Originally Posted by
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.
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.