Switching Gears: More Commuters Bike To Work

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition, Allison Aubrey reported about how several of the US's largest cities have tripled their number of bike commuters. She specifically documents National Geographic in DC, and how DC has grown a strong bicycle culture and they have noticed the positive changes in the past few years.

One way National Geographic staffers in Washington, D.C., can get to know their company's CEO is to take him up on his long-standing offer: to go for a lunchtime bike ride.

"Anyone still downstairs? OK, so we ready to go, guys?" National Geographic Society CEO John Fahey asks a group of about 20 employees.

Fahey, an avid biker, says he's just trying to encourage a little exercise — and he wants the opportunity to get to know folks informally. As the group makes the 15-mile trek to Hains Point along the Potomac River and back, Fahey makes a point of chatting with everyone, staffers say.

At National Geographic — which is a hub of outdoorsy, adventure-seeking types who think nothing of biking busy city streets — lots of the staffers who join Fahey for the lunchtime rides also use their bikes to get to and from work every day.

"I've been riding in for 19 years," says senior photo editor Dan Westergren, adding that he has definitely noticed the boom — especially as bike paths and bike lanes along city streets have improved.

The city is banning the use of hand-held cell phones by bikers and other non-motorists on wheels.

Westergren's commute is a combined 12 miles to and from home. And he says, given all the biking he does, he doesn't need a gym membership to stay fit.

"Really, to build it into your daily routine by commuting for me has just been the best thing," he says.


Cycling Culture
If you bike to work in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago or San Francisco, you're part of a boom. Cycling has at least tripled over the past two decades in these — and other — big cities across the U.S.

"It's almost like a snowball effect," says researcher John Pucher of Rutgers University. "People see other people cycling and they say, 'Wow!' " As part of a three-year research project for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Pucher has completed a preliminary report that documents the increase in biking in nine major North American cities.

"It's almost become a cultural phenomenon," Pucher says. "It's become the 'in' thing to do." For many city dwellers, it's a money saver, a time saver and a way to sneak in daily exercise.

Research shows that the extra physical activity that people get from walking and biking to work or school is not offset by less recreational activity.

"[Active commuters] actually double the amount of their total physical activity," says Pucher. And as a result, Pucher says cities with lots of "active" commuters tend to be healthier. The most recent evidence comes from a study Pucher and his colleagues published in the American Journal of Public Health.

They found that the U.S. cities with the highest rates of walking and cycling to work have obesity rates that are 20 percent lower and diabetes rates that are 23 percent lower — compared with U.S. cities with the lowest rates of walking and cycling.


Just 'Hide The Bike Grease'
There are, of course, a few daily obstacles. Take the weather. "In the winter it's just gross sometimes with the ice," staffer Julia Yordanova says. And there are also the dangers of traffic. "It's the cab drivers," says Jonathan Irish.

Not to mention the need to try to fit in a shower at the office. "You just try to hide the bike grease on your calf as you're sitting in a meeting," says Barbara Noe, an editor at Travel Books.

But hey, if the office culture tolerates a little sweat on the brow — or grease on the calf — take it a sign of good health. That's the way Pucher sees it.

Pucher says, "Most people understand that walking and cycling is healthy. They don't think as something they could integrate into their daily lives."

Power of Perceived Safety

While working in New York this past summer, I always noticed the window washers from my office window and thought, “who on earth would sign up for that job?” The reality was, the person washing the window was standing on a tethered platform, and had a second tether attached to themselves from the rooftop. There were three cantilevered arms over the building, two for the platform, and one for the worker. Though you do hear of deaths of plunging window washers, the reality is very rare, and considering the number of skyscrapers around the world and the amount of cleaning needed, the accident rate is extremely low. So why wouldn’t you or I choose this job? Quite simply, the perception of safety is so low that the idea of taking the responsibility is left to a small “fearless” minority. Would a major education campaign detailing the true safety of window washing, and citing the rarity of accident rates improve the number of window washers? Possibly, but by numbers so low as to be little worth the expenditure and effort. Some label the fear of bicycling in traffic as “Cyclist Inferiority Complex”, and tend to berate the population at large for having this wholly natural human vs. car concern.


In the 1960′s, the Netherlands and Denmark had developed their “car-first” infrastructure, and saw precipitous drops in bicycle modal share. By the 1970′s, efforts were made to focus on “people-first” planning, and to develop extensive bicycle infrastructure. This clip from Contested Streets details that switch, and shows areas in 1965 Copenhagen that look very much like Orlando now. The battle the planners faced was the assumption that “we’re not Italians, we’re Danes…we have no culture for walking”. Similarily, businesses fought the infrastructure tooth and nail, claiming traffic congestion and a drop in visibility. The reality is both cultures are now known as bicycle meccas. One would assume it’s always been that way when visiting, but according to planner, Jan Gehl, it’s only occurred within the last 30 years. Portland, Oregon would have never thought itself the bicycle capital of the US only 15 years ago, but the city’s massive redirection toward people first planning, changed the area in very short order.

Realizing the importance of the “perception of safety”, planners went to great lengths to make bicycling irresistable. Because of these major changes in Europe, statistics show massive increases in ridership for all age groups when compared to the US:

Women are more sensitive to safety than men, so separation of transit modes was a major push made by European planners to enhance the perception of safety. Because of this, Denmark and Germany have nearly 50/50 travel rates between men and women, and in the Netherlands, women actually exceed men in ridership:

This change in planning goes well beyond enhancing the “perception of safety”, and goes to great lengths to increase the overall safety by focusing on “people first” road calming. Soren Jensen’s study of cycle track installations showed increased ridership by 18-20%, and Peter Jacobsen’s study of safety increasing with the number of riders. What’s more telling is the fatality rates when compared to the US:

Between 2005 and 2007, bicycle trips in Amsterdam officially outpaced car trips. From 1990 to now, ridership has increased 36%. The only things changed infrastructure wise from then to now were increases in bicycle infrastructure and restrictions in parking measures. To see changes of that magnitude in the US, we’ll need to make similar adjustments to our road systems to place people over cars.

Globetrotting Layovers Provide Glimpse at Euro Facilities-Paris

One of the perks with working at an international company, is the vast number of projects that can send you across the globe. These kind of travel trips also create layovers in foreign cities for sometimes a day or so. Some recent such trips created stops in Paris France and Hamburg Germany for a few of my coworkers. Below is a recap from what they saw in Paris and the Hamburg post is in the works.


Few bicycling systems in the world have attracted more attention than the Paris’ Vélib, launched in 2007. With over 17,000 bicycles in circulation and a surprising degree of both permanent and provisional infrastructure, the Vélib is the crown jewel of European bicycle share systems, and has jump started a transportation revolution in this city of lights. But as fantastic and unprecedented as the Vélib may indeed be, the system is troubled by a number of distribution problems, and lacks the necessary scope of integral planning and infrastructure to make not only the Vélib, but bicycling in general a boundless success in Paris.


1. Success breeds mediocrity

The Vélib’s greatest success, and the baseline measure for any bicycle share system, is that it achieves critical mass. Quite simply, the bikes are everywhere. Stations appear every couple of blocks and often stock far more bikes than one might expect. Vélib’s system of 17,000+ bicycles and 1,200+ stations makes finding a bike, returning a bike, and enjoying a bike easy and carefree. Or at least, it ought to.

The Vélib, it seems, represents a strange case of success breeding mediocrity. Because such a critical mass of bicycles are in circulation and people actually use them to get around for short trips and errands, the system is plagued by a number of unprecedented problems. First of all, there is the inflow/outflow dilemma. During the day, there are a lack of bicycles in the perimeter districts (especially hilly areas) and an overabundance of them in the center- which makes parking a stressful and inconvenient affair. Since the Vélib is only free for the first 30 minutes, if you happen to arrive at your intended destination to find your station and the nearest one totally full, the result can be frustrating. True success could only be achieved if people in both the center and the periphery used the Vélib for all trips, long and short, constantly, or if bicycle redistribution were carried out so thoroughly that the the system could maintain its equilibrium- unlikely, though thought-provoking possibility. Secondly, as anyone who spends five minutes in Paris realizes rather quickly, walking is a great deal more pleasant than cycling in Paris, to take in the streets, smell, and architecture at a more relaxed pace.

2. Infrastructure…
What is in some ways more surprising than the Vélib, is the degree to which the city of Paris, has, within a relatively short span of time, established a tremendous amount of permanent and provisional cycling infrastructure. On-street painted bicycle lanes, asphalt-paved sidewalk lanes and separated, at-grade pathways make the frenzied center of Paris a more than adequate environment for bicycling.

As far as infrastructure goes, the city of Paris has employed several consistent strategies to accommodate cycling and make it a safer activity.

1. Permanent separated lanes - On several main boulevards and wider streets, Paris has built in permanent or provisional, separated cycle tracks. These are often paired with share stations at regular intervals and represent the crem-de-la-creme of the Vélib’s infrastructure.

2.  Painted lanes and logos - A mixed bag overall, the painted lanes with frequently stamped bicyclist logos in Paris reflect safe bicycling environments 50 percent of the time. Though frequent on street painted signage and lanes are a constant reassurance to traffic-dodging cyclists.

3. The Bike/Bus Lane - Nowhere more than Paris have I seen the bike/bus lane strategy employed. Basically, the city creates a dedicated bus lane (sometimes even in the center of the street, and often accessible to delivery vehicles as well) and stamps a cyclist logo onto it. The idea being, that in the process of facilitating public transport, the city also creates a safe, luxurious, and spacious route for cyclists. In reality, however, the city takes bicyclists out of the piranha tank and puts them in with the sharks. They are a less populous breed, but interactions can be daunting, uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous. In general, I find that these bike/bus lanes could benefit from a separate bicycle lane within the larger dedicated area in order to ease the potential space crunch and delineate space in the event of conflict.

4. The local/slow street - A more successful street prototype used in Paris is the local or calmed/slow street which is accessible to both cars and bicycles, but is separated from fast traffic.  These streets effectively separate bicyclists from heavy traffic and ease traffic by giving cars looking for parking a separate and comfortable space to do so. This concept is a familiar one used quite frequently in the Netherlands and helps to create a calmer space for bicycles, as well as a buffer between pedestrian sidewalks and heavy traffic.

4. Intersections - Where the bicycling infrastructure of Paris, and most other systems for that matter, falters is at intersections. Some would argue that an intersection in a cycling system serves the same purpose as a joint in the human body. Without the adequate articulation of these key pivot points, the skeleton loses its potential for connectivity and flexibility. Where cars, bicyclists and pedestrians come together and conflict, "That is the network." As much as Paris has succeeded in reassuring bicyclists of their place on the road and as part of the traffic hierarchy of the city, at its intersections (for bicyclists and pedestrians alike), the system fractures.
Though Paris has employed a number of interesting solutions in the realm of infrastructure, including checkered green painting at troublesome intersections, left and right turns remain treacherous and, at many junctions, bicyclists struggle to fend for themselves and must be quite aggressive. Of course, there is hardly a case for comparison between Paris and Amsterdam or Copenhagen in terms of urban scale, but the city needs to bolster their infrastructure at these busy intersections and roundabouts-with signals, signage, and color- to make the Vélib a safe as well as successful system.

3. Wayfinding in a city built for parades
Paris, like many grand European capitals, is a city built for parades, not people or traffic. This famous urban form, an amalgam of axial boulevards that meet at oversized roundabouts crowned by statuary and  pilfered obelisks, makes traffic planning and the creation of a better bicycling infrastructure a tremendous challenge. Unlike gridded cities in the United States or student cities of the Netherlands and Germany, the challenge for a capital on the scale of London, Paris, or Berlin is not only to create a more livable city for bicycles and pedestrians alike, but also to use these systems in order to enhance wayfinding/legibility and to clarify the city’s districts, main paths, edges, and nodes.

Bicycle signage has the potential to convey not only hierarchy and direction, but also structure. One critique of the Vélib, is that although the bicycle stations are generally paired to Metro Stations, there is no Vélib sign to indicate when a metro station actually has one nearby, where to find it from the station, or even a small V sign beneath the prominent and recognizable M. Additionally, though the ubiquitous green of the bicycle paths and logos in Paris is appropriately suggestive and easy to recognize, I would be interested to see whether or not the system could be more effectively paired with the metro line numbers, destination names, and colors, or have their own system cues involving colors, letters, numbers, and pictures. Since certain streets already have Vélib stations at regular intervals, why not give such streets a distinctive accent, so that those looking for parking know that such a path is a reliable Vélib parking route.

Part of the issue of a Vélib-type system is that unlike a subway, it allows users to move freely in all directions. As any Google map of Vélib stations will show, the system is the ultimate instrument of spontaneity and appropriately ascribes the situationist doctrine of derivé. But as much as this kind of freedom liberates, it also brings with it a strange, unknowable opacity that fails to suitably discern or guide not only how people bicycle through the city, but what might be the safest and least complex thoroughfares for them to use. After all, the Vélib offers a thirty minute ride, so in general, it is built for riders with a purpose.


The Vélib in Paris offers a sterling example of how a bicycle sharing system can change not only the perception of bicycling in a city, but also how bicyclists can move through and interact with an urban environment. As much as the Vélib should be emulated in capitals all over the world, the realities of bicycle sharing are limiting. In an ideal bicycling culture and environment, such as Amsterdam or Copenhagen, bicycle usage is widespread enough to render a share system redundant, relatively unnecessary or geared to tourists. As much as the Vélib has been successful, the regular Parisian bicyclist, whose pride for his/her old Peugeot is long-standing and mature, has hardly been afforded with more consistent parking at metro stations compared with the flashy Vélib. Bicycle sharing must in certain cases represent a transitional state that increases bicycling in the public imagination and encourages people to experiment with bicycle errands and commuting. Sharing concepts in general must also generate the interest of more niche markets and, as they are already, encompass a wider and more flexible range of vehicle types, including cars, mopeds, electric bicycles, segways, and cargo bikes.

As a final note, it must be mentioned that the Vélib, while successful and popular among the Parisian bourgeoisie, is not as widely accessible to the poor and immigrant classes, many of whom may not use a credit card, or may have never learned to ride a bicycle. This impedes the system from fully achieving its democratic aims and restricts user ship to a less-than representative cross-section of the Parisian population. Vandalism and theft, moreover, some arguably in reaction to these inequities, are all too common.

Cycling's New Rules of the Road-WSJ Article

Below is a great article by Tom Perrotta, from the Wall Street Journal.He highlights many of the issues that have been raised and explained on this blog. New York City's building boom of bicycle infrastructure has increased bicycling. This article covers the many viewpoints and growing pains associated with with this positive change. It is just refreshing to see that people are taking notice and that progress is occurring.



In the last three years, New York City has built 200 miles of bike lanes. Daily ridership is up—some estimates say it has nearly doubled since 2005—after years of tepid growth.

Some estimates say daily bicycle ridership in New York City has nearly doubled since 2005.

During each morning rush, thousands of riders cross the four main East River bridges. Bikes crowd the Hudson River Greenway and are on the rise along First and Second Avenues, where the city has installed lanes protected from traffic by rows of parked cars. The city's streets now include 482 miles of lanes and a total of 1,800 miles are planned by 2030.

What the city has discovered, though, is that remodeling its streets and increasing ridership is the easy part of building a bike town. It's a far greater challenge to change the habits of drivers, bikers and pedestrians in a dense urban environment with congested streets.

Drivers see bikers as a nuisance: "They think they rule the road," said Doru Rosca, a taxi driver from Astoria. "Are we supposed to stop because they are riding against traffic?" Pedestrians see bikers as faster, less predictable and more dangerous pedestrians. And cyclists, for all their gains in population and political clout, still feel besieged by cars and expect little help from the police. The result, as Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer witnessed last month, is often mayhem.

Bicyclists ride in a bike lane in New York City, a sight becoming more and more common as the number of cyclists continues to increase, creating safety concerns.

"We've got seniors who think bike lanes are walkways. We've got police cars using bike lanes as a quick way around town. We've got taxi cabs pulling up so close to the bike lanes that a passenger gets out and actually doors a cyclist," Mr. Stringer said in a recent interview in his office.


This fall, Mr. Stringer sent his staffers to the streets to document the chaos. The results, recorded over three days, astounded him: 1,700 total infractions by drivers, bikers and pedestrians, many of them egregious.

"We have to do something about it," he said.

To this point, the Department of Transportation has largely taken a "build-it-and-they-will-come" approach to cycling, much as other cities in the United States and throughout the world have done in the last few decades. Next year, it plans to beef up its awareness and outreach programs to alert New Yorkers to the new rules of the road.

"We have to step up our game on the education front," DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said in an interview last week. "There's a new street code out there and we need everyone to look out for one another and be safe."

In the next few months, DOT will unveil several campaigns for radio, television and billboards. One series of television ads will take aim at cyclists who ride on sidewalks, pedal through red lights and go against traffic.
The campaign, titled "Don't Be a Jerk," will feature prominent New Yorkers preaching bike etiquette. Mario Batali, the famed chef and restaurant owner, recently filmed a spot.

Biking in New York is safer today than during any time in the city's history. As daily ridership has increased (some estimates claim it has almost doubled since 2005 to more than 200,000 daily riders), the yearly number of cycling fatalities and injuries has remained flat or declined, and the percentage of riders who are injured while riding has fallen dramatically.

This year, however, the city will see a slight increase in the number of cycling fatalities and accidents in its year-over-year numbers, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the New York City Police Department.

There were 19 cyclist fatalities in the city through October 31, seven more than in all of 2009. In the same period, 3,505 bikers were injured in crashes with motor vehicles, more than last year's total and up 20% compared to the first 10 months of last year. If the current rate of injuries continues, the percentage of daily riders who sustain injuries in 2010 will rise slightly.

Such fluctuations are not uncommon when a city retrofits its infrastructure for bikes. Neither is conflict. In Portland, Ore., considered America's bike capital by many cyclists, there are still squabbles, especially on pathways shared by pedestrians and cyclists, according to Roger Geller, the city's bicycle coordinator.
But Mr. Geller said several factors have contributed to improved relations and safety in his city: Increased biking, better education and improved coordination among city agencies, especially between transportation and law enforcement agencies.

John Pucher, a professor of urban planning and public policy at Rutgers University, praised New York City for its infrastructure gains. "The cycle tracks, the signage and so forth, I think it's fantastic," Dr. Pucher said.
But Dr. Pucher said other cities have accomplished more, largely because of better intra-government cooperation.

Next year, Dr. Pucher will deliver a study, financed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, of cycling and urban transportation in nine cities: New York, Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Minneapolis.

"All of these cities, without a single exception, are doing more than New York," Mr. Pucher said. "They have better and more promotional programs. They have more training and education programs. They have infinitely better bike-mass transit integration, and better enforcement." Those cities also have a larger percentage of women and elderly who ride bikes, a sign, he said, that cycling is seen as safe.

In Chicago, Dr. Pucher said, taxi and bus drivers are required to take courses on safe driving with cyclists.
In Portland, motorists ticketed for cycling-related violations can take education classes in lieu of paying a fine. Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, would like to see similar practices adopted in New York.

"Cycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation and there's virtually no access to education," Mr. White said. "Cycling has increased enough in New York to warrant a citywide institutional solution."

"I can't speak to what's going on in other cities," Ms. Sadik-Khan said. "We're working very hard to do as much as we can to improve the education that we're doing, to improve the outreach that we're doing, and to improve enforcement by working with our partners at the NYPD."

Lax law enforcement is a sore point among both pedestrians and cyclists. In the 19th Precinct, on the Upper East Side, dangerous cycling is the chief quality of life complaint among residents, according to the NYPD.
In Park Slope earlier this month, a biker in his 40s ran a red light and crashed into 6-year-old Sean Frost as he and his nanny crossed Seventh Avenue in the crosswalk at the corner of P.S. 321. Jackelyn Frost, a psychotherapist, came home to find her son with a black eye.

"The cyclist was knocked off his bike, and he just got back up and rode off," Ms. Frost said.

At the same time, cyclists and cycling advocates say the police don't do enough to keep bike lanes clear or to punish speeding and inattentive drivers who endanger them.

The police department recently received a $150,000 federal grant to increase enforcement against drivers who speed and fail to yield to pedestrians and cyclists who violate traffic laws. The NYPD issued more than 29,500 summonses for bicycle infractions through October 31, up 7% from the same period in 2009.
But NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said there was no crackdown in the offing, either against cyclists or motorists who interfere with cycling.

"We're down 5,000 cops since 2001 and we've just been told that we have to get rid of 350 civilian places that were created to put cops who handled administrative duties on the street," Mr. Browne said. "That's a long way of saying, 'Yes, we want to do more in this area, but a grant of that size is not going to make a significant difference.'"

Cycling advocates say a lack of enforcement breeds contempt for the law.

Michael Green, the president of the Century Road Club Association, the largest bicycle-racing club in the country, explained by recounting the recent comments of a friend. "Her attitude was, 'The laws that protect cyclists are never going to be enforced, so why obey rules that aren't going to be used to help you?'" Mr. Green said. "It's amazing the people I see riding and not obeying traffic laws. It's across the board, from teenagers to 65-year-old women.''

The lawlessness Mr. Green and others described is easy to find: Pedestrians who routinely jaywalk and stand in bike lanes; a woman pushing a man in a wheelchair down the protected bike lane on Broadway; a bike messenger racing through a red light on Sixth Avenue; cars that use bike lanes as passing lanes; wrong-way cycling along the protected lane on First Avenue.

But there are signs of change, too. Ian Dutton, a commercial airline pilot and a member of Community Board 2, said his own behavior, and the behavior of fellow riders, has improved.

"I used to ride a lot more aggressively because I felt unsafe," he said. "When I'm in a protected lane, I feel like I can take my time. I say hi to people.''

A recent evening presented a sign that there's hope for a friendlier future for all commuters. At dusk, a food deliveryman stopped at a red light on Madison Avenue, despite no approaching traffic in the cross street. He was smoking a cigarette—and wearing a helmet. His bicycle even had lights. When the traffic light turned green, he rode off.

"We can do it," Mr. Stringer, the Manhattan Borough president, said. "Paris does it, Copenhagen does it. There's a way for all of us to get things right."

ThinkBike Workshops-Hit Miami

As I posted yesterday, the Dutch have been evaluating the American bicycle infrastructure, or the lack there of, for the past few months. They were in DC earlier this week and are in Miami this morning. The Consulate General of the Netherlands actively supports bicycling in South Florida and we are grateful to them for bringing three experts on traffic engineering and planning (which in their country includes bicycles) to meet with their counterparts here in the States. Below is the report from the South Florida Bike Coalition. They had the privilege to ride around the City of Miami with them today, pointing out difficult intersections, corridors and related challenges to bicycling here. The idea is to bring them back in the Spring and host a symposium and workshop with our local Department of Transportation, municipal planning and capital improvements offices and advocates to get everyone to ThinkBike.

It was a great ride and Herbert Tiemens of Houten took many more photos and geotagged them. Here’s the fun one:

They got a friendly welcome from a concerned City of Miami Police Officer. The exchange went something like this.

What are you doing?

We’re leading a bike tour.

uh… [pause, confused look] Well, you need to be careful. You’re riding in the street.

Yes, Officer. Where should we be riding?

Well, okay. Okay. Just be careful. There are cars behind you and they have to slow down.

Yes, Officer. Thank you.

Learning From the Dutch

In the Netherlands, traffic engineers don’t hire consultants to work bicyclists into plans – they themselves plan for bicycles. Every street, every development is planned with people in mind and pedestrians and bicyclists receive equal respect, if not priority. People bicycle all the time because it’s fun and healthy and green, of course, but also because it’s so easy.  In Houten, a city built up about 50 years ago (like so many of the developments in Florida), planners and engineers made sure that it was easy to get anywhere by bike. This is where Herbert is from and he has documented this bicycle city’s infrastructure and use here:

Our friendly experts listed some ‘Dutch Solutions’ for improving streets for bicycling. They include

• Mixing traffic everywhere but highways and reducing speeds to reduce the speed differential.
• Remembering bicyclists move like water – we wish to take the fastest, most direct route to where we are going and should be accommodated accordingly.
• Two lane one-way streets can easily become: One Lane One Way for cars plus a contraflow lane (two lanes, both directions) for bicycles.

The Dutch support bicycling because it make economic sense. Government statistics in the country cite that following statistic:

• Every mile by car costs $0.40
• Every mile by bike gains $0.19

People who commute to work by bike tend to take 10-15% less sick days, they have reduced health care costs and have an increased life expectancy of 3 years. They experience less disease and as young people, significantly greater levels of confidence, independence and healthy weight.

For more obvious but positive information (in English), backed up with studies and statistics, visit the Dutch Center of Expertise on Bicycle Policy online.

ThinkBike Workshops-Dutch Planners Educate U.S. on Bikeability

The Netherlands is a country committed to sustainability, where nearly 30 percent of trips up to 5 miles in distance are made by bike. A strong bike policy is integral to Dutch sustainability measures. There are 1.1 bicycles per person in the Netherlands, resulting in less traffic, less pollution and a healthier population.

Through a multi-city initiative called “ThinkBike Workshops”, Dutch experts have been visiting Canada and the US this year to discuss possibilities for increased bicycle use. The ThinkBike Workshops brought together Dutch bike experts, local politicians, planners, advocates, engineers and business people to plan and discuss how North American cities can become more bike-friendly.

The Washington DC workshop just ended on Tuesday, and workshops in Toronto and Chicago were held in September. The teams surveyed the cities by bike and discussed how streets, intersections and whole neighborhoods can be improved for optimal bicycle use. Other topics of discussion at the workshops included bike safety, bike commuting, biking to school, bike parking, bikes and public transport, law enforcement, etc. They give specific recommendations for specific intersections and corridors, guided by principles of continuity and bi-directionality. In DC, their suggestions included two-way cycle tracks (even on one-way streets) with buffers separating them from traffic, expanding public plaza areas, installing bike signals, bike-only connections where roads cut off, sharper turns at intersections, colored bike lanes and more.

What if our streets were as bike-friendly as theirs? We could get there. Our trip patterns aren’t dramatically different from theirs: most trips in this country are under four miles, or 20 minutes by bike. But here, people drive those short distances. What would it take to get more of us to go by bike?


As Cor van der Klaauw, a Dutch cycling planner, said, “I think most of the bikers from Holland, when they will cycle in your country, will think, ‘well, there are no facilities.’” But he also said he found some impressive bike innovations in DC – “We learned a few things which we can take back to Holland.”

On a national scale, there are things we can do to boost bike ridership. They’re not necessarily as sexy as cycle tracks but the Dutch visitors say they make a difference. They are all things that we know, and we can only dream of them actually being implemented. We make it too cheap to drive, getting a driver’s license is cheap, gas is cheap, parking is cheap, excise taxes on car purchases are cheap, etc. Plus, we get our kids started off wrong by driving them to school every day. The Dutch planners commented that the U.S. doesn’t invest enough in school buses, and our streets often aren’t safe enough for kids to bike to school. In the Netherlands, 50 percent of trips to school are made by bicycle.

Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI), a co-chair of the Congressional Bike Caucus, told DC workshop attendees, “We are engaged in a bipartisan war against couch potatoes here in the United States. I think it’s been won for some considerable time, for a variety of reasons, in the Netherlands.”

Below are some PDFs that detail the innovations in Netherlands' cycling infrastructure.


Cycling in the Netherlands 2009 PDF
Bicycle Policies of the European Principles: Continuous and Integral PDF
The New Amsterdam Bike Slam 2009 New York PDF

Getting Around Transportation

1.4 billion bicycles in the world make it the most popular form of transportation. We need to make it safer and convenient for everyone and the number will go up. Princeton's International Networks Archive has accounted for transportation means around the world and put the information in a comparative graphic. Pretty cool.