The Dutch infrastructure and culture embrace the bicycle, rain or shine.
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published October 28, 2005
[Times photo: Susan Taylor Martin]
Bicycles are so popular in the Netherlands that the Delft train station provides free parking.
DELFT, Netherlands - At 28, Manon Grobben would be the exception in America - an employed, well-educated young woman who has never owned a car.
Here, she's the rule.
In the Netherlands, Grobben and almost everyone else rides bicycles - mothers with babies, executives with briefcases, students with backpacks, senior citizens with flower-filled satchels. As high gas prices sour Americans on their Hummers and SUVs, the Dutch happily pedal past gas pumps charging the euro equivalent of $5 a gallon.
"It's much cheaper," says Grobben, a management assistant who was riding her boyfriend's bike. "Besides, it's a little country, and we've got little streets."
It helps, too, that the Netherlands is flat - much of it was reclaimed from the sea - and lacks violent extremes of weather. When it rains, some cyclists steer with one hand and clutch an umbrella in the other.
With the possible exception of China, the Netherlands boasts more bicycles per capita than any other country - at least 16-million bikes for the 16-million Dutch. Bike shops, as common as shoe stores in larger cities, carry flashy models costing hundred of euros, though most Dutch are far more frugal in their tastes.
Ruben Wiersma, for example, found a used woman's bike on the Internet for 50 euros, or about $62.
"Students really don't care what a bike looks like as long as it rides," says Wiersma, 27, who studies urbanism at Delft University of Technology. "Students don't have places to store them properly, so they get pretty rusty."
They also get stolen. In the eight years Wiersma has lived in Delft, a picturesque city known for its blue-and-white earthenware, he has had four or five bicycles pilfered. So common is bike theft - 900,000 were snatched in one year - that the Dutch advise, "Buy a cheap bike and an expensive lock."
The pedal bike was invented in France in the 1860s, and within two years the first bike rental and sales shop opened in Amsterdam. But the Dutch were slow to embrace the cycling craze that swept other places.
"Holland was a very conservative country then," says Gertjan Moed, owner of the Netherlands' Velorama National Bicycle Museum. "There was a big boom in the States and England between '84 and '96, but Dutch people didn't start until the first World War."
During World War II, German occupiers seized thousands of bicycles, fearing they would be used by the Dutch resistance. To this day, a Dutch citizen angry at a German often jokes, "Bring my bicycle back."
After the war, the Netherlands rapidly mobilized, with many people buying cars or mopeds for the first time. But the bicycle still proved an ideal way of navigating the narrow streets of old cities. In some places, cars are banned and only bikes are permitted.
Between 1924 and 1940, the Dutch government heavily taxed bicycle owners, using the money to build what is now a nationwide network of bike lanes and trails. The Netherlands also has excellent public transportation, making it easier for cyclists to commute to work or school in other cities.
Each day, hundreds of commuters park their bikes for free outside the Delft station, where they catch trains to Amsterdam, an hour away, or Rotterdam, a 15-minute trip. Those who don't want to leave their bikes in the open can pay 87 euros a year - about $110 - for parking in an underground garage that holds 3,000 bikes.
Thanks to the ease of getting around, the Dutch cycle far more often than do residents of other Western nations - 30 percent of all road trips here are by bike, compared with just 1 percent in the United States. A recent University of Central Florida study entitled "28 Reasons to Bike" notes that the Dutch are healthier and less likely to die in road accidents. The Dutch obesity rate is 10 percent vs. 31 percent for Americans. The Netherlands has 6.3 highway deaths per 100,000 of population, compared with almost 15 in the United States.
Cycling also helps reduce urban sprawl: A single-occupant car takes up 20 times as much urban space as a bicycle. And an urban freeway costs 2,500 times more than an urban bike path.
The Dutch learn to ride young, usually at 4 or 5. Many elementary schools give bike safety courses. Helmets are not required, but bikes must have lights, reflectors and be legally parked, or their riders face hefty fines.
It seems that no weather is too harsh or age too advanced for Dutch cyclists.
On a recent morning, the rain came down in sheets and the wind turned umbrellas into metal scarecrows. But 67-year-old Riek Nyboer, emerging from an appliance store, nonchalantly pulled on blue rain pants, red raincoat and unlocked her bike.
