I'm not actually convinced personally that wood is the best material for making a bicycle frame. However, who cares ? The results in this case are very beautiful indeed and that's certainly a good enough reason for this bike to exist.
Jan Gunneweg is a Dutch bicycle maker who makes wooden bikes. We saw them on display at the prologue of the Vuelta here in Assen, which is where the video above was made.
There's another video on youtube showing Jan racing and even swimming with his bike. The epoxy seals the wood pretty well, I should think, but I'm not so sure the metal bearings like it.
I covered before the fears of a shortfall in railway station parking in the Netherlands. There is actually some very good news that has come out of this.
The national railway company is promising to build 100000 (one hundred thousand) additional cycle parking spaces across 150 stations. That's an average of 666 extra cycle parking spaces per station.
They're also promising longer opening times for the guarded cycle parks, more cycle shops at railway stations (they do repairs while your bike is parked), improved wider cycle racks, that they'll be more active at removing abandoned bikes, and that there will be a lick of paint and other maintenance for existing cycle parks.
All this will take about five years to happen.
The question which remains is "is this enough ?" Let's hope it is.
Now, an average of 666 extra spaces per station. How does this compare with elsewhere ? To give an example, the number of extra spaces being installed in just five stations is more than the total parking at all 50 railway stations in London. It also compares very well with the amount at other places in the UK. There are quite a lot of cycle parking articles.
How many cycle parking spaces do you have at your local railway station ?
Thanks to Frits for pointing this article in the latest copy of "Spoor", the Dutch Railways magazine.
From Mike Rubbo's blog Sit-Up Cycle, this video is of Sue Abbott, an Australian who is facing legal action in Australia for refusing to wear a helmet when cycling.
As most readers will know, Dutch cyclists are both the most numerous and the safest in the world. In fact, the roads of the Netherlands are the safest in the world. Helmets are very rarely worn in this country, virtually not at all for utility journeys, though sport cyclists tend to wear them as part of the uniform. Australia's helmet compulsion is a misguided attempt to improve cyclist safety, when what really needs to happen is investment in cycling infrastructure. That is the way to increase the cycling rate and to make the population more healthy.
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.
A few weeks before the start of the school term, banners and signs appear to remind drivers that children are to be expected to be on bikes in larger numbers again. The banner reads "The schools are starting again".
Inside the heart symbols it reads "drive with your heart".
Virtually all school children travel by bike in the Netherlands.
I have previous posts about cycle parking at schools, including videos of primary and secondary age children travelling to and from school, the extent of cycle parking at schools, and about school trips, all tagged with school travel.
The school are already back here. Below are a few photos of the school run at the same school where I made this video:
It's safe for all ages because what looks like a road in these photos is actually a cycle-path from which motor vehicles are excluded.
Primary (elementary) school cycle parking. Children overwhelmingly ride their own bicycles.
Primary (elementary) school cycle parking
Bakfietsen are used only to transport some of the very youngest children. Others ride their own bikes.
The Cambridge Evening News reported a little while back that Cambridge is considering residents' responses "before a final decision on whether to press ahead with the trial scheme is made."
Consultation to find out whether they should "press ahead" on a "trial" that's decades late already ?
It staggers me how slowly the UK can manage to proceed on perfectly common sense things which are simply "normal" here in the Netherlands and have been so for many years.
But, well, that's why the Netherlands has made progress on cycling and the UK has not. Campaigners need to be less accepting of this and demand actual progress to be made in a reasonable amount of time. It's also why we emigrated...
A few days later the same paper covered the story that shoppers might be put off a town if it has slower speed limits and safer streets. Very odd indeed.
Incidentally, the Dutch did do the experiment, not on a small scale either, now have many thousands of km of 30 km/h speed limits and have found that this isn't quite enough.
A Dutch blogger who makes a 36 km commuting round trip (40 minutes each way) by bike 3 to 4 times per week has produced a website called "It almost never rains". On this website he documented rainfall during his commute over the year from September 2008 to August 2009. Just 32 days out of 288 days had rain during his commute.
The Netherlands is not the driest country on earth, but rain isn't a very good excuse for not cycling here.
Jan Gunneweg is a Dutch bicycle maker who makes wooden bikes. We saw them on display at the prologue of the Vuelta here in Assen, which is where the video above was made.
