Groningen Europapark railway station. Can cycle-parking be beautiful ?

Groningen has three railway stations. I have often written about the largest of the three, where there are over 10000 cycle-parking spaces but the other railway stations are also important and they also have bicycle parking. Europapark is in the South of the city. The station was originally built in 2007 as a temporary structure and re-opened in 2012 after extensive rebuilding. It won an award earlier this year as the most beautiful building of 2013. The inviting cycle-park is part of the reason why:

The temporary station in 2007. Bicycle parking was outdoors -
it's in the left of the picture on the other side of the railing.

The temporary railway station had several hundred unguarded outdoor cycle-parking spaces. The permanent station has 740 indoor spaces with a guard and is designed to accommodate double that number of spaces if the parking is made two level (as shown in a video here). The cycle-park is open from before the time of the first train in the morning until after the last train at night. This means it opens on most mornings at 5 am and doesn't close until 2 am.

There are bins here and they are used. This station is spotless.
(cleanliness is important for cycle-parking)

It has been understood for many years in the Netherlands that a smelly, dark or otherwise unpleasant cycle-park is not attractive to potential users. This is a social safety issue. If people are to feel safe on entering an enclosed space, especially late at night, it is best that this space is well lit, well maintained and staffed. This new cycle-park has all of those features and the cycle-path to it has

The parking is accessed from an underpass. The underpass also provides a new and very useful crossing of the railway line which didn't exist before now. Because it doesn't stand alone, it links up with the existing network in the city to form a very convenient route directly to the city centre and is useful for those cycling to school and work from homes South of the station.

The approximate location of the new cycle-park is shown in blue. The red lines show the new cycle-paths which are part of this development, including the new access under the railway line as shown in the video above. Google Maps does not yet have imagery even of the temporary station.

Why we must be wary of great infrastructure...

The new station has a shelter built of titanium and it is the
first in the country to receive a new type of furniture. The
station cost €40M in total and the luxury bike parking is
perfectly in keeping with the rest.

I like this cycle-parking design a lot. It will invite users because it's attractive and will be well maintained. It was expensive, but actually the amount spent on the cycle-parking is not out of proportion to the amount spent on the rest of the station.

However, I always caution against taking too much notice of exceptional pieces of cycling infrastructure. It's not that I dislike seeing such things, but that they don't mean much in themselves. I think I perhaps need to explain this stand.

Cities across the world like to boast of their best, but we must be wary of attention being diverted from the most important issue so far as encouraging mass cycling is concerned - the need for a comprehensive network of very good quality routes which go everywhere.

It's difficult for a politician to achieve a quick win by proposing, let alone delivering, a truly extensive network so it is far more common to see emphasis placed on what will look impressive in a short amount of time. Sometimes such projects are even named after the person who proposed them. Campaigners need to guard against such vanity. It has been known for at least 30 years that individual paths, bridges and tunnels are not enough to encourage cycling. Building only exceptional pieces can consume a large proportion of the total available budget for cycling, and the high expenditure on large items can hide that overall levels of funding for the more important but mundane cycling infrastructure is actually very low.

No piece of infrastructure, no matter how good, is particularly valuable to cyclists unless it forms part of their route. This is why a comprehensive network is the only way to reach all people. In the Netherlands, there are many piece of exceptional infrastructure and all of them form a part of the already existing comprehensive network. As such, it makes more sense to build them here than it does elsewhere. This example, due to providing a useful new route under the railway line, the building of this station improves the existing grid of cycle paths and therefore is useful for people who don't even use the station itself.

The video was made when I was accompanied to the Europapark station a few weeks ago by Cor van der Klaauw, senior beleidsmedewerker in Groningen and a true expert in cycling matters. He appears briefly in my video. Cor also wrote about the new station in an article on the Verkeerskunde website.

Keeping child cyclists safe

Two stories from our local TV:

As is usual for Dutch villages, De Groeve is connected by cycle-paths to the nearest town. The existing cycle-path was quite good. I was very impressed when I first rode along it in 2008.

There was really just one problem with this cycle-path. At night it was not well enough lit for parents to feel that their children were safe riding to and from school.

Press the button to make the lights
brighter. There's also a counter

A few months ago something new was installed. The new lights will operate at night time at half power, but passing cyclists can press a button at either end of the route to switch the lights onto full power for enough time to ride the 3 km distance. This measure reduces both energy consumption and disturbance of night-time wildlife due to the lights. If it's successful, the same system will be installed at other locations in Drenthe.

Grotere kaart weergeven

Grotere kaart weergeven

We already have other wildlife friendly lighting, such as green tinted LED cycle-path lighting at several locations in Assen.

However, all is not completely rosy for child cyclists in the Netherlands. These days they're involved in an increasing number of crashes, mostly single rider crashes, or cyclists colliding with one another. The reason why ? Perhaps it's due to mobile phones:



Meanwhile, According to a press-release from the Stichting Consument en Veiligheid, more Dutch children are having accidents with their bikes due to more of them having mobile phones and more of them using those phones while cycling (please note that as pointed out in the comments, not everyone agrees there has been a rise in danger and the Stichting has itself been criticised for being alarmist. I have learnt not to read much that I read in press releases about cycling).

Of course, every one of the children who is interviewed says that they behave perfectly and it's everyone else and not them. All the children being interviewed claim to be extremely careful and don't use their phones while cycling, though one admits to listening to music.

No-one wants children to be in danger, so extra safety lessons are being given in order to try to convince children not to use mobile phones while cycling to school. This is perhaps not entirely a bad thing.

Both of these videos demonstrate one thing quite clearly, though. It's normal in the Netherlands for small children to cycle to school, in daylight, at night time, in the summer, in the winter. Mostly they do this unaccompanied by adults (on average this is by the age of 8 and a half). In order for this to happen it must be safe enough for children to cycle without parents becoming overly worried about their childrens' safety. The literature that children are given does not emphasize helmets and reflectives as these are remarkably ineffective in increasing all three types of safety in comparison with working on sustainable safety measures.

Not only do childrens' bikes have
dynamos, so do their textbooks. A
day after writing this post, I
spotted my daughter studying this.

Almost all the bikes in the videos are fitted with dynamo lighting systems so that the lights are always present, reliable, and never have a flat battery. I recently wrote a comprehensive guide to selecting, installing and trouble-shooting dynamo lighting.

The bicycle cathedral

In the west of the Netherlands the A12 motorway is being rebuilt. Part of the rebuild will require a cycle tunnel under the motorway.

The Fietskathedraal is being built to ensure a pleasant route for cyclists. It's to be an underpass which is 53 metres long, 16 metres wide and 6.5 metres high - roomy and as a result with a good degree of social safety.


One of the unusual things being done to make the tunnel as attractive as possible to cyclists is an unusual method of lighting. Blue LED lighting will be used to make the tunnel the tunnel look even more roomy.



The Fietskathedraal is to be one of the largest corrugated steel constructions in Europe. The cycle route is to be open by around the end of this year followed by the road in October next year.

This is far from the cheapest option, but who said that maintaining and growing the world's highest cycling rate was cheap ?

Details of the fietskathedraal came from here and here

Why this isn't so important as you might think Exceptional infrastructure like this is always interesting to see, but what causes people to cycle in large numbers is the very tight network of everyday, but high quality, cycle routes.

Double sided lamp posts

This bike path has recently been resurfaced in Assen. It was slightly narrow but is now a generous width, about four metres. The path is alongside the road through an industrial estate and it is heavily used by many students and adult commuters to get to schools and workplaces near the city centre from a suburb on the other side of this industrial estate (though clearly less heavily used at the time when I took this photo).

The main reason for this photo was to illustrate the style of lamp-post used. Not only is there a lamp for the road, but there is also one for the cycle path. This is to ensure that this path, like others, has adequate social safety so that cyclists are not put off using it just because it is dark.

Note also the usual high level of subjective safety due to being separated from the cars. These are the things that make for a high cycling rate. An industrial estate is never going to be the best place in the world to cycle, but the attention to details makes the best of a bad situation.

Litter and social safety of cyclists

There have been a few posts on other people's blogs lately which have touched on the issue of litter, fly-tipping etc. on the environment for cyclists.

It may seem like a minor issue, but as the BBC pointed out recently, the presence of litter on the streets is one of those things that makes people feel unsafe.

If people feel unsafe on the streets then they won't cycle. This is what is meant by social safety.

For cycling to be popular the environment has to be non-threatening. This means well maintained streets, well maintained cycle paths, a low crime rate etc. This in addition to making cycling routes direct and making cycling feel like a safe thing to do (subjective safety).

I previously covered the aspect of litter by showing how cyclists here are provided with special litter bins for use while cycling.

Update: "Son of Shaft" posted a comment below with a link to a particularly interesting article in New Scientist about related research. Click here to go directly to the article.

Lighting on bike paths

Good lighting is an essential part of a cycle path which is to be used after dark. Without it, social safety problems creep in. People start to wonder what is hiding in the shadows.

While Assen is a very safe place, it wouldn't do to give people any reason to be scared to cycle at night, or for them to be scared to let their children cycle at night. So, here we have a rural cycle path at night, showing the lights which keep subjective and social safety high.

Note that there are no lights on the road at this point, but the cycle path is still properly lit.

Of course, even with good cycle path lighting its still a good idea to have effective lights on your bicycle.

Maintaining priority in the countryside. How a route between a village and a city can be made extremely attractive for cycling.

A 2.5 m wide cycle-path of concrete, unbroken for 5.5 km in
length, with priority over all side-roads. This is unidirectional,
it's the same on the other side of the road. It's not called a
"superhighway", it's just a "fietsroute+" and it took only €360K
from the local cycling budget to fund this (+€1.5M from other
sources).

On longer trips between towns, it's also important to maintain priority for cyclists so that journey times are not made excessively long.

This junction is on the main cycling route north from Assen to Vries. Note how the concrete surface of the cycle path, which is smoother than the asphalt surface of the road, continues through the road rather than the other way around. Also note the prominent give way markings (triangles) so that motorists are in no doubt about who has priority at this junction.

The raised areas with red paving prevent motorists from cutting the corner. The corner radius on the road here has been made deliberately sharp in order to slow down motor vehicles entering or leaving this side road.

The path has been upgraded to "fietsroute+" standard, which was publicised last year on postcards from the local government:

The only marketing was a postcard which listed the plus
points of the fietsroute+

This standard, as described by the text in the green dots on the postcard, requires that the route has:

• Clear signposts
• Easy and safe crossings
• Minimum of 2.5 m wide cycle path (on both sides of the road, as each side is unidirectional).
• Socially safe route
• A direct route from A to B
• Surface of concrete or asphalt with no or little roughness (but enough that you don't slip, of course).

On the back it reads "Cycling in Drenthe gets still more enjoyable and safer. Several cycle paths in our province are being upgraded to a Fietsroute+. Assen to Vries is the first"

"As well as the cycle path, the bus stops along the route are being improved. There is more room for parking bikes and later this year new shelters."

This stretch has been completed for some time, and work is now taking place on improving other routes to the same standard.

The effort put into these paths pays off in allowing cyclists to ride very quickly, take a direct route and to do this in great safety. The road which is paralleled by this route has an 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit, but has relatively little traffic due to not being the signposted route for drivers and due to there also being a motorway which offers drivers the choice of 120 km/h.

Older junction before it was upgraded in 2009

The cycle path itself isn't new. Even having priority over side roads is not entirely new. This is an upgrading of an existing facility. This photo shows a junction on a cycle path alongside the same road some way north of Vries. This stretch had not yet been upgraded when this blog post was originally written. The older junction had some roughness as you rode over it due to cyclists having to use the less smooth surface used for minor roads relative to that used for cycle paths. With the upgraded cycle-path surface, the difference is even more extreme.

Here's an example of a van driver giving way to the cycle path. In this photo you can see clearly how at this junction the cycle path remains on the same level while drivers who wish to cross it have to go over a bump caused by the different levels.

This photo taken over my shoulder at an older junction shows a driver giving way as he turns into a side road. You can see how the cycle path is apart from the road at the point of the give-way. This allows space for one car length between the road and the cycle-path.

The new way to cross a side-road. Very clear priority for
cyclists.

Finally here's another photo of one of the newer junctions. It's not the same one as in the top photo, though it looks virtually identical.

These routes are extremely popular, both with commuting adults and with school children. A very fast friend who lives around the corner from me travels 30 km each way along this route to get to work in Groningen. At the same time, parents have few fears that their children will not be safe travelling on such a well engineered route.

How successful is this route ?
This section of cycle-path links a village of just over 4000 people with a city of 65000 people. While the target population for this cycle-route is not huge, this route is so attractive as a means of transport that more than a thousand cycle trips per day are made along. That is success.

How it looks in reality

The fietsroute+ features from one minute into this video. The preceding minute is of a secondary route which bypasses the city centre.

Find out more
Read other blog posts about how cycle facilities in this country help cyclists to make more direct, faster journeys.

Two other posts about this route show school children commuting along it and going along in a velomobile at 40 km/h. Facilities like this are for every cyclist, fast, slow, young or old. Read more about fietsroute+.

The route features on our Cycling Study Tours. However, if you're impatient, you can get a glimpse of what it looks like to ride along it by looking at a series of stills and films that I put online here.

Night riding

When I went out this evening to visit a late opening DIY store, I took my camera in the hope of catching some typical night-time cyclists.

I'd not really thought of doing this before, as taking photos at night doesn't work very well. However, a few days ago I read a post on the American blog a few days ago which posed the question of whether night riding was "Safe or Insane?"

Over here, you'll perhaps not be surprised to learn, it's definitely "safe". The first photo shows a boy of perhaps about 12 who was cycling along on his own. The segregated cycle path provides a good degree of safety.

The second photo shows a family's bikes parked outside the store that I visited. There is one adult bike and two different size children's bikes. The one with the blue panniers probably suits a child up to 12 or so, while the smaller one behind has 20" wheels and I would guess is for children up to about 8 years old.

Note that children's bikes here come equipped for regular use because they'll get regular use. They come from the factory with carrier racks, mudguards (fenders to Americans), chainguards, kickstands, sensible tyres, a lock permanently mounted on the frame and... dynamo lights. All the things you need for everyday cycling. The manufacturers expect that children will cycle a lot and that they will cycle in the dark.

These bikes were parked outside when I arrived and still there when I left. There is proper cycle parked at the shop, but they clearly didn't want to use it, and obviously it's not dark enough to be wanting to ride home yet.

This photo shows another family buying Oliebollen (a type of donut. Delicious, but you need a good cycle afterwards to work off those calories) at a stall next to the DIY shop.

Again it's one adult and two children, with their bikes and intending to ride home in the dark some time soon.

Finally the last photo shows another cyclist who I photographed on the way home. This one doesn't have working lights. It is a legal requirement to have lights, but it's pretty popular for people not to bother anyway. Only about half of the cyclists I saw tonight had lights.

What's more, absolutely no-one had extra bright lights, or more than one set of lights on their bike. Also, no-one at all was wearing any reflective clothing. In fact, most people seem to prefer black clothing for their night riding.

It doesn't matter if it's day or night - cycling is safe here, and seen to be safe. As I've pointed out before, Dutch cyclists are substantially safer than those in the UK or USA whether or not they have lights at night. The environment has been made passively safe for cyclists, not relying on everyone to do everything right all the time. Lights and fluorescents have only a second order effect in comparison to having a truly safe environment. After all, how often are motorists known to tell cyclists that they've not seen them even in broad daylight ?

Our children also cycle after dark on their own. It feels safe to let them, and it is safe.

Sorry about the blurry photos. I turned off the flash on the camera to try not to swamp the photos and two of them were taken as I cycled along and I had to brighten them up somewhat in the computer to make anything visible. Oh, and in case you're wondering, my lights were switched on and working.

Night of the Night

Last night was the "Nacht van de Nacht" - "Night of the night." It's a campaign about light pollution, which has effects on night time animals and of course makes life difficult for astronomers. Various activities were organised around the country. Here in Assen we had a choice of a walk in the woods or a bike ride. A couple of dozen people turned up for the bike ride, which covered about 10 km over an hour, including lots of stops. It was lead by a council employee who showed off the new initiatives in street lighting.

Assen is aiming to be "carbon neutral" by 2020. As part of this effort the council is installing lower energy LED street lighting across the city. These produce more light per watt of electricity, and are more directional meaning that less is scattered across the sky (meaning that yet more of a reduction in consumption is possible). They cost money to install, but over time, they save a lot of money and a lot of CO2 production.

There are further innovations. While most of the lighting is white, there are also plans to install green lighting in some places. These can be even lower in energy consumption because the human eye is most sensitive to green light.

There was also talk of an idea where lights would dim and brighten depending on the state of an infra-red sensor on the pole. This means that energy could be saved due to the light being dimmed on the bike path where there are no people, but that the lighting would be bright as you approach and dim again after you've passed.

All of these things also benefit wildlife and make life better for astronomers.

We also saw solar powered lamps by cycle parking. While it costs around a thousand Euros to put in a normal pole, vs 2100 for a solar pole, no electricity supply has to be wired up, which can be expensive to do (a long time ago in another life I was involved in the preliminary design of some solar powered street furniture and we found it could work out cheaper than wiring to the mains).

As ever there was also talk of safety. Social safety for cyclists and pedestrians is improved by having good lighting. If you want people to cycle you have to provide decent street lights.

All of these things also benefit wildlife and make life better for astronomers. Given the number of advantages, it would seem rather silly not to be making these changes.

The tour ended up with a very welcome cup of hot chocolate and a slice of cake.

If you cycle after dark, then good quality bicycle lights are of course also essential for safety, as well as to see where you're going.

Assen, and the Netherlands in general, has a lot of environmental innovation which I've not seen in other places I've lived. I've written up some of it before.

For good neighbours, live in a quiet, car-free street

A study about living in quiet vs. busy streets written by Joshua Hart confirms previous results in the USA:

This says that "people who live with high levels of motor traffic are far more likely to be socially disconnected and even ill than people who live in quiet, clean streets."

I suggest reading Joshua's own blog entry, or the report itself published on the living streets website.

Dutch residential streets rarely have this problem
Residential streets in the Netherlands are rarely through streets for motor traffic. As a result, they are usually quiet enough for children to play.

Where busy roads come close to residential streets, the noise of motor traffic can be reduced in many ways. Quieter road surfaces can be used, speed limits can be lowered, and of course you can reduce the amount of driving by increasing the amount of cycling. This requires that cycling is made sufficiently pleasant as a manner to make journeys so that people will opt for it themselves.

People on busy streets elsewhere who "largely lived in the back rooms of their houses and chose dark or black curtains to conceal the soot build-up from vehicles" are living on streets which are also hostile to cyclists, leading to a spiral of lowering life quality.

A Dutch solution
There are busy roads in the Netherlands too, but they rarely go right past people's front doors. These three photos show a busy road in Assen and the barrier which separates it from where people live.

The houses are behind a layer of trees as well as a noise barrier. So, walking from the houses through the barrier you will successively see these three scenes.

First there are trees to hide the barrier from the homes. The barrier itself is around 4 metres high and consists of tinted toughened glass at an angle to reflect sound upwards.

The road behind the barrier has a 70 km/h (43 mph) speed limit despite being a dual carriageway. It also uses a quiet road surface. Cyclists and pedestrians have other routes so that they do not have to share this road, nor be inconvenienced by having to stop at the traffic lights.

The result of this is that the motor vehicles on the road are inaudible inside the homes on the other side of the barriers, and extremely quiet even in the gardens of those homes.

People live in houses here with exactly the sort of social interaction described for "Light street" in the paper.

There is also another view of the same barriers, including video and a later blog post illustrates how the original main road in this location has been civilized for cycling.

School buses

An American style school bus

There are no school buses in this country. There are companies which have a few of the traditional yellow school bus as used in the US, but they hire them out for corporate events, weddings etc. and do not use them to take children to school.

Children here predominantly cycle. We were told by a local secondary school teacher than the cycling rate to his school is 100% in the summer, dropping to around 95% in the winter. Some children cycle daily round trips of up to 40 km ( 25 miles ) in order to get to school. and back home.

Children attending primary school also cycle. This video, which I took a few months back when it was -2 C ( 28 F ) shows a normal school run at a primary school. It could have been taken on any day.

At this location, two thirds of all primary (elementary) school children arrive at school by bike.

This is the result of having infrastructure and a social environment which feels safe enough that people let their children ride bikes to school.


Amsterdam - child cycling under pressure
But wait, what's this article on the right ?

The headline reads "Amsterdam first years not happy cycling". It discusses how in Amsterdam the cycling rate for children in the first year of secondary school has dropped such that just 53% of children in the first year of secondary education cycle to school every day, vs. 89% of children over the entire country.

The reason most given not to cycle is the heavy traffic and the risks due to it.

The article also goes on to say that of those who cycle daily, 43% have fallen from their bikes at some point - mostly by crashing into other cyclists. The low quality of cycling infrastructure in some parts of Amsterdam is part of the reason why.

Why include this piece ? It's the same story as above. A high degree of subjective safety is vital if you want people to ride bikes. Amsterdam appears to many foreigners to be a paradise for cycling, and it has the highest cycling rate of any capital city in the western world. However Amsterdam is not a leader within the Netherlands. The city doesn't have the lowest rate of cycling in the Netherlands, but it most surely doesn't have the highest either. For all its charm (Amsterdam is really a marvelous city for many reasons), conditions for cycling in Amsterdam are not so good as in many of the other cities in this country, and that is reflected in a cycling rate which is lower than it otherwise might be.

The only "school bus" in Assen is part of a small fleet of
special buses which can  be hired for special events. You can
also choose the British double decker or Indonesian Bedford.

In the Netherlands, having only just over half of all children in the first year of secondary school cycling each day is something that is recognized as a problem. It's something to work on and improve. Note that it can be expected that by the second year of secondary school, rather a higher percentage of the children will be cycling.

And in the UK ?Instead of looking over the North Sea and taking note, the UK is as ever looking for advice in the opposite direction - across the Atlantic. There is a move with the Yellow School Bus Commission to introduce American style yellow school buses to the UK. This commission is ignoring the factors which make people continue to feel that their children are unsafe on the streets and if successful it will further reduce the opportunity for British kids to get exercise. It will also, of course, cost a fortune. Instead of spending on infrastructure which enables a truly green form of transport, the government will end up buying diesel to power buses and produce fumes on the streets. Should I be surprised that this commission was established and is sponsored by a bus company ? Is this proposal for the benefit of the children or of bus company shareholders ?

Children with disabilities ?
Children with disabilities can't always cycle to school and for them an alternative is provided. To minimise the number of private cars used on the school run, mini-buses are provided which call to each home to pick the child up in the morning and which return again after school. However these minibuses are not available to children who can make their own way to and from school.

The American school bus photo at the top is a public domain image which can be found here. The article is from the ANWB*Auto paper published on the 11th of September.

Three types of safety

Separate from the main road, a family cycles together, side-by-side. Straps on the front child seat are not done up. Slightly older children ride their own bikes. No-one wears safety equipment. The child in the rear is fiddling with something but the parents have no concerns concerned. This illustrates Subjective Safety.

The Netherlands is the safest place in the world to cycle. This is sometimes put down to a "safety in numbers" effect, but actually the infrastructure design is the vital component and shouldn't be overlooked. A lot of people would like their own country to emulate the Dutch success, but often they don't realise what is needed.

I used to do cycle promotion work in the UK, travelling from city to city and talking to a great number of people about cycling. They all already knew that cycling was healthy, good for the environment etc. Many people would like to be able to cycle. The number one reason that the average person in the street would give for not cycling was "it's too dangerous". So, what did they mean by this ?

One of many four metre wide cycle-paths
in Assen. School run cycling.

There are three measures of safety, all of which have their place in Dutch bicycle provision:

1. Actual safety - How many km you can expect to travel before you're injured on your bike.
2. Subjective safety (sometimes called "perceived" safety) - Are you near fast moving traffic ? Is it easy to make a turn across traffic ? Do you have to cycle "fast" in order to keep up ?
3. Social safety - Is there a mugger around that blind corner ? Will I be attacked in the street if I cycle ?

Cycle campaigners and planners might interest themselves in the actual safety, and it's a good thing that they do. Cyclists should of course be as safe as possible. However, no-one really makes a decision on whether to cycle or not based on these figures. Actually, cycling isn't really very risky in most countries and these figures often feature in cycle promotion literature. However, they're not successfully convincing people to take up cycling.

When people make the decision about whether it is "safe to cycle", they generally mean the second and third of our three different types of safety: Subjective Safety and Social Safety.

Also, if they're making a decision for someone else - perhaps their child or their partner - these issues become even more important.

Mother and children. Having several
metres of separation from the road
is essential for a high level of
subjective safety.

How do you improve Subjective Safety ? Here's a partial list:

• Cyclists should never mix with high speed or high volume motor traffic. A third of all roads in the Netherlands have a speed limit of 30 km/h or lower, most 50 km/h (30 mph) roads provide cyclists with a segregated path, as do many 30 km/h roads with higher volumes of traffic.
• On-road bike lanes and cycle paths without sufficient separation from the road are not suitable with high speed or high volume motor traffic.
• Reductions in speed and volume of traffic always help. All residential streets and a third of the entire road network has a 30 km/h (18 mph) speed limit or lower.
• Fully segregated cycle paths provide a good degree of subjective safety but must be built to a suitable standard. In this area they have a minimum width of 2.5 metres if for single direction use and 4 m for bidirectional use. Paths for pedestrians are separate.
• Junctions should be designed to make sure that cyclists are not left out. Cyclists can be separated in both time and space from motorists to maximise both efficiency and safety.
• In many cases, cyclists avoid junctions altogether so they cause as little inconvenience as possible.
• In Assen, the new standards require that cycle paths which follow the line of roads are separated from them by 2.5 metres. Where this isn't possible you will find a metal barrier is used, to provide a feeling of subjective safety as well as actual safety from crashing vehicles.
• Where possible, cycle routes follow a completely different route to driving routes, which of course improves the feeling of safety further.
• Reducing the noise of motor vehicles by using quieter road surfaces and installing noise barriers between the road and cyclists helps.

In the countryside away from all
motorized traffic, our family, rides
in comfort,

For social safety:

• You should always be able to see out of any tunnel as you enter it.
• Blind corners on paths are not acceptable.
• Cycle paths should be wide to allow cyclists to move out of the way of other people who may be on the path.
• Good sight-lines are required and there should be no places to hide along a cycle route.
• A low crime rate and a good conviction rate are needed. Cyclists should not feel that the police do not take their complaints seriously. 
• Areas that are clean, litter free, graffiti free, where grass is mowed and plants are not allowed to overhang the cycle path have a better feeling of social safety.
• Cycle paths should be lit at night so that you can see potential muggers, obstacles on the path etc.

If subjective and social safety are improved then people will cycle. They will want to. and so they will do it.

To summarise... No-one will do anything that feels too dangerous to them. Everyone wants their child to be safe and their partner to be safe. That's why so many journeys which ought to be cycleable are made by car. There is no point in arguing with people's decisions, or ridiculing them. The person making the decision to use a car has made it for quite logical reasons. Their level of confidence about cycling in the conditions around you is not the same as your own.

What to do... If you want people who do not cycle to take up cycling, then the right thing to do is to campaign for or design in road conditions which make cycling into an appealing option. That is what the Dutch have done. Everywhere. It is the key to the high cycle usage and high cycle safety figures.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that subjective safety is a concern only for inexperienced cyclists. No-one suffers from cycling being pleasant. Steps to increase the subjective and social safety of cyclists lead to a better cycling experience for all. Experienced cyclists are less likely to give up cycling in a subjectively safe environment. It becomes a lifetime habit. People continuing to want to cycle on the road when there is a parallel cycle-path are a sign of failure due to low quality. Always set your sights high enough when campaigning or planning.

A British child being trained. Wearing
fluorescent clothes and a helmet to ride
in the gutter on a residential street
which is subject to rat-running

So, where do helmets and fluorescent clothing fit in ? For some individuals, wearing such a thing improves their own feeling of safety to the level that they will ride. However, these items actually do little to improve actual safety and can have a negative effect on the subjective safety of other people due to making cycling look dangerous. Where cycling has a high degree of subjective safety, as it does here, no-one wears these safety aids. Dutch cyclists are safer without them than cyclists elsewhere are with them.

For more on the same theme, perhaps this post is most suitable. There are quite a few other posts tagged subjective safety which show different aspects of what makes cycling subjectively safe and the result of it. Amongst the other things needed to make cycling attractive is to make cycling more direct, so there are a lot of examples there to illustrate that concept too.

Big picture vs. small picture subjective safety
December 2011 update: I've realised since writing the text above that many people have slightly misinterpreted what I meant. There are two types of "subjective safety".

The most important, "big picture", type of subjective safety is that of society as a whole which causes everyone to cycle. This is what my article is about and this is what causes Dutch people of all ages and social positions to find cycling to be a safe activity, even wearing black clothes on an unlit bicycle at night. Cycling in the Netherlands always feels safe. This leads to a very high modal share for cycling.

The other, "small picture", type of subjective safety is that which involves people using safety equipment such as fluorescent clothes and helmets when they cycle. While this may make it possible for a few individuals who are already interested in cycling to cycle a bit more and to feel safer as they do so, it is debatable whether this does anything for the overall modal share for cycling.

Some people argue that it is detrimental to the modal share if cyclists take up visible safety equipment to improve their own "small picture" subjective safety. I suspect that "big picture" subjective safety is barely altered at all by this. The issues that people who don't cycle can see and which put them off cycling are with street design, not with the clothing of existing cyclists.

All the photos are of subjectively safe cyclists in the Netherlands, except the last which is of a British child being taught "safer cycling" in Cambridge. He is riding too close to the kerb on an unsuitable bike, but wearing fluorescent clothing and a helmet. The child in the fluorescent clothing will probably give up on cycling within a few years, while the Dutch cyclists will in all likelihood keep on cycling through their lives because high levels of subjective safety make it a pleasant thing to do.

The children in the photo at the top are all tired. Why ? Because this family is returning from the last day of a four day cycling event. They've cycled at least 40 km per day as part of the event, plus however far it is between their home and the startplace in Assen. The object which the child at the back is fiddling with as he cycles is a medal.

Per km travelled, Dutch cyclists are 3x less likely to die and 4x less likely to be injured than those in the UK, 5x less likely to be killed and 30x less likely to be injured than in the USA (statistics found here, page 506). Read more about the safety of cyclists in the Netherlands. However, this doesn't tell nearly the whole story, it's actually much safer than that for Dutch cyclists who fit the usual demographic for cycling in other countries. Two thirds of all cyclist deaths in the Netherlands are of people aged over 65. Most of their lethal injuries come from single vehicle collisions. i.e. when old people fall off their bikes, old age sadly can be enough to do the rest. This effect is virtually unknown in the UK and USA because so few older people cycle.

Rush hour

Note that captions on the video are only visible on computers, not on mobile devices.
This is a short video showing part of the rush hour traffic near our home in the suburbs of Assen.

It's like this every morning and evening. In fact, as this video is rather murky and doesn't have the 360 degree vision you need to see what is really going on in all directions at once, real life is somewhat more impressive than what you see here.

This is just one small area. There are many other busy cycling routes.

The large bridge, carrying the dual carriageway over the cycle paths, was built in order to make cyclists feel safe and so that they have direct and fast journeys. Until last year, there was a flat road junction here, and the bicycle roads were part of a direct driving route to the centre of the city. No longer. Drivers are now sent along that dual carriageway, through a few sets of traffic lights and by a detour to the centre. The direct route is for bikes.

Other, later blog posts explain a lot more about what is happens in this location and why. See also products for cycling with pets.

Boris still has much to learn

This Boris has had a little accident. But in
time he will learn how to help vulnerable
members of society.

The photo on the left is of a billboard sign in the Netherlands which reads "Boris still has much to learn".

This is an advertisement for people to adopt a puppy as a way of donating towards training for guide dogs for the blind. In time, this Boris will learn to help vulnerable members of society.

However, there's another Boris who also seems to have much to learn so far as transport policy in London for the vulnerable is concerned. I read this morning that London is not to have a hierarchy of transport users but to just let everyone decide what to do. It's a recipe for chaos.

Cities have been civilized in The Netherlands by design, not just by letting people do what they want. What people think they want depends on the conditions they live in. By not changing those conditions, people will continue to want the same things, continue to behave in the same way.

There is already a good example of this principle in London: London has a much higher percentage of people using public transport than most of the UK because public transport works better in London than in most places. Changing the environment within which people live to make public transport a more useful option increased the number of people who took that option.

Cycling has recently grown a little in London but this happened in large part for less positive reasons (terrorism, recession, cost of other means of transport for people on low incomes). The level of cycling in London now only looks good now in comparison with how it was earlier in London. London is still well behind other European cities, and particularly behind Dutch cities, because cycling in London still only has a positive appeal to the small percentage of people who are relatively easy to attract to cycling. Even they are under pressure, as you can see by observing the amount of safety gear worn. If it is to become a real cycling city, there must be changes in infrastructure that make cycling appeal to all.

We tried to help Boris

Once you have that mass appeal cycling will flourish because people want to do it, not because they are priced out of cars through the congestion charge or scared from public transport due to terrorism.

This was the first post on this blog about Boris Johnson. There are now many more.

Everyone cycles

The Steco Baby-Mee is designed to safely carry a baby

Everyone cycles here. Yes, everyone. OK, so I have to admit that's a very slight exaggeration as there is a small minority who genuinely don't, but it's really a very small minority. Officially, 93% of the country's population cycle regularly (every week), and just 7% cycle "rarely or never."

I've only met one Dutchman so far who said he never cycles, and he was a fake - he continued on to tell stories about cycle trips he'd taken a couple of years previously.

Let's take our street as an example.

We've got neighbours in their 80s who cycle, both for fun on the weekend and to go shopping or to visit friends. The stats for the whole country show that even the over 65s cycle for 24% of their journeys, so perhaps this should be expected.

However, we also have very young children in the street, some born just over a year ago, and when they're not riding around the street on tricycles or in the trailer pulled by a big brother or sister, they are seen travelling by bike too. Even the youngest children travel by bicycle - you can buy child-seats for tiny babies in this country, as you can see on the left. It's recommended for four months and up, but I've heard rumours they're also used for newborns.

A Mamafiets with a front child seat with windscreen, a rear
child seat and a device for carrying a pushchair. The bike also
has a sturdy centre stand and an anti-flop steering damper.

There are also special bicycles sold factory fitted for carrying two children together with shopping and which have a special attachment at the back for carrying a buggy. Neither these nor the baby seats are rare devices in the Netherlands.

Some people in the middle of their careers end up working a long distance from home and find it hard to make all their commuting journeys by bike, but everyone here cycles at least some of the time, and a large percentage of them do so daily.

Virtually all primary school age children arrive at school by bike - they need to as the schools arrange trips by bike too. In primary school, children travel independently from an average age of about 8 and a half. Secondary school children cycle up to 20 km each way, most of them continuing even in winter (we were told on a Study Tour that the rate of cycling to a local secondary school drops from 100% of children to 95% in the depths of winter).

Most customers at shops arrive there by bike. Again, this also continues right through winter.

I've never before lived somewhere where people cycled in anything like the numbers they do here. In Assen the average number of bicycle trips per day per person is around 1.2 (It's 0.8 for the Netherlands as a whole - still very high compared with most countries), which explains why it always looks like everyone seems to be riding their bikes.

The environment for cycling here is such that everyone wants to take part. That's how it should be, and how it has been made. It's not happened by accident, but by policy, and the changes over the years have been dramatic. Dutch planners plan for cycling.

The child seat support shown in the photo is available from Dutch Bike Bits. It is manufactured by Steco, who make a large range of items including very popular front luggage racks.

Cycle Friendly Zone Ahead

Unless more is done than erect signage, it can sometimes be difficult to tell a "cycle friendly" zone in the UK from one which is less "cycle friendly".

The photo shows a sign in Highbridge, Somerset, England. It was taken a couple of weeks ago by a friend passing through who had seen this arrangement of "cycle friendly" sign and lots of traffic and thought it funny.

As it turned out, this sign is in a place which has some significance for us.

Some years ago, my wife and I had our first home together just a couple of hundred metres from this sign.

Years before that, this road was part of my cycle route to work. It wasn't always particularly pleasant to cycle along here, however I was part of that small minority who get around by bike even if the conditions are not good.

In 2006, with a friend, I passed this spot on my ride between Land's End and John o'Groats.

This point is between my parents' and my sister's home. They only live 10 miles (16 km) apart from each other, which is a short distance by bike, but it may as well be a thousand miles when there are obstacles like this in the way.

What could be nicer than grand-children cycling over to see their grand-parents, or the whole family going on bike rides together with a picnic. If this was the Netherlands, such things would be possible. However, in Britain it is not possible. The lack of proper cycling infrastructure means that my nieces have grown into adults without ever making that journey, and that my parents would never consider riding in the opposite direction either (even though they find riding here to be very pleasant). Riding in this location is something that few would encourage their loved ones to do.

I don't criticise anyone for not cycling in conditions like this. If I still lived there I also wouldn't be encouraging my children to cycle their journeys. In fact, I might have stopped cycling myself by now too. That's what people do. I've met any number of people in Britain who cycled when they were young, but gave up as they got older, including friends of a similar age to myself. If conditions are not pleasant, people don't tend to cycle. Riding along the busy A38 and through cramped areas like that shown are enough to stop virtually everyone from riding, and the result is that despite this area of Somerset being just as flat as much of the Netherlands, the cycling rate is very much lower. Close to zero.

Over here it's very different. It's always pleasant to make such journeys by bike, and that's what everyone does. My children regularly make longer journeys than this to visit their friends. Not only does this mean my children have far more freedom because we moved to the Netherlands, but it also means that Mum and Dad are free from having to act as taxis. The habit isn't lost as people age, either. Even the over 60s make 24% of their journeys by bike.

For cycling to increase in popularity in the UK, provision for British cyclists needs to move well beyond just putting up a few signs. So long as infrastructure puts cyclists in the way of drivers, cycling will remain a minority pursuit. A high degree of subjective safety is vital if the habit of cycling is to be encouraged and retained as people get older. We're not traffic calming, we're people.

While this location was particularly interesting to us because of our connection to the area, the situation is far from unique. There are thousands of locations across the UK which look a lot like this. Thousands of locations that put off all but the most keen cyclists. By comparison, take a look at the way a Dutch city has been changed over time, or look at a typical route between towns.

We're running Study Tours over here for councillors, campaigners, planners from the UK to come and experience the difference between cycling in the Netherlands and cycling in the UK, and to see for themselves what the results are in numbers of people cycling.

The photo was taken by Simon Nuttall on holiday in the west country and is used here with permission. The original photo is online, and shows even more cars along with the location...