CityStories / Global Cities / Exporting the Love of Bicycling, Part 3: Java Island

San Francisco board of supervisors president David Chiu looks out on Java Island, a new neighborhood in Amsterdam where bikes and pedestrians (and boats) take priority over cars. 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.

Amsterdam’s New Neighborhood Where Bikes are the King of the Road

The experience of biking through four Dutch cities provided our team of Bay Area transportation leaders with plenty of examples of what they can do to make cycling more safe, popular and pleasurable back home. Bridget Smith, for instance, director of San Francisco’s Livable Streets Program, is excited about using more color on the roadways as an inexpensive but dramatic way of making sure everyone can tell bike lanes from car lanes.  

But the experience also fueled our imaginations about the future of cities. We saw one glimpse of what’s possible on Java Island, a cluster of neighborhoods constructed over the past 10 years in what was once the city’s harbor.  It’s a scenic waterfront location with strikingly handsome modern architecture in a pleasing variety of styles that is linked to the rest of the city by tram, road, and bike paths.  Although brand new, it exudes a charm reminiscent of the city’s famous canal neighborhoods—which for my money are one of the most vibrant and downright pleasing urban quarters on earth. 

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Like old Amsterdam, Java Island enjoys a picturesque waterfront setting.  But it shares another trait with the city’s medieval districts that you would never expect in a newly built housing development—it accommodates bicycles more easily than cars.  Motorized traffic is shunted to the side of each cluster of apartment buildings in underground parking garages, while pedestrians and bicyclists have free rein of the courtyards that link people’s homes like a green commons. 

This result of this visionary planning is more than just lovely—Java Island represents a bold new vision of urban life where people matter more than motor vehicles.  You feel a liberating sense of ease moving about these new neighborhoods—and so do the residents.  I’ve never seen kids—even really young ones—who look so completely comfortable running around their neighborhoods, not even during my own childhood in the days before autos completely ruled the road.  We passed two sets of young girls staging tea parties, one of them taking place on a blanket just inches from the joint biking/walking trail that served as the neighborhood’s main street. 

Pascal van den Noort, a transportation consultant leading our tour through the city, urged the group to “imitate this in California, please.”.

Amsterdam city council member Fjodor Molenaar, who met up with us on Java Island, explained that the Dutch call this an “Auto Luw” development, which translates as “car light” or “car sparse,” adding that this planning idea is now the official policy of the city.  

To get a sense of  how it feels to bike in the Netherlands, here is video that Molenaar recommended to us at a meeting the next day with city transportation officials at the mayor’s residence.  It’s a trailer for a new movie called “Riding Bikes With the Dutch” in which filmmaker Michael W. Bauch chronicles his family’s adventure swapping homes with a family in Amsterdam. 

Bringing It All Back Home

After five days of biking around Dutch cities, the Bay Area delegation was fired up about the potential of bicycling to improve life in American cities. On our last day, after a lengthy jaunt through Amsterdam—covering medieval and modern neighborhoods, rich and poor ones, all full of bikers—we dismounted for one last discussion at an outdoor café overlooking the waterfront. The next day most of us would be headed back to our homes and jobs and cars in the U.S., where most people would dismiss the idea of bikes making up a quarter percent of urban traffic as “science fiction.”  

One question popping up all over the group was how we reconcile our amazing experience of biking in the Netherlands with the auto-choked streets of San Francisco, San Jose and Marin County?  But as Hillie Talens of C.R.O.W. (a transportation organization focusing on infrastructure and public space) reminded us, it took the Dutch 35 years to construct the ambitious bicycle system we were now enjoying.  In the mid-1970s biking was at a low point in the country and declining fast.  Even Amsterdam turned to an American for a plan to rip an expressway through its beautiful central city. But the oil crises of that time convinced the country that they needed to lessen their dependence on imported oil.

The Dutch gradually turned things around by embracing a different vision for their cities.  While the country’s wealth, population and levels of car ownership have continued to grow through the decades, the share of trips made by cars has not.  We could accomplish something similar in the United States, by enacting new plans to make urban cycling safer, easier and more convenient. 

Following the Dutch model will make biking mainstream in America. The morning and evening rush hour of cyclists you see on the streets in the Netherlands are not all the young, white, male ultrafit athletes in spandex we are accustomed to seeing in the U.S.—people of all ages and income levels use bikes for everyday transportation, with women biking more than men.   

Of course, we won’t do everything the same as the Dutch— there are considerable differences between the two countries geographically, politically and culturally.  This was reflected in the questions our team posed to the numerous transportation experts we met during the week.  Where did you find the money to do that?  How did you overcome the opposition of motorists, merchants, developers etc.?  

And, inevitably , American ingenuity will envision solutions the Dutch, the Danish, the Germans or the Chinese never thought of.  

But the Netherlands does offer plenty of practical ideas to get started, as well as the inspiration of seeing a place where bikes have gained their rightful role as a form of transportation. Sitting on the sunshine with a chilly breeze blowing off the harbor (this was the first day we were not rained upon at least once while biking—one advantage most American cities have over Dutch ones), each member of the group shared thoughts of what they’d learned.  Here is a selection of the comments: 

David Chiu, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (city council):  

“It’s one thing to read statistics about the Dutch biking at ten times the rate we do in the U.S. It’s another thing to see it happening; not just for hard-core bicyclists but as an everyday way of life for the majority of citizens.  

“There is actually a road map of do-able public policies we can adopt to get us where the Dutch are today.” 

Sam Liccardo, San Jose City Council: 

“We can start by identifying a few corridors that serve many workplaces and have a high transit-dependent population and build them out with bicycle infrastructure.

“We can brand biking as cool, make it  hip—and get the bicycling community coming out to meetings to support these improvements.”

Shiloh Ballard, vice-president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (a business and civic organization):

“What we can immediately take back home is their general planning for bikes; for instance, all the visual clues that tell motorists to look for bicycles.”

Damon Connolly, vice-mayor of San Rafael:

“What I will be thinking about when I get home is how closely related land use planning is to transportation planning—they are almost the same thing.”

Bob Ravasio, city council member in Corte Madera: 

“The low-hanging fruit is getting people started with short trips—to the store, not commuting all the way from Marin County to San Francisco.“

Bill Gamlen, senior rail engineer, Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit:

“We need to build the infrastructure, get quality bike routes going like the Star Routes in Rotterdam.”

Ian Dewar, advocacy manager for Specialized Bicycles, based in San Jose:

“I was really, really surprised by the low number of bike accidents they have here. The education they do really pays off.”

Bruno Maier, vice-president of Bikes Belong:

“Imagine if all the bikes we saw in the Netherlands were single-occupancy vehicles. It would not be the same place.”