This video shows ten of the bus stop bypasses for bikes in Assen. They're not especially good "cherry picked" examples but simply the ten nearest my home. Most are alongside normal roads, one is alongside a bus road. All are within a couple of km and they were videoed in half an hour early last Friday morning. They're entirely typical of normal cycling infrastructure quality in this area. Note that these are all designed to be convenient for cyclists to use. They do not narrow or have raised sections to slow cyclists because cyclists are already slow compared with motor vehicles and we need to encourage efficient cycling not to slow cyclists down.
Large and small vehicles can never "share" equally. In order to encourage true mass cycling, where the entire population uses a bicycle for a proportion of their journeys, conditions for riding must be subjectively safe. Where bicycles mix with motor vehicles, this feeling of safety is reduced. Where bicycles mix with large motor vehicles it is reduced further.
Don't combine buses and bikes
Dutch bus-stop with no obvious bypass.
Bicycles don't travel on this road at all
but are behind the noise barrier. Watch this video to see how it works.
Buses and bicycles should never be combined in one lane. This is not only because of the subjective safety issue, but also because the two modes move in fundamentally incompatible ways. Cyclists try to maintain a constant speed because this maximises efficiency (greater efficiency makes riding a bike being practical over a longer distance and reduces the time taken - further aided in the Netherlands by cycling routes being unravelled from motor routes and avoiding traffic lights). Buses, on the other hand, stop regularly to take up and let off passengers.
Where bus and bicycle infrastructure is combined on a long road it often leads to leapfrogging as buses repeatedly overtake bikes and cyclists are given a choice either to wait behind the bus, wasting time and making cycling less attractive, or overtaking the bus while it is stopped, which can be dangerous for the cyclist.
Decades old and unimproved, the least
good example of a bicycle bypass in
Assen still has a place for passengers
to stand before crossing the cycle-path.
New-build doesn't look like this.
Segregate bikes from buses and also from passengers
Bus passengers also clash with cyclists. If a cyclist tries to pass the bus on the "wrong" side between the stop and the bus then this puts cyclists directly into conflict with those who are boarding or alighting the bus. This is avoided in the Netherlands as shown in the video above, though you'll note that in the oldest example, pre-dating modern practice, cyclists are routed on the wrong side of the bus shelter which could cause conflict. No modern bus stop would be designed like this, with conflict built in, but note that even in this example there is somewhere to stand after leaving the bus and before crossing the cycle-path.
Why doesn't Britain copy the best examples ?
After making the video above and while writing this piece I discovered that new bus stops claiming to deal with the problem that the Dutch were had already tackled more than 30 years ago were being introduced in London. Unfortunately, instead of copying from the best tried and tested examples, attempts have been made to design something new. Time will tell whether these are good examples, but there would seem to be reasons to expect them not to be as successful as normal Dutch practice:
New design for London. This will cause clash between cyclists and bus passengers. Why didn't they copy from best practice in NL ?
Bus passengers clashing with
cyclists in Royal College St
(Thanks to @AlternativeDfT)
New bus-stop for Royal College Street, London. It was obvious from the design that conflict should be expected here between cyclists and bus passengers because bikes are being routed between the bus and the bus stop without even a small place for bus passengers to stand between the bus that they're entering or leaving and the bicycle path with through traffic.
Also note that at just two metres wide, the bicycle lanes shown here are narrower than any of the examples in Assen. The high kerbs and the planters between the cycle-lanes and road reduce the safely usable width of the facility.
Even the oldest example shown in my video from Assen is 2.3 m in width. That's on a relatively quiet residential access road and it is just one small weak link in a very dense grid of high quality cycling facilities within a small city. It deals with far fewer cyclists than could be the case in a larger city with fewer facilities.
(a few days later, The Alternative Department for Transport blog included an interesting blog post about how this bus-stop has worked out in practice)
Another compromised design for London. Sharp bends on the cycle-path which is not wide enough. Opened several months after this blog post was written and immediately caused problems due to bad design. Why doesn't London copy best practice from the Netherlands ?
Dutch example from 1981. Not angular
and you could expect the cycle-path
to be of usable width.
From the picture it initially looked like this example could turn out better than Royal College Street as there is at least supposed to be somewhere for passengers to stand as they leave the bus. In that sense, it's similar to 30 year old Dutch designs. Similarity only goes skin deep, though, as the illustration shows an overly angular design and this could make it difficult to ride around easily, quickly and safely. There also appear to be dangerous high kerbs. It's not obvious why these kerbs are necessary at all, but they could at least be safe like these ones. Lastly, the plans for this cycle-path again suggested it would be just two metres wide.
It can be difficult to pass other cyclists safely within just two metres and if the route is well used this will be a problem. Given that "superhighways" in London are few and far between and that even with the low cycling modal share of London there is a huge population to draw cyclists from, this route probably will be well used.
The real bus stop bypass in London
under construction. "barely 1 m wide"
(Thanks to @AsEasyAsRiding)
Unfortunately, it's not actually been built even two metres wide. Mark Treasure tells me that it's "barely 1m wide at narrow point". A one metre wide cycle-path, with a post in it which narrows its effective width further, deep kerbs either side and passing a bus stop where bus passengers may or may not be aware of an approaching cyclist is very very far from best practice so far as bus stop bypasses are concerned.
The idea of a bypass is to make cycling convenient. It should not cause cyclists to slow down or place them in danger. It should not cause conflict between cyclists and bus passengers. It should also not cause frustrated cyclists to use the road in order to bypass the bypass.
(Hackney Cyclist wrote a very good blog post giving more details of the HS2 route extension)
"40 years behind" is a choice London is "40 years behind" by choice not by accident. Even now, after supposedly having "gone Dutch", the city is still designing and building inferior infrastructure as seen in the two examples above.
This simply isn't good enough.
Why is London still not learning from the best examples ? Why is the city still trying to find its own novel ways to solve problems which were identified decades ago in the Netherlands and the solutions to which have since been refined to a very high standard ?
Go North, find an even worse idea...
An amusing blog post from The People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire reminded me of another idea for passing buses which has appeared in Scotland recently. The rightly much criticized "Nice Way Code" suggests that cyclists should never pass buses on the left and on the right only "if you must".
Sadly, the "Nice Way Code" campaign has consumed a considerable fraction of the not very generous funding for cycling in Scotland. Instead of making it easy for bikes to pass buses safely and without conflict, they're using cycling money to tell cyclists not to pass buses.
This is just one of the many errors made by the "Nice Way Code", an organisation which sadly is backed by both CTC and Sustrans amongst other organisations who really should have known better.
Campaigners need to campaign effectively.
There is also excitement this morning about the British government having announced the "largest ever investment in cycling". This is apparently a figure of 77 million pounds to be spread amongst eight cities "in an effort to put Britain on a level footing with countries [...] such as [...] the Netherlands".
Unfortunately, this sum of money isn't nearly enough to achieve that aim. The Netherlands spends roughly €30 per person per year, every year in order to improve the cycling infrastructure and continue to expand the network. The total funding available over the next two years is about £148 million and this will allow investment in just eight cities to be at around £10 per head for just two years. This low figure of £10 per head is the figure which CTC actually asked for a few months ago and it's also the figure which will be debated in parliament on the 2nd of September.
Why is there so much complacency amongst campaigners ? Why such low ambitions ? Why do they offer support for inadequate policies and why do they not fight for what is really needed ? When you are already decades behind you cannot catch up by doing a third as much so why are campaigners putting their names to calls to do so little that the UK will inevitably remain in "dark ages" so far as cycling is concerned ? Low aspirations will not result in mass cycling and campaigners working with such aspirations are very much part of the reason why the UK is behind.
"Armadillos" in Assen. These have sometimes featured on the study tour as an example of what not to do. They get
bumped by passing vehicles.
Update January 2014
The "armadillos" in Royal College Street are a failure. If we had been consulted we could have told TfL in advance that this would happen. It's not something you find often in the Netherlands because it doesn't really work. There are just a few old examples like that shown in the photo on the right. When copying from the Netherlands it's important to look for good examples.
This is not a good example, it's one of those things that you should not copy. Probably the oldest cycle-path in Assen. It works OK in this location because it is alongside a residential area (apartment blocks) and there are very few vehicles turning across the cycle-path. But in time this will be replaced (it was supposed to have happened in 2010).
Update March 2014
The "Armadillos" shaken loose over the last few months by large vehicles which have been accessing a site on this road have been re-fitted and broken examples replaced. Much tidier now.
You'll see from the photo that the cycle-path is generous enough that it doesn't feel cramped and also that cars pass at a reasonable distance. Nevertheless, this is outdated infrastructure. We were originally told there would be a proper cycle-path in this location by 2009.
Each Assen concrete block "Armadillo" is 1 metre long, 25 cm wide and 12 cm tall. When some were loose, I tried picking one up. It was heavier than I thought I could lift without damaging my back. These are not the insubstantial plastic used elsewhere. Nevertheless, this is not adequate.
Also see Hackney Cyclist for more and The Alternative Department for Transport for more about Royal College Street. This post was updated to include the words "floating bus stop" because this newly invented term has become commonly used to refer to bus stop bypasses.
In its proposals for the Olympic Park in London, the London Cycling Campaign has produced some very nice glossy looking computer mock-ups of their vision for this enormous new sports facility.
On behalf of the cyclists of London, The LCC is asking for three metre wide bidirectional cycle-paths for routes past and through the facility.
Assen reality. A 3.3 m wide
cycle-path leads to a small
sports centre in a new suburb
In the second picture, the bidirectional cycle path looks barely two metres wide. It is also not clear how the guy in black is supposed to make a safe right turn at this junction to head towards the stadium.
Last year, the LCC was pushed by its membership into asking for Dutch style infrastructure. Unfortunately, they still don't really understand what they are asking for and are still not asking for anywhere near enough. This has not stood in the way of making demands which are often rather inadequate or of producing glossy pictures to illustrate those demands.
I think it's instructive to compare with a typical small sports facility here in Assen, which is itself a fairly typical small Dutch town. Other sports facilities in this city and across the country are served in much the same way.
Cycle-path past the same new suburb's sports centre. 4 metres wide and well separated from the road. No problems here with making turns. Note that the road, with a single lane in each direction, is one of just two entrances by car for a development of 9000 homes. There are many routes by bicycle.
Comparison table:
London
Assen
Population
8 M
67000
Pop served by facility
7 billion. The Olympics is an international event.
It's not just in new developments in the Netherlands or in Assen that cycling is a normal way to reach sport facilities. I took this in 2007 outside a local swimming pool in Roermond, a town in the south of the country. Britain is still planning for lower a lower cycling modal share in new developments than the Netherlands was planning for thirty years ago. To achieve change, campaigners in the UK need to have higher aspirations.
A year later...
The Olympics has been and gone in London, and the mess left behind in the Olympic park area doesn't even slightly resemble anything the Dutch would build or what was shown in the promotional video. See Hackney Cyclist's blog about it.
Having low aspirations like the LCC and other British campaign groups, does not result in progress. Rather, it helps to keep the UK "40 years behind".
Yes, there's someone walking their dog by bike in the second photo. This is not unusual in the Netherlands. Will "Love London, Go Dutch" result in the same happening all across London ?
Want to know more about the differences between the UK and the Netherlands ? We've lived in and ridden many tens of thousands of km in both countries. This gives us a unique insight which we condense into three days of study tour.
Cyclists disappearing into the mist in a park in
Cambridge
Cambridge in the UK is sometimes held up as an example for other cities to follow.
The city generally claims a cycling rate of about 25%. However, this is a rate for commuters only, including students, and not the proportion of all journeys which are made by bike. Estimates of the percentage of journeys by bike for all purposes are harder to find, and often hover around 18-20%. In a rather glowing article in the Guardian earlier this year it was claimed that "one in five" journeys are by bike.
This is not bad at all for Britain. In fact, Cambridge's modal share for cyclists is almost certainly the highest in the English speaking world. That's one of the reasons why we moved to the city in 1991.
We lived in Cambridge for 16 years and we wouldn't have stayed so long if it were not a pleasant place to live. However, the conditions for cycling are really only so-so. The reasons for Cambridge's relatively high cycling rate are unusual, specific to the city, and not easy to copy elsewhere.
What's happened since we left ?
We visited Cambridge briefly in October to visit some friends. After becoming used to the rapid progress and dramatic changes to cycling infrastructure in Assen in four years, it was interesting to see that essentially nothing much had changed for Cambridge cyclists in four years. Speed limits remain high, cycle-lanes remain narrow, cyclists are still expected to share lanes with buses and few residential roads are designed to limit rat-running.
Cambridge cyclists still find themselves riding on rough surfaces in narrow cycle lanes on busy through roads to the left of obstructions in the middle of the road in places where the speed limit drops from 40 mph to 30 mph (64 km/h to 48 km/h). It's not much fun if a bus or truck passes as you come to pinch points like this:
We also went along the much celebrated Gilbert Road. This looked less like somewhere which had recently received attention and more like somewhere which still desperately needed work. It still relies on narrow on-road cycle-lanes to separate cyclists from motor vehicles.
Cambridge still feels like a city where quite a lot of people cycle despite the conditions, and not one where the entire population is invited to cycle because of the conditions.
Just behind the "cyclists dismount"
sign at the entrance to this school in
Cambridge you find Sheffield stands
have been repurposed to stop
pedestrians from walking where cars
are being driven. This is surely not what
what the Dutch company which made
the stands intended them to be used for.
Students cycle a lot in Cambridge
Cambridge is an atypical city, with unusual demographics. Cycling is largely split along demographic lines.
While Cambridge's population is around 130000, the twouniversities cater for about 43000 students, making up a substantial proportion of the total population.
Students are a particularly easy demographic to attract to cycling. They're young adults, well educated, more confident than average and have to be fairly careful with money. Cambridge is not alone in having a higher proportion of trips by bike because it is a university city. In fact, the top cycling cities in most countries are university cities. This includes Groningen in the Netherlands, Copenhagen in Denmark, Davis and Portland in the USA as well as Cambridge in the UK.
It is not possible to copy the extra proportion of trips by bike due to the large student population to other similar cities which don't have a large student population.
Enough students are banned from keeping a car in Cambridge that if just half of them made all their journeys by bike, no-one else would need to cycle at all to achieve the headline cycling modal share of the city.
Who else cycles in Cambridge ?
Cycling in Cambridge also benefits from the fact that many students remain in the city after graduating in order to work for one of the high-tech companies in the area. Also, many people move to the city to work for these companies after graduating at other institutions.
The city is home to a higher than usual proportion of graduates and many people have noted that those who form the cycling habit at University tend to continue to cycle afterwards, especially at the start of their careers when they're still young and don't yet have responsibility for children. Cambridge is a very young city due to the recent graduates as well as the students.
Cambridge Cycling Campaign committee members are also predominantly from the "University and high-tech" end of local society1. Many members of the campaign are the same2. Cyclists in Cambridge are predominantly people who identify themselves as "cyclists", or at least are a member of the university and high-tech demographic that cycles. They've taken the unusual step of doing something which the majority of the British population now never does: riding a bike.
This is great, but with such a source of commuting cyclists, it's surprising that it is still only a quarter of journeys to work that are made by bike.
Just as it is not possible to copy the extra proportion of trips by bike due to the large student population to other similar cities without a large student population, so it is not possible to copy the extra proportion of trips by ex-students who kept the habit of cycling.
Note that I am not saying that everyone who cycles in Cambridge is either a student or works in a high-tech company as of course there are some cyclists who fit into neither of those groups. However very many of those who cycle in Cambridge are part of one of those two groups.
People from families which have long been in the city and who are connected with neither the university nor the high-tech businesses and who you might classify as "working class" don't cycle at a particularly higher rate than they would in any other British town. Amongst the "town" people, car usage is very much higher and riding a bike can be seen as a reflection of being poor.
That people linked with the university and high tech industries are more likely than average to cycle does not have much influence on the "town" people as they don't identify with that other group. Rather, cycling has become one of the ways that the two groups, of "local people" and "students" can be identified. As I cycled in the city, drivers shouting abuse (something which happened all to often) would often refer to me as a "student" or as "poor". They were not interested in that I never studied in Cambridge and only moved there in my mid 20s to take quite well paid jobs for computer companies. To them, I was definitely "gown". I made this clear to them in part by cycling.
It's not just cycling. The two sides of the town / gown divide have different priorities in other ways too. For instance, take the shops in Cambridge. The city has high retail rents. As a result, shops which sell low cost goods are relatively few and far between. Campaigns have been run by against new supermarkets opening in "gentrified" areas, even though many of the locally born people who live in the same area value the possibility of cheaper food and other bargains which the new shops may bring rather higher than having boutique stores which sell organic produce for higher prices.
The results of a social divide
The divide affects attitudes of both sides. It is part of the cause of a relatively high level of intolerance experienced by cyclists in the city even though cyclists are not such a small minority as they might be in other parts of the UK.
When cyclists experience trouble from drivers in Cambridge, the result tends to be quite similar to other parts of the country. They are unlikely to get much sympathy from the police or the public. I once had an experience of a Cambridge taxi driver driving into me deliberately as I rode along a counter-flow cycle-lane (very near where something similar happened to this cyclist). This driver also turned his vehicle around, chased me up the street, got out of his taxi and assaulted me. When I went to the police, the very first words spoken by the officer who interviewed me were "cyclists cause a lot of problems in Cambridge". The local newspaper in Cambridge quite often reports conflicts, with van drivers, runners, bus-drivers and youths all finding a reason to dislike cyclists.
It's a huge contrast with the Netherlands where cycling is something that the whole of society finds to be normal and there is no social divide between cyclist and non-cyclist. The response is very different should anything untoward happen to a cyclist.
The Cambridge Cycling Campaign was formed when shopping streets in the centre of the city, essential as part of many direct and relatively safe routes across the city, were closed to cyclists. This was a popular change amongst non-cyclists, and was possible to implement only because the public at large didn't cycle, didn't understand cycling and didn't support cycling as a means of transport. These streets have only partly been restored as cycling routes, and some of the one-way restrictions on them, which make sense only when driving, still apply to bikes. They are occasionally enforced with much publicity.
These restrictions in the centre make cycling routes in Cambridge less direct and force cyclists sometimes to have to use busy and dangerous roads.
The local newspaper in Cambridge often includes the same kind of articles and letters from outraged non-cyclists (red lights, one way streets, pavement cycling) which you see in other areas in Britain. These letters, and the attitudes which go with them, are unknown in the Netherlands. The conditions which cause cyclists to ignore red lights, ride the wrong way down one-way streets and ride on the pavement are to a large extent eliminated in the Netherlands by infrastructure designed to benefit cyclists, so they are not an enforcement issue. The occurrence of these problems are symptoms of a greater planning and design problem.
What about the infrastructure ?
I'm not the only person to have noted that cycling happens in Cambridge not because of the infrastructure but despite it.
There are a few high points. The paths through the parks, though narrow, shared with pedestrians and often crowded, are relatively pleasant to ride through. Recently a good new path opened which heads North from the Northern edge of the City to some villages. Also there is a nice cycle path about 600 m long which heads to the University buildings on the West (it was chosen for the cover of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign's 2016 document).
However, the better examples of infrastructure are not joined up. You can't make any journey only using these few good paths away from motorists. This is quite typical for the UK. Cyclists spend much of their time on roads which are "shared" with large numbers of cars. Also, the bans on cycling in shopping streets in the centre which originally were the catalyst for the formation of the local cycling campaign group in 1993 have only been partly repealed, leaving a useful link from the centre to the east unavailable to cyclists.
Cyclists go left, pedestrians go right. Carlton Way in Cambridge
Much of the separate provision that exists, is woefully inadequate, such as the short length along Carlton Way where a narrow path is shared with pedestrians for bidirectional travel. It's only a couple of hundred metres long but in this short length presents an array of problems to cyclists including a rough surface, having to give way twice, bollards, and an exciting point where pedestrians and cyclists have to cross each other's paths on a sharp corner before after another 90 degree bend cyclists are ejected into a side-road.
Kings Hedges estate in Cambridge.
It's far from perfect, with bumpy
narrow paths and bad sight lines.
However, these paths do provide a
traffic-free route to a primary school,
swimming pool, and a few shops.
In the 1970s, a reasonable effort was made in the UK to create housing developments designed around people rather than around cars. The Kings Hedges estate in Cambridge is an example of this. However, these early starts have not been maintained nor developed. They also have not been linked up with other newer developments.
There was also an attempt to build good cycling provision in the East of the city. However, this also doesn't really link up with anything in a useful way.
Newer developments are far worse in design. No longer are there significant green spaces, no longer is there an attempt to provide a network of motor traffic free paths.
"The Quills" - a new housing estate which offers this view of
the world. The result of trying to limit car ownership by
limiting car parking is to make car parking more of a problem.
I blogged before about "The Quills", a small new estate dominated by cars, and designed with no good route to cycle to the centre of the city without riding with those cars.
Also I wrote in the past about another new development, the multiply named Arbury Camp / Arbury Park / Orchard Park. The plans for this place were alarming enough, but the reality was worse. It caused many problems for cyclists before it had even been built, even if you were merely trying to pass nearby.
Outside the city
A few cycle-paths stretch outside the city of Cambridge, but they don't provide anything near to a comprehensive network of efficient routes. The local newspaper recently reported that another cyclist had been injured riding along the A14, a road with a 70 mph ( 113 km/h ) speed limit which might well have been classified as a motorway in other countries:
The A14. A motorway in all but name with a 70 mph speed limit and no hard shoulder. This runs across the Northern edge of the city and provides the most direct route to some nearby villages. Some people actually do cycle here, but we've known for a long time that it's not safe. View Larger Map
Britain does not provide convenient and safe routes paralleling "motorways" like this, and cycling on an A-road like this is legal in the UK. You might wonder why anyone would choose to use such roads. The answer is simple. Doing so avoids a long detour along busy narrowcountry lanes with 60 mph ( 96 km/h ) speed limits and blind corners.
Conclusion
The cause of the higher than average cycling rate in Cambridge is not something that can be replicated in other British cities. Where could you convince a third of the population to agree to be banned from owning a car ?
On the other hand, what makes cycling attractive in Dutch cities, including here in Assen, could be replicated in British cities if only the will existed to ask for it. What has been done is very simple. Long term planning is key - the same policies have been followed for many years. They've followed the principles of sustainable safety and have created conditions which:
Keep cyclists away from cars absolutely as much as possible.
This is what is needed to make infrastructure a draw for cycling rather than a hindrance.
We had three different houses in and around Cambridge, and it's notable that in none of them were any of our neighbours particularly enthusiastic cyclists. In fact, most of our neighbours never rode a bike in the entire time we lived in those houses. This is in sharp contrast with where we live now in Assen. All of our current neighbours cycle for at least some of their journeys. Due to cycling having been made the preserve of the many instead of a hobby activity for a few, there are few "non-cyclists" and no anti-cycling sentiment.
Assen is in most respects is quite normal by Dutch standards. Car parking here is the cheapest in the country, and no attempt has been made to limit the ownership of cars. New build homes here have adequate car parking as well as compulsory cycle parking. There is also no university in this city to boost cycling numbers. These things could be seen as disadvantages where encouraging cycling are concerned, but the cycling rate here is more than double that of Cambridge. More importantly, the people who cycle here come from the whole spectrum of society and are not taken predominantly from a particular demographic.
Cambridge
Assen
A video from Cambridge which has become popular on youtube:
Many people who view this think little more than to note that there are quite a few cyclists. Let's look deeper into it. The most dense cycle usage in Cambridge is in a few streets in the centre like this one, on routes used by many students. The conditions for cycling in this location are neither especially pleasant nor especially safe. The bulk of the cyclists that you see in the video are students. They ride for the reasons that students everywhere ride, but there are more of them in Cambridge in large part because they are not allowed to keep a car.
What can be done ?
Several unfortunate things have happened recently. The local government scrapped the much needed post of cycling officer and also while Cambridge was briefly in receipt of extra funds as a Cycling City, this initiative has also been scrapped. Investment in cycling in Cambridge has never been adequate.
It's important not to lose focus and not to be complacent. Cambridge's leading position in the UK, and in the English speaking world, is the result of unusual and fortunate circumstance, not of cyclists being particularly well provided for. With investment in decent cycling infrastructure, the city has the potential to do much better. For this reason, I was recently surprised to see a proposal to rename the main campaign group in the city with a more passive tone. Your work is not finished yet.
People elsewhere who look to Cambridge are looking in the wrong direction. The things that make cycling popular in Cambridge are not easily duplicated elsewhere. Instead of looking to one town which is exceptional for reasons that cannot be duplicated you would be better off looking to the Netherlands where a far higher cycling rate has been achieved even in towns with none of these special circumstances. The difference is the infrastructure above all else.
The chart on the right. Anna's research confirms that there is a correlation between cycling in Cambridge and affluence - precisely the point that I make above re "town vs. gown".
Note that Oxford and Hackney have similar demographic bubbles in which cycling is correlated with the lifestyle of a self selected and relatively prosperous section of the population.
A personal note about Hackney
I used to visit Hackney quite often just over twenty years ago. I met my (then) future wife, Judy, in Hackney as she lived there for a time. Hackney was then a very different place demographically to how it is now. We have to recognize the effect of social change on peoples' chosen modes of transport.
Hackney has been through a period of gentrification. The population is now more similar to Cambridge and Oxford than it used to be and that's the primary reason why cycling has grown in that area. The infrastructure is still dreadful and Hackney still achieves nothing like its potential for cycling.
January 2015 update
Since I wrote this piece, people from Cambridge have often claimed that great changes have been made since we left the UK. Their claims have not as yet stood up to much scrutiny. I made a very short work trip to Cambridge for work this month, arriving by coach and leaving by train. As a result Most of my view of the city on this visit was through a coach or taxi window. I saw a good part of my old commuting route from a village south of Cambridge, and two different routes to the Science Park. Nothing much had changed. Cycling remains difficult in Cambridge. In response to the conditions, many of those people who do cycle dress like canaries. I took some photos while waiting for buses and trains:
This cyclist decided he'd had enough of the road at this point.
A very narrow cycle-lane leading into to a bus stop. Those who can turn left here, mounting the kerb and riding through a park.
Making short connections by riding on the pavement is an understandable reaction to the conditions.
I was only here for a few minutes. Quite a lot of people prefer the pavement here.
I took the photo at the top in 1998 as I cycled to work in Cambridge in the fog. Jesus Green is one of the nicer bits of Cambridge for cycling, but those shared use paths were always too narrow and too bumpy, and access to them is not what it could be.
1 This is not in any way a criticism of the campaign committee. These are wonderful people giving freely of their time to try to encourage cycling. Cambridge Cycling Campaign is very well organised and the people in it try to do a good job. I was once a member of the committee myself. However, like everyone else their ideas are inevitably shaped by their position in society. 2Cycle campaigners around the world often point out that cyclists are on average better educated than non-cyclists or that they have on average higher incomes. This is all very well, but it also reinforces the difference between "town" and "gown".
A history of exaggeration
Readers from elsewhere may be amused to hear that back in the 1990s, the local council in Cambridge produced literature which said that Cambridge was second only to Amsterdam. This was of course a smokescreen. Portland now makes the same claim. It's still a smokescreen. Indeed, Portland is boasting even more. They only have about 5% of commutes by bike which isn't close even to Cambridge, let alone average Dutch cities. We have to always be wary of nonsense like this. There is a lot of exaggeration about and it's not helpful.
For some time I've been using the tag "excuses" on some posts on my blog. However, it's a bit ambiguous and even though I've explained what I mean a few times, some people still think I mean something else.
So, here I am trying to set the record straight. To me, these aren't so much excuses that individuals use to explain why they don't personally cycle, but excuses made even by existing cyclists for why it is that they think their country is different to the Netherlands. It seems rather odd to me that even people who campaign for cycling in their own country would prefer to make an excuse for why it doesn't happen rather than work towards a higher level of cycling, but that's how it is. It's easy to fall into a trap of believing that there is a fundamental difference in the people, the geography, the weather, or whatever.
Busting these myths is a part of what needs to happen if cycle campaigners elsewhere are to start to campaign more effectively. Asking for half measures won't do it. You need to ask for the best possible conditions for cycling if you want cycling to become a mass activity as it is in the Netherlands.
Recently I've started to refer to these as "myths and excuses", and included links to each type of "excuse" on the right hand side of the blog.
Here they are again, with longer descriptions. Click on the provided links either in or after each topic to find the references for each statement made here.
Our streets are too narrow. This one comes up all the time. From tiny villages in the UK, which really do have narrow streets, right through to places like Los Angeles where generally speaking they have enormously wide streets, a lot of people honestly believe that the place they live in somehow has less space for cyclists than the Netherlands does. It's a myth. The Netherlands has town designs from the medieval right through to the 21st century, and in all of these, space can be found for cyclists if the roads are (re)designed accordingly.
Providing for cyclists is too expensive. It's simply not true. Providing infrastructure for cyclists is actually incredibly cheap in comparison with providing infrastructure for the same people to make all their journeys by car. In the Netherlands it has been shown that even the relatively lightly used intercity superhighways are cheaper to build than not to built. What's more, it leads to other savings. For instance, in the health service, and even gives companies a competitive advantage over those from other nations.
Our population is too spread out. This is a favourite of Americans and Australians, who believe that their large countries lead to their population making far longer journeys. Thje maximum distance you could travel is of course larger in a larger country. However, average (median) journey lengths don't vary very much. The reason why is that practical everyday journeys (to school, shops, work) are constricted more by time than by distance in itself. Even in America, 40% of urban journeys are 2 miles under.. If you compare the whole of the country of Netherlands with cities in other places then the population density argument completely reverses, yet the Netherlands still has a much higher cycling rate.
We have hills. This is a plea heard often from people who imagine that the Netherlands is completely flat and that that is the reason for people cycling. It's not as simple as that. In a flat country, headwinds are phenomenal, so it's not really so big a gain for cyclists as is often imagined.
What's more, not all of the Netherlands actually is that flat. In fact, the Amstel Gold cycle race is held here and that race is famous for its vicious hilly course. It takes places in Limburg, a hilly province in the Netherlands. Elsewhere in the Netherlands, it's not unknown for artificial hills to be constructed because cyclists like to ride over them.
Also bear in mind that Switzerland achieves a much better cycling rate than many other countries despite the fact that it's rather mountainous. Switzerland's cycling infrastructure is good, but not wonderful. If it had better infrastructure then it probably would also have more cycling.
It's quite reasonable to assume that people will cycle less in truly mountainous places, but if your area is less hilly than Switzerland and you have less cycling than Switzerland, think about the reason for this. It's not the hills.
It took decades in the Netherlands. Actually, it took about 15 years. However, what's your point ? The problem is not actually making a proper start. People have been making this excuse that it takes too long for far more than 15 years, when they could instead have been working towards making real progress and now have something similar to what the Netherlands has. Catching up requires starting the process of building good cycling infrastructure, continuing the process rather than viewing it as something for the short term, and improving the standards over time so that the experience of cycling continues to improve. That's what The Netherlands has done. Any other could do the same, but it does require commitment.
It's because of the price of gas. Yes, running a car is more expensive here than in America or Australia. However, it's not much different at all from the UK. America, Australia and the UK have the same 1% modal share for cycling. So don't wait for higher petrol prices, or higher car parking charges, in order to make people cycle. Cycling should be made into a more attractive option for everyone and then it can be a positive choice that people make. The Netherlands is absolutely not anti-car.
It's the weather. What amuses me about this one is that people use it in all directions at once. Either it's too cold in their country, or it's too hot in their country. In at least one example, the complaint was that their city was too cold relative to the Netherlands, even though had on average warmer winters than the here. Our weather varies by a surprising extent. In the three years that we've lived here, daytime temperatures have varied between -12 C (10 F - much worse if you include wind chill, which I don't) and +38 C (100 F). People don't stop cycling in either extreme. Commuters still go to work, all sorts of people still go shopping and the children still cycle to school. However, recreational destinations do change. People are more like to cycle to go skating when it's cold and to the beach when it's hot.
Actual professional cycle-race on the
television in The Netherlands.
Yes, this is a cycle-path.
And yes, that's a genuine Dutch hill
So, why is it that so many people choose to cycle here, when they wouldn't if they lived elsewhere ? That's simple. The Dutch did all of this. And in particular, took care of this.
Update 15/2/11
Quite a few people pointed out other "excuses" in the comments, and I made a comment answering some of them. Here's a slightly edited version of that text:
"Our streets are too wide" and the closely related "You can't drive in medieval cities in the Netherlands". This is about claiming that cities elsewhere are too new to incorporate cycle infrastructure. It's exactly the opposite of what the "too narrow" people claim. The latter, "medieval", variant can be credited to a strange chap whose only experience of the Netherlands was on a train journey in the 1930s. Anyway, again it's nonsense. Some cities in the Netherlands do indeed have centres which date from medieval times. However, other cities and towns have been established right through history, including one of the very newest cities in the world which was established in the 1970s on land which had been sea bed until a short time previously. Plenty of space for wide roads there. However, all Dutch cities, no matter how old or new, are great for cycling in.
"You'll have problems at intersections". Not if well designed. I've examples of quite a few.
"Mass cycling is for poor countries"? Try looking here. Propelling yourself by consuming imported oil is detrimental to the economy. Cycling makes your country's economy stronger.
"Segregationists are splitters". What is this ? A playground squabble ? What I find most amusing about this accusation is the idea that cyclists haven't been split on many issues for ages. What's more, cyclists in low cycling countries are about as split as they possibly can be from the mainstream. Achieving a higher cycling rate re-integrates cyclists into society, which is what you need if you want to see cyclists being taken seriously on all levels, including in the event of crashes between motorists and cyclists.
"It doesn't matter what non-cyclists think". Hilarious. If that's what you believe then don't expect ever to grow the cycling rate. Growth can only come by convincing non-cyclists to take up cycling. If you don't take into account why people don't cycle (this is the reason) then you won't ever grow cycling.
If cycle paths are built "we'll be banished to dangerous crap forever". Isn't that the problem now ? That the roads which "cyclists" ride on are "dangerous crap" so far as everyone but very enthusiastic cyclists are concerned ? Cycling has reached its lowest possible ebb in the English speaking world. Whatever direction campaigning takes, to end up with a worse situation than a mere 1% of journeys being by bike, as at present, is rather unlikely. There is, almost literally, nothing to lose.
"Weren't the Dutch government always supportive of cycling" ? Actually, no. In the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s cycling in NL declined rapidly while the government prioritized road building and cars. I've several examples on the blog, also before and after photos of Dutch cities. In the 20th century, Dutch cities followed the same path as those elsewhere, transforming themselves to be ever more car centric. This was followed by a second revolution in which much of the harm was undone. Copy from successful Dutch city centre transformations.
"There's a lack of political support". I have a lot of sympathy with this. Of course there is a lack of political support in countries where cyclists are a minority. This is why it is a mistake to campaign only for "cyclists". Take note from the Netherlands. Successful campaigning here started by pointing out the deaths of children, not merely "cyclists". This removes the problem of cyclists being a minority. Everyone is concerned about children so it makes a lot of sense to campaign for children. This blog includes a number of articles about campaigning.
"Where there are no children cycling there is no need for this concern". Nice counterpoint, but children also die when walking, and in cars due to the way roads are developed and used in many countries.
What's more, car centric road design harms the development of children. Dutch children have an extraordinary amount of freedom of movement. That's all part of the reason why Dutch children are the happiest in the world. In fact, the top four countries for child well-being in this list from UNICEF just happen to also be the top four countries for cycling.
So, as it turns out you need cycle paths not only to stop children from dying when cycling, and not only for the sake of but also to help their development into healthy, happy adults. Personally, I find that quite a compelling argument.
There are a lot of stories about children on this blog precisely because children are important. Quite apart from anything else, they're the only source of future cyclists. If children aren't riding bikes, what chance does cycling have ? One of my favourite photos of local children is this one, of a girl riding home from school and with a few wobbles practising riding no hands as she went: If you've not seen it before, take a look at the video of what our local primary schools look like.
I think "John in NH" makes a good point in the comments about wanting manuals and standards to be improved. Most road engineers in the Netherlands are just the same as those in the USA or anywhere else. They're not mavericks, they're simply competently doing their job, and following all the relevant guidelines. Most of the infrastructure exists simply because the standards have been followed.
However, even the very good CROW manuals from the Netherlands don't tell all that you need to know. In the Netherlands they are interpreted from within a Dutch context. Minimums really are treated as minimums. Different types of infrastructure described in the CROW manuals quite passively and without preference are not equally popular. This is why it's important not only to read the manuals but also to see what is really done on the streets.
Update 19/2/11
The excuses keep piling up, including a hilarious one which appeared in a comment on Dave Warnock's blog. Apparently, "it is a historical fact that the Nazis invented segregated lanes." Unfortunately for this "fact", Adolf Hitler wasn't born until four years after the creation of the first cycle path in the Netherlands. Also we should note that in the Netherlands "bicycle use declined considerably during the occupation". This was the result of tyres being rationed and in short supply: "Anyone wanting a new tyre needed to turn in the old one and demonstrate that he lived at least 5 km from his place of employment and needed the bicycle in order to cover that distance on a daily basis".
Besides, what kind of argument is this anyway ? Allegedly, Mussolini "made the trains run on time", but does that mean that all "right thinking" people should now prefer that they don't run on time ?
Now if these people used the same argument about motorways and cars then it might actually make sense. It's a matter of historical record that Hitler "enthusiastically embraced" the building of motorways as well as "demanding the production of a basic vehicle" so that as many people as possible could drive on them.
Update November 2011
The excuses keep rolling in:
"But we have driveways". Believe it or not, The Netherlands has driveways too. They are just designed differently.
"Cycle-paths would cause flooding / light-pollution / removal of trees". Next to the damage caused by building roads, these considerations are trivial for cycle-paths.
Update December 2011 "It's in the genes / blood / veins of the Dutch". Like many of the myths, this one is believed by some Dutch people as well. However, a survey on a Dutch website for expats revealed that when Dutch people leave the Netherlands one of the things they miss most is cycling. It has also been shown that when people of other nationalities come to the Netherlands they cycle far more than they would have if they had stayed in their country of origin. England has a region named "Holland" which is strikingly similar to the Netherlands. It's flat, they grow flowers, there are a lot of windmills and dykes. Many of the people who live there are the families of Dutch immigrants who helped to drain these low lands and turn them into fertile farms - the same process as happened across much of the Netherlands. However, almost no-one cycles in "Holland" despite having the same blood. Why ? Because conditions for cycling are terrible. There are no cycle-paths to speak of. The reason why both native Dutch people and other nationalities cycle more when they live in the Netherlands than when they live in other countries where cycling is less pleasant isn't "in the genes", the "blood" or the "veins". The reason is that the infrastructure here makes it possible. Subjective safety.
"Journeys are short in the Netherlands". It was also revealed recently that Dutch commutes are the longest in Europe, somewhat defeating the argument that the Dutch only cycle because their journeys are short.
Update January 2012 "Strict Liability makes the Dutch safe to cycle". Some people think that high levels of cycling in the Netherlands are due to "Strict Liability" or that "Strict Liability" must be in place to make cycle-paths safe. Another way of saying this is to express opinions that the main reason that cycling is safer in the Netherlands than in any other country is because laws are different. None of these things is actually true and this view is based on a misunderstanding . The policy which has lead to more and safer cyclists is called Sustainable Safety and it's about creating fewer dangerous conditions on cycle-paths, streets and roads.
Update January 2013
Another suggestion which I've been sent was "why should traffic grind to a halt to indulge your hobby". That bicycles get in the way of cars and slow them down is not a new claim. However, studies have shown that more cycling leads to fewer traffic jams. In the Netherlands, driving is not actually difficult at all. An IBM study of "commuter pain" showed that Amsterdam is about as annoying for commuting by car as is Los Angeles and Berlin. Amsterdam is a better place for driving than London, Paris, Madrid, Milan or Moscow, all of which are dominated by cars and don't have nearly so many bicycles as down Amsterdam. There are few truly anti-motoring policies in the Netherlands and no reason for cycling campaigners elsewhere to be "anti-car". If it is attractive, cycling sells itself. People cycle en-masse in the Netherlands because cycling is very attractive indeed, not because they are punished if they drive. Given decent conditions for cycling, even free car parking isn't enough to make Dutch people drive.
Another myth which seems to have gained popularity of late is that lower speed limits are all that it will take to make people cycle. There's nothing wrong with reducing speed limits in and of itself, however, the effect of this should not be overstated. The Dutch found that reducing speed limits was not effective enough on its own. Low traffic Dutch streets which have 30 km/h (18 mph) speed limits are attractive to cyclists not because they have a low speed limit, but because they have almost no cars on them. The Dutch not only have the most extensive network of low speed limit streets in the world, but also have unravelled routes for motorists from those for cyclists. This removal of cars is what makes streets subjectively safe and leads to cycling being an easy choice for people to make.
Update July 2013
People continue to promote the myths which are addressed above. This post is but a summary, but if you follow the links above you'll find the individual references for each statement made here.
Again I've seen comments about how supposedly unfriendly the Netherlands is for drivers. This is simply not a fact. Driving here is a pleasure and it's also very affordable relative to peoples' salaries. Policies which are "anti-car" are extremely difficult to find. The Netherlands is one of very few countries which actually offers tax incentives to commute by car. In how many other places do drivers have such a perk ?
August 2013
The "bicycle" on the left has a number
plate. That's because it also has a
two stroke engine mounted by
the rear wheel
On a BBC Radio 4 programme, one of the people dialing in claimed that Dutch cyclists pay a type of "road tax" to use their bicycles. This is not true. There was once licensing of bicycles in the Netherlands, but that was phased out in the 1930s.
The modern myth may have roots in simple misunderstanding. There is a class of motorized bicycle in the Netherlands which doesn't exist in the UK. They look a lot like normal Dutch bicycles and these do have a number plate at the back, but they also have a two stroke engine mounted by the rear wheel. They're no longer produced, having been replaced by electrically assisted bicycles with the same 25 km/h assisted speed limit.
March 2014
Today a London Labour councillor tried to suggest that Hackney's low rate of cycling is due to 'diversity'.
2015 update "Dutch railway and bus stations are full of abandoned bikes". I made this video nearly two years ago showing that in fact this isn't the case:
Note that at many locations the parking is just as busy on weekends as in the week. At some the parking is significantly busier at weekends than on weekdays. This effect cannot be so easily observed at all locations. However the removal of "abandoned" bikes is actually very efficient in the Netherlands. So efficient that people quite often complain of their non-abandoned bikes have been "stolen" by the local government.
We can't copy the Dutch because of something entirely unrelated.
A new one in late summer 2015. If there's no really good reason not to emulate what has made the Netherlands successful in cycling, why not just go for an ad hominem attack instead ? The "Nazis and Hitler" argument advanced earlier is actually very similar to this one.
In this case the author suggested that a photo showed that the Dutch had "insensitivity to a minority" and this meant that they were likely also to be insensitive to other minorities and therefore that's a good reason not to emulate what really works in the Netherlands. In reality, Dutch cycling infrastructure benefits the entire population. People with disabilities, older people, and children are amongst the main beneficiaries and immigrants to this country find that they cycle far more after moving to the Netherlands than they did in their country of origin.
Update 2019
Dutch car ownership over time. This graph could
just as well be about the US or UK or any country.
Sadly, all are still heading in the same direction.
"Many Dutch live car-free" - In reality, car ownership and use have risen dramatically in the last few years. 27% of Dutch families don't have cars, which is very similar to the 22% figure for the UK, and these figures are falling in both countries. To a first approximation, everyone in the Netherlands who can afford a car and wants one probably has one, which is much the same as elsewhere. The Netherlands has never pursued policies which act against car ownership and use. Indeed, this is a country in which you can receive a subsidy to buy a new car and in which there is a tax free bonus for every km of a commute by car. Both these things encourage ever longer journeys to be made. Very few people make the decision not to own a car for ideological reasons. For those who don't have a car, transport poverty is not as severe as in the UK because cycling is safe so this low cost form of transport is used by everyone for some of their journeys.
A few days ago, the bike in the photo at the top, which belongs to the grand-child of one of our neighbours spent most of the day either being ridden along, or parked in the middle of, the street that we live in. No-one drove into it. No-one came close to doing so. That's what is needed if people are to feel confident about letting even very small children play outside: a very high degree of subjective safety. You can also see the answers to these "excuses" all at once.
Also note that at just two metres wide, the bicycle lanes shown here are narrower than any of the examples in Assen. The high kerbs and the planters between the cycle-lanes and road reduce the safely usable width of the facility.
