The Kingdom of Bicycles
We ask what the mobility of tomorrow will look like: why people in the Netherlands ride bicycles without constantly being afraid.
A child in the front, one in the back, right and left bulging shopping bags - and all this without a crash helmet. What seems to my German friends when they visit me in the Netherlands as a suicidal undertaking is the most normal thing in the world for Dutch women. They are true balance artists on the saddle – and at the thought of a crash helmet, many tap their foreheads without understanding: "Really rivet!", says Ina indignantly. Then the wind could no longer blow through her hair - and that is a must when cycling.
In the event of an accident, the car is generally to blame
But in the Netherlands, cyclists are also literally wrapped in cotton wool. There is not only one special law that protects them in traffic: in accidents with cyclists, the driver is basically to blame. They also have their own roundabout, their own traffic lights, tunnels, bridges, more and more highways – and since August 2019 in Utrecht also the largest bicycle parking garage in the world. No wonder, then, that the wheel is an indispensable part of life for the Dutch.
The number of citizens who leave their cars behind and cycle to work is between 40 and 45 percent. With a whole series of measures, the state and municipalities are trying to increase it further. As a result, more and more cycling zones are being created in the inner cities, in which motorists are undesirable in principle. Not to mention financial incentives: many companies subsidize their employees when they buy a job to get to work; the remaining costs can be deducted from the tax. Like the drivers, the fietsers are reimbursed 19 cents by their employer for every kilometer they commute to work.
17 million Dutch owns 22.1 million bicycles
Nowhere else in the world is the bicycle density as high as in the kingdom of cyclists: the approximately 17 million Dutch people own an average of 1.3 bicycles per capita . But beware: the pace on the cycle paths has increased, and it has also become more crowded. In Amsterdam in particular, tourists like to make the mistake of wanting to discover the city on a rental bike.
What do we learn?
The car does not always have to have the right of way. Bicycles need their own place on the streets, so many city dwellers get on environmentally friendly bikes.
