Petrol price vs. cycling rate for a range of countries

Note that even though this is almost flat between Great Britain and the Netherlands, this is the best case graph for people who think there's a correlation between car fuel price and cycling. This is because this graph concerns only the price of petrol.  If you compare diesel prices then it doesn, those are somewhat lower in the Netherlands vs. other countries. Diesel costs less here than in the UK, for instance and perhaps unsurprisingly, diesel cars are common in the Netherlands.

One of those myths that won't die is that the Netherlands has a high rate of cycling because the price of petrol ("gas" to Americans, "benzine" in The Netherlands) is high. This seems particularly to be suggested by Americans, because the price of petrol in their country is so low, and so is the cycling rate.

However, I don't believe this to be the case. If you remove the USA, and Australia to a lesser extent, many other countries have very similar petrol prices, but markedly different rates of cycling.

The graph shows the rate of cycling as a percentage of journeys in several countries in the world, plotted along with the January 2011 prices for petrol.

There are three areas of this graph which show a story.

On the left you can consider the USA, Australia and Great Britain. All three of these countries have a cycling rate of around 1%, but the petrol prices are spread widely - between 60 cents and €1.47 per litre.

You can then consider the largest part of the graph, Great Britain through to Finland. In all of these countries except Austria and Switzerland, the petrol price is very similar: between €1.40 and €1.48 per litre. However, the cycling rates vary across nearly the whole spectrum, 1% of journeys at the low end and 11% of journeys at the high end. The two end positions are taken by Great Britain with petrol at €1.47 per litre and Finland where petrol costs €1.48 per litre.

Lastly, take a look at the top three: Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. If you look hard enough here, then you can see an upward trend in both petrol price and cycling rate. However, petrol in the Netherlands is actually only 11% more expensive than Finland (€1.62 vs. €1.48) while the cycling rate is 2.5 times as high (27% vs. 11% of journeys).

But what about diesel ?
But actually, this doesn't tell the whole story. Because we've considered only petrol and not diesel, we've simplified the issue. When I last covered this, I noted that while petrol was more expensive in the Netherlands than in the UK, diesel was 14% cheaper in the Netherlands than in the UK. Considering both petrol and diesel together, the price of fuel is actually more equal between nations than it appears on my graph. For the driver of a diesel engined car (roughly half of new cars sold in Europe run on diesel), the fuel to run it is actually cheaper in the Netherlands than in Britain - yet these two countries span the widest range possible of cycling rates.

I think it's fair to say that there's no real relationship shown here between the price of fuel for cars and the cycling rate. Even when fuel for cars is expensive and congestion results in journeys being slow and inconvenient, people will continue to want to drive if driving remains the least bad option.

The cost of taxation and insurance are also not factors which make driving more expensive in the Netherlands. Insurance for new drivers in particular is much cheaper in the Netherlands than in the UK.

Many myths and excuses exist for why the cycling rate in other countries is lower. The only thing which really explains why the Netherlands stands out so far above other countries is that the experience of cycling is so different. In the Netherlands, cycling takes place away from the threat of motor vehicles on good quality cycle paths and roads which prioritize cyclists. Never is it necessary to take on busy motorized traffic by bike, or even to ride up the side of rows of stationery vehicles. This leads to an outstanding level of subjective safety, and as a result all types of people cycle.

To see the policies, infrastructure and campaigning which have lead to the Netherlands having both the world's highest cycling rate and also the world's safest cyclists, click on what works.

Fuel is actually free of charge for car commuters in the Netherlands

Because the Dutch government encourages businesses to pay their staff 19 c per km free of tax for commutes, the cost of petrol / diesel is actually zero or can even be negative for most car commuters. Yes, people are actually paid to drive in this country.

Cycling rates for the graph are taken from here and here. Prices for petrol (current in January 2011) come from here, here and here.

I covered the same excuse previously. However, it keeps coming up again, so I think it's worth repeating.

Is it all about the price of gas ?

I've read a lot of comments, especially from American cyclists, about how they believe that higher petrol (aka gas or benzine) prices will lead to more cycling. Comments are made that "in Europe" the cost of driving is much higher and as a result more people cycle and fewer drive. It's not as simple as that. For a start, not all of "Europe" is the same in every way.

The Netherlands and the UK differ markedly in the cycling rate. While the Netherlands has the highest cycling rate in the world with 27% of all journeys being by bike, the UK has amongst the lowest at around 1%. Much the same rate as the US, in fact (you can find figures for comparison here).

However, a difference in the cost of petrol is not the issue here. The sign in the photo shows the price of petrol and diesel in the Netherlands today at a garage that I cycled past: 125.9 and 94.4 euro-cents per litre. An online petrol price website tells me that the average costs in the Cambridge (UK) area is 91.4 and 101 pence.

These two figures work out as $6.08 and $4.79 per US gallon for petrol and $4.56 and $5.28 per gallon for diesel (a significant proportion of cars both here and in the UK run on diesel). Similar costs in both countries. Both much higher than the price of around $2 per gallon in the US.

Other costs of running a car are also very similar in the UK vs. the Netherlands.

Clearly something other than the price of this fuel is the reason for the differences between usage of bicycles in the UK and NL. Riding a bike for a while here in the Netherlands makes it very obvious what it is. Here you have more direct routes if you cycle and the whole experience feels an awful lot safer.

For a high cycling rate, you need a lot more than just expensive gas. Comparing the Netherlands with the UK is quite interesting from the point of view of car ownership.

There's a graph of cycling rate vs. petrol price in a newer blog post on the same subject.

The third price shown above is for LPG - Liquified Petroleum Gas, which is also sold as fuel for motor vehicles. Underneath the Northern part of the Netherlands is the Groningen Gas Field - the largest natural gas field in Europe.

Car Free Living (or... do the Dutch cycle because they can't afford cars ?)

Here in the Netherlands it's not at that unusual for a household not to include a car. Adults without driving licenses are not particularly unusual. There are other practical ways to make journeys.

These things are all relative, of course, and mostly I make my comparisons to the UK where I lived for most of my life. The UK also has quite a lot of households without cars. The figures for car ownership and affordability compared between the UK and the Netherlands make for interesting reading.

Right up through the 1980s and early 1990s, The Netherlands had slightly higher car ownership than the UK, which was to be expected as cars were more easily affordable in The Netherlands than in the UK. However, in 1995 something changed. Car ownership here in the Netherlands stopped growing while it continued in the UK, surpassing the Dutch rate of ownership.

The 1997 figure for car ownership in The Netherlands showed a slight reverse, with 372 per thousand compared with 373 in 1992.

In 1994 in the UK, 30% of households were car free, and 11% were judged to be unable to afford a car. However, in The Netherlands, these figures were 42% and 7%, giving the widest gap between affordability and ownership amongst the EU15 in the table.

The figures together indicate one thing. More Dutch people make a deliberate choice not to own a car than citizens of other countries in this survey. It's not that they can't afford to own a car, but that they have less of a need of it.

By catering well for people who choose not to have a car, and creating an environment in which cycling is a very pleasant and efficient way of travelling, combined with good transport mode integration, an environment has been created where being car free is a more viable choice, both for families and individuals.

However, you don't have to read far into this data to see that the car is still very popular in the Netherlands. Dutch people like driving, and they like cars. Cars remain more affordable in the Netherlands than in the UK. Lots of Dutch people own cars. However, Dutch people are not enslaved by cars. They have a choice of transport modes which work well, and the main alternative choice is the bicycle.

2013 update
Note that Dutch car ownership figures have risen considerably since the statistics used above were published. By 2010, the Dutch owned 528 cars per thousand people while the British owned 519 so again the Dutch own more cars than the British. Both countries have car ownership rates which are above average for Europe (see the Wikipedia list of countries by car ownership rate). However while they own plenty of cars, the Dutch are still opting to use them less than people of other European nations.

2019 update
Dutch car ownership and use have continued to rise.

The figures are from page 63 of a report titled "Are you moving in the right direction?" which was produced by the European Environment Agency back in February 2000. This article is one of many articles with interesting figures which you can find on our cycling articles page. Unfortunately it is the most recent set of comprehensive figures that I've found. The fragmented figures I've found since then suggest a continuation on the same lines, though car ownership has grown all across Europe in the last ten years including in the Netherlands.