7 ms·

The thing about NL is that it's totally flat and a tiny piece of land. The biking culture is a result of their geography, not anything else. For example, in Nor

by dgut 8y ago

The thing about NL is that it's totally flat and a tiny piece of land. The biking culture is a result of their geography, not anything else. For example, in Norway, where biking infrastructure is quite decent and people are generally positive about biking/being environmentally responsible, biking is simply impossible in most cases because of the larger hilly landmass and the cold snowy winters.

timwaagh 8y ago
norway is a huge country. sure you have bigger hills, but nobody lives there. what about those places where people actually live? snow isnt that big of a problem, you have salt for that. the simple problem is norwegians have too much money for cars. biking in the netherlands was never about the environment or vitue signalling, we do it because its necessary. tax and cost of housing is very expensive relative to our salaries. a lot of people cannot really afford cars so we need another option. its more similar to biking in china or vietnam in that sense.
adrianN 8y ago
Yeah I'm sure five decades of deliberate city planning have nothing to do with it. Berlin is also perfectly flat, quite dense and has a nice climate and yet in the Netherlands three times as many people commute by bike.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
It helps. But a few decades of deliberate infrastructure investments is what has made this a viable mode of transport in the Netherlands. This has been policy for decades and given the success in increasing safety, the policies have only become more pro cyclists over time. It's a data driven thing at this point. If repeated accidents happen on a particular bit of road, there will very likely be some follow up in the form of infrastructure work to fix things. Any new infrastructure that gets planned, this stuff is designed in from day 1. Much of this work is planned in order of priority based on things like accident statistics. Many US cities are actually quite suitable for adapting them to cyclists. The roads are wide and there's plenty of room to start fixing the infrastructure to have separate bike lanes, safer intersections, etc. You can start simple with some road markings. It's not rocket science.

by dgut 8y ago

timwaagh 8y ago

norway is a huge country. sure you have bigger hills, but nobody lives there. what about those places where people actually live? snow isnt that big of a problem, you have salt for that. the simple problem is norwegians have too much money for cars. biking in the netherlands was never about the environment or vitue signalling, we do it because its necessary. tax and cost of housing is very expensive relative to our salaries. a lot of people cannot really afford cars so we need another option. its more similar to biking in china or vietnam in that sense.

adrianN 8y ago

Yeah I'm sure five decades of deliberate city planning have nothing to do with it. Berlin is also perfectly flat, quite dense and has a nice climate and yet in the Netherlands three times as many people commute by bike.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

It helps. But a few decades of deliberate infrastructure investments is what has made this a viable mode of transport in the Netherlands. This has been policy for decades and given the success in increasing safety, the policies have only become more pro cyclists over time. It's a data driven thing at this point. If repeated accidents happen on a particular bit of road, there will very likely be some follow up in the form of infrastructure work to fix things. Any new infrastructure that gets planned, this stuff is designed in from day 1. Much of this work is planned in order of priority based on things like accident statistics. Many US cities are actually quite suitable for adapting them to cyclists. The roads are wide and there's plenty of room to start fixing the infrastructure to have separate bike lanes, safer intersections, etc. You can start simple with some road markings. It's not rocket science.