Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality

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PREFACE

In the summer of 2010, our family of four made a decision that would transform our lives for the better, although not in ways that we ever could have anticipated. After moving just blocks from Commercial-Broadway Station on Vancouver’s east side and soon finding our car collecting dust in the parking garage, we decided to ditch it and make all of our trips by foot, bicycle, public transit, and rental car (in the rare instances when we needed to take a road trip).

The decision was solely practical, and not ideological. Living in a compact, walkable neighborhood afforded us the luxury of having everything within a 20-minute walk or 10-minute train ride, which we quickly discovered could be replaced with short bike ride. Best of all, this resulted in an extra $800 in our pockets each month, an incentive enabled by the variety of mobility options offered by our city. This includes car-share, access to which ultimately convinced us to take the leap and give up car ownership for good.

Within months, we began documenting this newfound freedom, mobility, and simplicity via words, photography, and film. Perhaps unsurprisingly, having to spend less time commuting by car, circling to find that coveted parking space, or contributing to the congestion in our city effectively afforded us more time to share our stories. Those active forms of transport inspired us and fueled our creativity, and they continue to do so today.

Over the past eight years, this work has taken us to places we never could have imagined, as we garnered a global audience on social media and ended up speaking about the (many) triumphs and (few) challenges of our car-lite lifestyle in cities as far away from home as Montreal, Quebec; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and even Auckland, New Zealand. It also provided the basis of Modacity—our fledgling multi-service creative agency that now works with a variety of public and private partners around the world.

In December 2015, after several years of writing about North America’s emerging bike cultures, we walked into the office of our editors at Daily Hive with an ambitious proposal: a five-week, five-city tour of the Netherlands during the summer of 2016, to gather their inspiring cycling stories and share them through words, photography, and film. To our immense surprise, they immediately said yes, and with the help of some additional corporate sponsors and a modest crowdsourcing campaign, we set off with our two children on the trip of a lifetime.

Those five weeks were nothing short of life changing as we pedaled along Rotterdam’s stunning Erasmus Bridge and the Maastunnel, Eindhoven’s awesome Hovenring and Van Gogh Path, Amsterdam’s bustling Vondelpark and Rijksmuseum, Utrecht’s vibrant Vredenburg and Biltstraat, and Groningen’s impressive smart routes and car-free city center. We also had the immense privilege of sitting down with many local experts, such as the Urban Cycling Institute’s Meredith Glaser, Dutch cycling ambassador Mark Wagenbuur, Cycling Cities: The European Experience co-authors Ruth Oldenziel and Frank Veraart, and the University of Amsterdam’s own Fietsprofessor Marco te Brömmelstroet.

Upon our return to Vancouver, we wrote a series of feature-length articles about each city we visited, an exercise that was equal parts rewarding and frustrating. The latter came from having to reduce so many jam-packed days of amazing experiences, several hundred years of socioeconomic history, and the many fascinating characters we met along the way into just 1,500 words. A tremendous amount of the material we had initially hoped to cover was left on the cutting room floor. So, after completing the final story in September 2016, we resolved to assemble a book pitch, which formed the basis for the volume you’re now reading.

Of the overwhelming outside interest that drove the crazy journey to this particular point, we can only offer the following explanation: our followers were, and continue to be, intrigued to see a livable, life-sized city through the eyes of one (or four) of its users. This has turned our family’s unremarkable day-to-day existence into something truly noteworthy, where the simple act of moving around our city is a memorable, shareable, and joyous experience.

From a more personal perspective, our decision eight years ago to go carlite had a tremendous effect on our relationship as a family. Raising children is a challenging endeavor, and dedicating ourselves to more active modes of living certainly adds to that. But we have found that making most trips on foot or bike has led to very meaningful conversations with our children, because we focus more on them and not on what is happening through a windshield. It is an outcome we never could have anticipated, but we have a better understanding of their experiences and developing personalities, simply because of the human scale at which we travel through Vancouver.

At the end of the day, our family doesn’t identify ourselves as car-free, nor are we stubborn radicals determined to save the world. We chose simple means—walking or cycling—for the majority of our daily trips because they are the most practical, efficient, and enjoyable ways to get from A to B. More families like ours will choose these healthier, happier means once our cities make them not just safe and convenient, but also delightful.

Chris and Melissa Bruntlett

January 29, 2018

Vancouver, British Columbia

INTRODUCTION: A NATION OF FIETSERS

From Seattle to Sydney, from Los Angeles to London, and in car-clogged urban centers around the world, the humble bicycle is enjoying a second life as a legitimate form of transportation. Ubiquitous on city streets for the first half of the twentieth century, and then abandoned in favor of the private automobile by urban planners and the public for the second half, city officials are suddenly rediscovering the bicycle as a multi-pronged solution to many of their most acute twenty-first-century problems.

Faced with immense problems such as widespread obesity, traffic congestion, climate change, class inequity, social isolation, and budgetary constraints, decision makers have brought this nimble machine back from near-extinction to confront these daunting challenges head-on. There is, however, one nation that kept calm and pedaled on after the Second World War, even as virtually everyone else succumbed to the romance of the motor vehicle. This is a country where the prime minister and members of the royal family are regularly spotted on two wheels: the relatively small Northern European Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The Danish capital of Copenhagen may get a great deal of press and endless plaudits as the world’s foremost cycling city—but quite frankly, that is as much a product of effective marketing as a result of effective policy. This tremendous hype also neglects the world’s foremost cycling nation, just a few hundred kilometers to the southwest, the only country in the world where the number of bikes (22.5 million) exceeds the number of people (18 million). It is a country where citizens take 4.5 billion bicycle trips per year, during which every man, woman, and child pedals an average of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), and adolescents cycle almost 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles).

Consider this: in December 2016, when the City of Copenhagen loudly declared to the world that bicycles outnumbered cars on its streets for the first time in decades, the milestone was amplified by every major news outlet in the world. Six months later, a report by sustainable-mobility consultants Excellent Cities quietly revealed that the same was already true in 202 different cities and towns across the Netherlands (for trips under 7.5 kilometers—a little under 5 miles). The related infographics did the rounds on social media and quickly faded into obscurity—a surefire sign that, despite their incredible success story, the Dutch are rather poor at sharing and celebrating it.

Bring these amazing accomplishments up in conversation, though, and one is immediately greeted with the dismissive assertion That would never work here, followed by a number of other misguided claims. But the Dutch don’t cycle because their country is flat (if it were that simple, then Chicago and Winnipeg would be the biking capitals of North America). The Dutch don’t cycle because the weather is nice (and anyone caught in a brutal wind-or snowstorm blowing off the North Sea will refute that idea). The Dutch don’t cycle because they’re morally superior to the rest of the globe (their electoral flirtations with far-right candidate Geert Wilders should put that myth to bed).

No, the Dutch cycle because they’ve built a dense, 35,000-kilometer (22,000-mile) network of fully separated bike infrastructure, equal to a quarter of their 140,000-kilometer (87,000-mile) road network. The Dutch cycle because they’ve tamed the motor vehicle, with over 75 percent of their urban streets traffic-calmed to a speed of 30 km/h (about 19 mph) or less. The Dutch cycle because their government spends an astonishing €30 ($35 USD) per person per year on bike infrastructure—fifteen times the amount invested in nearby England.

The returns on those strategic investments are myriad and well documented. Safer streets result in far fewer traffic fatalities, with just 3.4 annual deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (versus 10.6 in the United States), a rate that—if successfully transferred across the Atlantic—would save over 20,000 American lives per year. And this intelligent and intuitive street design doesn’t just preserve human life. It adds years to it. A 2015 World Health Organization report predicted the Netherlands would be the only European Union country to reverse its rate of obesity in the coming years, projecting an 8.5 percent rate in 2030 (versus 50 percent in Ireland), largely because they’ve incorporated physical activity into how people get from A to B. Current Dutch cycling levels are estimated by Utrecht University to prevent 6,500 premature deaths per year, saving the economy €19 billion (more than $23 billion USD), about 3 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP). Similar bicycling rates in the United States would save a staggering 125,000 lives each year.

The transportation sector remains one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and thus it represents the lowest-hanging fruit for governments looking to meet difficult carbon-reduction targets in the worldwide fight against catastrophic climate change. The Netherlands demonstrates a clear path forward, with a 2014 World Bank report ranking it in the bottom 25 nations for transport-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, measured as a percentage of total national production. In fact, Dutch transportation contributes just a fifth of their overall emissions, compared to a third in the United States, which—with 1.9 billion tons of CO2 emissions in 2016—overtook power generation as the most-polluting sector in the country for the first time in over 40 years.

Then there are the immense quality-of-life improvements that come with prioritizing the bicycle as a mobility device, especially among the young and elderly. A 2013 study conducted by UNICEF found that Dutch kids topped the list for overall well-being when compared to children in the world’s 29 wealthiest countries, in part because of their ability to roam freely without parent supervision. Dutch adults, meanwhile, were ranked seventh in a global quality-of-life index presented at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, which considered factors such as affordability, inclusivity, life expectancy, and equality. Canada and the United States, on the other hand, were ranked 13th and 23rd, respectively.

The final and perhaps most compelling piece of this puzzle is the fact the Dutch have proven that a place that works for cycling also works better for driving. For three consecutive years (2015–2017), the navigation app Waze’s Driver Satisfaction Index—which analyzes the experiences of their 65 million users in 38 countries and 235 cities across the globe—named the Netherlands as the most satisfying place in the world to drive a car, referencing its smooth traffic conditions and solid road quality.

It may seem counterintuitive, but a key ingredient in creating the world’s most enjoyable driving conditions is providing the freedom to leave the car at home. With the ability to walk or cycle for short trips, take a tram or bus for longer trips, and use a fast, accessible national rail system for inter-city trips, the automobile is viewed as a last resort by many Dutch families (despite a rate of car ownership remarkably similar to that of the United Kingdom). With fewer motorists traveling both short and long distances on the country’s roadways, space is freed up for those who really need it, such as freight companies and emergency services. In addition to reducing the amount of congestion, this also decreases the need for maintenance due to wear and tear.

To truly understand how normal and mainstream getting around by bicycle has become in the Netherlands, one must simply reflect on the fact the Dutch language has two different words for cyclist. The first, wielrenner (wheel runner), is the hunched and helmeted archetype that dominates both the streets and psyches of most North American cities. Wielrenners are the fit and the brave, decked out in brightly colored clothing and safety equipment, and likely wanting a shower and a change of clothes when they reach their destinations. They represent a narrow and prohibitive type of cycling, which, tellingly, makes up only a tiny fraction of the biking done by the Dutch, mostly just for recreation (and not transportation) on a Sunday morning.

The second Dutch term for cyclist—fietser—is quite the opposite in its connotation. Fietsers are riding around in their normal street clothes, at a moderate pace, on bikes with an upright frame, without any sort of reflective or safety gear, particularly head protection. They’re not running with wheels—they’re walking with them. They represent a far more accessible, casual, and inclusive style of urban cycling, and they just happen to make up the vast majority of people cycling on Dutch streets. Unfortunately, outside the Netherlands they are in the distinct minority, in part because of inherent structural and cultural conditions that favor the fast and furious over the slow and steady.

Over the past few decades, many traffic engineers in the Western world have settled for dangerous door-zone painted bike lanes and sharrows, even as they pay precarious lip service to a mode of transportation they’ve never really taken seriously. And those compromises have had obvious impacts on the number and type of people riding bikes in their jurisdictions. But that laissez-faire attitude has changed very quickly as more and more regions invest in complete, comfortable networks of physically separated cycle tracks, traffic-calmed boulevards, and off-street trails, all designed to make traveling by bicycle far easier—and the everyday fietser far more commonplace.

As countries around the world look to the Netherlands for two-wheeled inspiration, they’ll find a number of critical takeaways, but none more important than this: Every location is different, and it’s never as simple as copying-and-pasting their methods.

Rotterdam’s postwar transformation offers up inspiration for other carcentric cities trying to tame their mean streets, none of which are as famously mean as New York City’s. In Groningen, courageous political leadership has been paramount in taming the car, and similar bravery is now manifesting itself in an all ages and abilities bike network in the emerging cycling city of Vancouver. In Amsterdam, citizen intervention persisted, narrowly saving their bicycle infrastructure from burial under freeways, and those activists are now inspiring a new generation of Bostonians to demand more. In Utrecht, residents have realized that the goals of a human-scale city and car-first city are mutually exclusive, and similar sentiments are now encouraging San Franciscans to reconsider the role of their own thoroughfares. And in Eindhoven, leveraging cycling has reinvented their city from one of industry to one of technology, and the sprawling Prairie city of Calgary now hopes to follow in its tracks. And beyond such lessons regarding infrastructure and policy, a significant cultural shift is also needed, one that seamlessly integrates the bicycle into everyday life.

Knowing that the work of the world’s foremost cycling nation is never done, the Dutch are now looking even further afield, embracing new ideas and technologies to continue decreasing the number of cars, vans, and trucks on their roadways. Electric-assisted bikes, cargo bikes, and cycle superhighways are being implemented and incentivized, as well as parking solutions that better connect bicycle and rail travel, all in the hopes of making the single-occupant vehicle a thing of the past.

But one size won’t fit all, and—like Rome—the Dutch cycling utopia wasn’t built in a day. It took over 50 years of incredibly hard work, a bit of good fortune, and some forward-thinking decisions that extended far beyond the current political cycle. Only because of all these factors do residents of the Netherlands enjoy a society that runs on the power of the bicycle, and the countless benefits that such a society brings to everyone, whether they choose to ride or not. By building superior places to cycle, the Dutch have also built superior places to live. And the entire world has a great deal to learn from their story.

01   STREETS AREN’T SET IN STONE

Rotterdam will be a beautiful city. It will be spacious, it will have the elegance of a metropolis: the speeding traffic, the broad boulevards, all the tall buildings will generate a sense of bustle that blends harmoniously with modern life. It will not be easygoing, but today we would prefer to see a row of gleaming cars than a carriage full of old ladies. Rotterdam will be our city, the city of twentieth-century people.

— REIN BLIJSTRA

Letter to the Het Vrije Volk newspaper, November 13, 1952

Few contemporary cities have endured the trauma of having their entire urban fabric erased overnight, but that was precisely what befell Rotterdam on May 14, 1940. In an ultimately effective attempt to shock the Dutch government into surrender at the onset of the Second World War, a ninety-plane wing of the Luftwaffe, the feared German air force, bombarded the city with 87 metric tons (96 US tons) of explosives, tragically killing nearly 1,000 residents, making another 85,000 homeless, and fully leveling all but 12 buildings within the 600-acre city center.

Prior to that catastrophic event, Rotterdam was a typical fine-grained Dutch city—founded in 1340—with narrow and cobbled streets, low-rise buildings, historic canals, and a red-light district. But, like any other city, it wasn’t without its challenges. While the port of nearby Amsterdam thrived during the seventeenth century, as can be seen in the city’s elegant and orderly urban structure, Rotterdam’s harbor didn’t experience its own economic boom until the Industrial Revolution, over 200 years