8 ms·

Building a city optimized for bikes is a choice

90 points by wienke 4y ago

dhruval 4y ago
One thing in favour of biking in Amsterdam and The Netherlands in general is the terrain is very flat as much of it is reclaimed land.
- danielbln 4y ago
  Maybe less of an overall consideration today, considering a lot of bikes are powered these days.
  - wienke 4y ago
    Less in the cities. They are mostly used in the biking highways between the cities. In the cities they are actually pretty dangerous and budget e-bikes like VanMoofs (with their annoying alarms) and Cowboys are frowned upon.
    - uranusjr 4y ago
      Wait you’re saying VanMoof is considered a budget choice?
      - wienke 4y ago
        In the complete spectrum it is a budget e-bike right? The proper ones are much more expensive.
    - yourusername 4y ago
      A good fraction of bikes i see in cities are powered. 52% of new bikes sold in the Netherlands have electric assist so even if they aren't the majority now they will be in a few years. I think the whole "Van moof" backlash is a thing that only exists in Amsterdam and opinion pieces of certain newspapers that have run out of things to write about.
      - wienke 4y ago
        I don't see the same. And also have a biased opinion on the excessive amount of public space it takes in a crowded city. A speeding bike needs much more room to break for instance. And notifying the entire neighborhood about at VanMoof being slightly touched with an alarm is also improper use of public space.
        soco 4y ago
        E-bike != speeding bike. Or it shouldn't, at least. I don't have an e-bike but definitely wouldn't push it for exactly the reason you mentioned, I ride bikes to support my health not to get sooner to the hospital.
        yourusername 4y ago
        Look closely. You'll see even many teens riding e-bikes with a battery pack under the luggage rack. Most of them aren't riding very fast.
- afarrell 4y ago
  Also, it doesn’t get very cold or hot there, in comparison to Chicago or Atlanta.
  - thomaslangston 4y ago
    Cold doesn't have to be an obstacle. Here's a video on Finland's bike infrastructure. https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU
    - Cockbrand 4y ago
      Well, great minds, etc :)
  - Cockbrand 4y ago
    The Finns would like to have a word with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU Aptly titled "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)"
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    It gets plenty wet and plenty cold in Amsterdam. In fact, most days of the year there's a decent-or-better chance of rain. So, what we would do (I'm no longer in town) is: 1. Take thin "rain ponchos" for riding 2. Check out cloud radar website, like buienradar.nl , to decide when / via what route to bike Also, there is absolutely no problem for the Dutch to bike at temperatures below the freezing point, in the height of winter (even though, granted, it isn't that far below zero centigrade). The bike paths are cleared of snow and things work just fine.
  - CiaranMcNulty 4y ago
    Cold isn't that much of an issue if you dress appropriately - you're doing cardio work so you can always speed up if you get cold!
- wienke 4y ago
  True. But you should see the weather today. Wet and cold...
  - terinjokes 4y ago
    Currently "snowing" in De Pijp even. Still plenty of bicycles.
    - piva00 4y ago
      20cm of snow in Stockholm, hills everywhere and I still see quite a bunch of people biking. Even where I'm right now some 15km away from the city centre. There's no bad weather, only bad clothes.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Yesterday was our weekly office day, and I've got a 45 minute bike commute back home across the city. My thumbs were already frozen after 5 minutes. I would have taken my bike into the metro but that's not allowed during rush hour. So I just suffered through the freezing rain and got home fine to a cup of hot chocolate and a change of clothes. It's actually fine once you're through it. It just sucks when you still have more than half an hour of freezing rain to look forward to. In fact, it's mostly those first 15 minutes that were the worst. After that, you get used to it, you adapt, and just continue through until you're home.
- brandhout 4y ago
  Cycling rates aren't considerably lower in 'Limburg', which is the hilly province of the Netherlands.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I wish ebikes were better at regenerative braking, that would help smooth the worst hills outs, just a little extra help getting up to recharge on the way down, but the inertia to drag ratio is not conducive to such things. I think many US cities could do a lot better, mostly by limiting cars in certain areas. Already it is common to see bike rental stations near the parking areas near many city centers. It is just that the cars are still there too, and there isn't always a safe way to cross some areas even in the center. Outside of city centers it is a combination of sparsity and impossible to cross highway exchanges. Even in century old urban neighborhoods it is single family dwellings with yards andboicket fences. Not hard to ride in as long as you know any car door may fly open at any time. But the sparsity means you are probably riding a long way to find groceries. The highway exchanges have no side street alternatives and they slice up cities so that if you want to cross from one section to another, you are going to have to take your bicycle onto a road with no shoulders and high speed limits. Lastly, I have ridden to get groceries in the Netherlands, it was quite pleasant. Even in winter when it isn't fun, you can bumdle up and ride to work. I apoke with people who did. Riding to work (or shoo) when the temp varies from -10C to well over 40C presents additional challenges. Apart from the Pacific Northwest, the US climate isn't anywhere close to as pleasant year round as the Netherlands. Some parts of California are nice enough I guess.
  - loup-vaillant 4y ago
    > I wish ebikes were better at regenerative braking, that would help smooth the worst hills outs, just a little extra help getting up to recharge on the way down, but the inertia to drag ratio is not conducive to such things. Flywheels perhaps? Though it'd add weight to the bike…
- mrob 4y ago
  But flat terrain tends to have stronger winds, and non-cyclists often underestimate how big a difference that makes. Power needed to overcome wind resistance increases with the cube of the velocity[0], so you really feel the headwinds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Power
- nobodyandproud 4y ago
  With pedal assist bikes, small hills are largely a non-issue. Harsh weather continues to he an issue.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  The Danish city of Århus is extremely hilly and has a very high cycling rate. I cycled through it during rush hour one day. It was very humbling to be passed uphill by ladies cycling in leopard print mini-skirts and heels. Granted I was overweight, had 80 pounds of camping gear on my bike and was pacing for an 8 hour day, but...
- tokai 4y ago
  Its a myth that riding up is harder than cycling on the flat. Pushing 150 watts takes the same effort no matter the incline. The lower speed climbing relative to the same power on the flats just make people push harder to keep up speed. It is very much possible to ride up while being comfortable.
z3c0 4y ago
Title: How The Netherlands Built a Biking Utopia That said, having visited a couple of times, I've been impressed with how accommodating to foot traffic it is as well. Outside of downtown Amsterdam, you'll find an almost equal ratio of footpaths-to-bike-paths-to-roadways.
- wienke 4y ago
  Yeah, for some tourists this is actually confusing because many times the biking lanes are confused with sidewalks and then get very soon notified in a Dutch way by the locals :)
- mcv 4y ago
  It's also quite accommodating to car traffic. Exactly because there are so many other transport options, there's less cars on the road, and dedicated car routes have good throughput. Also, road quality, signage and general traffic design is much better and consistent than in many other countries. As they say, you can feel by the road surface that you've crossed a border.
  - Someone 4y ago
    I think part of the reason roads are good is that, if more people get on bicycles, road wear decreases, and keeping roads in good shape becomes more affordable. The fourth power law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law: “The stress on the road increases in proportion to the fourth power of the axle load of the vehicle traveling on the road”) is very harsh for heavy vehicles.
    - vanilla_nut 4y ago
      Precisely. Almost everyone requires a car occasionally -- maybe when they're moving between apartments, or traveling to a hiking trailhead not accessible in any other way, or working a job that requires a large volume of equipment. By giving people other options when they don't need to use a car, those car trips become more bearable in many ways -- including infrastructure efficiencies.
tiku 4y ago
We can do a lot of things by bike here in the Netherlands, it is great. Shopping centers are almost always within 10/15 minutes reach by biking. Supermarkets are usually closer.
- phkahler 4y ago
  What are the demographics like? Do elderly people ride much? Are they trapped at home? What about the weather? How is biking in the rain or snow? On the upside, I suspect people are in better physical condition.
  - piva00 4y ago
    > Are they trapped at home? No, if they can't bike there's always public transportation. If they can't even move in a wheelchair then yeah, I think you'd be trapped anywhere in the world without a caretaker.
  - seper8 4y ago
    If anything elderly people are biking more than their younger (18+) counterparts...
  - DoubleFree 4y ago
    Elderly people also use bikes and often transition to electric bikes or sometimes tricycles if needed. As other people have commented, public transportation in The Netherlands is also quite decent, so that also sees much use by the elderly.
  - Someone 4y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/620201/average-biking-distance-per-person-per-day-netherlands-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/620201/average-biking-di... shows that in km/person/day, the 65 to 75 years old beat all other age categories, except for the 12-18 year old. So yes, they cycle.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    > Do elderly people ride much? Yes. There are also assistive devices like tricycles, mobility scooters and canta (enclosed microcars). And bikeable neighbourhood also tend to be a lot more walkable. And the netherlands have extensive public transportation networks > Are they trapped at home? Much less so than in the US, as they don’t need the ability to drive to get out. They are also significantly less dangerous to themselves and others, as they don't need to keep driving way past the age where they should really stop. > What about the weather? How is biking in the rain or snow? As they say in Scandinavia, climate is a clothing concern. Biking in the rain is a habit. It doesn’t snow that much in the Netherlands, but Finns do just fine (NJB has a video on Oulu, Finland, where people cycle year round and there’s 10~20 inches of snow from January to March).
einpoklum 4y ago
The US also used to have much better public transport systems - trains and busses - relative to the time period they were running at least; and those were killed off by a combination of corporate commercial interests and government subservience/blidness/cretinism/capture.
ako 4y ago
As a dutch person i found this an interesting read, didn't know some of the history how we got here and how much we benefit from it. "All of these changes have had an incredible impact on The Netherlands. In the 1970s about 500 children were dying from car fatalities per year. Four decades later in 2010, 14 children died, a decrease of about 97%." “Similar bicycling rates in the United States would save a staggering 125,000 lives each year.”
- CalRobert 4y ago
  I'm about as orange-pilled (NotJustBikes fan) as they get - to the point where my family are mostly trying to move to Utrecht if only to live in bloommerwede.nl/ - but that statistic is suspicious given that the US has roughly 40,000-50,000 road deaths per year. Maybe it's considering deaths from reduced pollution and other less direct effects of automobile use?
  - ciconia 4y ago
    The 125,000 figure is for deaths related to obesity. For traffic accidents it's 20,000.
lvl102 4y ago
I don’t think everyone wants to ride around in bikes. I really don’t like the idea of forcing municipalities to spend tax dollars retrofitting cities for bikes. It’s quite literally ripping apart the streets to satisfy 5-10% of the population. No thank you.
- ako 4y ago
  As a dutch person, i'm very happy our governments made this choice: makes cities way more liveable, benefits those who can't afford a car, saves many lives, improves the health of 1000s, and reduces healthcare costs due to improved health. It impacts way more people than just the 5-10% actually cycling. Everybody benefits from others cycling. Even if you're still driving a car, you should be happy with reduced traffic jams due to others leaving their cat at home.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - japhyr 4y ago
    Nobody uses half-implemented unsafe bike lanes that: - cars sometimes drive in - cars and delivery vehicles park in - have frequent gaps that dump you into the road - have no meaningful separation from vehicular traffic - are not clean enough to ride on easily People are happy to use well-designed and maintained bicycling infrastructure.
    - ben-schaaf 4y ago
      To add to that, nobody uses bike lanes that: - Have missing intersections; where making your turn is impossible from the bike lane - Are mixed use with heavy foot traffic - Make you cross high speed traffic, or have otherwise unsafe intersections - Don't connect to the existing network - Don't lead to any destinations - Have many potholes, or otherwise unpleasant surface - Don't get plowed
  - detrites 4y ago
    This really depends on where you are. Some European cities the bike lanes are in constant use, to the point if you're not as accustomed to it as the locals you may well cause an accident if you try join them. (And take care crossing them.)
CalRobert 4y ago
If you're from the US and sick of living in a monster-truck dominated hellscape, check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. It's a relatively easily obtained visa for anyone who can employ themselves.
jibbit 4y ago
it's not obvious to me how utopian this will feel as the percentage of (quite high powered) ebikes continues to grow. There is a chance that the golden age of city cycling is over.
- tokai 4y ago
  Definitely. Road deaths of cyclists will rise with the adaptation of ebikes. Even with laws around it, the capabilities of the ebikes are muddied with mopeds, reversing the segregation of bikes and vehicles that has been achieved until now. The ebikes are very nice for some types of commuters, but I fear that they will help reverse positive trends in bike riding and adaptation.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Completely innacurate, you already have a metric tonne of motorbikes under 50cc (bromfietsen) riding in the same bike infrastructure as normal bicycles in the Netherlands. It has never stopped anyway from riding their bikes. There is a space and a use case for everything. Ebikes fill a gap, they increase commute 'radius' for a lot of people, allow elderly to ride when they wouldn't be able to with a normal bike, etc. \ Also in my opinion ebikes are going to be critical for us to role out the Dutch model in other locations that are not as insanely flat. I cycle everyday for school rounds and general errands on a normal 7 gear bike without batteries but even if they had the same bicycle infrastructure as the Netherlands, I would probably not do the same in hilly cities like Granada, or Bristol or Lisbon, because I would just be sweating all the time. Whatever idea you have of ebikes on steroids is simply niche and not what the average consumer buys as an ebike.
  - tokai 4y ago
    Those 50cc motorbikes are slower in acceleration and lower in top speed than high powered ebikes. Without numbers is ridiculous to claim anything on how the adaptation is between high and low powered ebikes. Here in Copenhagen a lot of them on the streets are high power and there is not real oversight on that sold ebikes are low powered enought to count as ebikes an not e-mopeds.
eska 4y ago
As a European I was really surprised why SUVs are so popular in the US, making biking extremely dangerous. This documentary was quite eye-opening for me: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo Similarly in Germany we’re building a new Autobahn in the middle of a city (Berlin) under extreme costs, while still neglecting investment in trains, because we’re a car country.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > As a European I was really surprised why SUVs are so popular in the US, making biking extremely dangerous. Sadly SUVs and giant pickups are slowly becoming more popular in Europe as well.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    The price of fuel is too low. Vehicles should also be taxed by size and weight.
    - masklinn 4y ago
      European countries used to have fairly high taxes on power and / or displacement, which was why 60s and 70s european cars tended to have such small engines compared to American ones. It also affected engine designs as e.g. the english RAC horsepower was based on bore, hence the high frequency of undersquare 4s and 6s in english cars even upscale (e.g. Jaguar’s XK I6) as opposed to the oversquare V8s of american cars.
college_physics 4y ago
Cities are generally built on flat terrain. There are some famous exceptions [0] but for obvious reasons the slopes of streets within city limits tend to be tractable. With the e-bike revolution one can also address the edge cases (historic cities, elderly populations etc) So there is a massive opportunity to de-congest cities by shifting to (e-)bike transport. The key obstacles I see are: * weather conditions. unfortunately bikes are not particularly practical in harsh winter conditions. So the goldilocks bike zone is not available to all. inventing potential means to extend it would be doing god's work. * cultural. while oversized monster trucks are a particularly american obsession, the fact is that the common car has become a symbol of affluence and convenience across the planet. bikes were always a poor man's transport. politicians riding bikes still make people go "wow - how humble". the challenge is to change this perception * vested interests. a good fraction of the global economy revolves around cars. an optimal reconfiguration of cities would not eliminate cars, but it would still significantly reduce the numbers in circulation. there will be resistance for as long as people can neglect the externality of wasting enormous resources for no good reason [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steepest_roads_and_streets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steepest_roads_and_str...
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  Having lived in a city that doesn't clear most of their side streets when it snows (and does a pretty shoddy job of clearing the major thoroughfares, too), I'm not sure cars are particularly practical in harsh winter conditions, either. Cold is a problem, but with the right gear, you can stay plenty warm down to 0F. I'm sure we could use microcars (https://microlino-car.com/en/microlino https://microlino-car.com/en/microlino) or some other variation on enclosed ebikes to share bicycle infrastructure safely with folks who can't use bikes when it's truly cold out. The same strategy could work for extreme heat and humidity. The real problem is safety, rooted in snow clearing and ice buildup. Many cities refuse to maintain bike infrastructure at all during the winter, allowing snow and debris to build up on bike paths and lanes between Nov and April. This means that even when roads are clear, bikes aren't able to use dedicated bike infrastructure during much of the winter months, forcing bikes into car lanes. And my experience as a bike in those circumstances tells me that many drivers are NOT accommodating to bikes in that situation. This problem exists year-round, but snowy conditions make it even more obvious that cars, pedestrians, and bicycles don't mix well in our cities. Nobody needs to drive around massive SUVs, pickup trucks, and semis around dense downtowns. Many European cities get by with cargo bicycles and minitrucks (https://minitrucks.net/pages/direct-import-mini-trucks https://minitrucks.net/pages/direct-import-mini-trucks) to move 99% of packages and large items in city centres. The USA needs to keep large vehicles out of dense urban centres and turn as much infrastructure as possible over to pedestrians, public transit, bicycles... and microcars and mini trucks for the niche situations where those other modes of transportation won't work.
SecurityMinded 4y ago
This is a liberal utopia in US terms. The author is blissfully ignoring the fact that, The Netherlands is a postage stamp size country, smaller then most US states individually. There are only 9 states which are smaller than the whole country of the Netherlands. Even in the big, highly congested cities like NYC, LA, SF, the city sprawl is very big, making bike transportation very unfeasible. Should we uproot our cities and build them to welcome an utopia? I don't think so. I lived in Europe for the first 32 years of my life, all in big cities of several millions of people population. Even there, despite the traffic congestion, biking to work or shopping was not an option. Netherlands, especially the large cities in this country, like Amsterdam, are exceptions or happenstances. Taking them as a blueprint is unrealistic for the most part in the rest of the world.
- wienke 4y ago
  So the point of the article is that if you decide something now it will effect how the world looks in 50 years. The picture with the 2000 vision shows how others thought at that time. If the Dutch would have chosen that path, it now would look like that. City architecture are the way they are because we made decisions on how we wanted it to be.
- shagmin 4y ago
  Nothing is set in stone and the choice is not all one or the other. The US being so large means different regions can experiment with different things (I wish there was more of this). Plus, cities are somewhat like living, organic things. NYC made Times Square pedestrian-only and that's widely been viewed as a success (and there's more biking than ever in NYC in general last time I visited). I live in a fast growing area where the city is actively building greenways and has started to encourage a lot more dense, vertical development strategically around certain areas. Construction is happening one way or another, why have yet another urban area sprawling in every direction?
- pxmpxm 4y ago
  Expect to get downvoted by every left leaning US-suburbia-upbringing city transplant on HN. I've always assumed this is entirely about rejecting their idyllic childhood and parents' lifestyle, since victimhood is the currency of their social circles. An exclusively American phenomenon in any case. Sincerely, fellow European with a nearly identical life experience to yours.
toshredsyousay 4y ago
I think a lot people in the U.S. see our car-oriented culture as clearly just the natural way of doing things, and see places like Amsterdam as more 'unnatural'. I don't think most people realize what a historical accident it is, stemming from a confluence of factors: - Cars becoming affordable right about the same time as the U.S. was experiencing the postwar boom. If they had stayed too expensive cities might have expanded rail and other transport methods more in the postwar boom years. - New construction methods allowing the building of certain styles of single family houses cheaply arose around the same time - Several Supreme Court decisions like the banning of red-lining and the banning of public school segregation causes a lot of white people to move to more-expensive car-dependent suburbs as a way of preserving their ability to live in a segregated neighborhood. The GI bill was also structured in a way to exclude most African Americans from being able to buy homes. The resulting flight of wealthier white folks causes urban decay which causes more white flight to car-dependent suburbs. - After initial suburbs were built out, the FHA set up regulations that made it more difficult to build suburbs that weren't car-dependent. - Planners like Robert Moses hadn't been able to see the space inefficiency of when you have a huge network of suburbs trying to commute into cities via cars. Additionally, induced demand meant that highways into dense cities quickly fill up to capacity compared to more efficient methods of transport like trains or buses. - The federal government went along with the car-dependent vision promoted by planners, partially because it hadn't been demonstrated yet. The costs of building car infrastructure and suburbs were heavily subsidized by the federal government. Maintenance costs are mostly localized, but not expansion, which encouraged more expansion of the suburbs to get more tax revenue from property taxes until maintenance bills come due and the cycle begins again (see strongtowns.org to read more about this phenomenon). - As white people moved to the suburbs and drove personal cars, public transport became seen as something only poor-black people would do - Alternatives like biking became dangerous because of all the fast-moving cars and not as practical in spread-out suburbs - Status quo bias sets in, so we keep doubling down on existing patterns of development I'm sure there are a lot of other factors that I am forgetting, but the US wasn't built for cars just because there was a lot of 'empty space' or whatever people like to say.
deleted 4y ago
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blastonico 4y ago
Unfortunately it doesn't translate to other countries. The sloped Rio de Janeiro facing 40C (104F) and a thermal sensation of 50C (122F) is a big no - unless you're biking for fun, at the beach, in a Sunday morning. I understand you can cross the Netherlands, end to end, by bike, within 1 one hour or less. But it's not my reality.
cafard 4y ago
A choice made when? In 2023, 1932, 1823?

90 points by wienke 4y ago

One thing in favour of biking in Amsterdam and The Netherlands in general is the terrain is very flat as much of it is reclaimed land.

danielbln 4y ago
Maybe less of an overall consideration today, considering a lot of bikes are powered these days.
- wienke 4y ago
  Less in the cities. They are mostly used in the biking highways between the cities. In the cities they are actually pretty dangerous and budget e-bikes like VanMoofs (with their annoying alarms) and Cowboys are frowned upon.
  - uranusjr 4y ago
    Wait you’re saying VanMoof is considered a budget choice?
    - wienke 4y ago
      In the complete spectrum it is a budget e-bike right? The proper ones are much more expensive.
  - yourusername 4y ago
    A good fraction of bikes i see in cities are powered. 52% of new bikes sold in the Netherlands have electric assist so even if they aren't the majority now they will be in a few years. I think the whole "Van moof" backlash is a thing that only exists in Amsterdam and opinion pieces of certain newspapers that have run out of things to write about.
    - wienke 4y ago
      I don't see the same. And also have a biased opinion on the excessive amount of public space it takes in a crowded city. A speeding bike needs much more room to break for instance. And notifying the entire neighborhood about at VanMoof being slightly touched with an alarm is also improper use of public space.
      - soco 4y ago
        E-bike != speeding bike. Or it shouldn't, at least. I don't have an e-bike but definitely wouldn't push it for exactly the reason you mentioned, I ride bikes to support my health not to get sooner to the hospital.
      - yourusername 4y ago
        Look closely. You'll see even many teens riding e-bikes with a battery pack under the luggage rack. Most of them aren't riding very fast.
afarrell 4y ago
Also, it doesn’t get very cold or hot there, in comparison to Chicago or Atlanta.
- thomaslangston 4y ago
  Cold doesn't have to be an obstacle. Here's a video on Finland's bike infrastructure. https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU
  - Cockbrand 4y ago
    Well, great minds, etc :)
- Cockbrand 4y ago
  The Finns would like to have a word with you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU Aptly titled "Why Canadians Can't Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)"
- einpoklum 4y ago
  It gets plenty wet and plenty cold in Amsterdam. In fact, most days of the year there's a decent-or-better chance of rain. So, what we would do (I'm no longer in town) is: 1. Take thin "rain ponchos" for riding 2. Check out cloud radar website, like buienradar.nl , to decide when / via what route to bike Also, there is absolutely no problem for the Dutch to bike at temperatures below the freezing point, in the height of winter (even though, granted, it isn't that far below zero centigrade). The bike paths are cleared of snow and things work just fine.
- CiaranMcNulty 4y ago
  Cold isn't that much of an issue if you dress appropriately - you're doing cardio work so you can always speed up if you get cold!
wienke 4y ago
True. But you should see the weather today. Wet and cold...
- terinjokes 4y ago
  Currently "snowing" in De Pijp even. Still plenty of bicycles.
  - piva00 4y ago
    20cm of snow in Stockholm, hills everywhere and I still see quite a bunch of people biking. Even where I'm right now some 15km away from the city centre. There's no bad weather, only bad clothes.
- mcv 4y ago
  Yesterday was our weekly office day, and I've got a 45 minute bike commute back home across the city. My thumbs were already frozen after 5 minutes. I would have taken my bike into the metro but that's not allowed during rush hour. So I just suffered through the freezing rain and got home fine to a cup of hot chocolate and a change of clothes. It's actually fine once you're through it. It just sucks when you still have more than half an hour of freezing rain to look forward to. In fact, it's mostly those first 15 minutes that were the worst. After that, you get used to it, you adapt, and just continue through until you're home.
brandhout 4y ago
Cycling rates aren't considerably lower in 'Limburg', which is the hilly province of the Netherlands.
galangalalgol 4y ago
I wish ebikes were better at regenerative braking, that would help smooth the worst hills outs, just a little extra help getting up to recharge on the way down, but the inertia to drag ratio is not conducive to such things. I think many US cities could do a lot better, mostly by limiting cars in certain areas. Already it is common to see bike rental stations near the parking areas near many city centers. It is just that the cars are still there too, and there isn't always a safe way to cross some areas even in the center. Outside of city centers it is a combination of sparsity and impossible to cross highway exchanges. Even in century old urban neighborhoods it is single family dwellings with yards andboicket fences. Not hard to ride in as long as you know any car door may fly open at any time. But the sparsity means you are probably riding a long way to find groceries. The highway exchanges have no side street alternatives and they slice up cities so that if you want to cross from one section to another, you are going to have to take your bicycle onto a road with no shoulders and high speed limits. Lastly, I have ridden to get groceries in the Netherlands, it was quite pleasant. Even in winter when it isn't fun, you can bumdle up and ride to work. I apoke with people who did. Riding to work (or shoo) when the temp varies from -10C to well over 40C presents additional challenges. Apart from the Pacific Northwest, the US climate isn't anywhere close to as pleasant year round as the Netherlands. Some parts of California are nice enough I guess.
- loup-vaillant 4y ago
  > I wish ebikes were better at regenerative braking, that would help smooth the worst hills outs, just a little extra help getting up to recharge on the way down, but the inertia to drag ratio is not conducive to such things. Flywheels perhaps? Though it'd add weight to the bike…
mrob 4y ago
But flat terrain tends to have stronger winds, and non-cyclists often underestimate how big a difference that makes. Power needed to overcome wind resistance increases with the cube of the velocity[0], so you really feel the headwinds. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Power
nobodyandproud 4y ago
With pedal assist bikes, small hills are largely a non-issue. Harsh weather continues to he an issue.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
The Danish city of Århus is extremely hilly and has a very high cycling rate. I cycled through it during rush hour one day. It was very humbling to be passed uphill by ladies cycling in leopard print mini-skirts and heels. Granted I was overweight, had 80 pounds of camping gear on my bike and was pacing for an 8 hour day, but...
tokai 4y ago
Its a myth that riding up is harder than cycling on the flat. Pushing 150 watts takes the same effort no matter the incline. The lower speed climbing relative to the same power on the flats just make people push harder to keep up speed. It is very much possible to ride up while being comfortable.

z3c0 4y ago

Title: How The Netherlands Built a Biking Utopia That said, having visited a couple of times, I've been impressed with how accommodating to foot traffic it is as well. Outside of downtown Amsterdam, you'll find an almost equal ratio of footpaths-to-bike-paths-to-roadways.

wienke 4y ago
Yeah, for some tourists this is actually confusing because many times the biking lanes are confused with sidewalks and then get very soon notified in a Dutch way by the locals :)
mcv 4y ago
It's also quite accommodating to car traffic. Exactly because there are so many other transport options, there's less cars on the road, and dedicated car routes have good throughput. Also, road quality, signage and general traffic design is much better and consistent than in many other countries. As they say, you can feel by the road surface that you've crossed a border.
- Someone 4y ago
  I think part of the reason roads are good is that, if more people get on bicycles, road wear decreases, and keeping roads in good shape becomes more affordable. The fourth power law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law: “The stress on the road increases in proportion to the fourth power of the axle load of the vehicle traveling on the road”) is very harsh for heavy vehicles.
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago
    Precisely. Almost everyone requires a car occasionally -- maybe when they're moving between apartments, or traveling to a hiking trailhead not accessible in any other way, or working a job that requires a large volume of equipment. By giving people other options when they don't need to use a car, those car trips become more bearable in many ways -- including infrastructure efficiencies.

tiku 4y ago

We can do a lot of things by bike here in the Netherlands, it is great. Shopping centers are almost always within 10/15 minutes reach by biking. Supermarkets are usually closer.

phkahler 4y ago
What are the demographics like? Do elderly people ride much? Are they trapped at home? What about the weather? How is biking in the rain or snow? On the upside, I suspect people are in better physical condition.
- piva00 4y ago
  > Are they trapped at home? No, if they can't bike there's always public transportation. If they can't even move in a wheelchair then yeah, I think you'd be trapped anywhere in the world without a caretaker.
- seper8 4y ago
  If anything elderly people are biking more than their younger (18+) counterparts...
- DoubleFree 4y ago
  Elderly people also use bikes and often transition to electric bikes or sometimes tricycles if needed. As other people have commented, public transportation in The Netherlands is also quite decent, so that also sees much use by the elderly.
- Someone 4y ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/620201/average-biking-distance-per-person-per-day-netherlands-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/620201/average-biking-di... shows that in km/person/day, the 65 to 75 years old beat all other age categories, except for the 12-18 year old. So yes, they cycle.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > Do elderly people ride much? Yes. There are also assistive devices like tricycles, mobility scooters and canta (enclosed microcars). And bikeable neighbourhood also tend to be a lot more walkable. And the netherlands have extensive public transportation networks > Are they trapped at home? Much less so than in the US, as they don’t need the ability to drive to get out. They are also significantly less dangerous to themselves and others, as they don't need to keep driving way past the age where they should really stop. > What about the weather? How is biking in the rain or snow? As they say in Scandinavia, climate is a clothing concern. Biking in the rain is a habit. It doesn’t snow that much in the Netherlands, but Finns do just fine (NJB has a video on Oulu, Finland, where people cycle year round and there’s 10~20 inches of snow from January to March).

einpoklum 4y ago

The US also used to have much better public transport systems - trains and busses - relative to the time period they were running at least; and those were killed off by a combination of corporate commercial interests and government subservience/blidness/cretinism/capture.

ako 4y ago

As a dutch person i found this an interesting read, didn't know some of the history how we got here and how much we benefit from it. "All of these changes have had an incredible impact on The Netherlands. In the 1970s about 500 children were dying from car fatalities per year. Four decades later in 2010, 14 children died, a decrease of about 97%." “Similar bicycling rates in the United States would save a staggering 125,000 lives each year.”

CalRobert 4y ago
I'm about as orange-pilled (NotJustBikes fan) as they get - to the point where my family are mostly trying to move to Utrecht if only to live in bloommerwede.nl/ - but that statistic is suspicious given that the US has roughly 40,000-50,000 road deaths per year. Maybe it's considering deaths from reduced pollution and other less direct effects of automobile use?
- ciconia 4y ago
  The 125,000 figure is for deaths related to obesity. For traffic accidents it's 20,000.

lvl102 4y ago

I don’t think everyone wants to ride around in bikes. I really don’t like the idea of forcing municipalities to spend tax dollars retrofitting cities for bikes. It’s quite literally ripping apart the streets to satisfy 5-10% of the population. No thank you.

ako 4y ago
As a dutch person, i'm very happy our governments made this choice: makes cities way more liveable, benefits those who can't afford a car, saves many lives, improves the health of 1000s, and reduces healthcare costs due to improved health. It impacts way more people than just the 5-10% actually cycling. Everybody benefits from others cycling. Even if you're still driving a car, you should be happy with reduced traffic jams due to others leaving their cat at home.
Dalewyn 4y ago
[flagged]
- japhyr 4y ago
  Nobody uses half-implemented unsafe bike lanes that: - cars sometimes drive in - cars and delivery vehicles park in - have frequent gaps that dump you into the road - have no meaningful separation from vehicular traffic - are not clean enough to ride on easily People are happy to use well-designed and maintained bicycling infrastructure.
  - ben-schaaf 4y ago
    To add to that, nobody uses bike lanes that: - Have missing intersections; where making your turn is impossible from the bike lane - Are mixed use with heavy foot traffic - Make you cross high speed traffic, or have otherwise unsafe intersections - Don't connect to the existing network - Don't lead to any destinations - Have many potholes, or otherwise unpleasant surface - Don't get plowed
- detrites 4y ago
  This really depends on where you are. Some European cities the bike lanes are in constant use, to the point if you're not as accustomed to it as the locals you may well cause an accident if you try join them. (And take care crossing them.)

CalRobert 4y ago

If you're from the US and sick of living in a monster-truck dominated hellscape, check out the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. It's a relatively easily obtained visa for anyone who can employ themselves.

jibbit 4y ago

it's not obvious to me how utopian this will feel as the percentage of (quite high powered) ebikes continues to grow. There is a chance that the golden age of city cycling is over.

tokai 4y ago
Definitely. Road deaths of cyclists will rise with the adaptation of ebikes. Even with laws around it, the capabilities of the ebikes are muddied with mopeds, reversing the segregation of bikes and vehicles that has been achieved until now. The ebikes are very nice for some types of commuters, but I fear that they will help reverse positive trends in bike riding and adaptation.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Completely innacurate, you already have a metric tonne of motorbikes under 50cc (bromfietsen) riding in the same bike infrastructure as normal bicycles in the Netherlands. It has never stopped anyway from riding their bikes. There is a space and a use case for everything. Ebikes fill a gap, they increase commute 'radius' for a lot of people, allow elderly to ride when they wouldn't be able to with a normal bike, etc. \ Also in my opinion ebikes are going to be critical for us to role out the Dutch model in other locations that are not as insanely flat. I cycle everyday for school rounds and general errands on a normal 7 gear bike without batteries but even if they had the same bicycle infrastructure as the Netherlands, I would probably not do the same in hilly cities like Granada, or Bristol or Lisbon, because I would just be sweating all the time. Whatever idea you have of ebikes on steroids is simply niche and not what the average consumer buys as an ebike.
- tokai 4y ago
  Those 50cc motorbikes are slower in acceleration and lower in top speed than high powered ebikes. Without numbers is ridiculous to claim anything on how the adaptation is between high and low powered ebikes. Here in Copenhagen a lot of them on the streets are high power and there is not real oversight on that sold ebikes are low powered enought to count as ebikes an not e-mopeds.

eska 4y ago

As a European I was really surprised why SUVs are so popular in the US, making biking extremely dangerous. This documentary was quite eye-opening for me: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo Similarly in Germany we’re building a new Autobahn in the middle of a city (Berlin) under extreme costs, while still neglecting investment in trains, because we’re a car country.

masklinn 4y ago
> As a European I was really surprised why SUVs are so popular in the US, making biking extremely dangerous. Sadly SUVs and giant pickups are slowly becoming more popular in Europe as well.
- timbit42 4y ago
  The price of fuel is too low. Vehicles should also be taxed by size and weight.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    European countries used to have fairly high taxes on power and / or displacement, which was why 60s and 70s european cars tended to have such small engines compared to American ones. It also affected engine designs as e.g. the english RAC horsepower was based on bore, hence the high frequency of undersquare 4s and 6s in english cars even upscale (e.g. Jaguar’s XK I6) as opposed to the oversquare V8s of american cars.

college_physics 4y ago

Cities are generally built on flat terrain. There are some famous exceptions [0] but for obvious reasons the slopes of streets within city limits tend to be tractable. With the e-bike revolution one can also address the edge cases (historic cities, elderly populations etc) So there is a massive opportunity to de-congest cities by shifting to (e-)bike transport. The key obstacles I see are: * weather conditions. unfortunately bikes are not particularly practical in harsh winter conditions. So the goldilocks bike zone is not available to all. inventing potential means to extend it would be doing god's work. * cultural. while oversized monster trucks are a particularly american obsession, the fact is that the common car has become a symbol of affluence and convenience across the planet. bikes were always a poor man's transport. politicians riding bikes still make people go "wow - how humble". the challenge is to change this perception * vested interests. a good fraction of the global economy revolves around cars. an optimal reconfiguration of cities would not eliminate cars, but it would still significantly reduce the numbers in circulation. there will be resistance for as long as people can neglect the externality of wasting enormous resources for no good reason [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steepest_roads_and_streets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steepest_roads_and_str...

vanilla_nut 4y ago
Having lived in a city that doesn't clear most of their side streets when it snows (and does a pretty shoddy job of clearing the major thoroughfares, too), I'm not sure cars are particularly practical in harsh winter conditions, either. Cold is a problem, but with the right gear, you can stay plenty warm down to 0F. I'm sure we could use microcars (https://microlino-car.com/en/microlino https://microlino-car.com/en/microlino) or some other variation on enclosed ebikes to share bicycle infrastructure safely with folks who can't use bikes when it's truly cold out. The same strategy could work for extreme heat and humidity. The real problem is safety, rooted in snow clearing and ice buildup. Many cities refuse to maintain bike infrastructure at all during the winter, allowing snow and debris to build up on bike paths and lanes between Nov and April. This means that even when roads are clear, bikes aren't able to use dedicated bike infrastructure during much of the winter months, forcing bikes into car lanes. And my experience as a bike in those circumstances tells me that many drivers are NOT accommodating to bikes in that situation. This problem exists year-round, but snowy conditions make it even more obvious that cars, pedestrians, and bicycles don't mix well in our cities. Nobody needs to drive around massive SUVs, pickup trucks, and semis around dense downtowns. Many European cities get by with cargo bicycles and minitrucks (https://minitrucks.net/pages/direct-import-mini-trucks https://minitrucks.net/pages/direct-import-mini-trucks) to move 99% of packages and large items in city centres. The USA needs to keep large vehicles out of dense urban centres and turn as much infrastructure as possible over to pedestrians, public transit, bicycles... and microcars and mini trucks for the niche situations where those other modes of transportation won't work.

SecurityMinded 4y ago

This is a liberal utopia in US terms. The author is blissfully ignoring the fact that, The Netherlands is a postage stamp size country, smaller then most US states individually. There are only 9 states which are smaller than the whole country of the Netherlands. Even in the big, highly congested cities like NYC, LA, SF, the city sprawl is very big, making bike transportation very unfeasible. Should we uproot our cities and build them to welcome an utopia? I don't think so. I lived in Europe for the first 32 years of my life, all in big cities of several millions of people population. Even there, despite the traffic congestion, biking to work or shopping was not an option. Netherlands, especially the large cities in this country, like Amsterdam, are exceptions or happenstances. Taking them as a blueprint is unrealistic for the most part in the rest of the world.

wienke 4y ago
So the point of the article is that if you decide something now it will effect how the world looks in 50 years. The picture with the 2000 vision shows how others thought at that time. If the Dutch would have chosen that path, it now would look like that. City architecture are the way they are because we made decisions on how we wanted it to be.
shagmin 4y ago
Nothing is set in stone and the choice is not all one or the other. The US being so large means different regions can experiment with different things (I wish there was more of this). Plus, cities are somewhat like living, organic things. NYC made Times Square pedestrian-only and that's widely been viewed as a success (and there's more biking than ever in NYC in general last time I visited). I live in a fast growing area where the city is actively building greenways and has started to encourage a lot more dense, vertical development strategically around certain areas. Construction is happening one way or another, why have yet another urban area sprawling in every direction?
pxmpxm 4y ago
Expect to get downvoted by every left leaning US-suburbia-upbringing city transplant on HN. I've always assumed this is entirely about rejecting their idyllic childhood and parents' lifestyle, since victimhood is the currency of their social circles. An exclusively American phenomenon in any case. Sincerely, fellow European with a nearly identical life experience to yours.

toshredsyousay 4y ago

I think a lot people in the U.S. see our car-oriented culture as clearly just the natural way of doing things, and see places like Amsterdam as more 'unnatural'. I don't think most people realize what a historical accident it is, stemming from a confluence of factors: - Cars becoming affordable right about the same time as the U.S. was experiencing the postwar boom. If they had stayed too expensive cities might have expanded rail and other transport methods more in the postwar boom years. - New construction methods allowing the building of certain styles of single family houses cheaply arose around the same time - Several Supreme Court decisions like the banning of red-lining and the banning of public school segregation causes a lot of white people to move to more-expensive car-dependent suburbs as a way of preserving their ability to live in a segregated neighborhood. The GI bill was also structured in a way to exclude most African Americans from being able to buy homes. The resulting flight of wealthier white folks causes urban decay which causes more white flight to car-dependent suburbs. - After initial suburbs were built out, the FHA set up regulations that made it more difficult to build suburbs that weren't car-dependent. - Planners like Robert Moses hadn't been able to see the space inefficiency of when you have a huge network of suburbs trying to commute into cities via cars. Additionally, induced demand meant that highways into dense cities quickly fill up to capacity compared to more efficient methods of transport like trains or buses. - The federal government went along with the car-dependent vision promoted by planners, partially because it hadn't been demonstrated yet. The costs of building car infrastructure and suburbs were heavily subsidized by the federal government. Maintenance costs are mostly localized, but not expansion, which encouraged more expansion of the suburbs to get more tax revenue from property taxes until maintenance bills come due and the cycle begins again (see strongtowns.org to read more about this phenomenon). - As white people moved to the suburbs and drove personal cars, public transport became seen as something only poor-black people would do - Alternatives like biking became dangerous because of all the fast-moving cars and not as practical in spread-out suburbs - Status quo bias sets in, so we keep doubling down on existing patterns of development I'm sure there are a lot of other factors that I am forgetting, but the US wasn't built for cars just because there was a lot of 'empty space' or whatever people like to say.

deleted 4y ago

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blastonico 4y ago

Unfortunately it doesn't translate to other countries. The sloped Rio de Janeiro facing 40C (104F) and a thermal sensation of 50C (122F) is a big no - unless you're biking for fun, at the beach, in a Sunday morning. I understand you can cross the Netherlands, end to end, by bike, within 1 one hour or less. But it's not my reality.

cafard 4y ago

A choice made when? In 2023, 1932, 1823?