The Grid. The most important enabler of mass cycling, but a cycling concept which is often misunderstood.

The need for a very fine grid of high quality, safe and efficient cycling routes is something I've been writing about for many years. Since 2008 on this blog, for instance. It may seem simple and obvious, but this concept is often misinterpreted and very often watered down.

Does your city have an airport ? If not, pretend that it does for a moment. Think of a truly amazing airport with a dozen modern terminal buildings, three long runways which can accommodate the largest and fastest passenger jets, huge hangers for maintenance. But then imagine that your city has the only airport in the world. How useful is it now ? How many passengers use it ? Where do they go to ? Without linking to other places, your airport can never reach its potential. You may have a few flights for joy riders, a few enthusiastic air enthusiasts may fly off and land in fields, but flying as mass transport will never happen. To reach its potential, your airport must link to places where people want to go to.

Just as with our hypothetical airport, an individual cycle-path is only as useful as the rest of the grid of routes to which it connects. Even exceptional pieces of bicycle infrastructure are almost entirely useless on their own. They only reach their potential when they are part of a very finely spaced grid of routes which connects to all destinations. To be suitable for all people, this must provide a high quality level of service to all of those destinations. The average quality of service experienced by cyclists dictates how many people will cycle.

Example of a real, successful, cycling grid

Primary (red) and secondary (blue) bicycle routes in Assen. Grey lines are mainly residential streets almost completely free of motor traffic, green are recreational routes. Primary routes are never more than 750 m apart, but note that all the space between them is also available by bike. There are no real gaps in this grid and it leads right from villages outside the city to the city centre. Total map width approximately 6.5 km.

Part of Assen's primary cycling grid.
There are lots of cycle-paths like this.

Assen's bicycle route grid as shown in the map above deserves some explanation. The city has well over 100 km of cycle-path completely separate from the road. These paths are built to an extremely high standard. Most of the red and blue lines on the map show this type of cycle-path, though some high quality cycle-paths are not counted as either primary or secondary routes so are not shown as such.

Four metres wide smooth concrete but
this is merely a green recreational path

Recreational routes shown in green are also usually separate cycle-paths but because these are intended for recreational use they can be of lower quality. That shouldn't be taken to imply that these are of lower quality.

Many recreational paths are of equivalent quality to main routes.

Residential street in the Netherlands. Re-built so that it is
unusable as a through route by motor vehicle.

Most cycling in Assen takes place on the blue or red lines because these are the route segments which provide useful direct routes for everyone to take to their destinations. However the cycling grid really also includes all those grey lines as well and their total length greatly outnumbers the length of cycle-paths.

The grey lines on the map show every street which lies between main roads and main cycle-routes. These are perhaps the most interesting and certainly the most misunderstood part of the grid. Many of the grey lines are residential streets or shopping streets. Almost all these grey streets have 30 km/h speed limits, but the importance of the low speed limits is very often over-emphasized. These streets are civilized to an extent by low speeds, but what really makes a difference is that there are almost no cars moving at any speeds. While these grey streets offer many through routes by bicycle, they do not offer through routes by car and therefore cyclists rarely have to concern themselves with cars when riding on those streets. Drivers are directed around residential streets so almost none have any motorized traffic on them at all and any cars which you might meet are most likely to be driven by residents accessing their own street.

To summarise: Assen's cycling grid goes everywhere, it has many high quality cycle-paths, but no "sharrows" and very few routes marked by relatively in-effective painted on-road cycle-lanes. Inferior junction designs such as advanced stop lines (aka bike boxes), central cycle-lanes and multi stage turns have been eliminated, while good roundabout and traffic light junction designs are common. Many one-way restrictions help to prevent drivers from using residential streets as through routes, but none of them apply to cyclists. Note that average speeds for cyclists are relatively high because stops are infrequent. Due to cyclists being unravelled from motorists they are often directed around large and time consuming junctions because they are needed only on motor routes.

Assen's grid is successful. More than 40% of all trips are made by bicycle here.

An effective grid must go everywhere

Living or working near to a cycle-path is not enough. Building a cycle-path only in a new suburb, or next to a school or through a recreational area is not enough. True mass cycling requires that people be given the option of making all their journeys by bicycle with a high degree of subjective safety.

Where children can ride no-hands and
unaccompanied to and through city centre
streets, that's real safety.

For a truly high level of cycling, the grid of cycling infrastructure needs to go everywhere. For instance, the grid must reach:

1. all homes
2. all schools
3. all workplaces
4. all shops
5. all sport facilities
6. all religous buildings

Feel free to add on any other category of destination that you can think of. Everything needs to be on the grid. It is only when the grid goes everywhere and to everything that it has a chance of serving for the entire population to make a proportion of all their journeys by bicycle. It is only by making cycling available to the entire population that it is possible for a high share of all journeys, for all purposes, to be made by bicycle.

Planning of a grid must be undertaken on a grid scale. No single road, street, cycle-path or road junction stands by itself. If streets are considered individually then it is almost impossible to achieve a good result because it is impossible to emphasize different usages if the usage is expected to remain the same. Attempts to change streets while leaving them with exactly the same usage as before are a common reason why people think they have "not enough space" to change.

Good conditions for cycling are created primarily not by moving cyclists away from where the traffic is, but by moving traffic away from where the cyclists are.

It's essential that it's possible to cycle to all locations. The high quality grid of infrastructure for cycling must go everywhere and it does no harm to allow cyclists to have through routes very nearly everywhere. On the other hand, while drivers also need to be able to access everywhere, through routes by motor vehicle need to be controlled because through motor traffic does cause harm. i.e. it is the routes for motor vehicles which need to be moved to places where they cause least harm.

Fake grids (half a grid isn't a grid)

The Netherlands achieved a level of cycling nearly double that of the second place nation by providing a high degree of both safety and convenience for anyone who cycles on every journey that they choose to make by bike. This requires a high density grid as shown above, which exists not just within particular cities but which goes absolutely everywhere. It is only by providing this level of service that cycling is made accessible and acceptable to all segments of society. Children can ride their own bicycles to Dutch city centres in safety because of the continuous high quality infrastructure.

The term "grid" has been adopted in many places, but it's quite often the case that the ambition is at a far lower level than is required for success.

London's "grid"

This proposal for London looks superficially similar to the grid
of cycle-routes in Assen, but it is not similar. The purple lines
are in most cases not even comparible with the grey on the
Assen map. Even these "include main roads". Only the blue
lines are "superhighways" and the quality of those is suspect.

For example, London's proposed grid of cycle routes is shown on the left. This looks superficially similar to the map of Assen above but there are several very important differences.

The area covered by the London map is approximately 4x as large as Assen, yet there are fewer cycle routes indicated by differently coloured lines. Note that even these lines are deceiving:

Only the blue lines on the map are "Cycle Superhighways". The grand name unfortunately hides that many of these routes are of surprisingly low quality.

The purple lines shown on the map are merely "quietways".

Update 2016: I was too generous to London. It turns out
that the dark lines show the true extent of the grid in
London in 2016, save for one cycle-path.

Unfortunately, the importance of unravelling modes has still not been fully understood in London and so even these "quietways" are not comparable with normal streets in Assen (grey lines on map above) because these will largely remain busy through roads. What's more, using these quietways won't result in cyclists being able to make direct journeys because they have in large part been selected as the routes to put cyclists onto in order to achieve minimum disruption to other modes, rather than because they are where cyclists need to go. As a result, these "quietways" mostly appear on back streets which don't lead to many destinations.

Further reading: Quietways have been criticized elsewhere for not being providing particularly quiet or direct routes for cyclists and being meaningless due to poor junction designs.

Note also the second map added in 2016. For all the noise made by London with regard to cycling, it's sobering to see what the true extent of decent quality cycling provision in the city actually looks like. These paths do represent progress over what was there before but far too few decent cycle-paths exist for them to make any real difference to the modal share of the city. Compare with the map at the top of this piece which shows the extent of the network over the whole area of a small Dutch city.

Toronto's #minimumgrid
Another currently popular theme is the idea of the "minimum grid". I'm not a fan. I don't see the point in talking about building anything down to a "minimum", especially when we know that minimum is not enough. It seems to be a popular meme at the moment and many places have discussed the minimum grid idea, but this still makes no sense for any of the places where I've seen it discussed.

Toronto's current cycling infra map. This is a very long way
from being continuous and covering the whole city.
#minimumgrid means not nearly adequate to effect change.

Toronto is a huge city of 2.6 million people where the minimum grid idea seems to have taken hold. There is currently very little cycling infrastructure and the quality of what exists now in Toronto is the subject of many complaints. Nevertheless, the call here is for a mere 100 km of cycle-path. That's less than we have in Assen but to serve a population 40 times as large.

This is not even close to enough cycling infrastructure. Why is the aim so low ? I also have to wonder what the quality will be. Two years have passed since I criticized the Ontario Bicycle Facilities manual and it doesn't seem like much has changed. The solutions on offer remain both primitive and old-fashioned and there are proposals to adopt such inconvenient and proven dangerous ideas as mixing zones, two stage turns and bike boxes. Scope for improvement is limited to only a few streets and to a low quality standard so this again can't come close to enabling cycling for everyone.

There is very much which can be learnt from the Netherlands with regard to building better infrastructure for cycling so I was rather disappointed to find that one of the most prominent references to Dutch practice on a Toronto website about a new design was about nothing more than a possible pattern of tiles on a street. The big picture has somehow been missed. The important messages ignored.

Campaign for #maximumgrid!
There is no low minimum standard which is worth campaigning for. We know this because city scale Dutch research in the 1970s already demonstrated what is required to encourage cycling. Very high quality but sparsely built cycle-paths did not lead to significantly more cycling. For a grid of routes to enable cycling it must be high density and go everywhere. This has been known for 40 years so why are people still fighting for less ?

Forget the "minimum grid" and campaign for a "maximum grid". i.e. a grid which goes everywhere, for everyone. This is proven to work.

Less is never more for cycling. Cycling never suffers from infrastructure which is too well designed, nor does it suffer from a grid of routes which offers people too many safe choices, or from people being able to make all of their journey in safety instead of just some of it. There is only a problem where infrastructure is poor or non-existent and when people are given attractive places to cycle.

Plan a little and you'll only build a little, build a little and you'll achieve only a little. To achieve great things you need great plans. The more infrastructure that you have and the better the quality of that infrastructure, the better the result will be.

There is no tipping point
There is no minimum level of cycling infrastructure above which cycling will definitely grow. There is no tipping point, no avalanche effect where by reaching a particular level of cycling, growth becomes inevitable. There is simply no evidence at all to support these ideas. However, there is plenty of historical evidence from all countries in the world that a decline is possible from any level if cycling conditions decline.

There was more cycling almost everywhere worldwide 60 years ago than there is now. That includes the Netherlands. The Netherlands has more cycling now than any other country in the world but has been hard to achieve this position. The Dutch are no more tolerant of unpleasant cycling conditions than people of any other nation. The high modal share here relies on there being very good conditions for cycling. Cycling declined precipitously in the Netherlands between 1950 and 1975 when planners were most interested in motor vehicles and though there have been steady increases since the 1970s, cycling is still less popular here now than it was in the 1950s. This country now has the best infrastructure in the world and this makes it possible for anyone in the Netherlands to cycle as much as they wish to with a fewer problems than occur elsewhere. But it's still not perfect, still not at a level which causes no problems at all to anyone.

Just as in other countries, people will cycle on the pavement

in the Netherlands if conditions are not conducive to safety

This harms cycling even in the world's leading cycling city.

Where does unsafe infrastructure fit in ?

Just as in any other place, unsafe infrastructure in the Netherlands damages the grid by creating a gap which will put people off cycling if it creates too much danger or too much inconvenience. A high cycling modal share is a very fragile thing. Everyday cycling should never feel akin to taking part in an extreme sport. If people are put off due to danger and they stop cycling then it can be difficult to convince them ever to start again. While the Netherlands has a more comprehensive grid of cycling infrastructure than anywhere else, this country is certainly not perfect and we find that where there is bad infrastructure, the Dutch react in much the same way as people anywhere else: They either cycle in such a way that they avoid the problem (e.g. by dismounting and walking or riding on the pavement) or they don't cycle at all for journeys which take them through problem areas.

If areas where people feel unsafe and under pressure are small and while they are easily avoidable, their total effect on cycling modal share is small because working around the problems isn't too difficult. However if problematic infrastructure is widespread and there is no way to avoid dangerous areas then the obstacles becomes insurmountable for most people by bike and a reduction in cycling modal share is assured. This is a difference between a proper grid and the fake grids referred to above.

Recent mistakes in Assen led to increased pavement cycling.
on a few streets where cycling is not as safe as it should be.

The city of Groningen features on our study tours in large part because it allows us to demonstrate how cycling has a particular demographic in this student oriented city more than it does in other Dutch cities. Unattractive and unsafe infrastructure particularly affects how often vulnerable people cycle, though the high rate of cycling by the student population masks this effect. We have seen similar localized increases in pavement cycling here in Assen too where recent mistakes have been made in this city.

What works to make cycling more popular ?

I write quite often about problems in the Netherlands but just as with the infrastructure highlights, the problems need to be put in context. Bad infrastructure here causes the same problems as it would elsewhere however it should always be remembered that the worst of the problem infrastructure in the Netherlands covers a very small part of the total area of the country while the grid of good to excellent infrastructure covers the whole country. Examples of dangerous infrastructure have relatively little effect on the excellent Dutch cycling safety record because they are rare.

Discover what works to make cycling attractive to and safe for everyone. Book a study tour to have this all put in context. The next open study tour takes place in June 2015.

Assen on Monday afternoon. When there's a big event in the city, thousands of bicycles are parked everywhere. Note the very small child cycling to the city centre on his own bike. We would like all children to have this degree of freedom.

Related issues

While writing this piece, two related issues came up which I think require a little more explanation.

I've a collection of cycling route maps
from places I've been. I worked on the
Cambridge map and I believe the short
recreational routes that I wrote up are
still part of the latest edition. Cycling
specific maps are not necessary in
places with a proper grid for cycling.

Cycling route maps
Most Dutch cities do not have cycling route maps. This may seem surprising when all Dutch cities have high levels of cycling compared with other nations. Cycling route maps are actually a symptom of a problem. One of the things which becomes unnecessary when there is a proper high density grid for cyclists is consideration of where people should cycle in order to maximize their safety.

Note that I am not saying that there's anything wrong with cycling route maps. They can be a very useful tool for people who live in an area where cycling doesn't necessarily feel safe for people riding anywhere where they want to go. They can be useful for advising people about where they can cycle in safety. These maps can also be a useful campaigning tool if they are used to help to point out to officials where there are problems.

However when you can cycle safely everywhere and take the most direct routes to all locations by bicycle, there is simply no more need for advice about the best detours around direct routes to avoid dangerous areas and obtain a degree of safety unavailable on the direct route. When this has been achieved, cycling route maps simply are not needed any more.

Residential streets

There's often chalk on the street where
we live. Children at play.

Directing motor vehicles around residential streets rather than through them doesn't only provide benefits when cycling.

Because they are so quiet, both in terms of traffic and noise levels, Dutch residential streets almost always meet the requirements for socially connected living and children use them as playgrounds.

On the first edition of the Cambridge cycling route map we missed out some of the council's preferred routes on purpose to make a point about how we thought much of the infrastructure was not good enough. For later editions, our work on the map was handed to the council (who could afford to print them). They put the substandard infrastructure back on the map, but they didn't fix the infrastructure...

Does free car parking make people drive cars ? Certainly not when there is a better alternative

A supermarket in the centre of Assen in the 1970s. Note that the car-park is more than full. Conditions for cycling were not particularly pleasant at this time and it should be no surprise that cycling was in decline across the Netherlands when this photo was taken.

It's not unusual to hear calls from cyclists, especially cycling campaigners, for an increase in the price of car parking. The belief is that increasing the cost of driving is essential to prevent other people from choosing to drive cars, and it's usually assumed that this will somehow make those other people then choose to cycle. I've always found this to be a strange belief, especially when it is expressed by people who can well afford to park a car but who prefer to cycle because they enjoy it.

My personal choice to cycle has never really been about saving money. I cycle because of convenience and because I find cycling to be pleasant. I've always believed that if other people could find cycling to be as convenient, safe and pleasant as I find it then this would enable those other people to make the same choice as I do. No-one needs to be forced to do something that they want to do anyway.

Sadly, few places in the world offer people a genuinely free choice to cycle.

Outside the new supermarket on the same site as above with a study tour group last week. This shopping centre has cycle-paths at one end and other well designed infrastructure at the other end providing safe routes to both doors. Bicycles can be taken inside and parked right next to the shops. Car parking is free of charge for shoppers but cycling is the most popular way of visiting the supermarket.

Cycling in most towns does not feel safe. That makes cycling not particularly pleasant for most people. What's more, routes shared with cars result in cycle journeys rarely being much quicker than driving. When people choose to drive under conditions hostile to cycling we need to recognize that a rational choice is being made given the options available.

While conditions for cycling are unpleasant, people will continue to pay to park their cars almost regardless of how much it costs. They'll certainly complain more if it gets more expensive, but it will take extremely high prices to force people to stop driving and instead do something that they find to be dangerous and unpleasant, and this of course impacts harder on those whose wallets are less full.

On the other hand, if we make conditions for cycling pleasant, people will choose to cycle even if parking is cheap or free of charge. We see this at many locations in Assen, as there are many locations here where free parking does not fill up. The supposed lure of free parking turns out not to be very strong at all when people actually have a more pleasant and convenient alternative.


The same shopping centre, Triade, from the air, showing the high rise car parks above the shops. The top floor above the supermarket is, as usual, completely empty. Though this car park is free of charge if you visit the supermarket during your stay, that's not a sufficient attraction to make people drive when cycle-access is more convenient. View Larger Map
Other examples
By creating attractive conditions for mass cycling, people from all walks of life now have a free choice. The population reacted by opting to cycle instead of driving this is more convenient. While car ownership is quite high, those cars are not used for every journey. More journeys are made by bike than by car in Assen.

There's free car parking at many locations in Assen but though car parking is so often free of charge, those car parks remain relatively empty. Rather than trying to push people out of cars by charging high rates for parking, Assen demonstrates a more successful and less controversial way of encouraging people not to drive cars: a better alternative exists in the form of the bicycle.

You can't find this free covered underground car park on Google Maps. It's under a different shopping centre, which we also visit on study tours. I've never seen it even close to full. Most visitors prefer to park their bikes above, right next to the shops.

It's easy for anyone to look at Google Maps and view aerial photography of car-parks in Assen. You'll find them not to be particularly large for the population of the city, but still to be largely empty:


Free car parking at "big box shops" - garden centre, carpets, furniture etc. Shopping by car is relatively popular here because of the size and weight of items being bought. However, cycle-access is good: note proximity of cycle-paths. View Larger Map


Free employee parking at a health insurance company, a relatively large employer near the centre of the city. Remember that employees at Dutch companies are actually paid extra to cover the cost of long car commutes. Note easy access by cycle-paths on all sides. View Larger Map


Free employee parking at the oil company which is one of the biggest employers in Assen. Cycle-paths provide good access here too. View Larger Map
Assen's hospital
Given that people visit hospitals only under difficult conditions, it is especially unpleasant that charges at hospitals should be used to try to force people to change their behaviour. Thankfully, Assen does not do this. The hospital in Assen offers free parking for both cars and bicycles. I made a video of the public cycle and car parking at the hospital a few days ago:

Like many places in Assen, the hospital offers free car parking.

Another not so busy day at Assen
hospital's never full free car-park

While both cycling and driving are easy, the cycle-routes to the hospital in Assen make cycling into a pleasant way of making this journey. This encourages people to cycle, whether patients, visitors or staff.

People are more likely to drive to a hospital than many other locations because transporting someone who has discomfort due to illness or injury by bike may not be a good idea, but even in this location the car parking rarely, if ever, fills up.

In this image from Google Maps, just as in real life, the car parks are not nearly full. Free parking is not really an attractor. It doesn't make people feel they have to drive when driving is otherwise less convenient than cycling. Cycle-paths are shown in red - leading right up to the hospital main entrance.

Car-park pricing should not be a campaigning issue for cyclists

Free parking advertised in the local
news-paper. Convenient for some,
causes no problem for everyone else.
41% of journeys are by bike. Fewer
that are by car.

Assen proves that a high car parking cost is not actually necessary at all in order to achieve a high cycling modal share. What's more, this is a relatively prosperous part of the world so its also not necessary to

To grow cycling, it's necessary to convert non-cyclists into cyclists. When the majority of the population either already drive cars or see themselves as future drivers, there is nothing to be gained by antagonizing or alienating that majority.

Sign of a successful cycling policy. It
costs just €28 per month to hire a space
in a secure parking garage in the centre
of Assen (300 m from the main square).
The low price reflects extremely low
parking demand. Capitalism in action.

There may well be good reason for higher car parking charges in some cities, but that's not a discussion which cycling campaigners should be involved with. It is better that parking charges are decided on grounds other than that some members of a group representing a small minority perhaps do not like cars. Cycling issues overlap with but are not strictly environmental issues. Cycling campaigners campaigning against cars can foster an "us vs. them" mentality and make it more difficult for people who do not currently cycle to become cyclists.

Do you want to reduce dependency on
motor vehicles? Follow the Dutch
example: A higher proportion of trips
by non-motorized modes than people
of any other European nation. This
is not because of environmental
concerns but because it's most
convenient. And most importantly it's
despite the attraction of free parking.
(see also the list of myths and excuses)

What cyclists need most is better infrastructure. When there's a comprehensive grid of high quality cycle routes which goes everywhere, when distances on those cycle routes are shorter than distances by car, and when all three types of safety have been taken care of then this maximises the attractiveness of cycling. Dedicated cyclists will make the maximum number of journeys under such conditions.

However, not only does this provide the best environment for existing cyclists to make efficient journeys but it also provides the best environment possible to encourage people who do not currently cycle that they would also benefit from doing so - a step which they are far more likely to make if they do not see cyclists as "other".

It is better for cycle campaigners to spend their time on making conditions for cycling more attractive than on being concerned about the conditions for driving. The Netherlands demonstrates that this is more successful.

Cycling should be for everyone
A few weeks ago,the BBC reported on a woman in London who has no choice but to walk seven miles to her minimum wage job because she can't afford a car and public transport takes too large a chunk out of her small salary.

Still not close to good enough, London.
Simultaneous Green, Bridge, Tunnel,
Proper Roundabout, anything but that.

An increase in the price of car parking does nothing to stop people who already can't afford to drive from driving. It does nothing to help those who are also already priced out of public transport. Walking for so long each day cannot be convenient, but cycling is still not seen as an option. People in similar situations could be very well served by cycling but this will happen only if the conditions for riding a bike in become considerably more attractive than they are now. Sadly, London cycling conditions remain unattractive and there are still no plans to provide the city with what it really needs.

Rich people have far more options than the less well off. Those on a limited income suffer a disproportionate discrimination through costs which are not proportional to income. If the current least bad option for someone is to drive a car (which is the case for some people) then making this more expensive can make life very difficult for that person. Simply increasing costs does not provide people with another better choice.

Unlike increasing the cost of parking and also unlike the cost of public transport, making cycling more accessible is not regressive. Cycling infrastructure opens up a new option for everyone regardless of their wealth. Cycling is a great social leveller here in the Netherlands and it has the same potential in other countries. But this doesn't come without investment in proper cycling infrastructure.

When good enough conditions exist for cycling, it moves from being a minority pursuit to something that everyone can and wants to do. Some people might still be forced to cycle for financial reasons, some might do so purely because it's good for their health and there are certainly quite a lot of people across the world including here in the Netherlands who cycle simply because they like cycling. However, for cycling to become attractive and useful for the majority of people, the reasons to cycle must be those of convenience, pleasantness and relative safety.

Why can't all children everywhere live like Dutch children ?

It is at that point that the whole population starts to benefit. It also makes your children happy.

Why isn't every country doing this already ?

Update: The end of free parking in Assen!
I went away for a few days and returned to see the following headline in a local newspaper:

The end of free parking ? So soon after I'd written about it ? Read on. Note also that this refers to just one free parking area near the city centre. Others will remain free of charge.

It's an interesting story. A modification of the current policy.

I'm not the only person to have noticed that car parks in Assen, whether paid or free, are mostly empty. The council has realised this too. Car parking is supposed to be revenue neutral but because car parks "are largely empty and economically unsustainable", the city has had to subsidize car parking in Assen. Instead of subsidizing the car parks, the city wants to make them pay.

In an attempt to attract drivers into the largely empty high-rise car parks, the city actually intends to decrease the cost of using these car parks. The all-day rate in Assen's high-rise car parks is to be halved from the current €12 to just €6 a day. At the same time, the city will increase the cost of on-street parking and remove free parking close to the city centre in order to give drivers fewer options and force higher use of the high-rise car parks.

It's not a punitive move - it's merely a way of trying to make provision of parking in Assen become revenue neutral.

1974: At one time, Assen couldn't provide enough car parking. This is how the main city square was used. See the video below for an update

Next to most cities, this is very much a luxury problem. It is a sign of a successful cycling policy that the car parks are not all already full.

Rather than not being able to provide enough spaces to keep up with car parking need, Assen's population's use of bicycles has led to there being an over-supply of car-parking spaces and not enough cars to fill them.


2014: The same city square today. It's used for events, not for parking. This is just one of many places in Assen which is no longer a car park. January 2015 update
As described above, the council has now changed their policy and there is no longer free parking in Assen. This was covered in the local newspaper:

The result of charging just €5 per day for the previously free car-park at Veemarkt just outside the centre of Assen is that almost no-one uses it any more. Hence the picture of an empty parking lot in the newspaper. People prefer to pay €6 per day to park nearer the centre.

Also as a result of this, the same local newspaper carried a full page advertisement on the back cover from the supermarket at that location offering free parking to anyone who spends €25.

An unfortunate side-effect of encouraging drivers to use car parks which are closer to the centre of the city is that roads nearer the centre now have more cars on them. This has resulted in more problems for cyclists using the inadequate infrastructure at the cultural centre and the Kerkplein.

Read an update about problems which resulted from the extra traffic.

In answer to the question posed at the top, does free car parking making people drive cars ? No. It clearly does not. But making cycling unpleasant certainly stops them from cycling, and that is when people can feel they have no choice but to drive. Where cycling is made truly attractive, people no longer have to drive and car parks can become difficult to run on an economic basis.

Paying people NOT to cycle in the country where there is more cycling than any other

Free car parking is offered in very
many locations. In this case an
advertisement for a local shopping
centre. Workplace parking is free
and it's also free at at the hospital.

One of the many recurring myths about the Netherlands is that it's expensive to use a car here and that's why people cycle. However, this not really true. Relative to other EU countries Dutch people find cars to be relatively easily affordable but they often make a positive choice not to own a car.

Many people seem to believe that the Dutch government supports cycling above other modes of transport. However, this is not really true either. Cycling is funded well compared with other nations, but roads for motor vehicles receive far more funding than do bicycle paths. What's more, some policies of the government could be seen to be aimed at reducing the use of bikes. Here are two of those:

Paying people to commute by car
The Dutch government actually allows employers to offer a tax free perk to those with a long commute by car, and many employers choose to offer this perk.

Helpfully, I don't even have to translate this because the Dutch government provides the relevant information in English on a website designed to help foreign companies:

If you own a company in the Netherlands, you can pay employees with a fixed place of work a predetermined travel allowance. You are not, however, required to do this. Often agreements have been made in the employment contract or in the collective labour agreement (CAO) about the allowances for travel expenses. 

Kilometre allowance
You can pay this kilometre allowance for both commuting and business trips. Allowances of € 0.19 or less per kilometre are free of tax and social security contributions. If an allowance exceeds € 0.19 per kilometre, the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (Belastingdienst) will regard the excess as wages.

Public transport
If your employee (partly) travels by public transport, you can choose. You reimburse no more than € 0.19 per kilometre free of tax or you reimburse the actual travelling expenses free of tax.

Nineteen cents per km travelled goes a long way to cover the actual cost of driving many motor vehicles, and for economical or older vehicles it is likely that the driver will make a profit on this. It can also be claimed by people who car pool, meaning that a total of 38 cents per km is paid for one car - definitely profitable.

It is also possible to claim the allowance for cycling and this results in a tax free bonus as the cost of cycling is generally much lower than that of driving. I received this allowance for a 60 km per day commute. My commute earned €11 per day so in effect I was paid better than €6 per hour, tax free, to cycle. However, this option not open to most people as the minimum distance covered by the regulation is 10 km and for most people that's too far to commute by bike.

Encouraging students not to cycle
The leading cycling cities in almost all, if not all, countries are cities where large numbers of students live. I've discussed several times before how students and relatively recent graduates are uniquely placed to find cycling attractive as they're predominantly confident young adults, usually without children, with little spare cash and usually with short journeys to make. The Netherlands is no exception to this. The leading cycling city in the Netherlands, Groningen, is a student city. 50000 students live in a city of 190000 people and as a result of this influence Groningen residents have the youngest average age of any Dutch city.

The "discouragement" appears not to
be working. Bikes outside one
university building in Groningen.
700 more indoors around the corner.

However the Dutch actually provide a disincentive to students who consider cycling. Free public transport for all qualifying students. Students may use buses and trains across the entire country completely free of charge.

It's not actually a bad policy. Students must claim their free transport for use either during week time or at the weekend, but not both simultaneously. Our eldest daughter cycles to college within Groningen but uses her free public transport on the weekend in order to visit us or friends who live elsewhere in the country. This is why cycle-parking at the main railway station in Groningen is most full on weekends. Our neighbour's daughter who still lives at home uses her free transport to travel to college in the week (a 60 km round trip each day is more than most people would choose to do by bike) but she cycles to local friends at the weekend.

The pass also allows students to claim a 40% discount on the trains at any time that they cannot travel for free.

How many students take a free bus instead of cycling ?
In Groningen, it is estimated that the free bus pass is currently used by 5000 students a day on one of the main routes to university buildings. If the free bus pass was not available, it is estimated that around half of those students would travel by bicycle instead.

So why do people cycle ?
Both these policies, of giving commuters encouragement both to lengthen their commutes (Dutch commutes are in fact the longest in Europe) and to make them by car, and the other policy of providing a free of charge alternative means of transport for students, must have some negative effect on the cycling modal share of the Netherlands. Yet despite both these policies the population still views cycling as a positive choice because of the benefits that it brings. Cycling remains popular with a huge proportion of the population despite the government seemingly using fiscal measures in an attempt to discourage it.

Cycling is a convenient and economical means of transport everywhere. However, in most countries it does not reach its full potential. In The Netherlands, a bike offers more. The infrastructure not only makes cycling even more convenient than in other nations but it also makes cycling into an option so safe and pleasant that nearly everyone is attracted to cycling.

Student cities will of course always tend to have more cycling than non-student cities. City centres will always be busier than suburbs. Longer commutes are less amenable to cycling than short commutes, but good infrastructure in all of these locations is fundamental to unlock whatever demand exists for cycling in each place with each given population.

What this blog post isn't about
There seems to be some confusions amongst readers about what they perceive as anti-driving measures in the Netherlands. It's quite normal in this country for driving routes to be longer than cycling routes but this is not so much as a result of anti-driving measures as of pro-cycling and pro-pleasant neighbourhood measures. The problem of rat-running through residential areas has been almost eliminated by making those areas almost impossible to use for through journeys by car.

It's quite normal for a bicycle route
(blue) to be shorter than the shortest
possible car route (red). 

Cyclists can use direct routes through neighbourhoods because this encourages cycling and doesn't harm residents. However, driving routes go around residential areas because cars going through them do harm residents.

The same principle is applied in town centres and in the countryside and there are many thousands of examples of this throughout the entire nation. However while these measures make driving slightly less convenient than it might otherwise have been, they do not make it impossible. Dutch roads are well designed and well maintained and a pleasure to drive on.

Similarly, residential car parking is quite generous in the Netherlands. New developments are built with ample space to accommodate the cars that people own and older streets are rebuilt to accommodate them. This means cars can be parked without causing conflict with pedestrians and cyclists.

The Netherlands, here in Orange, has
the highest rate of non-motorized
transport in all of Europe.

The Dutch government can even offer support for driving and public transport, as demonstrated in this blog post, and people still choose to cycle here. They do so because cycling is better for them than any alternative, not because they've been forced out of cars.

The end result is that despite this being a rich nation where people can afford to own and use cars and other motorized forms of transport, the Dutch people make a positive choice to use non-motorized forms of transport more than the people of any other nation. Is this not the result we should all hope for ?

Carrots work better than sticks.


Today we went on a very enjoyable family trip to a seal sanctuary in Groningen. The 120 km round trip was too much for the family by bike so we made one of our rare trips by car. We didn't check in advance, but parking our car turned out to be free of charge in a half empty car park- an experience we've had almost everywhere that we've gone by car in this country. On this hot day I'd much rather have ridden a bike. That would have been a positive choice, much more pleasant. The cost of parking a car is immaterial.

Solving the problem of pavement car parking in residential streets

Ruysdaelstraat in Assen in 2009

Ruysdaelstraat in 2012

Residential areas frequently suffer from problems caused by car parking. This can take the form of cars parked on the road getting in the way of other drivers, cars parked on the road causing cyclists to have to swerve around parked cars (can be dangerous especially for less confident cyclists) or cars parked on the pavements (sidewalks) causing nuisance and danger for pedestrians.

Detail of parking space. Note that the
kerb is angled. It's designed to enable
driving over only at a slow speed.

Such problems can be addressed by redesign of the street, and there are many good examples of this in the Netherlands, including on many streets in Assen such as that shown above. The first picture, from Google Maps, shows how the street used to look up until very recently. The second was taken today as I cycled along this street.

These houses and the street which they are built alongside, date from the 1930s but existing trees on just one side of the road were recently taken up and replaced with trees on both sides of the road combined with parking bays.

Note that while the direction of motorized traffic was changed recently, this street has been one-way except for cyclists for some years. Routes for cyclists are unravelled from those for drivers. This is a useful through route with a bike, but not with a car. This makes yet another example of how segregation of modes is achieved without building cycle-paths.

Other examples:

This street in the newly built suburb of Kloosterveen uses the same design to keep cars off  a series of streets which together form a direct route only by bike. This is the only photo in this blog post of a new development.

A different way of achieving a similar result can be to use concrete setts through which  the grass can grow.

In some areas, bollards are used to control parking, This is a one-way street with cyclists excepted.

The same street, showing how there are again angled kerbs to climb a low speed in order to park one's car.

Sometimes, parking bays are built on-road, alternating from one side to another. This is again a street which makes a good through route for cyclists (linking up with the bridge shown in this video) but which goes nowhere for drivers. In this case, the permitted side of the road for parking alternates, which makes the road meander and serves to slow traffic.

All the streets in these photos have 30 km/h or lower speed limits. In this case with a smooth speed bump with a cycle by-pass on both sides and parking bays for cars on one side of the street. Again this street does not offer a useful through route by car.

The only street in Assen converted into a Woonerf. Here the speed limit is walking pace. Note that cars can park on one side only.

An older treatment showing parking bays on both sides of the road to achieve a similar result.

Another example of cars parked between the road and the pavement (sidewalk)

The bays can be made quite attractive, improving the green look of a neighbourhood rather than  resulting in residential areas looking like car parks.

Work continues right now on the process
of transforming older residential streets

This process of improvement is continuing right now on streets across Assen as more residential streets get this treatment. Where possible there is always enough car parking so as to avoid parked cars becoming a problem. This is how drivers are persuaded not to leave their cars in places which cause problems for cyclists and pedestrians.

In the Netherlands, people are not discouraged from driving by providing inadequate car parking spaces (as has been done to disastrous effect in the UK) but are provided adequate spaces to park their cars while cycling is made attractive by making cycling routes more convenient.


Dutch homes provide secure cycle parking by law but most other countries do not. In either case it's a good idea to use a secure bicycle lock on any parked bicycle.

The highest modal share for cycling in the world works due to carrots, not sticks.