The Netherlands is known as the for its cycling culture. It's the country with the highes bicycle density in the world. There are more bikes than inhabitants; 1,3 bike per Dutchmen. In every Dutch city or town you'll find numerous cyclists heading to work, school, grocery shopping or just going for a tour.

This hasn't always been this way. Just take a look at the images below from Amsterdam in 1971 vs 2020. You can clearly see the streets have changed in favour of the cyclists.

Although the Dutch have loved cycling way before World War two, the cycling branche really got a boost in the 70's.
One of the reasons for these changes was the oil crisis of 1973. This crisis created a worldwide shortage of oil. The crisis was caused by a the Arab oil-producing countries which increased the price of oil by 70% and reduced oil production by 5% every month. A complete oil boycott was introduced against a number of countries.
In The Netherlands we even had a car-free Sunday. There are photo's of kids playing on the empty highways from that times.

Cycling infrastructure

In those same years the numbers of cars increased as well. The cars became bigger and faster and the number of deaths due tue car accidents increased too. Among them were quite a lot of cyclists. In the 70's the Dutch protested agains the increasing number of deaths by accidents with cars which inspired the governament to reserve a budget for cycling infrastructure.

No helmets

One of the things you'll notice when you are in The Netherlands is that the vast majority of the cyclists here don't wear a helmet. There are multiple reasons for this. The first reason is that kids learn to cycle at a very young age. Most people have been cycling for ages. Secondly everyone is used to have cyclists around them. If you drive a car you know there are cyclists all around you so people pay more attention.
And then there is the amazing cycling infrastructure. A lot of the cycling paths are physically seperated from the other roads. If this is not the case the cycling path is often marked and most of the times painted red.
There are even roads completely painted red which means they are cycling roads and the cars are guests. Cyclists always have priority on those roads.
With the increasing amount of E-bikes and thus increasing speeds we do see more and more people wearing helmets since it had also increased the number of serious injuries and deaths among this group of cyclists.

A few examples

This is a car road with a seperated space for cyclists. Cyclists can use this space and cars have to go around them.

Here is one of the seperated cycling paths. You see the car road on the left. Cycling paths are are indicated by the blue sign with the white bicycle on it.

When there is an intersection with a car road and a cycle path most of the times the cyclists have priority. Like here in the photograph below.
The triangular white markings (we call them shark teeth) indicate that the cars need to stop when a cyclist is crossing.

There are directions especially for cyclists. These red traffic signs indicate how many kilometer it is to the surrounding villages.

Other countries

I see more and more countries are paying more attention to cyclists. The changing environment and the wish to get more people out of their cars plays an important role here. I've been to quite some surrounding countries in the past years and really can see the difference.
Denmark has quite a cycling infrastructure as well, especially in Kopenhagen. But also in countries as Italy, France and Germany i've seen seperated bike lanes.

In the Spanish city Pontevedra they banned cars from the center. More and more cities are also busy with decreasing the number of cars.

I think the coming years will be great for cyclists. As cars will be more and more banned from the cities people need to find other transportations methods.

How is the cycling infrastructure in your town, city or country?
Is it safe to cycle? Do you see the same trend as I mentioned in this post?
Or are cars still dominating the streets?
Let's discuss about it in the comments!

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FriendlyMoose

Creating blogs about photography, cycling, gardening, craft beer and more...

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Every week I create a post with an overview of all the photography contests on Hive. You can find the weekly overview post by checking the #photocontests tag.
I also organise a weekly photography contest myself; the POB Photocontest. This weekly contests has a new subject every week and you can win POB tokens and Ecency points.
Check out the posts with the #pobphotocontest tag.

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The Cycling Community is a community where you can share everything you like as long as it has to do with cycling. Share your rides, bike maintenance, news or tips and tricks.
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FriendlyMoose

Creating blogs about photography, cycling, gardening, craft beer and more...

---

Every week I create a post with an overview of all the photography contests on Hive. You can find the weekly overview post by checking the #photocontests tag.
I also organise a weekly photography contest myself; the POB Photocontest. This weekly contests has a new subject every week and you can win POB tokens and Ecency points.
Check out the posts with the #pobphotocontest tag.

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The Cycling Community is a community where you can share everything you like as long as it has to do with cycling. Share your rides, bike maintenance, news or tips and tricks.
Cycling posts will be upvoted by the community account.

You can support the Cycling Community by delegating some HP:

25 HP
50 HP
100 HP
250 HP
500 HP

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