Stop de Kindermoord revisited. Is New Zealand now outperforming the Netherlands ?

Back in 2011 I wrote about the success of the Stop De Kindermoord (Stop Child Murder) campaign in the Netherlands. This presumably had been covered by English language press in the distant past, but by 2011 it had been forgotten about so my blog post got quite a lot of attention at the time and encouraged other people to write their own versions of the same story.

The success of that campaign helped lead to improved safety for all Dutch cyclists, not only children. We would likely not have the excellent go-everywhere grid of cycle-paths that we have now if not for the success of that campaigning. That campaign and the realisation that the most important thing that can be done for cycling is building a grid literally changed the landscape in this country, however we can never be complacent. What has changed once can change again.

People often wonder why it is that the Netherlands succeeded in cycling when other countries did not. Why NL acted to reduce child deaths when other countries did not. I think it was largely a matter of luck. The Netherlands happened to have the right leader at the right time.

Dutch schools are open again. Thanks in large part to the work of politicians 40+ years ago, children are relatively safe from traffic. But thanks to the ineffective leadership of our current politicians they're not being protected against infection with Covid-19 (which is an issue for this reason).

The same thing can be observed now as we face a different health crisis and this time it's in reverse. Covid-19 has caused not just a little more death in the Netherlands than in New Zealand, but literally three orders of magnitude more deaths per capita. This enormous difference is the result of policy. It can't be explained away in a simple manner such as differences in climate, that NZ is an island, the culture etc. While in the 1970s the Netherlands had effective leadership which reversed child deaths, this time it is the Netherlands with an ineffective leader in the shape of Mark Rutte while New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been highly effective. As a result, thousands of lives have been saved in New Zealand relative to the outcome that we have here.

Forty years ago this cycle-path was part of my route to school in New Zealand. It was never a perfect example and while it still exists it won't work as well as it once did because it's been divided into pieces.

While the Stop De Kindermoord protests were taking place in the Netherlands I was a schoolchild in New Zealand. In this blog post I will be comparing the response of both of these countries to two crises. But if you're not from either country, read on because this piece is not only about those two countries. 

My approximate route to school in 1980 (Google
maps doesn't use the cycle-path under the roundabout)
New Zealand's schools keep children safe by closing with
a much lower rate of Covid-19 infection than here in NL.

The fervour for cycling infrastructure and creating liveable communities was not limited to the Netherlands in the 1970s but was also quite significant internationally. I wrote some time ago about a housing development near my old home in the UK, but another example is a cycle-path which ran almost all the way from my home in New Zealand to my secondary school. It wasn't a great cycle-path, giving way to cars at every junction, but it was there. Dutch infrastructure being built around the same time was more sophisticated. But the main thing that made the Dutch cycle-paths worthwhile in the end was that they eventually formed part of a complete go-everywhere grid of routes while what was built elsewhere usually stood alone so was of limited use. In the case of the cycle-path which I used to use, it's obviously less useful now than it used to be because many more homes have been built in the area, with many more roads connecting them, so while motor traffic has increased the cycle-path, which never had priority over side-roads, now gives way even more than it used to. This is just one example of how higher population density does not automatically improve cycling conditions.

It was quite common for young New Zealanders to cycle to school in the 1970s and early 80s, but 50 years of excluding cycling from planning has left cycling at a very low level. When I used to cycle to school in NZ there was cycle parking. These days my old school looks like a big car park, which is rather sad.

1970s politics in New Zealand and the Netherlands
New Zealand's prime minister during the Stop de Kindermoord period was Robert Muldoon. Muldoon became Prime Minister in 1975 as leader of the right wing National party after a campaign which included use of an absurd animated film to imply that the opposition's plans to provide pensions were communism. Other advertisements were criticised for stoking up racism against Polynesians. Muldoon's Wikipedia bio says he was "a bully" and "an enigma" and lists, amongst other things, his promising to "get tough" on immigration, arrests and deportations of Pacific Islanders (including the "Dawn Raids"), pushing of "law & order", causing an opposition leader to resign by accusing him of being homosexual (this lead to a police investigation because homosexuality was illegal), supporting links with Apartheid South Africa, supporting American nuclear weapons in New Zealand's waters against mass opposition, and vastly exaggerating the benefits of his pet "Think Big" projects which over-ran their budgets so much that they resulted in the country running up a large deficit and having to impose a wage freeze. The pension scheme which Muldoon pushed (instead of the one criticized in the animation) also turned out to be extremely expensive, reducing the funds available for other things, such as (my) education. Unfortunately, New Zealanders kept re-electing Muldoon until 1984. He was eventually removed from his position only after he called a snap election while "visibly drunk".

Joop den Uyl, car-free Sunday in 1973

Just before Robert Muldoon took power in New Zealand, Joop den Uyl became Prime Minster of the Netherlands. Den Uyl began with the difficult job of telling the public that "things would never return to how they had been" as he implemented fuel rationing and a ban on Sunday motoring. His cabinet then had to deal with a weak economy, but many progressive social reforms were made. These included increased welfare payments, indexation of benefits, rent rebates and a minimum wage, equal pay for men and women and financial support for companies who employed people with disabilities. A specific piece of legislation provided for people for whom "it is difficult to find employment and who have been in prolonged unemployment", providing worthwhile work and status in the community for people who otherwise find this difficult to achieve. Specific protection was also introduced to help long term unemployed people who had reached 60 years of age, and job protection was introduced for women who were pregnant reaching until 12 weeks after childbirth. Entitlement to orphans' pensions was extended to illegitimate children "whose mothers are dead and who have not been recognised by their fathers", schools were given more freedom to set their own curriculum, the length of compulsory education was increased and the use of Asbestos was restricted.

Den Uyl was succeeded in 1977 by Dries van Agt. Van Agt led a coalition of right wing parties for the next four years but found that spending could not be cut because he had only a slim majority and there was much public protest, so most policies continued as before. Some ministers resigned from his cabinet over not being able to pursue an austerity policy. Another minister resigned on a point of morals because the cabinet did not condemn the US decision to develop the neutron bomb. Van Agt has more recently taken an outspoken stance on the situation in Palestine. Van Agt's Wikipedia page also points out that he is known "for his love for cycling".

I think there's an obvious pattern here. The policies which were pursued by den Uyl's, and later van Agt's, governments were not the same as those which were pursued by Muldoon's government. So far as cycling is concerned, the Netherlands became the world's leading country, while in New Zealand cycling dropped to a very low level.

2020s politics in New Zealand and the Netherlands

New Zealand's minister for women until November 2020,
Julie Genter, cycled to hospital to have her baby.

We now have the opposite situation. With Jacinda Ardern it is New Zealand which has an inclusive and progressive leader. Quite apart from her excellent handling of the Covid crisis (strong control of borders and excellent messaging have helped to keep the total deaths to just 27), her government has also brought in strict gun laws in response to right wing racist terrorism, addressed a housing crisis, child poverty and social inequality, declared a climate emergency ("my generation's nuclear-free moment"), formally apologised for the Dawn Raids, and this government also finally legalized abortion. Same-sex marriage was legalized before Ardern took power, and she supported it. I've not been able to find a photo of Ardern riding a bicycle, but she has supported the idea of (at last) enabling cyclists to cross Auckland Harbour Bridge and she does wear earrings made of old bicycle innertubes. There is a huge contrast between the policies of Muldoon and Ardern.

And now we consider the Netherlands in 2021. Mark Rutte has been Prime Minister since 2010. Rutte leads a right leaning coalition which has repeatedly tried to pursue immunity through infection as a way out of the Covid crisis. This has led to 30000 Covid-19 deaths in this country so far (CBS excess mortality figures), many people suffering from long covid, many businesses being affected adversely. While other outdoor festivals and similar events were completely banned, this car-obsessed government allowed 70000 people to gather to watch Formula One racing a couple of weeks ago and this combined with the frustration caused by how long this whole thing has been allowed to go on has led to a near total breakdown of people actually respecting the few measures which remain in place. Lots of money was made available for support during Covid, but almost all of it was absorbed by large companies such as Schiphol Airport and KLM. Apart from Covid, this government has also presided over the disastrous "toeslagenaffaire" in which tens of thousands of parents, largely from immigrant backgrounds, were falsely accused of fraud by the government and required to pay back the money they had received to live on. This government has also had relatively minor scandals such as a minister forced out after he didn't bother going through the same channels as normal people have to when they renovate a building. The cabinet fell on the 15th of January when we had our elections, but the same people have been limping along as a caretaker government since that date while they try to form a new coalition without any progressive elements.

I don't like Mark Rutte very much, but I have to admit that none of this sounds quite so awful as Robert Muldoon. Mark Rutte does actually ride a bike, but his party is far more interested in cars.

There is again an obvious pattern. New Zealand's extremely good outcome is the result of excellent leadership. The Netherlands failed against Covid because our leader failed to understand what was going on and then tried to take shortcuts. As a result, the Netherlands is amongst the worst performing countries with Covid while New Zealand is amongst the best.

The right politicians at the right time

Good leadership produces good results. I think it's no coincidence that the Netherlands managed to do many good things with social policy and also begin to implement a sensible cycling policy, while it had good progressive leadership. I also think it's no coincidence that New Zealand has managed to do so well in recent years, including with their excellent covid policy. The right leaders can actually make good things happen.

Imagine if things had been reversed. i.e. if New Zealand now had Muldoon while Ardern had been in power in the 1970s, while we had den Uyl now and Rutte's time had been in the 70s. I think there's a fair chance that we would now see New Zealand with the cycling infrastructure and the Netherlands with the good covid result. Neither of these things are inherent to either country.

I don't understand why Dutch people keep voting for Rutte. I also don't understand why New Zealanders kept voting for Muldoon. The same kind of thing can be seen with Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, Donald Trump and others. This kind of leadership, blaming others for failure while trying to boost their own achievements, doesn't actually do anyone any good except perhaps those who they give contracts, grants or covid handouts. Public health is not their interest. We need to take politics more seriously. Poor policy does not lead to good outcomes. Progressive policies (equal pay, health service, education, pensions etc.) benefit us all.

So make sure you vote, and make sure you also campaign for positive change. Unfortunately, while the politics of Ardern and Rutte are quite different, the transport policies of their governments are quite similar: Both are focused on electric cars, responding to the huge motoring lobby. This is a mistake. More cars, of any type, are not going to save us from the multitudinous problems caused by cars. Even in countries where we have progressive representatives we still need to campaign for bicycles because the world's most efficient and most healthy form of transport is genuinely part of the solution to these problems and well worth campaigning for.

October update
I've been criticising the poor response of the Dutch government to the Covid crisis since March 2020. Specifically, I criticized their slow reaction to the threat of this disease which would obviously lead to  a higher number of deaths if it were allowed to spread.

Nineteen months have now passed and we find ourselves in the middle of yet another rapidly growing wave of infections because our government has repeatedly allowed the disease to take control. Restrictions have been given up too early, they never really tried to control the borders, and they insisted on ignoring research about the airborne nature of the virus, playing down the use of masks. They've also kept schools open as much as possible which has led to many infections in un-vaccinated school children (and their teachers, parents etc.).

Yesterday we had the first really good report on the Dutch news about how our politicians have failed us. At last they're also pointing out that everything was done too late and that our government kept openly following a plan to try to build up immunity through infection, not supported by any real scientists, even after even the UK publicly claimed to be doing otherwise. Will we ever see the people responsible for 30000 deaths brought to justice ?

November 11th update
A record was set today. Though everyone sensible could see this coming months ago our government has completely failed us again and we set a new record for the number of covid infections recorded in one day. No fewer than 16364 were recorded today, crushing the previous high which was barely over 13000. We also have a positive testing rate of 17.5%, indicating that most of the infected people have not been tested, and another 26 people have died.

April last year. This is what an "Intelligent Lockdown" looked like.

Our government is still floundering. They still don't understand what is happening, and are still trying to work out they should do next. The ideas they've deliberately leaked are obviously inadequate. But none of this should be a surprise because these clowns have also set a record for the longest time ever taken form a government after winning an election (update: it took 271 days in total before a coalition was formed).

We've known for many weeks now that the disease is spreading most quickly in children. That's why I gave this piece the title that I did when I wrote it two months ago. It is not acceptable to infect children with a deadly disease like covid. Children don't die in huge numbers from covid, but they do become long term ill, and when they take the disease home they infect their parents and grandparents. Hundreds of thousands of children have been traumatised by loss of parents due to covid.

So what has our government come up with ? There are recommendations for "lockdown-like measures" which will last only two weeks. During this time the schools will stay open with unmasked children infecting each other. Libraries and cinemas will close but shops, restaurants and cafes (pubs) will remain open perhaps with slightly more control for entry. This will obviously be a re-run of each time in the past when they have repeatedly failed to get the virus under control. But there is a difference from early last year - schools did actually close temporarily on March 15th 2020 due to public pressure because we'd reached the then alarming level of 176 cases and 8 deaths in one day. Today we have nearly 100x as many infections and over 3x as many deaths but this time schools are planned to stay open.

So who now is interested in stopping the kindermoord ? Not this Dutch government, that's for sure.

January 15 2022 update

Nothing has improved here. For about a month we had a supposed semi-lockdown (described as a "strict lockdown" by the Dutch press) but people were still still free to travel to go on holiday, still free to drive their cars across the border to go shopping or visit restaurants in Germany and Belgium when some shops were shut here. This covered the period over Christmas and New Year when a lot of people met in groups far larger than was supposedly allowed. Fireworks were banned over New Year but the government announced in advance that this law would not be enforced and Dutch people drove across the border to Germany and Belgium to buy ludicrous quantities of fireworks which were let off intermittently over a period of weeks including until 5 am on New Year's Day.

But now we're into January. How's it going ? Let's describe this this last week:

On Sunday it was announced that Sigrid Kaag, the leader of the second biggest party in the new ruling coalition, had covid so she went into isolation. But this didn't stop all the others, including some who had been in meetings with Ms Kaag, from gathering on Monday 10th of January with King Willem Alexander, to officially sign in the new government. Several people who attended that meeting later tested positive for covid but most of those who were in meetings with the infected, including our VVD Prime Minster Rutte and the King, declined to go into isolation.

One of those sworn in on Monday was the new Justice minister, Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius. She is the first to hold this position without a background including legal education. On Tuesday she announced that there would be no legal enforcement against shops and restaurants which broke the rules regarding covid.

Also on Monday the schools were re-opened. No investment has been made into making school premises safer, for example by improving their ventilation, and no children aged under 12 will be vaccinated until the end of this month so they'll have several weeks to be infected before they can receive their first vaccination. We found out this week that they couldn't have started sooner because our government ordered only 42000 child doses of the vaccine to cover around a million children. Don't let anyone tell you that this government wants to open school because they are concerned about the mental or physical health of children who would otherwise have to learn online. It's not yet been long enough to know how many infections have been caused by this rash measure.

On Thursday the 13th of January a VVD European Parliamentarian with an interest in environment and climate, Jan Huitema, made a speech about how cars should be be restricted. The VVD has always been a pro-car party.

The record for most covid cases per day has been broken several times this week and yesterday we had more than 35000 new cases with a 34% positive test rate. But this government wants to re-open everything so almost every day this week our compliant media has been publishing stories about to what extent things will be re-opened.

Much of the week had been spent with the government leaking their plans to re-open to the press. Eventually we had a press conference last night in which it was announced that all shops could re-open without any testing, use of apps to show vaccination status, or other measures to prevent spread. Masks will be required. In fact that's the one bright point in the whole thing as finally after two years the Dutch government seems to have realised that an airborne virus can be better addressed by wearing masks than by washing hands.

So on we go...

Quick Sunday 16th update: Yesterday many restaurants and cafes opened illegally, so did museums, cinemas and theatres. Today we've an all-time record so far number of infections (36308) with an all time record high positive testing rate (35.1%). This is made more remarkable because it occurred on a Sunday and our case numbers are usually low on Sundays. What's more, we've not yet waited long enough after opening schools last Monday to know what effect that will have, nor or course do we know the effect of this weekend's legal and illegal shop/cafe/everything else re-openings. Buckle up. Omicron is most certainly here.

The above lists of policies per politician are not complete. For example, Muldoon's attempt to maintain New Zealand's 1935 concept of a welfare state perhaps could be seen to fly in the face of some of his other ideas. Read the wikipedia pages of each, as linked above, for a fully picture.

June 2022 update
Here's a new graph, and it's not good news. Many more countries have decided to try to "live with the virus" and the result is more death everywhere. As the deaths can only ever accumulate, every country is now in a worse position than it was before, but the most shocking examples are what has happened in countries which were previously good examples:

New Zealand's fall from grace is spectacular with a two orders of magnitude worse outcome now in comparison with nine months ago, the total number of deaths recorded having increased from 27 at the start of September last year to 1261 today. This rapid increase in deaths didn't take a whole nine months but actually only two, resulting from Jacinda Ardern deciding to open the country's borders to tourists from April 2022, resulting in rapid spread of Covid. I suspect that Bob Muldoon would now be impressed by Ardern, if he had lived to see this extreme example of putting business ahead of public health. Similar public health policy failures have resulted in similar results in Taiwan which went from 837 deaths to 4280 and South Korea which went from 2327 to 24388 over a similar period.

These countries once had a huge advantage over European and American nations which never bothered to protect their citizens but now it has almost entirely been squandered. China is the only country which now seems to be fully committed to protecting its population from disease, and especially the multitudinous long term consequences for health which are becoming known as long covid.

Notes on a City. How problems which could be seen 40 years ago have not been solved and how an obvious solution was overlooked

In this blog post I highlight problems in Wellington, New Zealand. Please don't turn away just because you don't live in Wellington because many cities across the world have exactly the same struggles to cope with the volumes of traffic. You may well recognise the problems that Wellington faced and is facing as being similar to those of your own city.

A few days ago I came across a very interesting 44 year old film about the problems caused by mass motoring. Participants in the film talked about planning to avoid future problems. The film was made in Wellington, New Zealand so this blog post is in large part about Wellington. But actually, the film could have been made almost anywhere because the problems which it presents and the suggested solutions are common to almost anywhere. This film could even have been made in a Dutch city at that time as Dutch cities faced very similar problems.

First of all, if you really need to see it, here's a link to a video of horrific traffic around Wellington. It's what many cities around the world look like now.

Now lets look at the 44 year old film which prompted this blog post. This video shows what many cities in the world looked like in the early 1970s and includes a discussion of what was going to be done about it. I recommend watching it all eventually, but it is quite long. Perhaps watch the first minute now and then return after reading the blog post:

Wellington New Zealand - 1971. 42 minutes of film in which no-one talks about bicycles as a transport mode

Traffic jam in 1971. What's changed ?

One of the comments under the original posting of that youtube video said "40 plus years on we still have the same unresolved problems...", and of course that is the result of following a path which won't create change and lack of progress is a problem common to many cities across the world.

Planner trying to work out how to
resolve traffic problems between
Wellington, Hutt Valley and Porirua

What makes the film particularly interesting to me is that it doesn't only show the problems, but that expert and sensible people have thought about the problems and make suggestions of ways to try to resolve some of them. However what absolutely no-one in the video ever does is suggest that non-motorized transport in the form of bicycles could be any part at all of the solution.

I suspect that many Wellingtonians believe, just like people all across the world, that their city is not one in which bicycles could be practical. There will be people who think that Wellington's hills, wind and rain make cycling impractical. These are common myths. However cycling in Wellington most certainly is possible for average people for at least some of their journeys and the film provides evidence that this is true: While no-one ever talks about bicycles in this film, and the focus of the film is certainly not to demonstrate that cycling is possible in Wellington, the film-makers couldn't help but include bicycles ridden by Wellingtonians in their film.

People rode practical everyday bicycles in Wellington in 1971. An upright position, three speed hub gearing, mudguards, carrier... This is almost identical to the type of bicycle which is now ridden for most journeys in the Netherlands. It was suitable for Wellington in the early 1970s and it would be just as suitable now, if only there were safe places to cycle.

The people who we see cycling in Wellington in 1971 are not sport cyclists. They are going about their everyday life using a bicycle as a practical way of getting about. These bicycles are suitable for socializing, for shopping trips, for going to work, for going to school, for carrying children.

Some politicians in New Zealand may not remember that cycling was once relatively normal, but I do.

This shot of a supermarket showed cyclists, pedestrians and drivers as visiting for their shopping. Of course, if you plan only for motor vehicles, motor vehicles are what you will end up with.

When the camera showed busy roads like this, hostile to cycling, no bicycles were caught on film. Most people were already excluded by design because this is far too hostile an environment to encourage people to cycle. The same story has been repeated across the world: As roads become busier, most people will cycle less or stop cycling altogether.

An aspirational picture of a new suburb includes a bicycle, but it is not spoken about.

In a real suburb of Wellington there is no comfortable cycling infrastructure. This leads to cyclists being under pressure. Cycling on the pavement is a symptom of that pressure.

Pedestrianization: Streets which once accommodated all traffic are transformed so that they don't accommodate any. This can result in making good conditions for people who visit by motor vehicle and use the supplied car parking, at the expense of making the destination awkward to use for those who cycle. Pedestrianized areas can be designed to allow and encourage cycling.

New Zealand's cycling decline may have started before
that of the UK but there will have been a time when New-
Zealanders too cycled more than the Dutch do now.

In the photos above you'll see evidence that into the 1970s, New Zealanders still used the same practical everyday bicycles as are seen in the Netherlands these days. You'll also see some of the factors which were already putting pressure on cycling and which eventually would lead to it being something which only hardened "cyclists" would be involved with.

Cycling was once a popular means of transport in New Zealand: "Cycling became a popular mode of transport in many parts of New Zealand for half a century," but "in the 1950s and 60s government transport funding and policies favouring motor vehicles as the transport of the future". The same decline was seen worldwide, including here in the Netherlands. It is only by similar government action to that which made cycling decline that cycling can be made attractive once again.

Unfortunately, cycling was not valued sufficiently in 1971 even to be mentioned by planners in the film.

Making choices
There is an interesting quote at the beginning of the film: "It is an indication of the influence of the motor vehicle, that it makes us take stock of things, even to the extent of asking what sort of lives we want to lead." A choice needed to be made. The film-maker realised that many futures could be planned depending on how people wanted to live.

While the problems caused by mass motoring were already highly visible 44 years ago, a choice was made in most places to continue to favour the motor vehicle. That has not changed over the last four decades, and the problems caused by making that choice are still evident. Keep planning for more cars and more cars is what you will get.

In the 1970s, the same policies were being followed everywhere. The Netherlands is no exception. The photos below from Assen in the Netherlands in the 1970s are very similar to the photos of Wellington. But the photos of Assen now look different because a different decision was made a little later and the damage was turned around. The result is that the city centre has been transformed so that even small children can ride their bicycles in from the suburbs and enjoy a great degree of freedom when they arrive.

A supermarket in the Dutch city of Assen in the 1970s. The car-park is more than full, conditions for cycling were not particularly pleasant.

The new supermarket on the same site as above provides excellent access by bike. This shopping centre has cycle-paths at one end and other well designed infrastructure at the other end providing safe routes to both doors. Bicycles can be taken inside and parked right next to the shops. Car parking is free of charge for shoppers but cycling is the most popular way of visiting the supermarket. Read more about this location's transformation.

Dutch city centre street in the 1970s. No space was allocated for comfortable cycling and pedestrians had little space.

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. More about this street and others.

1970s Assen street. Cyclist in the middle of the road waiting for a second transport revolution.

Nowadays, the same junction looks like this. It's busy with bikes, not so many cars. The result of deliberate policy to improve city centres. Note the empty car parking bays. There aren't many provided but they're rarely full. Read more about this street and watch a video about the transformation.

Assen early 1970s: This tunnel still exists and I use it every day. An aspiration was shown even as early as this to encourage bikes and in the picture shows the result in this location. This cyclist is entering what was then a newly built suburb using a tunnel which avoids cyclists having to use a large traffic light junction. It still exists and is very useful today. Note how this cyclist looks just like those in the old film from Wellington, riding the same kind of practical everyday bike. In the Netherlands, those bikes never went away and normal people who didn't identify as "cyclists" continued riding them because when the error was realised, cars were not allowed to totally dominate. But there's one important difference. This new suburb, built between 1970 and 1975 and very much part of the solution to the problem, was planned like most Dutch suburbs. i.e. pleasant to live in, low-rise and very spread out with a lot of green spaces when compared with the high density type of housing under consideration by participants in the Wellington film.

Facts and questions

Routes followed by commuters in Wellington now
are exactly as discussed in the 1971 film

(source, licence: wikipedia) Wikipedia has a good page about Wellington. The city has a population of just under 400000 people. Property market speculation pushed up prices so that city centre living is expensive, the result being that "The typical central city apartment dweller was a New Zealand native aged 24 to 35 with a professional job in the downtown area, with household income higher than surrounding areas. Three quarters (73%) walked to work or university, 13% travelled by car, 6% by bus, 2% bicycled (although 31% own bicycles), and did not travel very far since 73% worked or studied in the central city". Note that even in the very centre of the city, and even with a demographic group which is the very easiest to attract to cycling, people are more likely to drive or to take public transport than to ride a bike.

Wellington has a mild climate. Neither summers nor winters reach the temperature extremes of Dutch cities. So we can't blame the weather for the low rate of cycling

Hills are also not an issue in for city centre cyclists. Indeed, the route out to the Hutt Valley is also quite flat, and where there were hills on the way to Porirua a reasonably flat route has been hewn out of rock for the motorway.

Some of the suburbs of Wellington are hilly - comparable with those of Trondheim, where of course the weather is genuinely a challenge in winter yet the aim is to achieve 15% of journeys by bike by 2025.

Read: population density and cycling

The population density of urban Wellington is slightly higher than that of Assen (890 vs. 780 people per square kilometre) while the metropolitan area density is very much higher than that of Trondheim (290 vs. 37 people per square kilometre).

None of these popular justifications for a low cycling modal share would appear to apply to Wellington (nor to many other places) so what is real reason why so few people cycle in the city these days ?

You get what you plan for
Here's my hypothesis about why it is that cycling is still so unpopular in and around Wellington: The city and the surrounding area are treating cycling no more seriously now than they were in 1971.

The same could of course be applied to very many cities around the world. Here are some examples of Wellington cycling infrastructure. The absolute minimum has been done. Would you enjoy cycling in these locations ? Would you encourage your children or your partner, your parents or anyone else that you cared about to cycle in these conditions ?

Near the city centre. Hills are not a problem, but look at the road. It's five lanes wide road with a three lane wide advanced stop box. Only the bravest of cyclists will be able to make use of this to turn right.

On a commuting route: Five lanes for cars and trucks + a pavement for walking on, which you can also cycle on, but watch out for the parked (and parking) cars and the lamp-posts. Not an attractive environment for cycling. The distance from Lower Hutt to Wellington is less than 17 km. It's not at all unusual for Dutch school children to cycle up to 20 km to get to school. Would you want your children to cycle this route ? See it on Google Maps.

Another commuting route: On the right, a cyclist. Fantastic brave human-being riding between a six lane motorway and rock face on a narrow strip of bumpy asphalt. Bigger view here.

Another view, another brave person. Note that the path is not only narrow but it has posts on it which cyclists have to swerve around. This does not make for pleasant or safe cycling.

Alternatives
Many people have uploaded videos of traffic jams in Wellington to Youtube. No-one likes being stuck in a traffic jam, but when planners have concentrated only on driving and provided no real alternative for most people, it doesn't really matter how terrible the experience of driving becomes, people will still find driving to be their least terrible option and so they will still drive.

Still from a video of a 13 km long commute by bike in Wellington. This is a shorter distance than many Dutch children cycle to get to school, but the video maker describes it as "intimidating even for confident bicyclists A 100 km/h multi-lane road with a painted stripe for cycling on the wrong side of the crash barrier is not nearly good enough to enable mass cycling. Please do watch this video and compare it with the conditions faced by drivers. By car it's slow and annoying, but it clearly doesn't feel so dangerous as cycling.

Google Maps suggestions for a similar journey, Wellington to Lower Hutt.
By car: Start now, takes 19 minutes                          
By bus: One bus every 60 minutes, takes 35 minutes

Without a good alternative, people will continue to drive. I like cycling, but like the 29% of people who live in the centre of Wellington who own bikes but don't cycle, if I lived and worked in Wellington or a city like Wellington, then I might well drive instead of cycling. The infrastructure could not be better designed to make this happen.

Conclusion
This blog post has concentrated on Wellington in New Zealand, but because the problems faced by Wellington are exactly the same as those faced by many other cities, the same applies to almost Anytown in almost Anycountry. Policy's just the same.

Until a genuine choice is made to favour something other than the automobile, more and more dependency on motor vehicles is the only likely outcome. Cycling is a very fragile mode of transport. Cyclists are very obviously exposed to danger when they ride on busy roads or on inadequate paths next to roads, and this is why cycling is extremely sensitive to subjective safety issues. It's not realistic to expect that people will take to cycling in any appreciable numbers when the experience of cycling is akin to that of taking part in an extreme sport.

Cycling was once popular in almost every country. Motor vehicle use rose not only due to cars being attractive in and of themselves, but also due to motoring being subsidized by government. This pushed cyclists aside both in plans and literally on the streets leaving those who still cycled in an increasingly precarious position. It took billions in investment and a lot of time for cycling to decline to the point it has reached now. For cycling to recover will also require considerable investment from government as well as time. There is no easily reached "tipping point" beyond which cycling will automatically increase. If such a thing existed then cycling would never have decreased past that point.

In recent years, the Netherlands has led the world in cycling investment. Even here, the government has never spent more than a fraction of the amount on cycling that they spend on roads for cars, but this has been adequate to stem the flow of people away from cycling and to lead to a modest increase, In the Netherlands, the majority of trips and the vast majority of kilometres travelled are by motor vehicle. It would take a lot more than the Dutch have done to change that. However, at least in the Netherlands cycling has been made both accessible to everyone and very safe. No helmets required.

Helmets
Cycle-helmet zealotry in New Zealand has no doubt done harm to cycling by making an already unpopular activity even less attractive. Much of the damage had already been done, in that cycling was already at a low ebb. However, helmets will make it more difficult even to grow cycling again and for that reason I oppose the mandatory wearing of helmets. In any case, any emphasis on helmets is in the wrong place. Successful campaigns to improve safety, especially of children, do not rely on secondary devices such as helmets to mitigate the results of crashes, but remove the source of danger so that crashes do not occur.

A grid of high quality go-everywhere cycle-paths is what keeps these children safe, not helmets. If New Zealand had done the same thing then Aaron Oaten's crash and resultant injury would almost certainly never have happened. Preventing collisions is far more effective than allowing them to occur and trying to prevent the worst injuries with safety equipment.

Compare the following two graphs showing the effect of both New Zealand's bicycle helmet law and the effect of Dutch cycle infrastructure:

Effect of New Zealand bicycle helmet law. ""Of particular concern are children and adolescents who have experienced the greatest increase in the risk of cycling injuries despite a substantial decline in the amount of cycling over the past two decades"

Effect of Dutch policy to make roads safer and build cycle-paths, especially concentrating on child safety. Between 1972 and 2013, fatalities on the roads dropped dramatically. Child road fatalities dropped by 98%.

The successful road safety policy removed the danger from where vulnerable people were. This led to a huge reduction in the number of people either injured or killed. The absolute number of child fatalities dropped by 98% over a period of time when the population size and the proportion of trips made by bicycle both rose significantly.

Christchurch New Zealand Cycle Design Guidelines

Christchurch in New Zealand published a Cycle Design Guide last year. My attention was drawn to it because of a bad design which I discovered came from this design guide. I've read most of the design guide now and sadly it's at least as deserving of criticism as Ontario's lacklustre design guide or the NACTO guidelines.

This will not be a full point by point critique. I can provide one if Christchurch wants it.

"Dutch Junction"

Christchurch's ideas for a "Dutch
Junction" prompted me to write this
piece. They appear to have based this
design upon a sketch which was part
of a criticism of someone elses poor
design standard

I was drawn to this section of the document because of the flawed illustration of this type of junction which had appeared across several New Zealand blogs. I found the image in a blog post on the Cycle Action Auckland site, but it originated in Christchurch's design guide.

Christchurch's design guide calls this junction a "Dutch Junction". The section about this type of junction starts on page 32 of the document where there are two photos of what the authors think a "Dutch junction" looks like. However, neither of these photos are actually they think they are. The upper photo is actually of a simultaneous green junction while the lower photo doesn't look like the Netherlands.

The Christchurch design misses many key details. The geometry of it is also completely wrong.

Cyclists are shown as stopping at the same stop line as drivers so there is no head start over drivers. That is not according to Dutch practice. In the picture there appear to be no cycle traffic lights. The description only says that separate lights are required "ideally". What's more, they don't seem to have understood how cyclists are protected in the Netherlands from drivers turning left across their path. The Christchurch document merely says that this type of junction "can incorporate advanced cycle starts", which is not the way in which cyclists are usually kept safe in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands current practice would require that drivers turning left do not receive a green light to proceed at the same time as cyclists have a green light to go straight on. There also appears to be no expectation that cyclists will benefit from being able to make a left turn when the traffic lights are red. That's normal in the Netherlands and helps to offset any additional delays that cyclists might have on occasions when they are turning right.

With this design you would also expect to see multiple lanes on road (Mark's sketch, which seemingly inspired this, includes such on one arm). What's more, there's no way for a cyclist who has crossed one arm of Christchurch "Dutch" junction and wants then to turn right to actually see his traffic light as it will be behind him. To end, the angles at the junction are wrong. Cyclists travel through graceful curves, they cannot make on the spot 45 degree turns.

A mish-mash
Christchurch's design guide features a mish-mash of different ideas from all across the world with no apparent overall concept of which is the proper way to go. There are some relatively good ideas, though even these are compromised in the way they are presented, but they're given equal billing with types of infrastructure which happily no longer exist here in Assen (advanced stop boxes, cycle-lanes in the middle of the road) and other things which we never had in Assen and would never want to see (sharrows, two stage "hook" turns).

The design guide also offers an interesting insight into how the designers view cycling. For instance, page 16 discusses one type of "major cycleway". This lacks specifics such as how wide a cycle-path should be but they clearly expect cyclists to make slow progress ("approximately 15 km/hr for expected users" of one type of "major cycleway") and they want to micro-manage how cyclists cycle (messages stencilled onto paths "move off path when stopped", "warn when approaching"). This would appear to be a tacit admission that the planned width is rather narrow, such that these low speeds and warnings might be required for safety. Good cycling infrastructure never requires cyclists to travel at an artificially low speed.

Where widths are mentioned, they vary. On page 20 it is said that "a desirable width of 2.4m on
both sides of the road" is required in order that cyclists can pass each other while by page 24 that has reduced to "approximately 1.8m to 2m on both sides of the road"

Christchurch's design guide is not a coherent piece of work but more of a summary of things that the authors have read about, and in some cases misunderstood.

Unfortunately, it appears to lean heavily on photos and opinions swept up from across the internet, some perhaps used without credit and some of them used without the concept being well understood by the authors. That may seem harsh, but I can say for certain that it's true in at least one case:

Cycle Barnes Dance

Is it not a bit rude to take credit for
someone else's work ? The original
photo is from one of my blog posts.

Someone working for Christchurch copied a photo from my blog of a simultaneous green junction here in Assen (find it here), edited it to remove my URL, and reproduced in black and white on page 34 of Christchurch's document. It is labelled "Cycle Barnes Dance". Perhaps after all that work they thought I'd never find it. While a small number of people are credited as photographers on page two of the document, my name does not appear and I certainly wasn't asked for permission to use this photo. I wonder who took credit for this photo ?

More seriously, we have to ask why did they use photos that were swept up off the internet rather than their own. Presumably the answer is that they didn't have any of their own. The probable reason for a lack of photos is that the authors of Christchurch's design guide have never actually seen and used this type of infrastructure. Their take on what a "cycle barnes dance" should look like is as follows:

Christchurch's take on a simultaneous green junction. They've missed key details of the design. This photo is taken from Christchurch's document. I certainly do not claim credit for it.

Unfortunately, the authors of the document have clearly misunderstood how simultaneous green junctions work. They have unhelpfully provided extra paint on the ground seemingly to guide cyclists to ride across diagonally rather than using the curved paths that are normally taken and which are essential to avoid collusions. They've also again forgotten about the opportunity turn right against a red light at junctions like this. That's normal in the Netherlands.

The text accompanying this is also interesting to read. Again, the document refers to separate traffic lights for cyclists being required at such a junction only "ideally", suggesting that you could allow cyclists to cross like this at the same time as drivers were in motion. I'd expect that to cause carnage. It never happens in the Netherlands. There are always separate traffic lights for cyclists at simultaneous green junctions. This is not optional. The document also refers to a possibility of combining the pedestrian and cycle phases, which again does not happen in the Netherlands because this would cause conflict and probably injury.

More bad practice lies below
The further I read through the document, the more examples of lacklustre design glare out at me. On page 38 there's a photo of a really dreadful and actually pointlessly badly designed "cycle bypass" (compare with the same concept done properly). On page 41 there's a relatively decent bus stop bypass design followed by a design which is almost impossibly bad on page 43. By page 57 it's back to discussing how to "encourage slower cycle speeds" (this should never happen) on shared paths on a page which also features a narrow "berm separated" cycle path which has an enormous drain in it.

Christchurch uses the term "hook turn" to refer to what is known elsewhere as a two stage turn. In most parts of the world, the word hook is used in this context to refer to the type of crash that it common to this type of infrastructure.

In general, there's far too much emphasis on on-road cycle-lanes. These are relatively uncommon in the Netherlands and just as in other countries, they're not entirely safe here either. The picture on page 61 especially horrifying. It combines those on-road lanes with several other examples of bad practice, several examples of how cyclists can be put into danger, in one image:

Let's count the problems:

1. Cyclists turning left have a potential left hook problem due to there being positioned on the left of left turning motor vehicles.
2. Even though there's a separate lane for cyclists turning left, no thought has been given to how cyclists could have been allowed to turn left on red without conflicting with anyone.
3. Cyclists going straight on experience added potential for danger due to having to try to stay in the middle of the road cycle lane. Drivers on their right but who want to turn left will turn across this lane.
4. Advanced stop lines have never really provided any benefit to cyclists.
5. Cyclists turning right are expected to go straight on, then slam on the brakes in front of other cyclists, turn left a bit and wait in the small green box. However, they won't know when the traffic light for their direction has gone green because it's behind them. If there's a separate left turn phase then drivers wanting to turn left who come from behind the cyclists waiting in the box won't be able to get past those cyclists.
6. Cyclists need to be able to make efficient journeys so many won't want to make their right turns in this inefficient way. That does not only apply to "fast" cyclists, but to everyone. If a child is late for school, they won't want to use this box either. They will have to cross two lanes of traffic on the approach in order to be in the right turn lane. Drivers will resent this because the cyclist is not using the provided cycle facility.
7. Cyclists coming in the opposite direction are forced into a left hook situation with drivers who wish to turn left.

This junction design is a recipe for disaster

I have to also mention that treatment of roundabouts is lacking. On page 64, they're talking about "taking the lane" on roundabouts. That's a very long way from best Dutch practice.

It goes on and on. There are very few gems in there (the bus stop bypass design isn't bad). Very few. Please, Christchurch, if it's not too late, do not adopt these guidelines.

You need coherence in design, not a mixture of ideas picked up from different places and with a wide range of different qualities. Copy from the best, not from everything that you've seen.

Don't guess. Know !
Christchurch could have found out a lot more in advance. For a start, they could have asked us specific questions about how these junctions work. They could have asked about what is actually built and how well it works but also specifics such as measurements of different parts of the junctions, radii. Instead of guessing and writing down those guesses as design guidance, they could have found out in advance and adopted best practice. Christchurch could even have employed us to write about things that we do know about rather than employing someone else to write about what they don't know about.

Christchurch: Don't just "borrow" my photos
uncredited, send a party of people on the
study tour to learn about real Dutch cycling
infrastructure. They'll then be able to take
their own photos in the same locations,
having seen with their eyes and used this
infrastructure and hopefully also
understood what they're looking at.

Ironically, the URL which someone in Christchurch removed from my photo was for the cycling infrastructure Study Tour on which they could have sent participants to learn about real Dutch cycling infrastructure so they can't have been ignorant of what they did. The photo was taken during a study tour and two previous participants are shown. One of them is cut in half by Christchurch's edit.

It seems to me to be very strange to start by writing standards and only find out later on what it is that you should have been doing. Surely it would be beneficial for Christchurch to send people to see infrastructure like this first hand before making an expensive and dangerous mistake by copying it incorrectly.

That my photo has been taken without permission and without credit and used in the Christchurch design guide should not in any way be thought to represent my endorsement of their guide. Overall, this is a poor guide to cycle infrastructure design.