This is not a cycle path

This video has explanatory captions which are only visible on a computer and not on a mobile device I cycled to a supplier in Hoogeveen and back home this afternoon to get more front luggage racks for the shop. A 75 km round trip pulling a trailer, which makes for a decent mid-week workout.

I went after lunch and returned just after the schools had shut, so there were a lot of school children making their way home both in the same and the opposite direction to me. A few of them are in the video and photos below.

Most of the first half of the route between here and Hoogeveen is on roads, not cycle paths. However, these are not roads as you probably know them. Yes, in theory they are "shared" with cars, but in practice you only very rarely see a car using them. Some years ago, a parallel road with a higher speed limit was built to take the through traffic. The only cars which use the minor road are those which are accessing properties along it. Today I saw no cars using the minor road in either direction, but I did see a lot of cyclists. On the parallel road with the 80 km/h speed limit there were quite a few cars, but no cyclists. It is illegal to cycle on that road, but we lose nothing due to that.

The Netherlands has 35000 km of cycle path, vs about 130000 km of roads. However, this doesn't imply that when you cycle on the roads that you have to "share" with large numbers of cars. Rather, you are segregated by mode, even when on the roads. What I'm highlighting here is road, not cycle path, so is not part of the 35000 km cycle path total. There are a lot of roads like this in the Netherlands, both in rural and urban settings.

Sometimes it seems that cyclists from the UK in particular get particularly vexed over the issue of being "banned from roads". However, in this case it really makes no difference at all to cyclists. We get the better half of the deal, in fact, with a direct route which is only very rarely invaded by a motor vehicle. What cyclists need to fight for is better conditions for cycling, which result in more cycling. Spending time in defending a position of being allowed to use roads which the majority of the population find unpleasant may slow the decline of cycling, but it will never grow it. The best defence is a good offence. In the case of cycling, growth comes by fighting for cycling conditions with a level of subjective safety such that everyone will want to cycle, and direct routes which make cycling efficient. The Dutch have done this for a while now, with great success relative to other countries.

Most of the still photos which follow were taken heading South, so that's why the main road is on the left in some of these photos, while it's on the right in the video:

A lone cyclist on the service road, while the parallel road for cars has several cars. Note that the street light is on the quiet road.

Several more cyclists on the quiet road. The main road is now on the left of some housing, so it's temporarily out of sight.

An adult cyclist blithely passes by a sign saying that he's banned from using the main road. Somehow he seems not to be concerned about this. 

Another adult cyclist, passing another sign, who doesn't seem to mind one bit about being banned from the road on the left.

Two girls riding together with no concerns about motorists.

One of the points where the service road becomes a cycle path. This makes it discontinuous for drivers, and is another reason why the road we're using only has cars on it which are being driven to access properties along it.

Now on the cycle path. This boy doesn't seem to feel sufficiently threatened by the traffic that he thinks he needs to hold his handlebars properly.

An elderly couple out for an afternoon ride. They're heading towards a roundabout, which if you're on the cycle path you completely avoid.

I'm also quite glad I'm not on the road. It wouldn't improve my feeling of safety either. Subjective safety is the big question. If there's not enough of it, people don't cycle. It's not just "for beginners". Experienced cyclists also also benefit from conditions which make cycling more pleasant.

On the way home now. We're on the cycle path on this side of the trees, the cars are on the right. Here two bikes are being used by four teenagers. Coming in the opposite direction are another elderly couple out for a ride.

Two more girls heading home on the cycle path.

Back on the road, with more children heading home from school and using the full width. The cars are on the other road to the right of those trees.

Another group of children riding home together. They were more spread out before they saw me coming in the opposite direction and made room.

None of the photos or video show cars using the minor road. This isn't just due to me being selective - I saw no cars using that road today.

The route highlighted by this post is shown on the map below. If the only route here by bike was the main road then there is simply no way that there would be this level of cycling, especially by school children. Few parents would see that option as safe. That is why even "on the road" it is important to have segregation of modes.


A 17 km one way distance to school

Conditions like this are what makes the difference between 1% of journeys being by bike in the UK, USA, Australia etc. and 26% of journeys being by bike in the Netherlands. It's the reason why 16 million Dutch people make more cycle journeys between them than 300 million Americans, 65 million British and 20 million Australians all added together. It's also the reason why Dutch cyclists are the safest in the world.

Hoogeveen and back is quite a regular journey for me now, and I've videoed it twice before. Article originally referred to 29000 km of cycle-path. This was incorrect - the Netherlands now recognises 35000 km.

Joining in with the mass. Just how much do the Dutch cycle, and why do they do it ?

Use of different transport modes by time of day (in millions of journeys).
Fiets=bike, Auto=car, OV=public transport, Lopen=walking

New figures from the Fietsersbond throw light on the astonishing number of journeys per day made by bike in the Netherlands. The graph gives a picture of what's going on, but there's also some more detailed text accompanying it:

Dutch people cycle a lot. Of course there is more cycling in the summer than in the autumn and winter. But cycling rates also vary between days of the week. On an average working day, 5 million people make an average of 14 million cycle journeys. Monday and Thursday are the top days with a million more journeys than on the other days of the week. On Saturday, 11.5 million cycle journeys are made, and on Sunday 6.5 million.

Through the week, between 8 in the morning and 6 in the evening, more than a million cycle journeys are made each hour. The high point is between 8 and 9 in the morning with 1.75 million cycle journeys during the hour. In that hour, many journeys to work and school are made, and more bicycles are in use than cars. Cycling on a typical week-day:

Time	Description	Total
8:00	By 8 in the morning, 750000 cycle journeys have already been made. Most of them are to work.	0.75 M
8:30	Most children are now at school. Another 450000 cycle journeys pass in half an hour.	1.2 M
9:00	Most adults are now at work, and college students are now on the way.	2.5 M
12:00	Another 2.5 million cycle journeys during the morning for a variety of reasons.	5 M
13:00	1.5 million more rides. Primary school children (5 - 11 years old) cycle home for lunch.	6.5 M
14:00	Another 1.2 million cycle trips pass in the early afternoon.	7.7 M
16:00	Most children have left school, and they cycle to friends, sportsclubs etc. In the last two hours, 2.5 million cycle journeys were made.	10 M
17:00	Another 1.2 million cycle journeys pass in the late afternoon. Many people make shopping trips and school children head home from sports clubs. The evening rush hour is about to start	11.2 M
18:00	Most people are now home. Another 1.2 million cycle journeys have passed.	12.4 M
24:00	Another 1.75 million cycle journeys are made in the evening. Many club (sport) cyclists go for rides, night school students ride, club members meet, and people go out on the town by bike.	Over 14 M

In the day, 5 million cyclists have made around 14 million cycle journeys.

Nearly a fifth of all cycle trips are to or from school. Children
account for more than 2.5 million of the cycle journeys made
each day. Over half of all trips to primary school and a
majority of journeys to secondary school are by bike. It is
enabled in part by well designed complex intersections.

The scale of cycling in the Netherlands is quite phenomenal. If you go out, at any time of the day or night, you're not unusual, but are joining with a mass of other cyclists making their journeys. It's impossible to travel far on a bike without seeing other cyclists. I don't think I've ever made it further than 200 metres from my home (in a 100 m long cul-de-sac) before seeing at least one bike. Riding a bike is not in any way a political statement. It's just normal.

The figures above are national figures, applying to the whole country. The Netherlands has a population of 16 million people. That's just twice the population of London or New York. However, the cycling rate of the country as a whole is far higher than that of cities in other countries. By comparison, treating the country as a "city", the people here are spread out at a remarkably low density of just 400 per square kilometre, vs. 4800 per square kilometre in London or 10000 people per square kilometre in New York.

However, despite having the advantage of high density and the resulting short journey lengths, neither of these cities manage more than a small fraction of the cycle usage of this whole country. London has only around 2% of journeys by bike, and New York even less at only around 0.6% of commutes. In neither of those cities would you find masses of school children riding at any time. (more about population density and cycling)

Inviting infrastructure
The difference comes down to infrastructure which invites you to cycle. Cycling is not a difficult thing to decide to do in the Netherlands. It comes naturally because cycling is so convenient and so safe.

This high percentage of all trips by bike is only possible because almost everyone cycles in the Netherlands. If only a limited subset of the population ride bikes then it will remain a minority pursuit no matter how enthusiastic that minority might be. In order to achieve true mass cycling this must be a means of transport attractive to the whole population.

Read also a three day later blog post about the wide cycling demographic of the Netherlands. A week after this blog post was published, Mark Wagenbuur made a video based upon this post. Several other blog posts detail what brought this level of cycling about. Key to it all is of course a high degree of subjective safety and making cycling into a convenient mode of transport.

School cycling in winter

On the 15th of February, the day these photos were taken, it was -8 C in the morning. However, as you can see from these photos of cycle parking at a local school, Dutch school children cycle whatever the weather.


This cycle park has more than enough space for every one of the 700+ students to park a bicycle, and very nearly every student arrives at school each day by bicycle. Yes, that means even on the coldest days, and includes children who live so far as 20 km from the school.


I met my youngest daughter from school, a little earlier than usual, and we rode home together.

I'm happy to say that it's warmed up a little now, and we're seeing temperatures above zero even first thing in the morning. My daughters again headed for school by bike this morning, just like everyone else.

Also see what happened at this school when they held a school triathlon.

Rural bike paths in the winter

The explanatory captions on this video are only visible if you view it on a computer and not on a mobile device.

Heading in the opposite direction
on the same path in summer. Note
the tractor path alongside. This is
an example of how routes are
unravelled in the countryside.

This video is a combination of video shot in summer 2007 with some I shot on Sunday. The same path in fine weather and difficult weather is just as usable by cyclists when the temperature is -6 C and there is snow.

To maintain a high cycling rate, it has to be made easy to ride bikes all year around, even in rural areas. This cycle path is well used by adult commuters and also by school children who ride from villages into Assen.

A cycle route, shown in blue on the left, between Zeijen and a secondary school in Assen is 6.1 km. There is one traffic light on the route and the majority of it is on cycle paths or very low traffic roads. The equivalent driving route is shown using red. This route is 6.8 km in length and has two traffic lights. Cycle paths lead to cyclists making more direct journeys in greater safety whatever the time of year.

At the time of posting this, two days later, there is still about the same amount of snow on the ground, it's snowed lightly again this morning, and the cycle paths look just as clear. I took the dog for a walk by bike this morning, my children have both gone to their schools by bike (no schools are shut due to the weather), and my wife's gone to a meeting by bike. Tomorrow it's supposed to be -12 C, and I expect to ride to work in Groningen 30 km away. It's probably going to look a bit like it did two weeks ago.

A few days ago I was told a detail of how the gritting is performed so efficiently. The drivers follow routes determined in the summer and use GPS to turn the salt supply on and off. This prevents drivers from dumping all their salt too close to the depot, and is the reason why there are some very small patches which oddly seem not to have been gritted at all - they are due to mistakes made months ago when planning the routes.

I'm impressed by some of the details. For instance, these works required blocking the cycle path an diverting cyclists onto the sidewalk to go under a bridge. Gritting carries on under the bridge, and a temporary flush kerb has been installed.

Cyclists don't have so much of a problem due to snow as ice-skaters do. The local news reported that people running ice skating rinks which rely on the cold weather have problems because the snow causes the ice to be thinner.

Update 15 Jan: Google's Streetview car got very close to going along this route, on the road. They seem to have been put off by the bad surface, though, as they stop at the end of the smooth bit.

There are more posts about gritting of cycle paths, school travel and road works. The snowy video above was made last Sunday when there was 12 cm of snow and the temperature was -6 C. You can see more of it from my post about a pleasant ride through the countryside on that day.

School cycling route from a village into the city

The village of Vries is about 8 km North of Assen. It is a village of fewer than 5000 people. There is no secondary school in the village so most children of secondary school age in the village cycle each day to Assen to go to school.



The school which is the shortest distance from the centre of Vries is on the Groningerstraat in Assen, around 8.5 km (5.25 miles) South. Not all of the children attend this school, some of the others go a few km further into Assen and some ride in the opposite direction to Groningen, about 18 km North of Vries. Some children sometimes ride a bus, but there is no "school bus". The schools do not have drop off zones for parents to deliver children by car, and arriving at school by car is extremely rare. These children predominantly cycle to school, as is the case all across the Netherlands.

The cycle path provided for this route is of very high quality and encourages cycling. I covered this cycle path before. It also forms part of the route of my commute to Groningen.

Even though in this case the driving route and cycling route are the same, cyclists only go through two sets of traffic lights, while drivers go through four. The difference was explained in a previous post.

If you want to encourage a higher cycling rate where you live, this is the standard of provision to aim for. Not only do children cycle in greater numbers here than elsewhere, but the same is also true of the entire population. The degree of subjective safety on cycle paths like those shown in the video is the reason why cycling here is so appealing.

There are many other school travel stories, and don't miss the video of primary school children riding to school.

Note that the google maps imagery of this route is a bit outdated, but what is on streetview is quite good.

School Triathlon

The circle shows the 20 km radius from within which children
cycle to school in Assen. The green spots are approximate
locations where friends of our children live and from where
they cycle to school. The red line shows the triathlon route

We're nearing the end of the school year and school activities are leaning towards the less serious. Yesterday my youngest daughter took part in a triathlon. All the children in the first year of education at her secondary school (most are now thirteen) were given a pink sheet of instructions with directions to a running track and swimming pool roughly a 35 km round trip distance. It is, of course, expected that every child will have arrived at school by bike and be able to take part in the activity.

The instructions start "at the front of the school, by the cycle parking". Part of her school's cycle parking is shown at the left. There are more cycle parking spaces than students.

Perhaps some of the more sporty minded children rode quickly, but I'm quite sure that for many children the journey was made at a more relaxed pace while talking with friends. At secondary school, constant supervision isn't usually necessary, but during the triathlon there were teachers out on the route at controls every few km to make sure no-one was taking a short cut !

Last year my daughter was still in primary school at this time of year. The last primary school cycle trip was a 150 km cycle camping tour. At that age they were accompanied by teachers or parents at all times when cycling.

Staying on the school theme... Last year I made a video of primary aged children going to school by bike on a perfectly normal (though cold) morning. That video has now had over 20000 views. It's worth seeing again:

Explanatory captions on this video are only visible if it's played on a computer and not on a mobile device.

While we knew that children cycled to school before we moved over here, we had no idea about the number of other school trips that they made by bike.

School bags dangling from flag poles are a common sight right now. When school is over, this is a way of announcing the fact.

While most live closer, some secondary students ride a 40 km round trip each day just to get to school.