City centre streets. Perfect for children on their own bicycles, if the city is truly planned for cycling. Cargo bikes shouldn't be required.

Something which people who visit Assen often notice is the lack of cargo-bikes. Somehow an expectation has grown up that cargo bikes are the way of transporting children by bicycle. Actually, children have their own legs and really should be able to use them to transport themselves as soon as they have the ability to ride a bicycle. This of course is only possible if the infrastructure is very very good, and over most of this city that is indeed the case. It wasn't always like this, but motor vehicles were removed from the centre several years ago and that left behind conditions where everyone is safe.

The photos below were taken within ten minutes a little after three o'clock on an afternoon a couple of weeks ago:

All ages and abilities served by one type of infrastructure. The youngest daughter in this family rides on the front of Mum's bike while her slightly older sister rides her own bike. They're heading directly towards the city centre. Directly towards the same streets as shown in the following photos. It's not unusual to see children this young cycling to the city centre. A comprehensive grid of very high quality infrastructure makes this possible.

The city centre streets are used by bicycle by people of all ages. The woman in the centre has more experience, but lots of experience isn't required to be safe here. The youngsters on the right are already able to make their way through the city without an adult to accompany them.

Of course some children are accompanied by parents. These two are heading towards a large square in the middle of the city which was once a car-park.

The youngest child sits on Dad's bike while her older sister rides her own bike.

Mother and son.

Young teenagers have complete independence. This group rode through together. Presumably the lessons for the day had ended. The light grey concrete on the left of the cyclists is textured to help blind people find their way. Paving like this is laid throughout the city centre.

Another mother and son. The mother's bike has a fold down child-seat on the back, which is possibly used sometimes for a younger sibling.

They're all moving in the same direction, but they're not all looking in the same direction. Cycling is very social in the city centre. People are always looking out for their friends and family. A lot of smiles, a lot of waves.

More youngsters riding home from school together. The city centre streets make a good route to many locations.

Teenagers attending secondary school (age 12 upwards) are likely to have further to travel. 

Eating while cycling and riding no hands. These are comparatively safe things to do when there are no cars on city centre streets.

Mum indicates a right turn. The children also will turn up onto the forgiving sloped kerb .

Teens again, riding sociably side by side.

Very young children ride on the back of their parents' bikes. But those who cycle on their own bike are often also very young.

Where have the cars gone ?

Red dots show the locations which feature in the photos
Traffic lights are no longer needed because through
traffic has been removed. The car park no longer exists.
There are now zebra crossings to make it easier for
pedestrians to cross the "road" for bikes.

The photos above show very typical views of the centre of Assen in 2014. Many other Dutch cities look similar. However, it wasn't always like this.

In the 1970s, the number of children being killed on the roads reached a peak. Cycling was in decline in the Netherlands at that time.

Assen, like other cities, was full of motor vehicles. Cars, buses and trucks dominated the city centre streets. Cyclists who remained on these streets were under pressure. The situation was much like that of many cities now. There was "no space for cycling infrastructure" and car parks were full.

If Assen had continued on the path which the city was on, it's unlikely that people would cycle so much in the city as they do now.

Pedestrian zone.
Cycling allowed
on given routes.
Note generous
delivery times.

The problems in the centre of the city were turned around by a second revolution which returned old streets which pre-date motor vehicles to people rather than allowing the problems due to allowing motor vehicles to dominate them to grow.

The city centre area is now a large pedestrian zone. What looks like a road in all the photos above (except the first one) is actually a stripe through the pedestrian zone on which cycling is permitted. This is a design which works very well because it is familiar. "Road" for bikes, "pavement" for pedestrians result in no clashes between cyclists and pedestrians within this pedestrianized area. Signage at each entrance to the pedestrian zone points out this status.

Cycling and walking are the most popular means of transport for shoppers in Assen and these are the modes which are best catered for in the city centre.

Of course it's not just the city centre which has cycling infrastructure. An extensive and fine-grained grid of high quality infrastructure stretches across the entire city so that no-one has to cycle in conditions which are not subjectively safe. This is the only way of making cycling accessible to everyone.

When our children were young we still
lived in the UK. The streets were not
safe enough for them to ride their own
bikes so we used this Ken Rogers trike
with child seats. It worked well, but
we wouldn't have needed it in Assen.

What about parents ?
In many places, people who didn't bother with a car before they had children find that they need one once they have children. Of course it is in many ways better if people switch to using cargo bikes to carry their children rather than using a car, however the experience of the children themselves is not so different if they're transported by a parent with a bicycle rather than being transported by a parent with a car.

A high percentage of parents using cargo bikes to transport their children is better than having the same parents driving cars, but while a growing number of cargo bikes might indicate a growing confidence amongst parents it should be seen as a step in the right direction but not as an end in itself.

There are quite a lot of cargo bikes in
Assen. They're used for many other
reasons than to transport children.

Why not cargo bikes ?
So long as they're used for carrying cargo, there's nothing wrong with cargo-bikes at all. There's also nothing wrong with them for carrying small children.

It is only when cargo bikes are seen as a solution for carrying children who are old enough to ride their own bikes (i.e. 4+) that this indicates a problem. The problem is not with the bikes or their riders but with the environment for cycling.

If parents don't think that the local cycling infrastructure is sufficiently safe for their children to have control over their own movement then this indicates that the infrastructure is sub-standard. Children should have conditions safe enough that they can have control over their own movement and not have to rely upon their parents for lifts, either by bike or by car.

Mother of three in Groningen

Where the cycling infrastructure is very good, cargo bikes are relatively rare and mostly used for carrying cargo. It's better for parents and for children if children can be given the freedom to control their own movement.

I'm not criticizing anyone for using a cargo bike to transport their children. People who do this in difficult environments should be applauded for making a positive choice which is not always rewarded by society. We made a similar choice when we lived in the UK and our children were small. We first used a tricycle and later moved on to trailerbikes (also uncommon in the Netherlands for the same reason). It was not always easy to do this because other parents could be quite critical and drivers were sometimes quite aggressive around our children.

It's not always so good as this in the Netherlands
Cities across the Netherlands vary in how easy it is for everyone to ride bicycles. For instance:

• Amsterdam has the lowest rate of cycling to school of any city in the Netherlands, closely followed by Den Haag and Rotterdam.
• Groningen has a marvellous centre, but hostile cycling conditions can be found a short distance north from the centre.
• Assen is also not perfect. In particular, a new dangerous junction south of the city centre makes access difficult for vulnerable people and recently there have been several design mistakes made in new infrastructure.

The Netherlands is still far and away the most successful country on earth at encouraging people to cycle, and at encouraging people to let their children cycle. Assen is a stand-out city even within the Netherlands. But I always warn that you should never assume that this country always gets everything right.

A truly high cycling modal share requires that everyone should be able to cycle everywhere. That is what true mass cycling is all about.

Our streets are too narrow for cycle paths

I've lost count of how often people have tried to convince me that their city's streets are too narrow to have cycling infrastructure. The three words "not enough space" are repeated as if they are a mantra.

It is often genuinely believed that Dutch towns were built with wider streets and that there is therefore more space here than in other countries. Of course, that's not true at all. If you look around an older city like Assen (over 750 years old) then you find many narrow streets just as you would with any older city in another country. Newer wider streets in the Netherlands are also similar in width to newer wider streets elsewhere. It's the modern day usage of the space which is different, not the width of the streets themselves.

Take a good look at the photo above which shows one of the streets in Assen in 2014. Quite clearly there's "not enough space" here now to accommodate motor vehicles. When people see streets like this then they often guess that there was never enough room and that therefore this street was always much as it is today.

However, that's not actually the case. Look back to 1957 and we find that this same street was completely different. There was an asphalt through road in this location, and it was quite a busy road which could accommodate large vehicles in both directions. While the gap between those buildings looks small, it is in fact just enough to accommodate this traffic so long as you don't mind that pedestrians must cross only at certain places and can walk safely only on one side of the street. Note that no separate space at all was allocated for safe cycling. Cyclists had to use the road along with trucks, buses and cars. There is of course no longer a bus route through this location.

1970s city centre street in Assen. No room for cycle-paths here either. Traffic lights were required to deal with the cars in this location. Cyclists were amongst the cars and pedestrians had little space.

I suspect that this is starting to sound like a familiar situation to some readers in other countries and it was certainly familiar to Dutch cyclists in the 1950s.

The same location in 2014. We don't need traffic lights any more because cars are no longer driven through here. Note how there is ample space for cyclists on a "road" for bikes separate from a wide pedestrian path, and that the pedestrian path has plenty of space on both sides for a textured surface for blind pedestrians.

An observer in the 1950s in the Netherlands might well have pointed out that this street had "not enough space" for a cycle-path at that time. i.e. exactly the same objection as people give about their streets now. And of course they'd be right if the streets were viewed as having to always manage the same combination of vehicles as was the case in 1950s Assen.

1960s. Pedestrians squeezed to the edge while a lone cyclist waits with drivers for a traffic light 

So where did the space for people, pedestrians and cyclists, come from ? It came from right underneath where motor vehicles used to be. A second revolution on Dutch streets was required to change things. A decision was made to effect real change. This was not limited to just a few streets, but spread across cities and even the entire nation. Traffic was redirected so that residential areas and the centres of cities could be reclaimed by people.

Now: Pedestrianized with good cycle access

It's worth reflecting on the fact that cycling was in decline in the Netherlands while streets were dominated by cars. It's not difficult to work out why. Transforming the streets reversed this decline. As you look at these photos, consider how convenient and how safe it was to cycle on the streets of Assen in the past vs. how convenient and safe it is today.

1960s: Main through routes for motor vehicles and cyclists alike

Now (2014): Still accessible by motor vehicle but very much a downgraded route. No longer usable as a through route by car so therefore few people drive here. Still a busy through route by bicycle, which no longer requires traffic lights.

Update 2016: Now upgraded once again. This is now part of Assen's central pedestrian zone which permits cycling. Allocated times for deliveries and and for the Wednesday and Saturday markets

Update 2016: Where trucks used to be driven on a main through route, children now play in the fountains

1940s: Major intersection, in this case busier than usual due to an event. Traffic stopped at a junction.

Now: A pleasant place to sit and have a drink. Bicycles flow freely here and it is no longer a bus route

1974: Assen city centre was a car park. The car park was often full.

Now: Assen city centre is a square with cycle parking and where events are held. There's no longer any need to have the streets leading to this area dominated by cars. Note that small children are free to cycle even in the city centre.

People often believe that Dutch cities somehow have more space than other countries. As you can see from these photos, it's simply not true. What happened in Assen and across the Netherlands was that planning on a large scale gave streets a defined purpose rather than all of them operating in a chaotic manner as through routes by car. Motor vehicles were not prioritized above all other transport but careful considerations were made of where they should go and where they should not. Busy roads still exist, but careful junction design removes conflict.

Streets where cyclists and pedestrians needed to go were transformed to exclude through motor traffic.

When ring roads were built the traffic was taken off the old main roads which became pleasant routes for bicycles. Crossings of the ring road were nearly always grade separated.

When a new route was required to take cyclists to the centre of a city from a new suburb, the original direct route was turned over to cyclists and the driving route took a required detour to traffic lights.

Drivers are now kept away from the city centre by a special type of one-way system leaving what were once the busiest city centre streets to cyclists and pedestrians. A similar network of one-way streets is used in residential areas.

Shops cater for cyclists with parking by the door, while car parks are by necessity larger and more remote.

Residential streets were treated in a
similar way, even the narrowest now
serving as bidirectional through routes
for bicycles while being made useful
for access only by car.

Together with an extensive grid of high quality cycle paths, these changes have resulted in nearly 100% segregation of cyclists from drivers. Cycling routes are largely unravelled from driving routes, resulting in lower noise, less danger and cyclists having the most direct routes and fastest journeys possible. This is what makes cycling extremely attractive to the entire population.

Of course it's not just Assen but every Dutch city which has done this and they have all been successful. Nothing stops other countries from making similar changes. There is no better time for other countries to start a similar transformation than today.

See the result of the transformation for yourself. We visit these locations on our study tours.

The city centre has changed enormously since this photo was taken in 1972. Infrastructure which was new or under construction at that time to accommodate endlessly more cars in the city centre was removed years ago.

"Nearly Car Free" areas

The Dutch term "autoluwe" refers to any place with few cars. There is no translation in regular use in English but I think we need one. I propose "Nearly Car Free" or NCF or a way of describing these areas. It's perhaps a little cumbersome, but it's descriptive and difficult to distort its meaning.

This "winkelerf" uses the same sign
as a woonerf, but the character of the
street is not like a woonerf. Children
don't play in the streets here. In
practice this works the same as
any autoluwe shopping street.

Woonerven (Home Zones) are Nearly Car Free but woonerven are residential areas. Shopping streets do not have the same character. While woonerven are not through routes by either car or bicycle and serve only those who live in the area, shopping streets have to allow access by the public.  Shopping streets should not have the same form as a residential area. The idea of Autoluwte goes back to the 1970s and it is common in very many town centres and smaller shopping areas across the entire country. Every town and city has areas like this and the centres of Assen and Groningen are not exceptions.

The video shows how this works on a fairly cold February afternoon (min -3 C, max +2 C) in Assen. There are a lot of cyclists and pedestrians but you won't see many moving cars. Many of the pedestrians have reached the centre of the city by bicycle. You can see their bikes parked everywhere in the video. Because there are very few moving cars there are also very few interactions with cars. This results in a high degree of subjective safety and makes it possible for everyone to feel safe when walking or cycling:


In the centre of Assen everyone cycles in safety. If you don't watch this video then you will probably not understand the blog post.
Nearly car-free streets like this feature all across the Netherlands. They're a great success.

Removal of railings

Note that anti-pedestrian chain railings were once installed on streets like this in the Netherlands in order to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road where it was most convenient to do so. They're gone now. Pedestrians can now cross at any point on a street which is no longer designed for the maximum convenience of motor vehicles.

A very common type of street
Almost all city centres in The Netherlands work in this way. Some streets are only for pedestrians, many allow cycling for access, those where automobiles are allowed are usually not useful as through routes.


Groningen also has nearly car free streets. As in Assen, this means that even small children can ride, and crash, their own bikes in the centre of the city, safely isolated from the danger of cars.
This is not "Shared Space"
Unfortunately, foreign observers often confuse NCF with the much newer, but much less successful idea called "Shared Space". This is unfortunate as they are actually diametrically opposed ideas.

"Shared Space" in Haren. Much through
traffic by car, conflict is promoted,
Cycling feels uncomfortable and
is discouraged.

While NCF removes motor vehicles in order to make cycling and walking more pleasant (an example of unravelling of routes), "Shared Space" seeks to achieve the same ends while keeping motor vehicle through traffic and forcing motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to "share" the streets on an equal footing. Simply because architectural features of the space have been changed, drivers are expected to behave in an unusually friendly manner towards pedestrians and cyclists for eternity. Those same architectural features are also supposed to give pedestrians and cyclists more confidence to make their way as vulnerable road users amongst a large volume of motorized traffic.

"Shared Space" in Haren.
It's really all about cars,
not about pedestrians and
cyclists.

This is of course ludicrous and it does not work. The Netherlands was the first to come up with the idea of Shared Space, but it is not popular here now. "Shared Spaces" in this country date from the early 2000s when the idea had its brief popularity and before people had seen the problems with it. They have been retrofitted with features such as pedestrian crossings, railings and signs because of course it turned out they were necessary in order that people would be able to do such things as cross the road.

In "Shared Space" areas, pedestrians run across the road and cyclists cycle amongst the pedestrians. Such areas do not have relaxing and pleasant streets as seen above in Assen and the many other places which have excluded cars.

The most effective way of civilizing town centres is to remove cars from them
Removing cars from streets is a very effective way of encouraging cyclists. However, this removal has to be almost total in order to make cycling attractive to the whole population.

Note also that "pedestrianized" areas in the Netherlands usually make it clear that they do not exclude bicycles.

We are running an open Cycling Study Tour in May 2013. Book a place if you wish to see how what we describe on this blog works in real life.

Well before it was applied to streets in the Netherlands, the underlying principle of Shared Space was laid out very clearly by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.

100% segregation of bikes and cars

City centre street, no cars allowed. Clear signage gives
loading times for deliveries

Again and again I read comments of the form "even in Holland not all parts of rides are segregated" or talk of "similar road exposure" in the UK vs. the Netherlands. I've been accused of making out that the cycle-path network in the Netherlands is more extensive than it actually is.

Such comments are based on a misunderstanding of the differences between the way that roads and streets are designed and used in the two countries.

"Shared" street ? Not on an equal basis. It's a through route
for bikes but access only for cars.

The misunderstanding usually arises because someone notices the simple statistic which says that while the Netherlands has about 130000 km of roads, there are only about 35000 km of cycle-path.

This sounds, of course, like there is a serious short-fall of segregated cycle paths.

The first misconception is that people look at these figures as if those 130000 km of roads are exactly the same as roads in their own country and assume that cyclists find themselves in conditions which are like in their own country. That's not correct.

The second misconception is to assume that because there are a quarter as many km of cycle-paths as roads that Dutch cyclists spend 3/4 of their time riding on roads. That's also not correct.

City centre streets are busy, but with bikes instead of cars

Quite simply, these are the wrong ways to look at those figures.

Dutch people do cycle on a mixture of cycle-paths and roads. However, this does not mean that cyclists in the Netherlands spend much of their time mixing with motor vehicles.

Over the last few decades, the Netherlands has unravelled the networks of car and bicycle routes. If you compare routes for the same journey by bicycle and by car, then in very many cases you will find that the two routes are very different to one another.

A child rides a bike in the middle of a bicycle street.
This was once a busy through road by car. Now access
only by car / through route by bike.

I've demonstrated this principle several times on this blog (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8). In some cases the separation of routes is achieved by building of cycle-paths. However, in many others it is achieved by removing cars from the roads. Sometimes when new roads are built, the old road can serve cyclists very well.

These days, very many roads and streets are simply no longer part of the route network for cars. They still allow access by car, so that deliveries can be made and people who live along them may reach their own homes by car should they wish, but they are not through routes by car. As a result, such streets are absolutely not dominated by cars. A cyclist using a road on such a route has much the same feelings about safety as someone using a cycle-path.

It is only when cycling doesn't feel like an extreme sport that it can become so popular as it is in the Netherlands.

Residential street. No cycle-path required as it's not a
through road for cars. Residential parking, but these cars
rarely move.

Residential streets in the Netherlands rarely work as through roads for cars, even if they were originally designed to do so. This makes them excellent places to cycle or walk with a high degree of comfort and safety.

In some cases, this has been formalized by creation of woonerven, but many of the same characteristics can be found in residential streets which are not woonerven.

Woonerven have a speed limit of "walking pace". However, they are not the only roads with low speed limits. In fact, over 40000 km of roads in the Netherlands, a third of the total, have a speed limit of 30 km/h or lower. This lowering of speeds on minor roads has been done to the maximum possible extent. It is now difficult to achieve more safety by this method  as roads which remain through routes for motor vehicles are not effectively calmed simply by changing the speed limit.

In a village, primary school children cycle home
unaccompanied on streets which are not through routes
for cars. From an average age of 8.6 children
travel unaccompanied

The photos give examples of different roads and streets on which cyclists have the same feeling of subjective safety, and similar degree of actual safety, as on a cycle-path.

These principles are not used only in towns. They are also common in villages and in the countryside.

Minor streets in villages don't work as through roads so drivers don't use those to "rat run" either. This makes it possible for quite young children to cycle to school and back unaccompanied.

Between towns in the Netherlands you can often find two roads next to each other. One for cars, the other for cyclists, agricultural vehicles and access to homes. Sometimes the route for drivers isn't visible from the route for cyclists.

Route signs in a village. Only one direction offered by
car, lots by bike.

Even in the open countryside you can ride long distances by bike on "roads" and rarely see any cars at all. Such roads only make a through network by bicycle because they are joined by cycle-paths. For drivers, many roads in the countryside offer nothing more than long detours, dead-ends, and roads with rough surfaces which don't get cleared in the winter.

Unravelling, or separating, the routes taken by motorists and cyclists has many advantages, including a reduction of noise and exhaust fumes as well as the increase in safety which comes due to a reduction in the number of chances for conflict.

Cyclists achieve subjective safety when they do not have to mix with cars, not specifically because they are on a cycle-path. Roads which have (almost) no cars on them do not require a cycle-path to parallel that road. A remarkably large proportion of roads in the Netherlands are, for all practical purposes, free of cars. This is just one reason 35000 km of cycle-path does not represent a short-fall compared with 130000 km of road.

Those roads on which there is an appreciable volume of traffic can be relied upon always to have segregated cycle-paths alongside. By this manner, very nearly full segregation of modes is possible when cycle-paths have a total length which is "only" about a quarter of the total length of the roads.

While cyclists are segregated from traffic in every photo in this blog post, this is the only photo in which this was achieved by building a cycle-path. This is a through road for cars and is used by a higher number of motor vehicles, so it needs a cycle-path.

The title of this post is deliberately provocative. However, it's not inaccurate. This has been my experience: When cycling in the Netherlands, you are almost always segregated from traffic, whether by means of a cycle-path, or otherwise. I have ridden many tens of thousands of kilometres in the Netherlands but not yet found anywhere that felt so dangerous for cycling as did my daily commute in Cambridge. My total experience of "road rage" in this country remains just one minor incident in nearly five years.

This map, which accompanied the printed version of this article from the Fietsberaad about Enschede, shows how main routes for cycling have in large part been unravelled from main routes for motor vehicles in that city. In the article it is explained that the absolute maximum number of motor vehicles per day on these routes should 2500 - i.e. a number that you might find on a residential street. More than this and the route starts to feel unpleasant and threatening for cyclists.

This unravelling of the cycle network from the motor vehicle network is taking place all across the Netherlands. Where there are higher levels of motor vehicle usage, even within residential areas, the public shows a preference for separated cycle-paths.

Many cyclists who visit the Netherlands on holiday remain oblivious to concepts like this. It is common that people who visit on holiday report that they had few problems cycling in the Netherlands despite there being cycle-paths for only part of their journey. Often this is ascribed to better driver behaviour, perhaps through better training. However, people who make such statements have simply not noticed this "hidden" policy. Roads here are not the same as roads in other countries. Segregation of modes takes place even where there are no cycle-paths. Sustainable safety principles require that conflict is reduced and that is what results in the much better subjective safety when cycling.

Our unique experience of having lived, cycled and campaigned in both the UK and the Netherlands has led to the programme of our three day study tours in which we transfer as much as possible of this knowledge. The tours are hands-on. Or, rather, they really are tours. You use the facilities for yourself, accompanied so that we can explain about what you are experiencing. To find out more, please book a tour.

It's not a substitute for a tour, but to get a flavour of what this is like in practice, please watch the following video. It shows a complete, normal journey by bike in the Netherlands. In this case, nothing more than the route from a fairly close by shopping centre to our home:


This post originally referred to 29000 km of cycle-path in the Netherlands. However, this was an older figure. There are now reckoned to be about 35000 km of cycle-paths.

This blog post introduced the term "unravelling" into the English language as a translation of the Dutch term "ontvlecthten". There was no previous English translation of this term. Others have picked up my translation while an academic paper in 2013 used the term "unbundling" instead to represent the same concept.