Three types of safety

Separate from the main road, a family cycles together, side-by-side. Straps on the front child seat are not done up. Slightly older children ride their own bikes. No-one wears safety equipment. The child in the rear is fiddling with something but the parents have no concerns concerned. This illustrates Subjective Safety.

The Netherlands is the safest place in the world to cycle. This is sometimes put down to a "safety in numbers" effect, but actually the infrastructure design is the vital component and shouldn't be overlooked. A lot of people would like their own country to emulate the Dutch success, but often they don't realise what is needed.

I used to do cycle promotion work in the UK, travelling from city to city and talking to a great number of people about cycling. They all already knew that cycling was healthy, good for the environment etc. Many people would like to be able to cycle. The number one reason that the average person in the street would give for not cycling was "it's too dangerous". So, what did they mean by this ?

One of many four metre wide cycle-paths
in Assen. School run cycling.

There are three measures of safety, all of which have their place in Dutch bicycle provision:

1. Actual safety - How many km you can expect to travel before you're injured on your bike.
2. Subjective safety (sometimes called "perceived" safety) - Are you near fast moving traffic ? Is it easy to make a turn across traffic ? Do you have to cycle "fast" in order to keep up ?
3. Social safety - Is there a mugger around that blind corner ? Will I be attacked in the street if I cycle ?

Cycle campaigners and planners might interest themselves in the actual safety, and it's a good thing that they do. Cyclists should of course be as safe as possible. However, no-one really makes a decision on whether to cycle or not based on these figures. Actually, cycling isn't really very risky in most countries and these figures often feature in cycle promotion literature. However, they're not successfully convincing people to take up cycling.

When people make the decision about whether it is "safe to cycle", they generally mean the second and third of our three different types of safety: Subjective Safety and Social Safety.

Also, if they're making a decision for someone else - perhaps their child or their partner - these issues become even more important.

Mother and children. Having several
metres of separation from the road
is essential for a high level of
subjective safety.

How do you improve Subjective Safety ? Here's a partial list:

• Cyclists should never mix with high speed or high volume motor traffic. A third of all roads in the Netherlands have a speed limit of 30 km/h or lower, most 50 km/h (30 mph) roads provide cyclists with a segregated path, as do many 30 km/h roads with higher volumes of traffic.
• On-road bike lanes and cycle paths without sufficient separation from the road are not suitable with high speed or high volume motor traffic.
• Reductions in speed and volume of traffic always help. All residential streets and a third of the entire road network has a 30 km/h (18 mph) speed limit or lower.
• Fully segregated cycle paths provide a good degree of subjective safety but must be built to a suitable standard. In this area they have a minimum width of 2.5 metres if for single direction use and 4 m for bidirectional use. Paths for pedestrians are separate.
• Junctions should be designed to make sure that cyclists are not left out. Cyclists can be separated in both time and space from motorists to maximise both efficiency and safety.
• In many cases, cyclists avoid junctions altogether so they cause as little inconvenience as possible.
• In Assen, the new standards require that cycle paths which follow the line of roads are separated from them by 2.5 metres. Where this isn't possible you will find a metal barrier is used, to provide a feeling of subjective safety as well as actual safety from crashing vehicles.
• Where possible, cycle routes follow a completely different route to driving routes, which of course improves the feeling of safety further.
• Reducing the noise of motor vehicles by using quieter road surfaces and installing noise barriers between the road and cyclists helps.

In the countryside away from all
motorized traffic, our family, rides
in comfort,

For social safety:

• You should always be able to see out of any tunnel as you enter it.
• Blind corners on paths are not acceptable.
• Cycle paths should be wide to allow cyclists to move out of the way of other people who may be on the path.
• Good sight-lines are required and there should be no places to hide along a cycle route.
• A low crime rate and a good conviction rate are needed. Cyclists should not feel that the police do not take their complaints seriously. 
• Areas that are clean, litter free, graffiti free, where grass is mowed and plants are not allowed to overhang the cycle path have a better feeling of social safety.
• Cycle paths should be lit at night so that you can see potential muggers, obstacles on the path etc.

If subjective and social safety are improved then people will cycle. They will want to. and so they will do it.

To summarise... No-one will do anything that feels too dangerous to them. Everyone wants their child to be safe and their partner to be safe. That's why so many journeys which ought to be cycleable are made by car. There is no point in arguing with people's decisions, or ridiculing them. The person making the decision to use a car has made it for quite logical reasons. Their level of confidence about cycling in the conditions around you is not the same as your own.

What to do... If you want people who do not cycle to take up cycling, then the right thing to do is to campaign for or design in road conditions which make cycling into an appealing option. That is what the Dutch have done. Everywhere. It is the key to the high cycle usage and high cycle safety figures.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that subjective safety is a concern only for inexperienced cyclists. No-one suffers from cycling being pleasant. Steps to increase the subjective and social safety of cyclists lead to a better cycling experience for all. Experienced cyclists are less likely to give up cycling in a subjectively safe environment. It becomes a lifetime habit. People continuing to want to cycle on the road when there is a parallel cycle-path are a sign of failure due to low quality. Always set your sights high enough when campaigning or planning.

A British child being trained. Wearing
fluorescent clothes and a helmet to ride
in the gutter on a residential street
which is subject to rat-running

So, where do helmets and fluorescent clothing fit in ? For some individuals, wearing such a thing improves their own feeling of safety to the level that they will ride. However, these items actually do little to improve actual safety and can have a negative effect on the subjective safety of other people due to making cycling look dangerous. Where cycling has a high degree of subjective safety, as it does here, no-one wears these safety aids. Dutch cyclists are safer without them than cyclists elsewhere are with them.

For more on the same theme, perhaps this post is most suitable. There are quite a few other posts tagged subjective safety which show different aspects of what makes cycling subjectively safe and the result of it. Amongst the other things needed to make cycling attractive is to make cycling more direct, so there are a lot of examples there to illustrate that concept too.

Big picture vs. small picture subjective safety
December 2011 update: I've realised since writing the text above that many people have slightly misinterpreted what I meant. There are two types of "subjective safety".

The most important, "big picture", type of subjective safety is that of society as a whole which causes everyone to cycle. This is what my article is about and this is what causes Dutch people of all ages and social positions to find cycling to be a safe activity, even wearing black clothes on an unlit bicycle at night. Cycling in the Netherlands always feels safe. This leads to a very high modal share for cycling.

The other, "small picture", type of subjective safety is that which involves people using safety equipment such as fluorescent clothes and helmets when they cycle. While this may make it possible for a few individuals who are already interested in cycling to cycle a bit more and to feel safer as they do so, it is debatable whether this does anything for the overall modal share for cycling.

Some people argue that it is detrimental to the modal share if cyclists take up visible safety equipment to improve their own "small picture" subjective safety. I suspect that "big picture" subjective safety is barely altered at all by this. The issues that people who don't cycle can see and which put them off cycling are with street design, not with the clothing of existing cyclists.

All the photos are of subjectively safe cyclists in the Netherlands, except the last which is of a British child being taught "safer cycling" in Cambridge. He is riding too close to the kerb on an unsuitable bike, but wearing fluorescent clothing and a helmet. The child in the fluorescent clothing will probably give up on cycling within a few years, while the Dutch cyclists will in all likelihood keep on cycling through their lives because high levels of subjective safety make it a pleasant thing to do.

The children in the photo at the top are all tired. Why ? Because this family is returning from the last day of a four day cycling event. They've cycled at least 40 km per day as part of the event, plus however far it is between their home and the startplace in Assen. The object which the child at the back is fiddling with as he cycles is a medal.

Per km travelled, Dutch cyclists are 3x less likely to die and 4x less likely to be injured than those in the UK, 5x less likely to be killed and 30x less likely to be injured than in the USA (statistics found here, page 506). Read more about the safety of cyclists in the Netherlands. However, this doesn't tell nearly the whole story, it's actually much safer than that for Dutch cyclists who fit the usual demographic for cycling in other countries. Two thirds of all cyclist deaths in the Netherlands are of people aged over 65. Most of their lethal injuries come from single vehicle collisions. i.e. when old people fall off their bikes, old age sadly can be enough to do the rest. This effect is virtually unknown in the UK and USA because so few older people cycle.

Subjective safety outside cycling

I've argued in the past that increasing the subjective safety of cyclists is probably the most important thing that can be done to increase cycling. I'm sticking with this. It's easily the biggest difference in the experience of cycling here vs. the UK, and it's pretty obvious which place has most cycling.

It isn't only in cycling that subjective safety is important. The motor vehicle industry has for many years touted the safety of their products. For instance in the very clever Volkswagen ad shown here.

Never mind that a comparable number of people were killed by motor vehicles during the 20th century as in all the wars combined, the message is always that cars are safe. They've also managed to make people think that bigger and more expensive cars are safer, even if it's not always true.

The airline industry is even better at it. It's hardly surprising that many people have a fear of flying. There can be few things more unnatural, or a more inherent feeling of danger, than sitting in a hermetically sealed tube which is travelling several miles above the ground at an incredibly high speed. However airlines present it as something else. Airliners have subdued and relaxing lighting, they hide the nuts and bolts of construction and the necessarily thin pressure bearing walls of the aircraft by nicely decorated and smooth plastic mouldings. The staff speak in a reassuring and controlled manner so as not to alarm passengers. Aviation disaster movies (or anything else alarming) are not scheduled for in-flight entertainment.

And what is happening for cycling ? While what ought to be done is to control the source of the danger, the motor vehicle, the emphasis is all to often placed on cyclists and pedestrians who are expected to behave and dress in ways which attempt to increase their own safety, generally marginally, in a hostile environment. It's the wrong approach because it does not attack the danger, nor the fear of danger head on. The way to increase both safety and subjective safety of cyclists is already known.

Anyway, the motor industry is where we came in, and here's more from them. Relax and enjoy this film, and be reassured that your "living room on wheels" is the safest place in the world...


I have more examples of things concerning subjective safety. To see what it's like to cycle without safety concerns, visit Assen. The photo at the top came from here.

Extreme sport ? Why there is no point in saying that cycling is safe without it being subjectively safe

This bridge provides an essential link for bicycles by
keeping cars out of the way. Read more.

Skydiving is a very safe sport. In the USA in 2007 there were 2.2 million jumps and only 18 deaths of sky-divers. That's an average of a death every 122000 jumps. If you were to jump once every day you could expect to live to 334 years of age before a skydiving accident killed you. (source: USPA website)

What does this have to do with cycling ? Well, these are precisely the sorts of statistics that many cyclists like to quote to non-cyclists to try to encourage them to cycle in countries where there is little cycling.

Does this work ? Generally not. Cycling remains at around 1% of journeys made by bike in the English speaking countries. People who are enthusiastic cyclists cycle. Those who are not enthusiasts don't. In that way it's very much like skydiving. People use both activities to raise money for charity.

I share with a lot of my readers that I wouldn't willingly jump out of an aeroplane with a parachute no matter how safe I was told it was. I can see that it's thrilling, and I'm sure it is fabulous fun. However, jumping from an aeroplane offers no utility to me, and it is way past my threshold for subjective safety. Many people feel the same way about cycling.

So what is the difference between the Netherlands, where everyone cycles, and the countries where few people cycle ?

It's quite simple. There are two main points. First the high level of subjective safety achieves this:

1. A cycle ride here is always a pleasure.
2. Motor vehicles are generally somewhere else.
3. Street design is such that conflict between motorists and cyclists is rare

What's more, there is the great efficiency of cycling in the Netherlands:

1. Cycle routes are often shorter than driving routes
2. You can skip past traffic lights
3. You can park closer to your destination

What's more, everyone does it. From children, through families together on to older people.

It's a logical impossibility to expect 40% of journeys by bike if cycling only appeals to 5% of the population. That is why cycling here has to be for everyone and why a high degree of subjective safety is vital. A high cycling rate and high subjective safety cannot be separated. This is why I've highlighted subjective safety in a number of posts.

If you live in a country where there is a low level of cycling, you live in one where the subjective safety for cyclists is too low for most people to consider cycling. Without improving conditions cycling will continue to look like an extreme sport to many people and you will have as much success in increasing the rate of cycling as in convincing the general public to skydive.

While cycling in busy traffic might sometimes seem like an extreme sport in some countries, it doesn't here. The woman in the photo is definitely not engaging in an extreme sport. There is no "traffic jamming" here in Assen. The nearest any car travelling at speed will get to her today is if one crosses over the bridge she's just passed under. What's more, she is on the most direct route to the centre of the city. This high quality cycle route is closer to a straight line than any route by car, and has no traffic lights on it, vs. a minimum of three sets by car. Wonderful conditions for cycling like this attract people to cycling.

To see conditions for cycling which are so irresistable that they attract everyone, come on a Study Tour. If you simply want to relax in conditions away from the stress of cycling elsewhere, consider one of our holidays.

I should perhaps point out that I have no argument with skydivers. If you want to throw yourself out of a working aeroplane, that's fine by me. However, if you don't mind, I'll just watch.

Subjective safety in the English speaking world

It isn't only in the Netherlands that subjective safety matters. Here it's been dealt with to a greater extent than in most other countries. People already cycle in large numbers. It's a rather bigger problem in English speaking countries which have amongst the lowest levels of cycling, and the lowest levels of both subjective and actual safety for cyclists.

The huge numbers that turn out for one day only events like London's Freewheel demonstrate how safer conditions create cyclists. How people will cycle if the surroundings are pleasant enough. However, single day events don't give an opportunity for people to grow a habit of cycling.

There are a number of responses to the lack of subjective safety in the English speaking world. Things that people do in an attempt to increase their subjective and actual safety for at least a part of some of their journeys. Often cyclists make use of relatively indirect back roads (making journeys slower and less direct than they would be in the Netherlands where you can take direct routes without fear for your safety). Cyclists wear fluorescent clothing and can get quite obsessive about lighting because they fear they won't be seen. Helmets are common due to a perception than it makes cycling safer.

Occasionally there are organised efforts such as the "bike bus" in Sydney, Australia. This gives an improvement in the level of subjective safety felt by a cyclist riding alone on hostile streets. It's great if they get people to cycle, however, the existence of such a thing is symptomatic of a problem. The people using the "bike bus" don't feel safe enough to ride on their own, and even in the "bike bus" they don't feel safe enough to do away with helmets and fluorescents. Many more people will remain unconvinced that it's safe even with a "bike bus".

Ultimately this is the wrong approach. If cities in English speaking countries (Sydney included) had proper cycling infrastructure which made cyclists feel safe and improved the efficiency of their journeys, there would be no such thing as a bike bus. There would also be a much higher rate of cycling in the much more attractive conditions, people wouldn't feel the need to wear protective clothing, and the injury rate would fall.

The English speaking world needs to start looking for advice not amongst other English speaking countries, but to those countries where cycling is truly a part of everyday life. The Netherlands leads in this and Denmark is in second place. This is where you find the experts who have proven success in raising rates of cycling.

15th October Update
Via Amsterdamize, a story which shows that Australia is perhaps also starting to do the right thing. Let's hope it is successful.

We organise Study Tours in the Netherlands for campaigners, planners and others interested in experiencing for themselves the highest quality cycling infrastructure in the world. The Dutch cycling experts group is the Fietsberaad.

Why do Sydney's drivers hate cyclists ?

The Sydney Morning Herald from Australia recently reported that Sydney is "the city that hates bikes." Cycling rates are low all across Australia, but Sydney is the city which has "the lowest rate of bicycle ownership of any major city in Australia as well as the lowest proportion of people who cycle every day." Melbourne has double the cycling rate of Sydney, with 2.1% of commutes by bike vs. 0.8% in Sydney.

John Pucher, who I wrote about previously, spent a sabbatical year researching ways to boost cycling in Sydney, and wrote a detailed report which looks into the reasons why Sydney has so little cycling, making comparisons with Melbourn and with the rest of the world.

The graph shows the relationship between the bicycle modal share for commuting and the proportion of bike trips which are by women for various areas of Melbourne. Women are typically more cautious than men, and where subjective safety is lacking, fewer women will cycle. It is noted in the article that cycling rates for women are very low in Australia, while the highest rate of cycling by women is here in the Netherlands where 55% of all cycle journeys are made by women.

Normally I would note here that the commuting rate is usually a lot lower than the modal share for all journeys. This is true in most instances because children, parents with children and the elderly are even more affected by subjective safety issues.

However, Australia's cycling rate is so low that other effects come into play. In Sydney, fully 53% of cycle journeys are made for recreational purposes. This is quite an unusual situation. Conditions are such that utility cycling by "normal people" who don't identify themselves as "cyclists" has almost been eradicated.

Pucher's article (please read it) spends a lot of time looking at the factors which make cycling particularly unattractive in Sydney. Topography and climate, population density and urban form, trip distance, socioeconomic and demographic factors. I've covered most of these issues before, and none really add up to a reason for no-one to cycle.

I've covered these excuses before, so I won't go over them again, except for one. The problem of trip distances is so commonly over-stated that I will write about that. The average work trip length in Sydney turns out to be 16.9 km. That's quite a high figure. However, 32.9% of work trips are actually under 10 km, and 15% of trips to work are under 5 km. Even with such a large number of short commutes, only 0.8% of all these commutes are being made by bicycle. Journey distances may put off some potential cycle commuters, but they are clearly not the real reason for the cycling rate of Sydney being so extraordinarily low.

It is often believed by people from low cycling English speaking countries that the Dutch only make short journeys. That of course is not the truth. Across the whole of the Netherlands, 35% of all trips for all purposes that are under 7.5 km are made by bike. So are 15% of journeys between 7.5 and 15 km and 3% of journeys over 15 km. The Dutch have the longest commutes on average of any nation in Europe.

So what is the problem ? Why do Australians cycle so infrequently ? Section 5 on page 14 of the article gets down to it:

"Concern about the danger of road cycling is a serious deterrent to getting more people to cycle—especially for children, the elderly, and women, but also for anyone who is risk averse (Bauman et al, 2008). A recent survey of 1,150 Sydney residents living within 10 km of the CBD suggests that perceived traffic danger is the primary reason why non-regular cyclists do not cycle more often (City of Sydney, 2006). Thus, improving cycling safety is an important approach to encouraging more cycling among a broader cross-section of society. Of course, reducing cyclist injuries and fatalities is an appropriate public health goal in itself, but the potential impact of improved safety on people’s willingness to cycle is yet more reason to pursue this goal."

There you have it. There is a lack of Subjective safety.

It doesn't have to be like this. In the Netherlands we have infrastructure which supports cyclists by giving them direct journeys with a high degree of subjective safety making cycling easily accessible to all. The result is not only an enormous difference in the number of short and slow journeys made relative to other countries, but increases interest in all types of cycling. You also see it reflected in the very high rate of participation in racing, and the resulting success in international racing vs. other countries, and the high rate of long distance cycle commuting. The latter particularly benefits due to infrastructure specifically designed to support it. The quality of Dutch provision has made a great difference to my own commuting speed. For keen cyclists, there is no down side to the type of infrastructure which exists in the Netherlands.

The story about Sydney came to me via the Crap cycling and walking in Waltham Forest blog.

London's cyclists are not to blame for London's low cycling modal share, it's the politicians who should take the blame

Low cycling nations and low cycling cities don't have a problem with how well cycling is marketed, they have a problem with how well their infrastructure works for cycling.

Six Londoners died in a short period of time recently and this has been followed by protests including a "Die In".

Neither London's Mayor, Boris Johnson nor the Cycling Commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, appear to be aware of their role in what has happened. Both have made remarks on the lines of that there is nothing they could do by changing infrastructure which would reduce the incidence of deaths. They are  deliberately misleading people and the people they are misleading most are those who voted them.

Cycle-paths are one of the forms of
infrastructure which keep Dutch
cyclists safe.

Here in the Netherlands we have infrastructure which reduces the incidence of cyclist deaths. We used it every day. I've offered my time twice to the Mayor in order to demonstrate what it is and how it works, but it would seem that he's not very interested in knowing what he needs to do to keep cyclists safe.

Yesterday evening I watched a news programme from the UK in which Andrew Gilligan blamed cycling campaigners for making cycling look dangerous. He suggested that cyclists making cycling sound dangerous this was the reason why a BBC survey revealed that a fifth of London's cycle commuters have stopped cycling. Yes, he actually laid blame on the people who promote cycling. This is a disgraceful distortion of what is actually happening under his watch.

Back in March, just after Boris Johnson appointed his friend as cycling commissioner, I was skeptical of their motives and suggested that this was a time when campaigners would need to become more busy than before. It was clear then that London would rely on hype, exaggeration and marketing rather than actually building the infrastructure that was required to make change happen. I gave he post the tag "broken promises" because even as they made their promises, it was obvious that they would be broken. Nothing that has happened in London since that time reduces my skepticism.

It's possible to ride for six years without incident
A few days back I realised that while up to six years ago I had quite regular unpleasant experiences when cycling, I'd now had six years of having no unpleasant experiences at all, not having been cut up even once, until that run of six years was broken just one month ago. What is special about six years ? Six years ago we emigrated from the UK and we've lived in the Netherlands since that time. Why one month ? One month ago I rode a bike for just a few hours in London and it reminded me what it is like to ride a bike in the UK.

Why isn't it like this for everyone ?
In order to encourage people to ride bicycles, the choice of doing so has to be made easy. Routes taken by bicycle need to be direct, they need to be as free as possible of stops, and the conditions need to be and to feel very safe. Unless cycling is subjectively safe, most of the population will never cycle.

The best way of improving both actual safety and subjective safety is to do one simple thing: remove motor vehicles from the spaces where cyclists ride.

The BBC's survey revealed a fifth of cyclists had been involved in a collision. This is not just a problem with subjective safety, but of whether people are injured or die when cycling. It's not a marketing problem which can be solved by not talking about dying, it's a problem with the experience that people have if they get on a bicycle, which in London is always tense.

Two-thirds of London cyclists admit they sometimes ride on pavements to avoid busy junctions. They do this not because it's convenient (it's not) but because it feels safer than continuing their journey on the road. To solve problems like this we first have to understand them.

London cyclists don't dress like this
because it's fashionable but because
they are scared

In one of my very first posts on this blog, more than five years ago, I noted that "Cyclists are the pit-canaries of the roads. If they're numerous, dressed in ordinary clothing and wide-ranging in age you can tell that you are in a location where cycling is "normal" in society and where it is safe enough, and feels subjectively safe enough, that everyone cycles. If people feel they have to dress to be safe then this is a sign that they do not have adequate subjective safety."

London's cyclists still look very much like the pit canaries of the road and there are good reasons why. If you cycle in London then you have to be concerned about your own safety. The BBC survey included several questions about subjective safety. For instance, one question asked whether people thought their family and friends were safe when cycling. Nearly 70% said no. The low subjective safety is why people wear bright colours, helmets and face masks. These are not fashion accessories, they're tools for survival. They're not worn because someone said it was unsafe, they're worn because people feel unsafe when cycling.

Until London gets to grips with why people feel unsafe when cycling and until the city starts to do something about the reasons why people feel unsafe by building infrastructure makes cycling attractive to everyone, the city will not see a rise in cycling to levels comparable with the Netherlands.

Cycling in London doesn't need marketing, it needs infrastructure !

The same principles apply everywhere
Any place which has given inadequate attention to making cycling safe, convenient and enjoyable will see stagnation at a low percentage of journeys by bike as only people who particularly like cycling will ride bikes.

Journeys by bike in London never broke through even 5% of the total. Sadly, this decline has occurred before the city has even done one percent of what it needed to do to make mass cycling happen in the first place. However, declines can happen anywhere and examples of it happening should be a warning to us all.

It's not only London which has seen cyclists give up. Once mighty Denmark has unfortunately also seen the equivalent of one in eight cyclists give up. This decline came about for the same reasons as the decline in London. They ignored the importance of building good enough infrastructure and tried to use marketing to fill in the gaps. Voluminous international publicity turned out not to be enough to make people feel safe when they experienced problems on a daily basis such as junction designs which cause conflict and have killed seven Copenhageners already this year. While it may still seem a step beyond what many nations have, to copy Denmark's "success" actually means to copy what doesn't work in Denmark. That's why I suggest that the Netherlands remains easily the best country to try to emulate.

While the Netherlands is currently on top that doesn't mean that this country is any more immune to these issues than any other. Plenty of Dutch people take what they have for granted and simply don't know why it is that they cycle. Denmark should especially serve as a warning to the Netherlands as policies and practices from there and marketed to this country could reasonably be expected to end with the same result here as they did where they came from.

The Dutch don't cycle because it's "in their blood" but for the same reasons as anyone else would cycle given conditions which made cycling into an easy option to choose. When cycling is convenient, offers direct and uninterrupted journeys and both feels and is safe then people choose to cycle. When conditions are merely adequate and when incidents happen often enough that people remember them and become concerned about their safety, cycling will stagnate or drop.

Not all Dutch cities grow cycling at the same rate. Here, just like everywhere else, people cycle in response to infrastructure and not in response to marketing.

Hope for the future
Cycling needs actions, not words. A million volumes of marketing material do not have the same value as one metre of good quality cycle-path, and that's universally true. To a first approximation, cycling modal share is proportional to expenditure. Politicians control the funds and they need to release them in order that cycling can grow, not make excuses for inaction or blame cyclists for their own misfortune.

The Netherlands achieved its cycling success by building a remarkable country-wide network of world class infrastructure and not by marketing. Other countries could achieve the same results in the same way. There is no proven alternative method which leads to true mass cycling.

Update 6 December 2013
Usage of London's bike share system is also falling. This is also being blamed on cyclists. When I was in London a few weeks ago I tried the system and found it to work well enough as a civil amenity. However, I also cautioned that it's not cycling infrastructure.

For four and a half years I've been writing about the limits of London's bike share system and how it can never lead to a real cycling "revolution" in the city. Bike share answers the wrong question. London's problem was never a shortage of bicycles, but was always a shortage of pleasant conditions for cycling.

London's aim should be to become a city of ten million cyclists. This will never happen while instead of fixing the infrastructure, London's politicians seek to pass the blame for the majority of the population being scared to cycle onto the few people brave enough to do it.

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.

London Freewheel

A couple of months ago, Fernando in London bought a basket and support from me to transport his dog, Fosse. Yesterday, Fernando kindly sent me some photos of the two of them taking part in the London Freewheel ride last week.

This was the second year of the Freewheel, and it was wildly successful: 100000 people were attracted to ride their bikes on 12 km of closed roads in the capital.

The success of the event shows just how attractive it is to be able to cycle without having to be constantly concerned about motorised vehicles. It's a good demonstration of how increasing subjective safety results in more people cycling, even if the improvement is just for one day.

Clearly the pent-up demand to cycle that is present in most places also exists in London.

Imagine the rate of cycling that London could achieve every day if the infrastructure in the city was redesigned with emphasis on increasing subjective safety for cyclists so that it was always to the level experienced on the Freewheel.

I have more posts referring to subjective safety.


Fernando's basket is the extra large size that I make for transporting dogs, and it's mounted on a sturdy front rack.

I have another photo of Fernando and Fosse together, accompanied by photos of other people with their dogs on their bikes.

We organise holidays over here in the Netherlands where we always have this degree of subjective safety. We would also be very pleased to have the transport planners from wherever you live visit to take part in a Study Tour so that they can see the result of achieving this.

The truth about Copenhagen

This is a long post, but also a factual one. Please do read the comments. I think it notable that Copenhagen residents would appear to be in agreement with me, including the Head of the city's Bicycle Programme, Andreas Røhl

The Copenhagen conference is upon us, and what's happening ? Well, CO2 emissions from delegates travelling to the conference are huge for a start, so let's hope they achieve something.

No doubt we've also got any number of articles about "the world's cycling capital" to look forward to.

So what's the problem with this ?

Danish cyclists are increasingly scared to cycle. A recent press release from the city revealed that the number of people who feel safe cycling on the city's streets has fallen from 47% to 40%. An officer from the city's cycling programme is quoted as saying 'More parents don't want their children to ride.'

You can see why there is this concern over safety in almost any photo of cyclists in the city. The majority of cycle paths have no real separation from the street. To cycle in Copenhagen is to cycle in close proximity to motor vehicles. This leads inevitably to a lower level of subjective safety.

The paths are also very narrow. Many are just two or 2.2 metres wide. This is much narrower than the 2.5 m + 1.5 m separation from the road which is normal in the Netherlands for single direction paths. A recent report from the Fietsberaad reported that there is "no promotion" and "almost no important technical or infrastructural innovation."

The cyclists of Copenhagen include relatively few children. Helmets are much more common than here in the Netherlands (they reflect the feeling of safety of those who choose to wear them). There are lots of motor vehicles.

When the Copenhagenize blog includes a piece on cycling to school, you don't see videos of Danish children. Rather, the blog has used the video I shot of Dutch children here in Assen. That's great, but where are the Danish children ? This is important. I can see the next generation of Dutch cyclists already riding their bikes, but not where the next generation of Danish cyclists will come from.

Danish children cycle to school less than ever. Lots of people do use cargo bikes to transport their children within cities, but children are relatively infrequently seen on their own bikes. To be fair, Copenhagen is trying to do something about this, and Mikael is right to point out the absurd direction in which cycle promotion has been heading in Denmark. But the cycling rate in the country as a whole has dropped 30% since 1990. (Sadly, it continues to drop).

So how much cycling is there in Copenhagen ?

The diagram above comes from page ten of "Cycle Policy 2002-2012", an document produced by the City of Copenhagen, showing the modal shares for the city. The text says "The (bicycle) share of the total number of all purpose trips is slightly less than one fifth, but the share of home-workplace traffic is as high as one third." Note how the figure for commuters is substantially higher than that for all trips. This is very often the case because when you concentrate on commuters you conveniently get to ignore the problems faced by pensioners, disabled people, parents cycling with their children and children cycling on their own. Working age adults are less sensitive to a low level of subjective safety.

These figures come from ten years ago. Why am I looking at such old figures ? Well, as it turns out, newer figures from a reliable source are not that easy to find. More recent "Bicycle Accounts" omit the "all trips" figures and only talk about the more impressive figures for commuting. According to the "Bicycle Account" for 2008, the commuting figure has risen to 37%. If we scale the "all journeys" figures by the same proportion you can expect that around 22% of all journeys in Copenhagen are now by bicycle - and around twice that number are by car. John Pucher independently reports that "A 2005 travel survey found that 20% of all trips in Copenhagen were by bike." (page 26 of this document).

Do I have something against the Danes ?

I am sure that some people will ask my motivation for posting this. Do I have something against the Danes ? Of course not. Denmark has the second highest cycling rate in Europe. That is something to be proud of, and to build on. I want to see them reach their target for 40% of commuters by bike. I'd like to see them set targets for wider demographics than just commuters, too.

Denmark needs to try harder than they are at present, for the sake of their own cyclists quite apart from for the rest of us.

Copenhagen looks impressive compared with countries where few people cycle, but the cycling rate is not that high in comparison with many cities in the Netherlands. Several Dutch cities now have more cycle journeys than car journeys. However, while Copenhageners also like their bikes, they still drive a lot more than they cycle.

I think it's quite simple. The infrastructure has let them down. Cycling in Copenhagen isn't as stress free as it needs to be. Not quite so pleasant as it needs to be. There is inadequate subjective safety.

Dutch cities with less than a 30% share are considered to be doing quite badly and work to make improvements. At 27% of all journeys, and 35% of all journeys under 7.5 km, the cycling modal share for this entire country is higher than that of Copenhagen.

Copenhagen's targets

Back in 2002, the City of Copenhagen set some targets:

• The proportion of people cycling to workplaces in Copenhagen shall increase from 34% to 40%.
  
• Cyclist risk of serious injury or death shall decrease by 50%.
• The proportion of Copenhagen cyclists who feel safe cycling in town shall increase from 57% to 80%.
• Cyclist travelling speed on trips of over 5 km shall increase by 10%.
• Cyclist comfort shall be improved so that cycle track surfaces deemed unsatisfactory shall not exceed 5%.

These are all worthwhile aims, but how successful has Copenhagen been in achieving them ? That recent press release that I referred to earlier gives a few answers:

• The 40% commuting target has not yet been met. Rather, the city still says that "more than a third of residents pedal their way to work."
• The fears associated with cycling in Copenhagen have risen. The proportion who feel safe has dropped from 57% to 53%.
  
• Actual death and injury rates have definitely dropped, which is very good news.
  
• The other two issues, of speed and comfort have not been reported on, so I can only assume there isn't much progress to report on these.
  

So, why the lack of progress ? It comes down to quality of infrastructure and levels of subjective safety. As shown before, cycling in Copenhagen means cycling in close proximity to cars. Road junctions generally don't separate cyclists from motorists as they do here. The 2008 bicycle account reports that "58% (of Copenhagen cyclists) feel unsafe because of cars." Cycling simply doesn't feel safe enough with Copenhagen's infrastructure and that is why growth has stalled where it has and why the demographics are as they are.

How is the infrastructure different ?

Some of the language from the Cycle Policy document explains the difference. For example, "Normally cycle tracks are wider than two meters across." Two metres is actually rather narrow by Dutch standards which require 2.5 metre minimum widths. Also, there is no mention of any separation from the road. We have a 1.5 m separation standard here, while on many of the Danish cycle tracks, there is simply a kerb which will drop you onto the road. This makes the usable width of the cycle tracks narrower than their actual width.

Copenhagen (urban population 1.8 M) has around 350 km of cycle tracks. This are in large part not separated from the road by more than a kerb. Also, at junctions bicycles and cars are mostly mixed in together without separate traffic light timings (even with their newer designs). There are more details and lots of photos of different types of Copenhagen cycle tracks on page 23 and onwards in this document.

By contrast, even tiny Assen (population 65000) has over 100 km of separated cycle paths (double that if you count both sides of the road - I'm not sure how Copenhagen counts), which are mostly quite well separated from the road, and road junctions mostly keep cars and bikes separate (as seen here, here, here).

Copenhagen is also growing a network of "green cycle paths" away from the road, and now has more than 25 km of these. From the videos and photos I've seen, these look very good. They quite closely resemble some of the better cycle paths we have in Assen and Groningen. I've recently featured some typical local cycle routes here and here. The reaction of an American visitor to the streets of Groningen can be seen here.

So, why write this now ?

Copenhagen's marketing as "the world's cycling capital" has been very successful so far. Nice branding too. However, real growth in cycling comes not from marketing and branding, nor from taking photos of pretty girls on bikes, but from investment in infrastructure.

Unfortunately, the effects of the hype now go beyond the residents of just that one city. London, for instance, seems to think that merely painting its cycle paths "copenhagen blue" will lead to success. It won't. To get a really high rate of cycling you need the proper infrastructure. There is one country in the world which has it.

So what's to be done ?

These are figures for all journeys, not just commuters

Groningenize ! What is needed everywhere is to build better infrastructure and make cycling more attractive. Copenhagen itself could do with a good dose of "Groningenization" in order to improve both its cycling rate and the demographics of its cyclists. Groningen itself needs to continue to improve its infrastructure in order to continue to increase its cycling rate.

And the rest of the world would be best off watching the best example. To "Copenhagenize" is to copy what is second best. "Groningenize", "Netherlandsize", even "Amsterdamize".

Conclusion

Copenhagen has achieved a lot. It has the highest cycling rate in Europe outside of the Netherlands. There is quite a lot of catching up to do to get to the point that many Dutch cities have reached, but they're still doing really well by world standards. Let's keep it in perspective, cheer on their success so far. However, it's also important to realise why their success has been limited, and try to understand why Dutch cities have achieved so much more.

Other countries wanting to achieve a significant modal share for bicycles really do have to look beyond Copenhagen. Groningen leads the world.

And us ?

And what about Assen where we live ? Well, the cycling rate here is 41% of all journeys. Not as high as Groningen, but not far off double the figure for Copenhagen. It's a very high figure for a city which doesn't have a student population to boost the cycling demographics. This city only started to refer to itself as a "fietsstad" or "cycling city" after the all journeys figure reached 40%, and then did so just with a small piece in Dutch on the city's website. That's called modesty.

We weren't born here, but came here for a reason. The cycling environment is first class (not only in the city but also in the countryside) and it's a wonderful place to live.


There are several other posts about Copenhagen. Copenhagen has continued to make claims which are not supported by evidence. For instance, a widely reproduced press release which claimed a huge number of cyclists on "the busiest cycle street in the world" did not stand up to scrutiny.

2013 update
You read it here first in 2009, now it's confirmed by the Danish press (English translation). Cycling has stagnated in Copenhagen at about 35% of commuters, well short of both the 40% target which I wrote about above and the 50% target which the city then set. As I suggested in 2009, Copenhagen has at last started to look to Groningen for advice.

The Danish article discusses several of the things that we recommend and which feature on our study tours: Simultaneous green junctions, the much larger railway station cycle parking facilities in the Netherlands, and it is topped by a photo of the Gerrit Krol triple bridge which saves cyclists an enormous amount of time.

It's also been confirmed this year that two stage junctions used widely in Denmark are an unsafe design of junction which has led to many deaths.

These problems could have been avoided or minimised by Copenhagen and Denmark as a whole following a path of building better infrastructure which invited people to cycle rather than relying heavily on marketing, both within the country and to an outside audience.

We can help cities in Denmark or any other nation by demonstrating best practice.

2014 update
Five years after publishing this blog post, calling for Denmark to attempt to stop trying merely to use hype to sell cycling and instead "Netherlandsize" itself so that the country can genuinely grow the popularity of riding bicycles, there is at last official recognition within the Danish government that cycling has been in decline for twenty years in their country. This is a very good thing. It is only after recognition of a problem that the beginnings of a solution can be found.

2014 update - part 2
Unfortunately, this new found sense didn't last. A few weeks after I wrote the last paragraph, Copenhagen once again started claiming implausible numbers of cyclists on one route as a success.

For the sake of your own population, it's time that international city marketing and promotion of prestige projects took second place to building a useful network of infrastructure.

Independent EU statistics for cycling
in Copenhagen for 2010 and 2012.
Cycling dropped from 31% to 26%
Car usage rose from 29% to 33%.

Independent research shows that cycling continues to decline in Copenhagen.

2015 update
Sadly, the cycling embassy of Denmark reports that funding for cycling has been severely cut. Official figures from the city also show that cycling in Copenhagen declined between 2010 and 2012.

This post was inspired by a post on a similar subject on the Amsterdamize blog, and not quite believable figures quoted on the Copenhagenize blog. The Groningen chart comes from page 23 of this presentation by Cor van der Klaauw. Since this blog post was written, the claims on the Copenhagenize blog have been slightly modified.

100% segregation of bikes and cars

City centre street, no cars allowed. Clear signage gives
loading times for deliveries

Again and again I read comments of the form "even in Holland not all parts of rides are segregated" or talk of "similar road exposure" in the UK vs. the Netherlands. I've been accused of making out that the cycle-path network in the Netherlands is more extensive than it actually is.

Such comments are based on a misunderstanding of the differences between the way that roads and streets are designed and used in the two countries.

"Shared" street ? Not on an equal basis. It's a through route
for bikes but access only for cars.

The misunderstanding usually arises because someone notices the simple statistic which says that while the Netherlands has about 130000 km of roads, there are only about 35000 km of cycle-path.

This sounds, of course, like there is a serious short-fall of segregated cycle paths.

The first misconception is that people look at these figures as if those 130000 km of roads are exactly the same as roads in their own country and assume that cyclists find themselves in conditions which are like in their own country. That's not correct.

The second misconception is to assume that because there are a quarter as many km of cycle-paths as roads that Dutch cyclists spend 3/4 of their time riding on roads. That's also not correct.

City centre streets are busy, but with bikes instead of cars

Quite simply, these are the wrong ways to look at those figures.

Dutch people do cycle on a mixture of cycle-paths and roads. However, this does not mean that cyclists in the Netherlands spend much of their time mixing with motor vehicles.

Over the last few decades, the Netherlands has unravelled the networks of car and bicycle routes. If you compare routes for the same journey by bicycle and by car, then in very many cases you will find that the two routes are very different to one another.

A child rides a bike in the middle of a bicycle street.
This was once a busy through road by car. Now access
only by car / through route by bike.

I've demonstrated this principle several times on this blog (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8). In some cases the separation of routes is achieved by building of cycle-paths. However, in many others it is achieved by removing cars from the roads. Sometimes when new roads are built, the old road can serve cyclists very well.

These days, very many roads and streets are simply no longer part of the route network for cars. They still allow access by car, so that deliveries can be made and people who live along them may reach their own homes by car should they wish, but they are not through routes by car. As a result, such streets are absolutely not dominated by cars. A cyclist using a road on such a route has much the same feelings about safety as someone using a cycle-path.

It is only when cycling doesn't feel like an extreme sport that it can become so popular as it is in the Netherlands.

Residential street. No cycle-path required as it's not a
through road for cars. Residential parking, but these cars
rarely move.

Residential streets in the Netherlands rarely work as through roads for cars, even if they were originally designed to do so. This makes them excellent places to cycle or walk with a high degree of comfort and safety.

In some cases, this has been formalized by creation of woonerven, but many of the same characteristics can be found in residential streets which are not woonerven.

Woonerven have a speed limit of "walking pace". However, they are not the only roads with low speed limits. In fact, over 40000 km of roads in the Netherlands, a third of the total, have a speed limit of 30 km/h or lower. This lowering of speeds on minor roads has been done to the maximum possible extent. It is now difficult to achieve more safety by this method  as roads which remain through routes for motor vehicles are not effectively calmed simply by changing the speed limit.

In a village, primary school children cycle home
unaccompanied on streets which are not through routes
for cars. From an average age of 8.6 children
travel unaccompanied

The photos give examples of different roads and streets on which cyclists have the same feeling of subjective safety, and similar degree of actual safety, as on a cycle-path.

These principles are not used only in towns. They are also common in villages and in the countryside.

Minor streets in villages don't work as through roads so drivers don't use those to "rat run" either. This makes it possible for quite young children to cycle to school and back unaccompanied.

Between towns in the Netherlands you can often find two roads next to each other. One for cars, the other for cyclists, agricultural vehicles and access to homes. Sometimes the route for drivers isn't visible from the route for cyclists.

Route signs in a village. Only one direction offered by
car, lots by bike.

Even in the open countryside you can ride long distances by bike on "roads" and rarely see any cars at all. Such roads only make a through network by bicycle because they are joined by cycle-paths. For drivers, many roads in the countryside offer nothing more than long detours, dead-ends, and roads with rough surfaces which don't get cleared in the winter.

Unravelling, or separating, the routes taken by motorists and cyclists has many advantages, including a reduction of noise and exhaust fumes as well as the increase in safety which comes due to a reduction in the number of chances for conflict.

Cyclists achieve subjective safety when they do not have to mix with cars, not specifically because they are on a cycle-path. Roads which have (almost) no cars on them do not require a cycle-path to parallel that road. A remarkably large proportion of roads in the Netherlands are, for all practical purposes, free of cars. This is just one reason 35000 km of cycle-path does not represent a short-fall compared with 130000 km of road.

Those roads on which there is an appreciable volume of traffic can be relied upon always to have segregated cycle-paths alongside. By this manner, very nearly full segregation of modes is possible when cycle-paths have a total length which is "only" about a quarter of the total length of the roads.

While cyclists are segregated from traffic in every photo in this blog post, this is the only photo in which this was achieved by building a cycle-path. This is a through road for cars and is used by a higher number of motor vehicles, so it needs a cycle-path.

The title of this post is deliberately provocative. However, it's not inaccurate. This has been my experience: When cycling in the Netherlands, you are almost always segregated from traffic, whether by means of a cycle-path, or otherwise. I have ridden many tens of thousands of kilometres in the Netherlands but not yet found anywhere that felt so dangerous for cycling as did my daily commute in Cambridge. My total experience of "road rage" in this country remains just one minor incident in nearly five years.

This map, which accompanied the printed version of this article from the Fietsberaad about Enschede, shows how main routes for cycling have in large part been unravelled from main routes for motor vehicles in that city. In the article it is explained that the absolute maximum number of motor vehicles per day on these routes should 2500 - i.e. a number that you might find on a residential street. More than this and the route starts to feel unpleasant and threatening for cyclists.

This unravelling of the cycle network from the motor vehicle network is taking place all across the Netherlands. Where there are higher levels of motor vehicle usage, even within residential areas, the public shows a preference for separated cycle-paths.

Many cyclists who visit the Netherlands on holiday remain oblivious to concepts like this. It is common that people who visit on holiday report that they had few problems cycling in the Netherlands despite there being cycle-paths for only part of their journey. Often this is ascribed to better driver behaviour, perhaps through better training. However, people who make such statements have simply not noticed this "hidden" policy. Roads here are not the same as roads in other countries. Segregation of modes takes place even where there are no cycle-paths. Sustainable safety principles require that conflict is reduced and that is what results in the much better subjective safety when cycling.

Our unique experience of having lived, cycled and campaigned in both the UK and the Netherlands has led to the programme of our three day study tours in which we transfer as much as possible of this knowledge. The tours are hands-on. Or, rather, they really are tours. You use the facilities for yourself, accompanied so that we can explain about what you are experiencing. To find out more, please book a tour.

It's not a substitute for a tour, but to get a flavour of what this is like in practice, please watch the following video. It shows a complete, normal journey by bike in the Netherlands. In this case, nothing more than the route from a fairly close by shopping centre to our home:


This post originally referred to 29000 km of cycle-path in the Netherlands. However, this was an older figure. There are now reckoned to be about 35000 km of cycle-paths.

This blog post introduced the term "unravelling" into the English language as a translation of the Dutch term "ontvlecthten". There was no previous English translation of this term. Others have picked up my translation while an academic paper in 2013 used the term "unbundling" instead to represent the same concept.