CityStories / Global Cities / Exporting the Love of Bicycling, Part 2: The Hague and Rotterdam

With the growing popularity of cycling in the Netherlands, finding a parking place for your bike is becoming more difficult, as seen here in the Hague. Credit: Jay Walljasper

On a fact-finding mission to the Netherlands, a delegation of California public officials marvel at the promise of bicycles for 21^st Century transportation. Jay Walljasper explores the bicycling paradise built by the Dutch in this three-part series.

Squarely Addressing the Problems of Bike Safety & Theft

Next stop was the Hague, where bikes account for 27 percent of all trips around the city of 500,000—exactly the average for the Netherlands as a whole. But not content with being merely average, the Hague is spending 10 million euros a year (roughly 14 million dollars) to improve those statistics.

Hidde van der Bijl, a policy officer for cycling in Hague’s city government, outlined their strategy about improving bicycle speed and safety: separating bike paths as much as possible from city streets and when that is not possible designating certain streets as bike boulevards where two wheelers gain priority over cars and trucks. The latter are known as bike boulevards in the U.S,, and are being used in Portland, Berkeley, Minneapolis and other cities.

These are practical innovations that could make a dramatic difference in nearly every American town because research on this side of the Atlantic shows that physical separation from motorized traffic on busy streets is the single most effective policy that gets more people to bike.

The Hague, Netherlands

But officials in the Hague realizing that fear about safety isn’t the only thing that discourages people from riding bikes more frequently; that’s why they are tackling the problems of bike parking.

This might seem a minor point to Americans cyclists who seldom find it hard to park bikes just a few steps from their destinations. But upon closer look, parking emerges as a significant issue for cyclists in any large city.

“The car is parked out in front of the house on the street, while the bike is stuffed away out back in a shed or they have to carry up and down the stairs in their buildings,” van der Bijl explained. “So people choose the car because it is easier.”

“It’s an issue for me personally,” agreed Ed Reiskin, San Francisco’s director of public works, “because I always have to carry my bicycle down to the street.”

People also worry about their bike being stolen off the street at their home or job. That’s why creating more secure bike parking in residential neighborhoods, commercial districts and workplaces is a priority for Hague’s transportation planners.

The city is busy building parking facilities in the basement of new office developments and at strategic outdoor locations throughout the center city, many of them staffed by attendants like a parking garage. You can park your favorite bike there for a nominal fee, confident that it will still be then when you return. (Groningen, the Netherlands biking capital with 59 percent of urban trips made on two wheels, debuted the first guarded parking facility in 1982 and now sports more than 30 in a town of 180,000.)

Meanwhile in high density residential neighborhoods, the city is installing bike racks or special bikes sheds to make life easier for two-wheel commuters, sometimes taking over auto parking spaces to do it. One parking space can be converted to 10 bikes spaces, according to van der Bijl.

A busy bikeway in Rotterdam, a Dutch city that feels American with wide streets and heavy automobile traffic. Credit: Zach Vanderkooy

On our third day in the Netherlands, we biked across the Atlantic—at least it felt that way in Rotterdam, a city whose streets seemed almost American. We came face-to-face with familiar road conditions: heavy traffic on 4-lane roads with aggressive drivers.

Bob Ravasio, a Marin County realtor and city council member in the town of Corte Madera, quipped “Utrecht seems like a fantasy land now. This is what we’re up against at home.”

Rotterdam heightened our optimism about boosting biking in the U.S. when we learned that 22 percent of trips around town each day are made on bicycles—below average among Dutch cities but more than double the rate of any major American city. If they could do it, so could we.

“Rotterdam could be San Francisco or Oakland with more bikes,” observed Damon Connolly.

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Even more encouraging was the news from Tom Boot of the city’s planning department that Rotterdam has been increasing its share of bike traffic by 3 percent annually for the last several years. They’ve achieved this phenomenal growth by expanding and improving the network of bikeways—separating them from car traffic whenever possible and coloring the asphalt bright red everywhere else to clearly mark bike lanes for motorists to see.

“Good things are happening here,” observed Bruno Maier, vice-president of Bikes Belong, “and you can really envision it happening back home.”

Part 3: Java Island