Still Pedaling

Unfortunately Machka, I have not. My conception as to what its like in the Netherlands to ride is based on the videos posted.

My ex brother-in-law lived in the Netherlands for many years and he really loved it there. He was transferred there when he worked for Shell Oil. According to him, it was a wonderful country to raise a family. Mind you, that was about 10 to 15 years ago. So, based on his experiences I can only assume that the Netherlands would be a nice place to live, and along with that I would assume that it would also be a nice place to ride a bike.

My chances of visiting the Netherlands are about as good as winning the lottery. You see, I am one of the millions of Americans who are strapped because of very high expenses - medical bills being one of them. What little extra I have at the end of the month went towards purchasing a bicycle, and the one that I purchased for my wife was from funds I received after selling my camera gear. So, if the Publisher's Clearing House van comes visiting, I will indeed take a trip to the Netherlands, but until then, I'll enjoy what little money I have left over at the end of the month and ride around my own hood and dream of what it must be like to visit far away places.

Cheers
Wayne

Still Pedaling

I did just that Dave, and I came across a nice video called "Groningen: The World's Cycling City", which I previously posted. Here it is again.

bikinyurop

Those videos make it look like everybody in the Netherlands is cycling and cycle paths are perfect and made of gold. The fact is that cycling is a part of every day life and people can easily get around by public transportation + bicycle. A good bicycle policy requires good infrastructure and the will of the citizens to pick up their bikes and cycle. However, for daily use (getting to work for example) also needs a good public transportation system. This is exactly where the flaw in the current system in the netherlands lies in my opinion. Trains have become better in some respects (free wi-fi in the train for example), but lacks when it comes to train delays. Some say it is due to privatizing public transportation, some say it is due to mismanagement and some others claim that something else is behind and bad service.

Anyway, my point is that the Dutch system is flawed as well. It's fun to cycle due to the landscape and the infrastructure. It sucks to drive a car due to traffic jams and so on, but people do it any way because it beats using public transportation as of now. If public transportation would be better, there would not be reason to drive a car at all in our little land.

Still Pedaling

Its pretty much impossible to reach a perfect system. There will always be flaws that's for sure. Where I live, roadways are very well designed and laid out for the automobile, and as far as public transportation goes, we have it, but its as useless as a submarine with a screen door. Reason being is that most people love their cars, and with a well planned roadway system, why take a bus, or for that matter, ride a bike.

We have a lot of bike baths on our roadways, but we lack the infrastructure that the Dutch have implemented. Very few people where I live commute by bicycle, so it would be a huge argument to persuade government officials to develop something that would even come close to what other countries like the Netherlands have. Who knows what might come about in years to come. I'm quite certain, though, that in my lifetime I will never see such a system here where I live, but, like I said - who knows.

bikinyurop

Increased spending in public transportation grows with the increased demand for a green economy. I must say that Germany is progressing really quickly in this respect. You can get around with long distance coaches and by super fast trains (300kmh). Here it makes sense to buy a bike like that. In the USA I wouldn't buy it though.

hamster

Your profile says "location: Arizona". Population density of Maricopa County, AZ is less than one half of population density of Netherlands. Population density of Phoenix is one fourth of the population density of Amsterdam. Your state has to raze hundreds of thousands of single-family houses and replace them with multistory apartments before it can get to the state where bikes start making as much sense as across the pond.

Once you get to that density, you've increased the number of cars in your current system by the factor of 2x to 4x, and you can see that even your well planned roadway system would struggle immensely. At that point local planners can start making decisions whether to continue trying to squeeze in more cars (widen freeways, build overpasses and tunnels, add parking structures) or encourage bike commuting by adding bike lanes & such. The second option is justified if they can reasonably expect high return on investment (spending money would take cars off the roads).

I live near San Diego. Local officials recently approved a $200 million bike infrastructure expansion plan that involves building or completing something like 50 miles of separated bikeways throughout the county. Do I expect these $200 million to make a dent in car-commute rate? I don't, and probably neither do they. Maybe they are extremely forward-thinking and they want to start spending money now in anticipation of hitting population density markers some time closer to 2050 than to this day. Maybe they just think that having bikeways is a good idea.

achoo

Germany is about 1/2 the size of Texas, but with three times the population.

BlazingPedals

Discussing that particular line of though would certainly get everyone involved 'moderated.'

Machka 

Well from our experience in 2012 ...

Some areas in the Netherlands were lovely ... but not really all that much different from cycling the rail trails in Victoria, Australia or cycling the Velodyssey Route in France.

But cycling in Amsterdam was ... ummm ... challenging. I preferred the seeming chaos of cycling in Taiwan.

fietsbob

drop by P&R and that can be argued further.. if you wish to..

Home :: Veterans for Peace

Machka 

Incidentally, those of you interested in travel by bicycle might be interested in the Touring forum:

Touring

cyccommute 

It. Does. Not. Matter. The width of the road is the important bit.

cyccommute 

While you left hamster's point 5 out of your discussion, you left the rest of his points out of the discussion as well. Yes, there is a little political game playing going on but the rest of his points are still valid...and not just for the US. Most large (and many medium sized) cities in the US are working to address some of his points. Some of his points can't be addressed...topography and sprawl...but others can and are being addressed. But they are being addressed to fit US cities.

cyccommute 

You are missing the elephant in the Arizona room: heat. Even with that as a factor places like Tucson have made some pretty good strides towards greater bicycle ridership.

And, just like the separated bike lanes wouldn't be a good fit for the snow belt, Still Pedaling, you might not want separated bike lines in Arizona. If you were to do the fully separated lanes like they have in Amsterdam, complete with a linear curb, how would you deal with drainage during monsoon? You'd have to have 2 separate drainage systems...one for the roadway and one for the bikeway. If you didn't, you'd have all the water draining into the bike lanes which would make them rivers that would be difficult to impossible to bike through. It's analogous to the snow removal problem in the north only shorter term.

cyccommute 

To be fair, I had similar experiences. Much of the area was very nice to bicycle through. It was certainly easy riding. But I've ridden through many similar areas in the US and in Scotland (but they were more physically challenging). The people of Holland could do with a bit of a "3' foot rule" mentality but the locals seem to be comfortable with how close cars passed.

You are damning with faint praise in calling Amsterdam "challenging". I'm not timid when it comes to riding nor am I a retiring commuter. When I rode through the middle of Amsterdam on a rush hour Friday, I had to ride the most aggressively I've ever ridden. I even had to stuff a motor scooter onto the grass who was trying to pass me on a corner where we couldn't both co-exist.