How the Dutch got their cycling infrastructure (2011)

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-got-their-cycling-infrastructure/

by omnibrain • 11 years ago

120 74 11 years ago

bicycledutch.wordpress.com

manachar2• 11 years ago

Talking infrastructure with people in the US (and maybe elsewhere) is frustrating. People seem to forget that we can build whatever system we want. Which is why it warmed my cockles to see this:

"Road building traditions go back a long way and they are influenced by many factors. But the way Dutch streets and roads are built today is largely the result of deliberate political decisions in the 1970s to turn away from the car centric policies of the prosperous post war era. Changed ideas about mobility, safer and more livable cities and about the environment led to a new type of streets in the Netherlands."

Here in the US, most people I talk to seem to think the car-based, suburban, strip malls, business parks, and commercial city center approach is the only way to do things.

You can see this approach disastrously over-applied here in Hawaii, especially on O'ahu and around Honolulu.

It's refreshing to see this well thought out reminder that humans are clever creatures and really can optimize systems for other outcomes.

wpietri• 11 years ago

San Francisco has been moving in this direction and I couldn't be happier. Some of it is directly inspired by Dutch innovations; a few years back the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's director took a sabbatical in Amsterdam and came back all fired up:

http://www.spur.org/events/2011-01-13/going-dutch-creating-b...

But yes, when I tell people outside of SF that I haven't owned a car in years they often look at me as if I had two heads. As the great Vizzini would say, it's just inconceivable.

aexaey2• 11 years ago

BTW, photo in the linked article was made from the top of this 2500-place 3-story-high bicycle parking structure at the Amsterdam Central train station:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fietsflat

edit: grammar

IkmoIkmo6• 11 years ago

Absolutely, although it does depend. The Netherlands had and still has today very small cities where residential, commercial, office and other (local school, sports centre, park) areas are close together and easily reachable by foot, bicycle or short distance public transportation (tram, bus, subway). Building cycling infrastructure immediately pays off because you're building transportation lanes that have 10 miles per hour speeds, in cities where citizens mostly make many 1-4 mile trips.

And this is a pretty common European feature really, virtually all our cities are built in the age of transport by foot or horse and are structured much differently, coupled with higher rates of population density in the Europe (vs say the US, or worse, Australia).

That wouldn't work as much in say Australian cities, some of which are known for their terrible urban sprawl. The notion of building transportation lanes that average 10 miles per hour when typical citizens work, shop or go to school say 10 miles or more away from home, doesn't make as much sense. Australia after all has seen the majority of its cities founded in the past 150 years and saw 2/3rd of its population growth in the past 50 years or so in the era of ubiquitous cars.

Now of course existing Dutch cities today are expanded with minimizing any urban sprawl in mind, and cycling is both an instrument to solve issues as well as drive city design to prevent issues. And new cities are entirely built with this in mind. But in terms of reinventing existing cities, it was much easier to do in the Netherlands than it'd be in say the US.

So while I'm Dutch and yes, 40 years ago we were heavily motorised, and had lots of traffic deaths, and had poor cycling infrastructure, and were able to reinvent ourselves, and while yes this can apply to all cities worldwide to a large extent, it's also fair to point out that some cities would really need radical changes to decrease travel distance and create more density. e.g. by creating many small city centres where residents can do everything (most of their shopping, work, entertainment and education within miles of their home). Such radical changes require very significant leadership and an effort that dwarfs what the Dutch had to do to get where they are today.

That having been said I've also visited lots of American cities where cycling infrastructure would seem like a perfect fit. You mentioned Honolulu, I totally agree, it's a no-brainer to build cycling infrastructure there, requiring nothing more than what the Dutch did.

Lastly another difference isn't technical, economical or social or relating to geography or anything like that, but purely political. The Netherlands has always had an automotive industry but it's always been relatively small. Virtually all cars are imported. Of the top 10 brands, 3 are German, 3 are French, 1 American/Swedish/Korean/Japanese. It's pretty well known that the car industry helped dismantle public transportation in the US, such forces haven't been as big a factor in the Netherlands (despite the fact Dutch Royal Shell's oil industry was the largest company by revenue of any company worldwide in 2013, 2nd in 2014 and 3rd in 2015, revenues equivalent to about 85% of the country's GDP (!), but it's pretty much entirely focused outside of the Dutch market anyway).

Although I do recall very recently Shell funding helmets for kids which I thought was pretty funny. In 2010 only 2 kids died in traffic in the Netherlands, and it's pretty well known that cycling is reduced when cyclists are forced to wear helmets here and that cycling's popularity has done a lot for safety. You could take that as a clever anti-cycling measure wrapped in 'safe the kids' rhetoric from Shell, but perhaps that's paranoid.

Fun fact, Dutch support for Israel in the 70s may have helped the cycling culture get a tiny boost. OPEC boycotted oil sales to the Netherlands for its arms sales to Israel who was embroiled in the 73 war with various OPEC members. Dutch PM responded with car-free sundays due to oil scarcity. Of course soon after OPEC expanded the list of countries beyond the Netherlands, we started getting oil from South America and Africa instead and it didn't last very long either (ironically there was even a bit of an oil glut in Dutch harbours because one of the biggest refineries in the world was in Rotterdam so whenever it supplied e.g. France or Germany it could circumvent the boycott), and driving less on sunday led to driving more on saturday, so it wasn't extremely significant but I thought it probably helped a tiny bit :)

jacquesm3• 11 years ago

I remember roller skating on N200 during one of those car-less Sundays.

justincormack• 11 years ago

High property prices might help rebuild places like Australia to higher density.

manachar2• 11 years ago

The interesting part is cities where traffic is bad like Honolulu and Boston are doing massive changes to their infrastructure. It's just the changes are primarily to try to squeeze more cars in. Boston's Big Dig was a non-minor, twenty year, 22 billion dollar project.

Essentially, many places are spending massive amounts of money and looking to do big changes already. It's just these projects almost universally are focused on being an continuation of the existing car-based infrastructure – just with more lanes to fit more cars.

Urban sprawl with existing infrastructure can be a tough one to solve. I hope to see more communities make more innovative choices in the future.

brc• 11 years ago

I'm really coming around to the idea of car-free Sundays. Even from something like 5-11 am I think a lot of places would really benefit from that.

This Sunday I participated in marathon/half marathon and it was great to see the streets empty except for runners, occasional cyclists taking advantage of the closed streets and lots of pedestrians watching the crowd but also filling the cafes everywhere.

You specifically mentioned Australia - while Melbourne is flat and cool, both Sydney and Brisbane are hilly and hot for half the year. The country also has insane helmet laws, so that even the bike-sharing programs are essentially unused simply because you have to wear a helmet or face a fine. So the bikes sit in the sun and rain and virtually never get used.

Removing the helmet laws for adults would go a long way to higher adoption in the dutch model. But 'safety' laws are hard to ratchet back, given all the effort that went into telling people they couldn't be trusted with their own judgement in the first place.

Khaine• 11 years ago

Try telling your logic to all the idiots who want cycling infrastructure here in Australia. You need the right population density for it to be effective

jacobolus• 11 years ago

Hawaii in particular seems like an insane place to build a car-centric society. It’s not like anyone is going to go on a long road trip, or needs to commute from point to point over a huge geographic area (as one comparison, the island of Oahu has <1/10 the area of the SF Bay Area). I’m guessing the typical Honolulu commute is only a few miles.

Some combination of boats, mass transit, bikes, walking, so-called neighborhood electric vehicles, and the occasional jeep seems like it would be much more practical. The money and space spent on parking, wide streets, and car ownership would go quite a long way if diverted to transit.

masklinn• 11 years ago

as one comparison, the island of Oahu has <1/10 the area of the SF Bay Area

And a good part of it is Koʻolau and Waianae which most people probably don't cross daily.

sirmarksalot• 11 years ago

Downtown real estate in Hawaii is about as expensive as in San Francisco. Most working-class people live in bedroom suburbs like Hawaii Kai, Mililani, or Makakilo, 12-20 miles away. People who live closer to town are largely on the mountain ridges, making it geographically close, but logistically impossible to bike.

And a huge number of people also cross the mountains from Kaneohe, Kailua or Waimanalo, using either Likelike or Pali Hwy, both of which have a staggering amount of elevation change.

pinaceae• 11 years ago

also helps when cities/towns are older than the US as a whole. much denser, built for different times.

also helps when your country is dead flat. old people can cycle on flat roads. SF style hills ... not so much.

_ph_• 11 years ago

This is why electrically assisted bikes are a huge thing. For the weak, they give the ability to ride at a decent speed and also they help with going uphill. Which is also important, if you use the bike as vehicle rather than a sports device, like biking in business clothing.

pjmlp• 11 years ago

Never been in SF, but lived in Switzerland. Everyone cycles there, even in the Alps centric cities.

jules2• 11 years ago

I don't know how hilly SF is, but the Netherlands does have some areas that are somewhat hilly. With a bike with gears it's not much of an issue. You go slower yes, but it still works great. In fact I prefer to bike in the hillier areas because they tend to be less windy than the flat land near the seaside. From age 12 to 18 I biked 12.5km to high school each day (and 12.5 back home), so even moderate distances are certainly doable. It's fun to think that in total I biked around 40,000km to school, approximately the circumference of Earth. It really helps to say in shape; I know people who bought a car and in a few years they were obese.

rjprins• 11 years ago

Actually older cities are harder to make compatible for bikes. New cities, with a better urban planning are the ones that win in terms of cycling comfort.

Most parts of most cities are flat. A couple of hills doesn't mean you can't cycle in the rest of the city.

greggman• 11 years ago

Don't forget the influence of the auto industry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4

walshemj2• 11 years ago

You have to compare geography and the pre existing built environment though

ska• 11 years ago

True, to a point. Geography should affect planning, but we haven't done a particularly good job of that in many cases. There is also a real danger of a sunk cost fallacy being applied to the later (existing infrastructure), for example.

Scarblac• 11 years ago

It seems that the US likes to do everything in a more decentralized way though.

After the flooding near New York a few years back Dutch consultants were brought in to see what could be improved, one of the hard things was that in the US they had to work with small local governments everywhere whereas in the Netherlands flood prevention is mostly a national issue solved by national infrastructure projects.

r3bl• 11 years ago

This year I spent some time in Rijswijk (a small city right next to The Hague) and I was able to get to The Hague's center and back without ever having to leave the bicycle track.

Seriously, their bicycle tracks are amazing. Physically detached from pedestrians and cars and ciclysts have separate traffic lights.

It's no wonder that the Netherlands has a larger number of sold bicycles than it has citizens.

jacquesm3• 11 years ago

It's no wonder that the Netherlands has a larger number of sold bicycles than it has citizens.

It's definitely true that most dutch people have at least one bike and quite possibly more than one. But we also have a huge bike theft problem and a good chunk of the new bicycles sold are to replace stolen ones.

kwhitefoot• 11 years ago

It's no wonder that the Netherlands has a larger number of sold bicycles than it has citizens.

Or it could be because it has a larger number of stolen bicycles than it has citizens, at least I have a vague memory of seeing a news report to that effect, might have been an exaggeration of course :-)

aexaey2• 11 years ago

It's no wonder that the Netherlands has a larger number of sold bicycles than it has citizens.

Many people in NL have two bikes per person if a daily commute's too long to be comfortably done by cycling alone:

- one bicycle at home to cycle to the train station near the place of residence;

- second bicycle parked overnight (and over weekend) near the train station of the city one work in, to continue the trip to the office.

...and in the afternoon - same exercise in reverse.

This practice is so widespread in fact that a year or so ago, it was a matter of public debate - who is due to pay for those huge bicycle parking places next to the train station: Municipalities (because those bike parking places are on municipal ground), or NS, the Dutch train operator (because it is NS' customers who make use of those bike parking).

neonbat2• 11 years ago

For some reason New York City is unable to keep a couple of 1970s train cars in motion cough L train. Given this fact is unlikely to change I see the move towards more bike heavy infrastructure as a good move. Citibike has done pretty well in New York and they keep installing new way stations or "bike ports" as I like to call them. Very exciting.

Ollinson• 11 years ago

All of the train cars on the MTA L line were made between 2006-2010

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car...

neonbat2• 11 years ago

Yeah I can make a cotton gin and a horse drawn carriage in 2015 . When something is created has no fixed or forced relationship to the effective age of the underlying technology.

walshemj2• 11 years ago

My dad did some consulting for LU (on the power side) a while back he was amused that the 1930 kit was lasting much better than the newer 1970's stuff.

chrismealy• 11 years ago

The author, Mark Wagenbuur, is hugely influential in America. Without his videos America would still be stuck in its vehicular cycling rut. I doubt there's a city planner in America who doesn't get sent links to his videos all the time. Now if Americans could only stop losing their shit every time on-street parking is removed ...

awjr10• 11 years ago

I'm chair of CycleBath (http://www.cyclebath.org.uk) and we're having one hell of a time pushing for better cycle infrastructure. I think one of the more interesting problems we have is that cyclists are treated as an outlier group within the UK.

There are certain cities that "get" cycling e.g. Cambridge ( https://vimeo.com/133736570) but persuading the general public that it is worth spending money on cycling is extremely hard. We have recently taken the approach to educate people that attend the Police Community Liaison meetings where they can spend 50%+ of the time discussing illegal pavement cycling, as to why it happens. http://cyclebath.org.uk/2015/08/24/how-to-solve-pavement-cyc...

I truly believe that the transport policy of your local authority defines the health and wellbeing of your residents. I think the fact the cost of healthcare in the UK is "hidden" as it is "free" has subtlety enabled a car centric culture to persist. My father who lives in Florida stated that people are demanding cycle tracks. They want to keep fit and keep their healthcare insurance low.

In the UK obesity in boys is around 16%, in the Netherlands it's around 1.6%.

The other problem with cycle infrastructure is that if it's not good for a 7 year old to ride on, it's not going to work for the general public. Segregation is key and definitely do not allow your local authority to create shared space where pedestrians and cyclists mix "happily".

Then you have the biggest issue. Cycle infrastructure is only as good as the weakest link. So local residents can massively impact the quality of the network and thus the ability for people 5 miles away to make a decision to choose to cycle. So you get a piece-meal approach to cycle network development in the hope that it will join up eventually :(

As an aside, I noted somebody felt 10miles was too far on a bike. I would suggest investigating e-bikes. They are rather good these days and can happily tank along at 15.5mph (Europe), even faster in some countries.

hueving2• 11 years ago

In the UK obesity in boys is around 16%, in the Netherlands it's around 1.6%.

Not to detract much from your larger point, but this is much more likely due to diet than cycling. If the UK is picking up eating habits similar to the US, the ~200 calories a day you might burn from a leisurely bike commute (can't be vigorous enough to cause sweating) isn't going to be enough to offset the big caloric imbalances that lead to obesity.

kaonashi2• 11 years ago

How is ~10% of average daily caloric intake insignificant?

awjr10• 11 years ago

I'm not saying kids are not fat in the Netherlands, just not obese. Something like 60% of kids cycle to school in the Netherlands. It's estimated that about 22% of rush hour in the UK is the school run.

I'm trying to look at Cambridge obesity rates vs other cities to see if there is some correlation.

awjr10• 11 years ago

EU obesity rates with the UK at 26% and Netherlands at 11%. Italy is even better, so diet is obviously a key factor. http://www.dw.com/en/rising-eu-obesity-rings-alarm-bells-in-...

I've looked at obesity studies in the UK and the child focused ones look at the location of fast food restaurants close to schools. I've never seen a study that looks at obesity rates and examines the Local Authorities transport policies. Cambridge, Bristol and some parts of London are possibly good control groups. I know Bath has better health than the UK average, but 27% of people walk to work.

DonHopkins• 11 years ago

On the other hand, the typical diet in the Netherlands consists largely of cheese and mayonnaise.

The parents who pedal their kids around in a bakfiets [1] (the Dutch equivalent of an SUV) have every incentive to raise their children to be slim, and the parents get a lot of exercise themselves.

[1] http://bicyclebelleboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Bak...

IkmoIkmo6• 11 years ago

In terms of US eating diet in the UK, well the Netherlands is kind of split there. On the one hand it's the most americanised country in Europe, on the other hand it's got its own distinct eating culture, breakfast in the Netherlands isn't really like anywhere on the planet and food eaten during school is mostly homemade (although by highschool this starts to fade).

But cycling can be significant. 200 calories per day is probably pretty accurate, I'd say it's more like 250 though. We're talking then about 1750 calories per week. Now if you were at caloric break even point, added an exercise that lost 1750 calories per week, ceteris paribus, that's about half a pound of weight loss per week. Over the course of a year that's 25 pounds. Or in other words, if you were at a caloric surplus (of 250 kcal per day) such that you'd gain 25 pounds every year during school, adding this exercise would totally negate that slow path to obesity. It's hugely significant.

Not just that but even if it prevents a small weight increases of say 10 in that year, and improves endurance and cardiovascular health due to daily exercise, kids will feel better and are more prone to trying out sports than if they'd already start to be overweight (or even obese) and have poor condition. (not because they don't need it, but because so many people start to identify them as a non-sports person, and many obese people start to self-identify with this, too). And that has compounding longer term effects.

Beyond that, I fully agree with the notion that you can't exercise away a bad diet, it's trivially easy to eat quantities of food that take massive exercise effort to counterbalance. But for kids in the Netherlands I do think cycling is pretty significant.

usrusr5• 11 years ago

The other problem with cycle infrastructure is that if it's not good for a 7 year old to ride on, it's not going to work for the general public.

Bikes are children's toys, that's so... Saudi Arabia?

I really consider this a terrible design principle, because nobody likes to be treated like a seven year old and doing so could be a serious disincentive against cycling for anyone but the most irrationally fearsome. Design for competent cyclists, everyone can eventually become one. If the result happens to good for the seven year old, fine, it'd not that unlikely if money and space permits it at all. If not, treat children like pedestrians and grant the appropriate exceptions in law for supervising adults. They are surely not the kind of cyclist who causes havoc on the sidewalk today (this won't work in exceptionally walked places like most of Manhattan, but there, nothing less than a complete network of elevated bikeways could be made even remotely child-proof while providing real transport and not just some recreational riding in a park).

awjr10• 11 years ago

The issue is that people cycle despite the conditions and pavement cycling is illegal in some countries (UK). Also pavement cycling is slow and tedious compared to on-road cycling or within a dedicated cycle track.

The idea of making a cycle route "child proof" is not to appeal to current cyclists, but to persuade people that want to cycle but feel the roads are just to dangerous to share them with buses, to get on a bike.

Taking Bath, UK as an example, the river to the west of Bath has a shared use traffic free child friendly path that connects that area to the heart of the city with 12% of people cycling to work. A similar area without that connection on the east side is about 5% http://datashine.org.uk/#table=QS701EW&col=QS701EW0010&ramp=...

This is all about persuading parents that it is safe to let their kids cycle to school as the roads are designed to accommodate that should a child fall off his bike they won't be killed by a car running them over. With that type of infrastructure in place you get a massive uptake.

jules2• 11 years ago

The reason why adults in the netherlands are biking is because they started at age 7 or younger. So at least from this perspective it's a sound design principle. Making safe bikeways is easy and benefits 7 year olds and adults alike: instead of making streets have [bike lane][car lane][car lane][bike lane] make streets like [car lane][car lane] || [bike lane][bike lane].

huuu• 11 years ago

As Christopher Alexander explains in his books: we forgot how important it is to build for humans. I think that's the core of the problem.

But sometimes it's difficult to see what this means. Building roads for cars isn't bad because it's helping humans to travel. But when car roads overtake the pleasure of being outside something went wrong.

awjr10• 11 years ago

I think the major issue is that we prioritise roads for cars. When I was in Orlando, Fl., we tried crossing the junction near our hotel on foot and gave up and drove. We need to prioritise walking, then cycling, and then driving. Segregating each form of transport is key. In the USA, putting roads onto a "road diet" is easier in many cases due to the size of the lanes you have. http://gizmodo.com/what-the-heck-is-a-road-diet-1727066519

smonff• 11 years ago

The Paris cycling infrastructure is freaking non-efficient. And dangerous. Pedestrian and cycling zone are way too mixed, accidents between the two are very easy. Now, pedestrians hate cyclists and cyclists hate pedestrians. You cannot cycle freely becahse the cycles paths are a kind of bigger pedestrian path.The only place where you could use the bike in an efficient way are bus paths (also including taxis). It's interesting but not really secure as busses are very disrespectful with bicycles.

The political action is a fail in the case of Paris, because they did it only to say let's see, we did something for you, but they didn't reply understood the things that are explained in this video. They don't want to take the risk of loosing pro-cars electors and it is a pity.

awjr10• 11 years ago

Yup, happens in the UK. It is cheaper and less politically divisive to build a shared path rather than take on-road parking away to create segregated cycle infrastructure. One of the things I am trying to push into our local council is for them to use the cycling and walking audit tools that were developed as part of the Welsh Active Travel guidance http://gov.wales/consultations/transport/active-travel-desig...

They are available here should you want to use them ;) http://cyclebath.org.uk/resources/

We've had a few schemes where 3-4 multiple designs were submitted and the final chosen design was poor for cycling and walking. Having a cycling and walking audit scores against each design would have given a stronger case for other designs. http://cyclebath.org.uk/2015/05/23/london-road-an-example-of...

hellofunk2• 11 years ago

It is interesting that a lot of the younger Dutch citizens I meet here do not realize that it has not always been the way it is now, that the deep reach of the bicycle was a deliberate policy shift away from an equally extreme shift towards cars earlier in the 20th Century. However, among the older citizens I meet, they indicate that throughout their whole lives, bikes were always a common mode of transport; just perhaps nowhere near the ubiquity of today.

awjr10• 11 years ago

I was on a train talking to a dutch guy about cycling. He said the dutch are crazy cyclists and do crazy things. I then asked him who would be to blame if a car hit him "The driver of course." What if you hit a pedestrian? "That would be my fault".

I also had to explain to him that cars do not have to give way to cyclists at junctions so watch out. He thought that was crazy. ;)

tiku• 11 years ago

This has to do with the fact that cyclists are more vulnerable than cars and thats why a car is always responsible. Kinda like in skiing or snowboarding that you're responsible for who is in front of you..

It works fine because the most roads dont have cycling paths next to them, if they do it is divided so cars cant easily get on the bike path and viceversa.

toothbrush• 11 years ago

I'm loath to get into this discussion, but i'm actually very much in the Dutch camp on this one. Here in France cars and bicycles are considered 'equals' as far as road rules go, and it's a nightmare. 1000kg of death metal (no reference to the band) versus about 15kg and an exposed human are no match. I've learned to cycle really defensively here, since motorists just don't treat you with the proper respect. Mind, by 'proper respect' i don't mean that cyclists should be treated like holy cows, but simply that people should all be conscious of the hierarchy of vulnerability. If a cyclist crashes into a pedestrian (even if the pedestrian did stray into the bicycle path) i find it reasonable that the cyclist, being the heavier faster object, should pay more attention. Likewise for the car. It's a disgrace that cyclists end up having to pay for car repairs when in many cases there would've been no accident if the car had been driving respectfully [0] — even if the infrastructure (that is, in France a "bicycle path" is simply an already narrow 50km/h car lane with a bicycle icon painted on post facto) doesn't encourage it.

0. This happened to me. It taught me to drive extremely defensively. You will not believe the number of times i have had (for example) a green traffic light, and have had to stop for oncoming traffic turning left in front of me. I have right of way, but 1000kg of steel trumps right of way Every Time. If i sound a little ranty, it's because i'm rather bitter about the state of affairs here.

eveningcoffee2• 11 years ago

Another vibrant bicycle culture is in Berlin.

usrusr5• 11 years ago

Which really puzzles me, given their transit infrastructure. Do they still lack cell coverage in the subway? Smartphone on transit is what killed my cycle commute. I just love those sleepy minutes idly indulging in some light social media infotainment before the day really starts.

dasil003• 11 years ago

I just love those idle minutes in the tube when no one can get ahold of me for once.

eveningcoffee2• 11 years ago

It is not that everyone is cycling, just a lot of people. Many (most?) people still choose the U-bahn or tram (on the east side).

I think that it is a question of lifestyle. Instead of choosing hot and moist U-bahn, you have a refreshing ride on the bicycle. Especially when the distances are short. Well, this is just a hypothesis.

Dorian-Marie• 11 years ago

There is a great Critical Mass community there: http://www.critical-mass-berlin.de/

neographikal• 11 years ago

With the widespread adoption of the ebike the cycling has gotten another impulse. With the help of the motor larger distances can be covered with ease, instead of people cycling 5-8km to work you now see a lot more people covering something like 10-15km with the bike (I myself do around 16*2 if it's not raining or bitter cold).

The bike saves a ton of emissions, helps in the reduction of traffic jams thus saving a lot of polution and cycling is healthy. But even in the Netherlands the politicians don't always get it, this year the tax rebate for bikes bought for home-work trips has been canceled.. Too expensive, I really can't see how, but hey.

How the Dutch got their cycling infrastructure (2011)

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