assen city centre
2. Bicycle road in Assen
3. New development in Kloosterveen
4. Residential streets
5. Dutch children cycling
6. Road works which don't get in the way of cyclists
7. Car parking
8. Bus roads
9. Cyclists see fewer traffic lights and short delays
10. Unravelling of cycling routes from driving routes

The video gives a reasonable impression of the sort of thing seen on our study tours, but due to lasting somewhat less than 5 minutes rather than the three days of the complete tour, there is of course quite a lot missing. Come on the tour - we've much more to show. We're available throughout the year for private tours for groups and individuals, and there is often an open tour which individuals or small numbers can join. Contact us for more information.

Excellent video from Streetfilms in Groningen plus more information about the city

A couple of months ago, Clarence Eckerson Jr of Streetfilms fame visited Assen and Groningen. He's now finished the wonderful film above and I recommend that you read about it on the streetfilms website.

More about Groningen
Much has been written about Groningen. It's the world's leading "cycling city" by modal share and has held this position quite consistently for many years. While roughly 60% of journeys in the centre of the city are by bike and about 50% for the city as a whole, cycling doesn't fizzle at the suburbs or at the edge of the city. Roughly 30% of all journeys made in the whole rural and sparsely populated province of Groningen (which shares its name with its own capital) are by bike.

A high student population is very often related to a high modal share for cycling, and this holds true in the Netherlands as well as in other countries. Groningers have the lowest average age of any Dutch city due to the high student population who make up 50000 of the city's 190000 population. However, people cycle in Groningen far more than can be accounted for only by the size of the student population. Groningen took deliberate action in the 1970s to make the city a better place to live and to grow cycling and there has been a continuous programme of change since that time.

While the centre of Groningen is dense, the overall density of the city isn't actually particularly high and many people make longer journeys by bike. There has long been a network of routes which cover the entire countryside and during the period that I commuted to Groningen, I videoed some of the other commuters on a different route. Groningen is now building new high speed cycle routes to aid commuters making longer journeys from villages.

The high cycling modal share causes problems which are like no other place:

1. Congestion due to students using particular routes by bike resulted in alternative cycling routes being promoted to improve journey times.
2. People complain about the number of bicycles parked, even though they themselves are cyclists.
3. It's almost impossible to keep up with the demand for cycle-parking. The main railway station in Groningen featured in Clarence's video currently has spaces for around 11000 bicycles, up from about 3000 ten years ago. However the cycle-park in not adequate at the weekends so current plans are for the number of spaces to rise to 19000 by 2020.
4. Pedestrians are provided with red carpets outside shops in order to discourage the parking of bicycles in particularly difficult locations.
5. Local laws prohibit parents from driving their children to school in Groningen as this caused a problem for cyclists. This is, of course, greatly to the benefit of children.

Note that the main railway station cycle-park featured in the video isn't the only large cycle-park in the city. See also the cycle parking at an award winning smaller railway station in Groningen and the bicycle light vending machine at one of many free guarded cycle-parks in the city.

Read more about the triple bridge where cyclists can still cross the canal when a ship requires the bridge to open and about how simple automated counters are used to gather accurate statistics about cyclists.

You may also like to see if you can spot some of the same places in the city centre featured in Clarence's film as well as some of my videos and photos in some films shot in the car dominated Groningen of the 1960s.

Despite all this, Groningen isn't perfect and local campaigners made sure that the city would lose the "Cycle City 2011" competition in large part because the city contains the most dangerous road junction in the whole country and a bridge "as steep as Alpe d'Huez". I made sure that I showed Clarence some of the problems with the city but they unfortunately didn't make their way into the video.

Do you want to see it for yourself ?
We're organising study tours again next year. The first open tour will be in April. Please contact us to book a place.

Groningen was a leader in redesigning itself as a "cycling city" but all other Dutch cities followed similar policies. To achieve the same success as the Dutch have it is necessary to copy from the best examples and don't do anything just because it's "Dutch". It won't work to just try to pick one aspect of what makes cycling work in the Netherlands. The comprehensive network of routes which allow cycling journeys to be direct and subjectively safe requires everything that has been done here.

Note that Zwolle has been snapping at Groningen's heels for many years now and recent figures suggest this smaller Dutch city may actually have surpassed Groningen for the proportion of trips by bike.

A Toot and a Wave. Dutch cyclists are not an out-group. Car horns are not used as weapons.

I still tense up a little if I hear a car horn when cycling. I still glance around for escape routes.

This is a learnt behaviour which comes from many years of cycling in Britain, where car horns are used quite often by drivers to send an unpleasant message to cyclists supposedly committing some ill or other. The sound of a car horn would commonly be accompanied by that of squealing tyres, a revving engine or abuse through a car window. None of those things has happened to me in six years of living in The Netherlands, but I still cringe when I hear a horn.

Still from the video showing "tooter" and "waver"

In The Netherlands, cyclists are not an out-group. That is to say that we're not an easily identifiable group on the edge of society. Because cyclists are not an out-group, we don't suffer from homogeneity bias where each member of a group are blamed for behaviours which part of the group may have. There is no discussion here about "cyclists" going through red lights, riding on the pavement etc. Cycling is mainstream here. There is no "us vs. them" antagonism between drivers and cyclists because the same people ride bikes as drive cars.

It would be absurd to imagine that
the Dutch cycle because they are
genetically inclined to do so, yet
people often make this argument.
Every section of society can be
seen cycling in The Netherlands.
Immigrants find cycling nearly
so convenient as people who
were born here. The cyclists in
the video most likely to be singled
out and subject to criticism as an
out-group are the lycra clad and
helmeted "racers", one of whom is
in the background of this still.
The moped at the start of the
video represents another out-group
often accused of being dangerous

Of course, that's not to say that there is no bias in The Netherlands, nor that everyone is fair and rational. I made this video during a Study Tour a few weeks ago. A little before we reached this point and while we were observing another location of interest in Groningen, a woman come up to us with a complaint. The growing collection of teenagers' bikes which we were admiring outside a football ground caused her discomfort. To her, the collection of "scruffy" bikes lowered the tone of this respectable neighbourhood. Why couldn't the teenagers park their bicycles a few hundred metres away in the secure cycle-parking facility provided by the council ? Of course the reason the answer to this was in her question. The secure cycle-parking facility was a few hundred metres away and the teenagers would have to walk. Everyone likes convenience. I suspect that includes the woman making the complaint, who was astride her own bicycle as she spoke to me. The out-group in this case was not "cyclists" but "teenagers".

It is often the case that the behaviour which motorists and pedestrians complain about in other nations is actually teenage behaviour. For instance, when cycling is banned in a pedestrianized area, the only cyclists who will remain are those who are scoff-laws. Often they are teenagers.  Teenagers push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. That has always been so and it always will be so. The more that cycling is normalized, the more it is that teenage cyclists will follow the norms of behaviour which the majority follow.

The rise in cycling in The Netherlands came about due to normal people campaigning for safety. This campaigning which was inclusive of the population as a whole and not just for the benefit of a vocal minority.  Cycling is not a revolutionary activity in the Netherlands. Long may this remain so.

Why we do tours
People sometimes wonder why it is that we operate Study Tours and what we have to offer that a Dutch person does not. The experience of having living and cycled for many years in less cycling friendly countries gives us perspectives that people who have not done this simply cannot have.

See also my other blog post from today about an excellent dynamo lighting special offer.

Dealing with overcrowded cycle-routes in Groningen by encouraging students to make faster journeys

The stencils show how to get
to the centre and the Zernike
campus using an existing but
less busy route

We visited our daughter at her student accommodation in Groningen a few days back and noticed that some unusual symbols had been stencilled onto the cycle-path near her home.

My daughter explained to us what was going on. Alternative routes were being suggested to students at the Zernike campus on the North of Groningen to reduce strain on the existing route.

Cycling in Groningen continues to grow. Three years ago it was known that over 14000 cyclists per day were using Zonnelaan. I featured a bicycle counter on Zonnelaan in a blog post two years ago. Busy bicycle routes might seem like something to boast about but really they're a sign of a problem, a sign of too many cyclists being funneled into a single route rather than having a choice if routes which provide efficiently for each user.

Marketing to students:
Did you stay up too late last night ?
Stayed in bed too long ?
Too long in front of the mirror ?
All good reasons to try the new
faster route.

Addressing the problem of an overcrowded cycle-path
The Zonnelaan cycle-path could be widened and upgraded, but it would still pass through several sets of traffic lights at which there are delays. In any case, high numbers of people on one route are not really a measure of success.

Cities in the Netherlands have an extensive grid of bicycle routes. This should avoid a funneling effect due to everyone taking the same route. Other viable routes to the Zernike campus already existed, but students are a transient group who do not necessarily look for alternatives. This is why it was decided to inform students about the alternatives. In this case, marketing worked because and only because the routes already existed.

There are many possible alternative routes, but the council picked options which don't have traffic lights on them. These routes are advertised as the "smart route" to take. If students follow these routes then the can make their way through the city with no traffic lights at all because the recommended routes are almost completely unravelled from the motor vehicle routes.

The suggested routes start from parts of the city with much student accommodation and head towards the Zernike campus. My daughter lives in the North and travels to the centre. She was already using one of the routes in the opposite direction to get to college.

The new routes were advertised to students during the first few weeks of this new term. This has been publicized on local TV and newspapers and people have been employed to present the information, especially to new students who have just arrived in the city and who have not already become used to another route. Colourful signs accompany the stenciling on the cycle-paths to make the routes easy to follow.

"Je bent op tijd als je de slimme route rijdt"

"You'll be on time if you take the smart route"

What do the new routes look like?
The route between my daughter's accommodation and the city centre was already of very high quality. Nothing has changed apart from adding stenciled guidance and signs to help students at Zernike to find the route.

The alternative routes are of high quality and were already quite well used. This is a very good direct cycle-route with few reasons for cyclists ever to have to slow down or stop.

Student boom
The presence of students in a city almost always increases the cycling modal share. It only works, of course, if other things come together. The cycling infrastructure needs to be good, and that of Groningen, like other Dutch cities, is good by world standards.

However, Groningen's infrastructure is not particularly good by Dutch standards - something which is in part hidden by the huge number of students cycling.

The huge rise in parking of bikes at the railway station is also a symptom of the favourable demographics. The cycle parking is most full at weekends in term time when students use the railway station to access free public transport at weekends.

Not everyone is happy about this
There are sometimes unexpected consequences of trying to solve problems like this. Quite apart from my daughter's fear that her route would become too busy, it turns out that local businesses don't like cyclists being redirected away from them:

"Businesses on the Zonnelaan are not happy with the new cycle routes"

The first person interviewed says that when he started his business 25 years ago research showed that 10000 cyclists per day were using the Zonnelaan route. That's why they located there. The number of cyclists past his door has more than doubled since they started the business. Like other business owners on the route, he's disappointed that the local government is redirecting passing traffic away from his door as this could result in less business. The local government has organised a meeting to try to address these concerns.

In the Netherlands, shopkeepers like cyclists.

A race
Three people from a courier business in Groningen tried out the new routes to see which was really fastest. First and second place in their race were taken by the cyclists who took the new routes:



The stencilled markings on the cycle-paths may look to American eyes rather like "sharrows". However this is a cycle-path, not a road. "Sharrows" are not real cycling infrastructure and they do not exist in the Netherlands. Thankfully. It's important that the good examples are used for inspiration not the bad.

How many Dutch children still go to school by bike ? The rise of driving.

One of the odd things about the Dutch relative to other countries is a habit of washing all their dirty linen in public. Bad news stories have remarkable prominence here and that includes making sure that bad news is heard around the world.

Headlines but a lack of real figures
In the last few days, headlines have started to appear in Dutch and in English about how children in the Netherlands are being driven to school by car far more than they used to be. According to the headlines, "one third" of children now go to school by car. This sounds alarming, and may seem to fly in the face of what cycling blogs, including this one, have written about cycling to school.

Most of the press stories neglected to give a source for their figures and many of them seemed to be based on nothing more than other news websites' stories. This is not great journalism. Yesterday I found what seemed to be a reasonably likely original source for this story and wrote about the figures on the Campaign for Childhood Freedom forum (link removed as this unfortunately did not achieve any traction). This blog post expands on that forum discussion.

How steep is the rise in driving to school?
The figures for cycling and walking to school in the Netherlands remain such that most other countries would be proud to boast about them. However, we have to look at this complaint in the same way as the Dutch are looking at it. For the Netherlands, these figures are not good news. It is true that the rate of driving has increased relative to what it was 18 years ago and even though walking and cycling together are still twice as significant as is driving, they have both decreased.

In 1994, 26% of primary school aged (5-12) children went to school by car. In 2012, 30% did so. Cycling (blue) and walking (red) have dropped. It's a decline in cycling and walking, the issue needs addressing, but it's not catastrophic.

So exactly how do Dutch children get to school?
Below you'll find a quickly made English language translation of the KPVV graphic showing statistics for all schools for all weather conditions for primary school children:

On an average day, 37% of primary school children (age 5-12) cycle to school, 30% walk and 30% go by car. On the worst days this reduces to 34% and 30% and driving increases to 33%. On the best days cycling increases to 39%, walking to 31% and driving drops to 27%

One of the headline concerns of the Dutch is that only 17% of primary ages children (5-12) now travel to school by bike completely independently of adults. By picking on this figure alone, it can be made to look like a very small proportion of children are now independent. However, as you can see from the above graphic, if you add together independent walking (9%) and independent cycling (17%) then 26% of primary school children actually still travel independently to school. It has been known for some time that the average age for independence is 8.6 years and as it happens, 8.6 years works out as approximately 2/3rds of the way through the primary school age group so this is not so far off the proportion of primary school age children who we already knew were travelling independently in 2006.

The KPVV article explains quite a lot more than just presenting these figures. There are huge variations between schools. For instance:

1. The share for cars varies from 6 - 48 % for town schools and 34 - 52 % for country schools.
2. The share for bikes varies from 16 - 65 % for town schools and 20 - 44 % for country schools.
3. The share for walking varies from 18- 63 % for town schools and 17 - 37 % for country schools.

Parents waiting outside a Groningen primary school for young
children as older children ride by. On a study tour in June we
saw a parent stop her car here illegally. Other parents were
shocked and deliberately blocked her way. After going home,
the driver caught up with us by bike to explain, apologise and
ask me not to report her to the police (never my intention).

These variations are actually nothing new. For instance, it's five years since I wrote about how Amsterdam had the lowest first year secondary school cycling rate in the country. This is perhaps what should be expected for the largest and busiest city in the country, and we shouldn't be surprised that other busier or less well planned Dutch cities have lower rates of child cycling than the better planned cities. But problems like this in some of the areas with a larger population skew the average figures for the entire nation downwards and make the picture look worse than it is in the better organised areas.

On the other hand, in some places the frequency of driving to school is very much lower and the frequency of cycling is much higher. It's been illegal to use a car to take a child to primary school in Groningen for several years. Here in Assen a new housing development was planned to enable 2/3rds of primary school trips to be by bike. Neither of these ideas are unique to single places and in much of the country there really are an overwhelming majority of trips to school made by bike and walking. Planning so that journeys are safe and convenient by bike is what makes this possible.

It should also be noted that there are also special types of school to which more children will also be driven. In the area where we live there are absolutely no school buses at all except for those which pick up children who have special needs and take them to schools to which they may not be able to travel unaccompanied, perhaps located further from their home than another school which is less suitable for their needs. At special needs schools you also find far more private cars than at average schools. I don't know if schools like this were included in the KPVV figures but if they were they will have made the numbers look worse. There are also other schools which have unusually large catchment areas such as English language "international" schools for families of temporary workers. I don't know if these are included in the KPVV figures either, but they would also push the average upwards if they are.

Note that all the figures above are for primary schools. i.e. children up to the age of 11 or 12. There is a much higher rate of cycling to secondary schools than to primary schools. Almost all secondary school aged children travel independently and almost all of them travel by bicycle.

Some schools don't allow some children to cycle
Some primary schools in the Netherlands, particularly older schools which have not been improved, don't actually have sufficient cycle-parking for the number of children who want to cycle. At some of these, children are not allowed to cycle if they live within a specified radius, perhaps 1 to 1.5 km, of the school. They are supposed to walk instead, but of course this is not always what happens.

The best solution to overflowing bicycle-parking at school is to build more bicycle-parking. Keeping up with the demand is difficult but cycle-parking is expanding all across the Netherlands.

It's good that the issue has been raised
I think the KPVV and others in the Netherlands are absolutely right to raise this issue and I hope that the decline in cycling and walking can be stopped. It is the job of campaigners everywhere to be critical and to show figures in a negative light. This is the only way to make progress. Perhaps the alarmist headlines are required within this country in order to wake people up and stop this decline. It worked before.

Nowhere can afford to be complacent and to sit on its laurels, and that applies even to places which see themselves or are seen by others to be leaders. However the exposure of this story in English could be misleading and that's the reason why I have written about this story. For other countries, the Netherlands is still the best place to look towards in order to see how to cater for mass cycling to school. However, even here you need to find the best examples to copy.

Fietsersbond campaign
I'm very happy to see that the Fietsersbond is using this publicity to call for better conditions for cycling near schools. Amongst other things they are calling for a 100 m car free zone around all schools and woonerven (15 km/h speed limit and child priority) and kiss&ride places at the edge of the 100 m car free zone.

The Netherlands is still a long way away from being the sort of place where an "eco" school would ban cycling.

Bus stop bike parking. Enormous need on weekdays, less on weekends. Mass parked bikes in The Netherlands are not "abandoned".

2006 situation at Marsdijk bus stop in Assen. Note old inferior
road crossing at the western side with traffic lights for bikes
which no longer exist. Courtesy Bing Maps.

When we first moved to Assen there was a lot of work taking place at the North of the city. A road was being rebuilt to provide better access by motor vehicle to the North and the cycle-path alongside was also being rebuilt to provide a far better route by bicycle to the North.

There was also work going on to provide more space for business in the same part of the city, so new office buildings were constructed

Google Maps image marked to show current day cycle-parking
in red. The new office building (blue spot) required extra
car parking. Overall there are fewer car parking spaces
now than in 2006, but far more bicycle parking spaces.
Note also the improved road crossing. Cyclists no longer stop

At the same time, the facilities for buses were being improved. The existing bus-stop which could take just one bus at a time was expanded into four bus stops. At the time, the cycle-parking for the bus stops was considerably enlarged as well.

The bus services from this stop have been successful and therefore because people cycle to this bus-stop, more cycle-parking was required.

The cycle-parking has been expanded since it was originally built by taking away car parking spaces. The full extent of cycle-parking now is as shown in the image where cycle-parking is highlighted in red. Some of this was built over spaces which had been constructed as car parking only a few years previously.

This bus stop is on the Study Tour route so we have shown it with varying amounts of cycle-parking to quite a few visitors to Assen. Because we always operate the tour on week days, the cycle-parking is usually full with bicycles which belong to commuters (you can catch a bus from here to Groningen or other towns and cities). However, if you visit the same location on the weekend, the cycle-parking is almost empty.

There is a persistent myth about how massed bikes at Dutch railway and bus stations are "abandoned" however this is not true. The rates of usage are enormous compared with other countries and actually the people who manage cycle-parks like this are very efficient at removing abandoned bikes so that legitimate users can find a space.

The video shows the same cycle-park both on a week day (Wednesday of the last Study Tour so some participants are in the video) and on a Sunday so that you can see the vastly different rate of use:


Click for bigger video
Explore the area on Google Maps:

Bigger map. Google Maps data currently dates from 2009 so does not show the most recent changes in the area. There's a bus lane here, but it is not combined with the cycle-path. I've never seen a combined bus and bike lane in the Netherlands.

There are hundreds of spaces here, and their presence demonstrates which you can't take bicycles on buses in The Netherlands. It's nice to be able to do so, but it only works if very few people use a bicycle to get to the bus stop. In The Netherlands you can't rely on that.

The long red building is both a football club and Chinese restaurant.

Update November 2013

This cycle parking was upgraded again in November. The parked bikes are now sheltered from the weather.

Today the September open Study Tour is viewing this bus stop amongst many other locations in Assen.