Zeeland - getting it wrong in the "year of the bike"

Zeeland, the most south west province of the Netherlands which shares a border with Belgium, has declared 2010 to be "the year of the bike." The idea is promote more cycle usage in the province.

However, that's not all they're doing. Sadly the good stuff is rather overshadowed by Zeeland having decided to promote the use of bicycle helmets amongst school children, starting in one area with the intention of spreading across the province if they are "successful". That's pretty much a first for this country.

So, what's wrong with it ? Well, there has yet to be a helmet campaign which has been accompanied by a rise in cycle usage. In Australia, huge falls were seen.

Zeeland ought to take note of what happened in New Zealand, which was named after the province. I grew up in New Zealand, returning to the UK at the age of 15. As children we always cycled to school. However, now ? The website for my old secondary school doesn't mention cycling at all. Rather, there is now a bus route promoted for the 4 km trip that I used to make by bike. Is this the future that Zeeland wants to see ?

English speaking countries don't provide any good examples. I watched cycle sheds being torn down at the secondary school near where we lived in the UK a few years back.

Dutch secondary schools have lots of cycle parking at present because they need it. Do we want to see this go away altogether as it has in countries where cycle helmets have been promoted and cycling has not been supported ?

Also, consider how children use bicycles in the Netherlands. If someone turns up at a friend's house without a bike and an outing is planned, they borrow someone else's bike, or ride on the back of a friend's bike. No-one thinks of this as dangerous. However, if it becomes the norm that a helmet is required, neither of these options will work if just one child is without a bike helmet, so none will travel by bike. Perhaps Mum will helpfully suggest she can give them a lift in a car ? That's how it is in other countries - ones where very few people cycle.

Inconvenience is a large part of the problem with requiring people to have special equipment in order to cycle. The same problem as Mike Rubbo pointed out makes bike share impractical in Australia.

Just imagine if you could only walk somewhere if you took along some special piece of personalized equipment. Say expensively custom fitted walking boots, and if there was a campaign to say that without fitted walking boots, walking was dangerous. If you cycled to a friend's house, with your normal comfortable cycling shoes, and they suggested that you go for a walk you'd not be able to take part.

What's more, this type of cycle promotion plants a seed of an idea. The idea being that here in the world's safest cycling country, cyclists are not actually safe at all. Perhaps this suggests that it's best not to cycle. Cycling relies on a high degree of subjective safety. Without this, cycling declines.

Zeeland is also the province where the fuss arose last year about considering implementing a speed limit on cycle paths. Apparently, Belgian cycle racers who come across the border to ride on Zeeuwse cycle paths are a nuisance. However, the only reason these cyclists come across the border is because conditions are better for them in Zeeland than on the roads in their own country.

I found the story on ligfiets.net.

Mum, can we go skating ?

The snow has cleared up over the last few days, but it's still pretty cold here at the moment. -9 C outside our window this morning. Yesterday I took some photos of these children who were skating on one of the frozen canals.

Note the pile of bikes beside the cycle path on the left. That's how the children got here. There's no adult supervising, so no adult's bike amongst them.

It's safe here for children to cycle on their own, and for them to skate on their own too.

Ice hockey is popular too. These children were practising a little further along the same canal.

And of course their bikes were not far away either.

How else to travel ? This way there is no need to wait until Mum (or Dad) can give them a lift. In the summer they do much the same to go swimming.

Is it any surprise that Dutch children have again been shown to have the best lives of all children living in industrialised countries ?

Sustainable safety

The Dutch concept of "Duurzaam Veilig", Sustainable Safety, has lead to this country having some of the safest roads in the world. Over ten years, between 1998 and 2007, the number of traffic fatalities in the Netherlands fell by an average of 5% per year due to the policies within the framework of "Duurzaam Veilig". This is a decrease of 300-400 deaths overall, more than a 30% improvement in safety for the already relatively safe Dutch road network.

A clear downward trend in traffic deaths

So what is "Duurzaam Veilig" and what does this mean ? Let's start with what it is not. Frequently I see from the UK that there are calls for drivers to be better educated, for cyclists to be better educated, for pedestrians to wear brighter clothing so they are seen more easily and to take the responsibility for avoiding being hit by motor vehicles. This is not sustainable safety. Sustainable safety is not about punishing people for making mistakes, but about preventing those mistakes from occurring.

While a good level of education of drivers in particular (as they are the ones bringing lethal force to the roads) is important, it is never possible to completely eliminate the chance of error, or of frustration leading to violent behaviour, if conflict is designed into the way in which roads are used. What's more, people are often tired or distracted. These things cannot be solved by education, they are a result of being human.

Dutch roads are dramatically safer now
than in the early 1970s. Child fatalities
on the roads have dropped by 98%. Just
9 children died on Dutch roads in 2013

What the Dutch have done is to reduce the frequency of conflict between road users and to to reduce the lethality of those crashes which still inevitably occur. This has involved changes in infrastructure to keep vulnerable road users away from the lethal force of motor vehicles, design of junctions so that routes do not cross each other at speed, as well as some changes in the law and education of road users about how to behave in a safe way (i.e. drunk driving, taking a break on long journeys...).

Speed limit reductions are a useful tool, both in town and in rural areas (but note that merely posting speed limit signs is not enough on its own). Out of a total of 120000 km of roads in the Netherlands, 41000 km have had the speed limit reduced from 50 km/h to 30 km/h roads and over 33000 km have been reduced from 80 km/h to 60 km/h. From the article: "Currently over 70% of all 30km/h neighbourhood connector roads have speeds reduced at intersections and/or stretches of road, and 45% of 60km/h roads." It is estimated that 51 to 77 traffic fatalities were prevented by the 30 km/h roads and 60 more due to the rural 60 km/h roads.

On many of the 30 km/h roads, measures have been taken to exclude cars.

Cycle-paths well away from traffic
remove conflict and danger.

Also, roundabout construction is credited with saving an estimated 11 lives. However, it goes beyond this. Traffic light junctions in the Netherlands do not work in the same way as similar junctions in the UK. In most cases, drivers who have a green light can go without having to negotiate with other drivers or cyclists who also have a green light but who are travelling in different directions. The conflict between, for instance, cyclists travelling straight on and motorists turning right has been removed by junction design. What's more, cyclists can avoid many traffic lights therefore avoiding all the danger caused by those junctions.

The measures have proven to be socially cost-effective, as benefits are a factor of four higher than costs. It's a common theme with Dutch policies concerning transport and in particular cycling that measures are not seen as a cost, but as a benefit. The Netherlands is a rich nation, in part due to sensible design of roads.

Of course it's all OK to have the world's safest roads, but to influence people to ride bikes you also need Subjective Safety to make cycling feel safe enough that people want to do it, and want their children to do it too. This has been addressed by a number of means, leading to the world's highest rate of cycling, and happily the same things which increase real safety and work for sustainable safety also work to increase subjective safety. The result is the highest rate of cycling in the world, with very high participation by the broadest possible population of cyclists, and what this means sometimes takes people by surprise.

Read also another blog post which explains about the importance of Sustainable Safety. Also about how the necessary segregation of cyclists from drivers is achieved even without cycle-paths because cycling routes are unravelled from driving routes.

Yarra - the highest cycling rate in Australia

Mike Rubbo recently made this film about Jackie Fristacky, the Councillor for Nicholls Ward, City of Yarra which is located in Melbourne in Australia.

Over here, it's nothing special to be a "cycling councillor." In fact, quite the reverse. When 93% of the population ride a bike at least once a week, it would be a brave councillor who tried to get elected with any kind of anti-bike message. In this country, the royal family ride bikes, and do so publicly in part because it's a way of connecting with the public and appearing a bit more normal rather than aloof.

However, in Australia it is not the same, and Jackie is sticking her head out in being a "cycling councillor." It is perhaps not a co-incidence that she represents the area with the highest cycling rate in Australia. 9% of commutes in Yarra are by bicycle, which is vastly higher than the average for the country as a whole.

Now, that's all very interesting, but what I like to know about places like this is what makes them special. What makes Yarra a place where cycling is more acceptable and more commonplace than elsewhere in Australia ? I sent Mike this question, and got a very comprehensive reply from Jackie herself, listing her reasons why Yarra has a high cycling mode share:

• Location close to key destinations such as CBD (1-2kms away to 5kms away at the extreme), employment and local activity centres;
• Yarra being 19.5 sq kms, and only a few kms from CBD (Central Business District), so distances all easily cyclable;
• Relatively flat terrain;
• Hoddle grid street pattern (rectangular blocks) makes cycling easy;
• High youth population, including students, given proximity to many tertiary educational institutions (University of Melbourne, RMIT, Australian Catholic University, and city campuses of Monash University, Vitoria University and others);
• Demographic is diverse with high proportion of professionals (higher incomes), and students and public housing (low incomes); both demographics cycle;
• cycling as an egalitarian and independent mode, suits the Yarra demographic;
• Congestion, so it is far more effective to cycle - being faster and door to door;
• 20% of households do not have a car, compared with Melbourne average of 10%;
• 73,000 residents; and 8,700 business in Yarra, employing some 60,000 people, Yarra having the largest source of employment outside the CBD. Some large businesses, like the CUB, have large secure bike cages for staff. Many employers are starting to encourage their staff to cycle to work with good parking and other facilities. Under the State planning scheme, these have become mandatory for larger new developments, but this is effecting existing businesses too. At meetings with planners, we take every opportunity to point out that more bikes are sold than cars, especially in Yarra, so where are residents/workers going to put their bikes. We say that if they do not want them in corridors and on balconies where they can cause trip hazards and WorkCare claims, then they need to plan better storage places;
• people are employed locally though more are employed in the CBD and also in surrounding areas;
• Yarra inherited a good cycle path to the CBD (Canning Street) but this has been supplemented by bike paths on virtually all roads in Yarra due to policy change directing this;
• Role models of Mayor and councillors on bikes, and senior staff including Directors on bikes;
• PR with press features on cycling and facilities;
• many local workers like to attend a bar or the like after work and having a car hampers them with restricted parking, drink driving etc; a bike gives more flexibility and less likely to be DUI.

What is my point in presenting this ? I believe there is always a reason why people cycle more in some places than they do in others. You see the same thing even here in the Netherlands. Some cities have higher cycling rates than others. There is always a reason why.

The challenge is to transform the rest of the city, even the rest of the country, so that conditions there are also conducive to cycling, and to keep on doing so in order to continue to increase the cycling rate. Commuters are a start, but they only get you so far. For a sustainable improvement, infrastructure needs to be designed to make it possible for a wider demographic to take to bicycles.

For now, let's be happy with what Yarra has achieved so far: The highest cycling rate anywhere in Australia.

Compare with a city in the Netherlands with a "low" rate of cycling

Where Ford Escorts go to die

An article on the BBC news website drew me to look at St. Helena, a tiny Island in the South Atlantic which they refer to as "the world's remotest island." Just 4255 (or 7637 depending on whether you believe wikipedia or the BBC) people live on the island.

In many ways, life on the island sounds idyllic. On other ways it does not. I can see why people leave, but also see why others might want to take their place.

So, why is this on a cycling blog ? Well, there's a video on the BBC site which includes interviews with school children. The boy on the video at 1:28 talks about the some of the issues that people face on the island. He says "...people getting 4000 - 5000 pounds per year as their salary, and that's to pay for food which is 2-3 times the price of the UK, to run a car with petrol one and a half times the price..."

Hang on, I thought. A car surely isn't actually a necessity. It's really a tiny place. In fact, St. Helena has a total area only 50% greater than that of the city of Assen where we live. It's perfectly possible to live here without a car, so surely that's also true of St. Helena. Because the island is just 16 x 8 km in size, the maximum distance anyone can possibly travel to get to anywhere else on the island is shorter than the distance that some school children from villages around here ride daily to get to school.

St. Helena's climate would appear to be very agreeable too. It apparently doesn't drop below about 15 C (59 F) in the winter, so no cycling on ice as we have to do here.

However, the BBC also refer to the island as "where Ford Escorts go to die." Could it really be true that a place so small is so infested with car culture that no-one considers that there is a different way of getting about ?

I took a look around the web to see if I can find any evidence that anyone rides a bike there. Surely a bicycle would also be a practical way of getting around this place. However, neither the government website nor tourism website actually refer to bicycles at all. In fact, I didn't manage to find a single reference to anyone riding a bike on this island, ever. Very strange indeed. I do hope I'm wrong about this - contributions from those who regularly cycle around the island would be very interesting to hear about.

If nothing else, perhaps cycling could be something else to offer on the tourism site. It does sound like a fascinating place to visit.

Northern Velomobile Ride

Yesterday was the Noordelijke Velomobieltocht - Northern Velomobile Ride. It was organised by Peter, who lives a few hundred metres from me here in Assen.

We had a bit of snow overnight, and I set off into it with a sparkling clean Mango which I'd washed the day before.

Peter's route took us through just short of 60 km of Drents countryside. It all looked beautiful in the fresh snow which had fallen overnight. We stopped for lunch and there was delicious soup provided when we returned to his home at the end of the day.

You can also see a few more photos on picasaweb.

Other participants also documented the ride.

Peter's experiences as organiser can be read on his blog, Alex took lots of photos and Wilfred's blog post includes a really nice film:



We didn't have such a big group as the Oliebollentocht a few weeks ago, but it was a very pleasant event all the same.

A group of us go on similar rides most weekends.
Read my review of the Sinner Mango Velomobile.

Railway station cycle parking in Zutphen and Wageningen

All Dutch railway stations have mass cycle parking. This video from Radio Netherlands Worldwide shows a newer cycle parking facility at Zutphen railway station in contrast with an older one at the station in Wageningen. The new facility is designed to be more comfortable for cyclists to use, as well as more secure against cycle theft.

Wageningen's population is just 36000 but there are thousands of spaces for bikes at the station. Zutphen has a population of just 47000, and over 3000 cycle spaces at the railway station. That's one space for every fifteen residents. In absolute numbers it's actually more than London, a much larger city with 8 million inhabitants which provides spaces for just one in every 2800 residents to park a bicycle at all of its fifty railway stations combined.

Note that the video was made last winter while there was snow on the ground. The cycling rate in the Netherlands only drops about 5% in the winter, so most people were still cycling and the bike racks were still full.