URBANITY: THE BICYCLE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
Looking straight ahead, hair flying away from her face, her hand on the bell and pedalling furiously, the woman just whizzed past me, as I caught my breath and took a quick step back on to the pavement just in time to avert collision.
People had warned me what to expect, because Amsterdammers who ride bikes, actually own the road and may not take kindly to tourists toying with the idea of crossing the biking lane!
And most residents do not even want to encourage tourists to cycle, even though there are plenty of places from where bikes can be taken on rent. At least that’s what 20-year old Renske Schouwink, studying environmental policy in Amsterdam and interning at BYCS — an organisation that develops new concepts and collaborations to get more people cycling — told Eos.
Amsterdam’s thriving bicycling culture has much to teach Pakistanis about city design
“The bicycle traffic can be chaotic if you don’t understand the unwritten rules. The Dutch have cycled all their lives, it’s their means of transport. They also have a thorough understanding of it, but it is hard to explain to newcomers,” she explains. Almost 60 percent of the city residents use a bike on a daily basis, even when it snows!
“Enthusiastic tourists might, therefore, be disappointed by their cycling experience,” she warns.
“Yes, the Dutch are very good and very fast on their bikes,” agrees Mohammad Akbar, a Pakistani student studying in Amsterdam. “For those not used to seeing a deluge of cyclists, it can indeed be daunting,” he adds. Luckily for him, he had spent a good three years in Utrecht, a smaller city close to Amsterdam, where he got enough experience to navigate his way about.
“Just stick to the simple rules — keep your eyes and ears open!” he advises, adding that once people get the hang of it, it’s a “breeze” because the “biking infrastructure is brilliant” with designated bike paths even on highways which are extremely safe for cyclists. Little wonder that bike usage in Amsterdam, which has about 400 kilometres of designated bike paths, has increased by 40 per cent in the last 20 years.
But to be fair, both the weather and the topography help the biking culture. “The Netherlands has a mild climate, it’s very flat and bikers don’t have to pay road tax, while parking is free!” says Schouwink adding that people generally do not have to travel long distances in order to get to work or school.
But it’s not just to work or to school or the grocery store that Amsterdammers bike to. Akbar says young people may turn up on bikes dressed up formally for an evening. “Women manage to pedal in their heels too!” he adds.
Today, there are more bikes (847,000) in Amsterdam than its population of 800,000, says Katelijne Boerma, the bicycle mayor of Amsterdam (a voluntary position to which she was elected last November), the “cycling face” of the city. And it is four times the number of cars! This does not include the 15,000 that are dredged out annually from the bottom of the canal, she told Eos, over an informal email exchange. Having a bicycle mayor to promote cycling has also caught on in cities such as Capetown, Sydney, Mexico City and Beirut.