5 ms·

Why Dutch Bikes are Better (and why you should want one)

43 points by bane 5y ago

1MachineElf 5y ago
Someone else here agrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743676
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
KennyBlanken 5y ago
So, after a decade and a half of transportation riding in a metropolitan US city, I can definitively say: no. Big brain dump, incoming. There a lot of elements of Dutch style bikes that are great. He's completely right: enclosed chains, skirt guards, racks, generator lights, swept handlebars, internal-geared hubs.) If you're interested in regular transportation by bicycle, you absolutely should try to find as many of those things as possible (or, more likely, try to find a bike with a frame that will accommodate as many of those as possible.) But do not buy a Dutch-style bike if you live in the US. Most of the things you want can be found in the (thankfully) ever-growing "transportation bike" category though you'll have to look a bit harder. There are several brands that make nice transpo bikes, but I think some of the most consistently good transportation bikes are made by Breezer. The big boys like Specialized and Trek do generally try to force you into a "hybrid" bike if you want something for "transportation." About the biggest change they make is (hopefully) making sure there are enough mounting holes on the frame for mounting both a rack and fenders, and doing so with a fair amount of flexibility (ie multiple options for doing so.) Many bikes sold as "touring" bikes can make for good transportation bikes. The reason you don't see good all-inclusive transportation bikes in US bike shops is because most shoppers in the US look at bicycles as toys, not transportation or utility items. And they are extremely "price conscious", which is a polite way of saying "people in the US are cheap as fuck when it comes to bicycles", so the pricetag on the bike has to be as low as humanly possible. This leads to a lot of other problems, like for example most bike shops in my city struggling to pay workers fair wages and benefits. People don't blink at paying $100+/hour for service at their car dealership, but they expect to pay more like $5/hour at the local bike shop and are incensed if charged more. The exception are shops that do a lot of business with fitness/sport/competitive riders, but a lot of "regular" folks walk into such a shop and almost immediately turn around and leave, unless they happen to spy the display rack of hybrid bicycles. My roommate thought I was insane spending $1,200 on a transportation bicycle. Ditto for when I then spent another $300 or so installing generator-hub powered lights (I went for fairly high end stuff; you can do it cheaper); I asked him how many bike lights he'd lost, broken, or destroyed or had stolen and he thought for a moment, how much he'd spent on batteries, and how many times he'd found himself biking in the dark because the batteries went dead due to not being charged or replaced recently...and said "okay, fair enough." He rode home with me one night on the bike path and was so stunned by how bright and well-lit the path in front of us was, he actually swore. Those bike lights have functioned flawlessly for a decade and a half. Similarly, he was incensed that I spent $60 per tire on better tires for said bike. Those tires lasted me a decade of daily urban use in the Northeast US. They also had reflective sidewalls, which significantly increased the bike's visibility at night. The author of the video repeats a lot of common myths about bicycles. Upright seating position is "more comfortable"...but only for a fairly limited amount of time (there's a reason bikes designed to be ridden for HOURS at a time are not upright; namely, you have less weight on your ass), has nothing to do with power efficiency (in fact many erg bikes used in performance studies and performance tests are...drumroll...upright), and "aero" does not matter at typical urban cycling speeds (ie about 10-15mph.) Don't buy a dutch bike if you ever want to ride it more than about half an hour. Your ass will be very unhappy with you. My daily 'transpo' bike is a road bike style frame with road bike handlebars; they're much narrower, and narrow handlebars can be a significant advantage in urban environments, though it's kind of a tradeoff, because swept-back bars won't get hooked on something...but if your handlebars get hit, you're eating shit regardless. I'm baffled by the author's snobbish comments about "costume changes" - I rode "plain clothes" on my road bike every goddamn day, just fine, thank you. Because I bought a bike that was sized appropriately for my body, I don't get "hit in the nuts" by the top-tube despite having somewhat short legs, and I'm able to easily mount and dismount. The reason drop-tube bikes are often called "women's bikes" is because women are on average shorter, but yes, the US population also looks at them and thinks they're "girly." It is difficult to go below a certain horizontal top-tube height relative to the wheel size. Terry Bicycles famously made a lot of 650c road bikes for women (700c is the standard road bike wheel size) "Steel" is not stronger than "aluminum"; there are numerous alloys and tubing thicknesses for both metals and both steel and aluminum bikes can range from "don't look at it wrong" to "will outlive you." Aluminum is generally more durable, especially anywhere it regularly rains. Steel frames can be protected with anti-rust treatments like Framesaver (which is likely just cosmolene or other standard automotive anti-rust spray) but that adds to the cost. Anyway. Back to the point at hand. The major problem with 'Dutch bikes' is that they are massively heavy (Also, coaster brakes. The author loves coaster bikes. Those are fine in country where the legal system, infrastructure, and other road users are all much more accommodating of you. All of which is a significant problem in the US.) First off, if you live anywhere that isn't as flat as the Netherlands, that weight is going to mean going up hills is murderous, especially since most Dutch bikes are lacking in gearing. Seriously, the Netherlands is so flat, they used to transport a significant amount of goods on huge trikes with a single gear. Like, look at the size of these things: https://www.notechmagazine.com/2010/06/tandem-cargo-tricycle-1940.html https://www.notechmagazine.com/2010/06/tandem-cargo-tricycle... (granted, some of them were bread bikes, and I know from a cargo-bike-delivery-rider friend that the bread run was always her absolute favorite. "It's so LIGHT!") The next problem with being so heavy is that you can't easily bring the bike in at night unless you have a garage (unlikely in most metropolitan areas) or ground-floor apartment. Why do you need to bring bikes in? Because of systemic problems that lead to massive rates of theft. US Police do not take bike theft seriously, despite the fact that just like with theft of a car, theft of one's bike could lead to one being unable to afford getting to work or school, just as in theft of a car. Many homeowners and renters insurance policies exclude bicycles, too. Laws around bike theft are generally a joke in most of the US, treated as basic property theft unlike motor vehicles where theft of a motor vehicle, or even the slightest vandalism, is a felony level offense. Few US urban communities have sufficient public bike parking, especially of the secure sort; a lot of it is badly designed (there is an obsession with making it "pretty", for example), badly located, and badly installed. Many residential buildings have bike parking in them now, but reports of theft from them are extremely commonplace. With the advent of municipal rental systems (aka bike "shares") many cities have altogether stopped deploying infrastructure for private bike ownership and even removed it in some places. In my neighborhood in Boston, the city silently removed a number of bike posts in the main 'square' where bike parking was in very high demand, right as they put in a new Hubway bike "share" station. I later found out that business owners complained that the bike share docking station was going to take up SO MUCH parking (about one and a half car spaces.) As a "peace offering", the city removed several on sidewalk parking posts on the side of a one-way street where vehicles were not even allowed to park. We do not have the social safety nets that a country like the Netherlands does; bike theft is rampant in most metropolitan areas because it's a fast, low-risk way to make money, especially if you're homeless. There are a multitude of ways to steal almost any bike, but one particular way that is quite popular costs about $10-15, is almost completely silent, and will destroy even some fairly seriously built U-Locks. Basically, you cannot leave a bike outside, even on your property, because eventually it will be stolen. And no, having a "crappy" bike "nobody would want to steal" works, because...guess what people want to buy when they move to a new city and are looking for a used bike online? If you made it to the end, thanks for sticking around. Please support legislative protection for PEOPLE on bicycles, and actively support bicycling infrastructure, because there is a VERY loud minority that hyper-aggressively fights this stuff. It's incredibly cheap for its benefits and we will not save the planet putting everyone in an electric car, especially in urbanized areas. PS: before you comment in reply, see https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/ https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/, especially if you are preparing to regale me with what you saw a person on a bicycle do the other day, something about "paying their fair share of the road tax", something about "earning the right to the road by following the rules", or any of the usual tripe.
- mdekkers 5y ago
  So this huge rant is essentially “Don’t buy a Dutch bike because they are heavy and don’t have gears” both of which are not true. Most Dutch bikes have gears, and most Dutch bikes are light weight. Source: I’m Dutch, bought many bikes in the Netherlands, had to ride my bike 15 miles daily to get to school and back (which is the normal thing to do), and my ass has never complained. You are also conflating a type of machine (Dutch bike) with many random US issues, such as legal protection and theft. On the theft part, LMFAO - bike theft is insanely prevalent in NL, I suspect more bikes get stolen instead of sold annually, and you are randomly throwing in issues such as lighting and “look how much money I spent on my bike”. I’m happy for you that your identity is so tied up to your biking hobby, but your insight into Dutch bikes is deeply flawed.
  - pythonic_hell 5y ago
    I agree with your assessment. A common miss conception I’ve seen visiting foreigners have about Dutch bikes are because they used bad rental bikes while visiting. Most of the rental bikes are quite bad; lack of gears, awkward dimensions and incredibly heavy.
    - KennyBlanken 5y ago
      The video we're discussing extolls the virtues of a heavy, gearless, coaster-brake bike.
  - n4r9 5y ago
    The importance of weight depends on the geography. I cycle 3 miles to the office each way but there are a couple of steep hills on the route, and I would dread it if my bike weighed much more than 10kg. Some of the bikes shown in the video look like they could weigh twice as much.
  - casion 5y ago
    I used to live in the Netherlands, now in a major US city. Always biked to everywhere. Dutch bikes (price/use vs price/use) are absolutely heavier, noticeably so. I spend about 1500 on my daily bike. The average Dutch Bike in the Netherlands is ~12-14kg. My bike here in the US right now is 9.6kg. My nicer bike is 7.8kg. Like others have mentioned, _it matters_. My ride has significant uphill portions both ways (due to one way streets). It sucks on a heavy bike, and it sucks on a bike without fairly aggressive gearing. Carrying the bike up 8 flights of stairs is not fun, and throwing on an extra 3kg after a long ride is... ick. Not to mention the top tube design on some of them makes carrying a Dutch Bike more difficult. It wasn't mentioned in other posts, but riding upright going uphill is rather unpleasant as well. Trying to overcome that discomfort with a lean on a "Dutch Bike" just compounds the discomfort. To the other points - Streets in the Netherlands were flatter. Bike theft was MUCH less problematic. Climbing stairs to get to your home was less common. None of these things are a knock on Dutch Bikes. It's a different tool for a different place. Maybe if you're commuting in Kansas, Texas or Florida then a Dutch Bike makes sense. If you're in a major American coastal city then it's unequivocally the wrong choice. The OP's point stands IMO: buy the right tool for the right job.
rootsudo 5y ago
No different from a Japanese mamachari.
blunte 5y ago
Dutch bikes are best for the Netherlands, but not generally best. Dutch people are bigger than most people elsewhere, and they more often ride with children or another adult on the same bike. So heavy steel frames last longer and are worth the extra weight. Plus, most of NL is relatively flat, where the extra weight won’t be so burdensome. Also, heavier bikes take more effort to steal. And given the per capita leading bike theft rate, it makes some sense to park your 60lb bike on the street overnight compared to a nice light $$$ bike. Other features, such as protected chains, fenders, no gears or internal gears are just generally good for city life. In terms of engineering, van moof has some clever designs (and some designs which look cool but aren’t extra useful). Other Dutch bike companies have even less special compared to other brands like cannondale, trek, etc.
- jarofgreen 5y ago
  > most of NL is relatively flat Yeah as soon as he said about "no gears" I thought that. I've heard people talk about "no gears" and London being flat but you would NOT get away with that in Edinburgh.
  - giobox 5y ago
    As someone who rode fixed gear (“no gears”) in Edinburgh for many years, I can assure you it’s absolutely possible, and wouldn’t take an average person that long to get fit enough to do it either. I’d actually argue Glasgow city centre has more challenging gradients - some of the streets around Garnet Hill/Strathclyde Uni are _much_ more taxing IMHO on a single speed than most gradients in Edinburgh’s old and new towns. I’d 100 percent still buy a bike with gears for my kids if I lived in Edinburgh though! The bigger issue with Dutch style bikes is the “coaster brakes” they often have - these are very inferior stopping power-wise to even something like a dirt cheap v-brake design. Less of an issue again on the flat, they are truly awful to try and come to a halt on a long steep decent though.
    - blunte 5y ago
      Indeed, my favorite bike for technical mountain climbing in Colorado was a singlespeed. As for the weak brakes on old Dutch bikes, you can flip on the headlight friction generator for some added stopping power :P.
mcntsh 5y ago
As someone who owns 6 bikes, been car-free for years, and uses them as his main mode of transportation, I've decided that be best bike one can buy as a daily driver is a Brompton. They come with fenders, racks, dynamo lights, and internal gear hubs. It checks all the boxes of a "dutch bike" but it's light and portable... so portable that you can take it as carry-on onto an airplane or bus. You can take it into the supermarket and use it as a shopping cart. Hell, they even make electric ones.
IshKebab 5y ago
Yeah they're great as long as you don't need to go up any hills.

43 points by bane 5y ago

1MachineElf 5y ago

Someone else here agrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743676

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

KennyBlanken 5y ago

So, after a decade and a half of transportation riding in a metropolitan US city, I can definitively say: no. Big brain dump, incoming. There a lot of elements of Dutch style bikes that are great. He's completely right: enclosed chains, skirt guards, racks, generator lights, swept handlebars, internal-geared hubs.) If you're interested in regular transportation by bicycle, you absolutely should try to find as many of those things as possible (or, more likely, try to find a bike with a frame that will accommodate as many of those as possible.) But do not buy a Dutch-style bike if you live in the US. Most of the things you want can be found in the (thankfully) ever-growing "transportation bike" category though you'll have to look a bit harder. There are several brands that make nice transpo bikes, but I think some of the most consistently good transportation bikes are made by Breezer. The big boys like Specialized and Trek do generally try to force you into a "hybrid" bike if you want something for "transportation." About the biggest change they make is (hopefully) making sure there are enough mounting holes on the frame for mounting both a rack and fenders, and doing so with a fair amount of flexibility (ie multiple options for doing so.) Many bikes sold as "touring" bikes can make for good transportation bikes. The reason you don't see good all-inclusive transportation bikes in US bike shops is because most shoppers in the US look at bicycles as toys, not transportation or utility items. And they are extremely "price conscious", which is a polite way of saying "people in the US are cheap as fuck when it comes to bicycles", so the pricetag on the bike has to be as low as humanly possible. This leads to a lot of other problems, like for example most bike shops in my city struggling to pay workers fair wages and benefits. People don't blink at paying $100+/hour for service at their car dealership, but they expect to pay more like $5/hour at the local bike shop and are incensed if charged more. The exception are shops that do a lot of business with fitness/sport/competitive riders, but a lot of "regular" folks walk into such a shop and almost immediately turn around and leave, unless they happen to spy the display rack of hybrid bicycles. My roommate thought I was insane spending $1,200 on a transportation bicycle. Ditto for when I then spent another $300 or so installing generator-hub powered lights (I went for fairly high end stuff; you can do it cheaper); I asked him how many bike lights he'd lost, broken, or destroyed or had stolen and he thought for a moment, how much he'd spent on batteries, and how many times he'd found himself biking in the dark because the batteries went dead due to not being charged or replaced recently...and said "okay, fair enough." He rode home with me one night on the bike path and was so stunned by how bright and well-lit the path in front of us was, he actually swore. Those bike lights have functioned flawlessly for a decade and a half. Similarly, he was incensed that I spent $60 per tire on better tires for said bike. Those tires lasted me a decade of daily urban use in the Northeast US. They also had reflective sidewalls, which significantly increased the bike's visibility at night. The author of the video repeats a lot of common myths about bicycles. Upright seating position is "more comfortable"...but only for a fairly limited amount of time (there's a reason bikes designed to be ridden for HOURS at a time are not upright; namely, you have less weight on your ass), has nothing to do with power efficiency (in fact many erg bikes used in performance studies and performance tests are...drumroll...upright), and "aero" does not matter at typical urban cycling speeds (ie about 10-15mph.) Don't buy a dutch bike if you ever want to ride it more than about half an hour. Your ass will be very unhappy with you. My daily 'transpo' bike is a road bike style frame with road bike handlebars; they're much narrower, and narrow handlebars can be a significant advantage in urban environments, though it's kind of a tradeoff, because swept-back bars won't get hooked on something...but if your handlebars get hit, you're eating shit regardless. I'm baffled by the author's snobbish comments about "costume changes" - I rode "plain clothes" on my road bike every goddamn day, just fine, thank you. Because I bought a bike that was sized appropriately for my body, I don't get "hit in the nuts" by the top-tube despite having somewhat short legs, and I'm able to easily mount and dismount. The reason drop-tube bikes are often called "women's bikes" is because women are on average shorter, but yes, the US population also looks at them and thinks they're "girly." It is difficult to go below a certain horizontal top-tube height relative to the wheel size. Terry Bicycles famously made a lot of 650c road bikes for women (700c is the standard road bike wheel size) "Steel" is not stronger than "aluminum"; there are numerous alloys and tubing thicknesses for both metals and both steel and aluminum bikes can range from "don't look at it wrong" to "will outlive you." Aluminum is generally more durable, especially anywhere it regularly rains. Steel frames can be protected with anti-rust treatments like Framesaver (which is likely just cosmolene or other standard automotive anti-rust spray) but that adds to the cost. Anyway. Back to the point at hand. The major problem with 'Dutch bikes' is that they are massively heavy (Also, coaster brakes. The author loves coaster bikes. Those are fine in country where the legal system, infrastructure, and other road users are all much more accommodating of you. All of which is a significant problem in the US.) First off, if you live anywhere that isn't as flat as the Netherlands, that weight is going to mean going up hills is murderous, especially since most Dutch bikes are lacking in gearing. Seriously, the Netherlands is so flat, they used to transport a significant amount of goods on huge trikes with a single gear. Like, look at the size of these things: https://www.notechmagazine.com/2010/06/tandem-cargo-tricycle-1940.html https://www.notechmagazine.com/2010/06/tandem-cargo-tricycle... (granted, some of them were bread bikes, and I know from a cargo-bike-delivery-rider friend that the bread run was always her absolute favorite. "It's so LIGHT!") The next problem with being so heavy is that you can't easily bring the bike in at night unless you have a garage (unlikely in most metropolitan areas) or ground-floor apartment. Why do you need to bring bikes in? Because of systemic problems that lead to massive rates of theft. US Police do not take bike theft seriously, despite the fact that just like with theft of a car, theft of one's bike could lead to one being unable to afford getting to work or school, just as in theft of a car. Many homeowners and renters insurance policies exclude bicycles, too. Laws around bike theft are generally a joke in most of the US, treated as basic property theft unlike motor vehicles where theft of a motor vehicle, or even the slightest vandalism, is a felony level offense. Few US urban communities have sufficient public bike parking, especially of the secure sort; a lot of it is badly designed (there is an obsession with making it "pretty", for example), badly located, and badly installed. Many residential buildings have bike parking in them now, but reports of theft from them are extremely commonplace. With the advent of municipal rental systems (aka bike "shares") many cities have altogether stopped deploying infrastructure for private bike ownership and even removed it in some places. In my neighborhood in Boston, the city silently removed a number of bike posts in the main 'square' where bike parking was in very high demand, right as they put in a new Hubway bike "share" station. I later found out that business owners complained that the bike share docking station was going to take up SO MUCH parking (about one and a half car spaces.) As a "peace offering", the city removed several on sidewalk parking posts on the side of a one-way street where vehicles were not even allowed to park. We do not have the social safety nets that a country like the Netherlands does; bike theft is rampant in most metropolitan areas because it's a fast, low-risk way to make money, especially if you're homeless. There are a multitude of ways to steal almost any bike, but one particular way that is quite popular costs about $10-15, is almost completely silent, and will destroy even some fairly seriously built U-Locks. Basically, you cannot leave a bike outside, even on your property, because eventually it will be stolen. And no, having a "crappy" bike "nobody would want to steal" works, because...guess what people want to buy when they move to a new city and are looking for a used bike online? If you made it to the end, thanks for sticking around. Please support legislative protection for PEOPLE on bicycles, and actively support bicycling infrastructure, because there is a VERY loud minority that hyper-aggressively fights this stuff. It's incredibly cheap for its benefits and we will not save the planet putting everyone in an electric car, especially in urbanized areas. PS: before you comment in reply, see https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/ https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/, especially if you are preparing to regale me with what you saw a person on a bicycle do the other day, something about "paying their fair share of the road tax", something about "earning the right to the road by following the rules", or any of the usual tripe.

mdekkers 5y ago
So this huge rant is essentially “Don’t buy a Dutch bike because they are heavy and don’t have gears” both of which are not true. Most Dutch bikes have gears, and most Dutch bikes are light weight. Source: I’m Dutch, bought many bikes in the Netherlands, had to ride my bike 15 miles daily to get to school and back (which is the normal thing to do), and my ass has never complained. You are also conflating a type of machine (Dutch bike) with many random US issues, such as legal protection and theft. On the theft part, LMFAO - bike theft is insanely prevalent in NL, I suspect more bikes get stolen instead of sold annually, and you are randomly throwing in issues such as lighting and “look how much money I spent on my bike”. I’m happy for you that your identity is so tied up to your biking hobby, but your insight into Dutch bikes is deeply flawed.
- pythonic_hell 5y ago
  I agree with your assessment. A common miss conception I’ve seen visiting foreigners have about Dutch bikes are because they used bad rental bikes while visiting. Most of the rental bikes are quite bad; lack of gears, awkward dimensions and incredibly heavy.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    The video we're discussing extolls the virtues of a heavy, gearless, coaster-brake bike.
- n4r9 5y ago
  The importance of weight depends on the geography. I cycle 3 miles to the office each way but there are a couple of steep hills on the route, and I would dread it if my bike weighed much more than 10kg. Some of the bikes shown in the video look like they could weigh twice as much.
- casion 5y ago
  I used to live in the Netherlands, now in a major US city. Always biked to everywhere. Dutch bikes (price/use vs price/use) are absolutely heavier, noticeably so. I spend about 1500 on my daily bike. The average Dutch Bike in the Netherlands is ~12-14kg. My bike here in the US right now is 9.6kg. My nicer bike is 7.8kg. Like others have mentioned, _it matters_. My ride has significant uphill portions both ways (due to one way streets). It sucks on a heavy bike, and it sucks on a bike without fairly aggressive gearing. Carrying the bike up 8 flights of stairs is not fun, and throwing on an extra 3kg after a long ride is... ick. Not to mention the top tube design on some of them makes carrying a Dutch Bike more difficult. It wasn't mentioned in other posts, but riding upright going uphill is rather unpleasant as well. Trying to overcome that discomfort with a lean on a "Dutch Bike" just compounds the discomfort. To the other points - Streets in the Netherlands were flatter. Bike theft was MUCH less problematic. Climbing stairs to get to your home was less common. None of these things are a knock on Dutch Bikes. It's a different tool for a different place. Maybe if you're commuting in Kansas, Texas or Florida then a Dutch Bike makes sense. If you're in a major American coastal city then it's unequivocally the wrong choice. The OP's point stands IMO: buy the right tool for the right job.

rootsudo 5y ago

No different from a Japanese mamachari.

blunte 5y ago

Dutch bikes are best for the Netherlands, but not generally best. Dutch people are bigger than most people elsewhere, and they more often ride with children or another adult on the same bike. So heavy steel frames last longer and are worth the extra weight. Plus, most of NL is relatively flat, where the extra weight won’t be so burdensome. Also, heavier bikes take more effort to steal. And given the per capita leading bike theft rate, it makes some sense to park your 60lb bike on the street overnight compared to a nice light $$$ bike. Other features, such as protected chains, fenders, no gears or internal gears are just generally good for city life. In terms of engineering, van moof has some clever designs (and some designs which look cool but aren’t extra useful). Other Dutch bike companies have even less special compared to other brands like cannondale, trek, etc.

jarofgreen 5y ago
> most of NL is relatively flat Yeah as soon as he said about "no gears" I thought that. I've heard people talk about "no gears" and London being flat but you would NOT get away with that in Edinburgh.
- giobox 5y ago
  As someone who rode fixed gear (“no gears”) in Edinburgh for many years, I can assure you it’s absolutely possible, and wouldn’t take an average person that long to get fit enough to do it either. I’d actually argue Glasgow city centre has more challenging gradients - some of the streets around Garnet Hill/Strathclyde Uni are _much_ more taxing IMHO on a single speed than most gradients in Edinburgh’s old and new towns. I’d 100 percent still buy a bike with gears for my kids if I lived in Edinburgh though! The bigger issue with Dutch style bikes is the “coaster brakes” they often have - these are very inferior stopping power-wise to even something like a dirt cheap v-brake design. Less of an issue again on the flat, they are truly awful to try and come to a halt on a long steep decent though.
  - blunte 5y ago
    Indeed, my favorite bike for technical mountain climbing in Colorado was a singlespeed. As for the weak brakes on old Dutch bikes, you can flip on the headlight friction generator for some added stopping power :P.

mcntsh 5y ago

As someone who owns 6 bikes, been car-free for years, and uses them as his main mode of transportation, I've decided that be best bike one can buy as a daily driver is a Brompton. They come with fenders, racks, dynamo lights, and internal gear hubs. It checks all the boxes of a "dutch bike" but it's light and portable... so portable that you can take it as carry-on onto an airplane or bus. You can take it into the supermarket and use it as a shopping cart. Hell, they even make electric ones.

IshKebab 5y ago

Yeah they're great as long as you don't need to go up any hills.