Cycling in Amsterdam

 Relaxed morning ferry bicycle commute in Amsterdam

Cyclists cannot take the car tunnel to cross the body of water called IJ (pronounce in Amsterdam dialect: eye). For that purpose the city has a host of ferries in exploitation. All for free since car drivers don't have to pay to use the tunnel. This is a very relaxed commute in holiday times. It will give you an idea how this works.

This is a 360 degree video; use your mouse or phone to look around.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Cycling along Prinsengracht on my way home

This is part of Prinsengracht, the almost outer of the big canals in the canals district. It is used by me to go home, like here. 360 degrees footage. Use highest quality option when playing.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Polder meditation

Cycling in the polders bring you in a meditative state which is good for creative thoughts and cooking up new ideas. This path is most likely 50 years old and will not be up for renovation any time soon. Obviously cars cannot go here. Look around you, with your mouse, mobile phone or otherwise, it is in 360.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Showing off electric bike behind Rijksmuseum 

Electric supported bicycles come in 2 flavors: Pedelecs that support the cyclist to speed up top 25km/hour and Speed Pedelecs that are basically electric mopeds in bicycle guise; they can (theoretically) go up to 45km/hour. Sales of both types of bikes have sky rocketed since a few years but since corona intense. This proves that using a big car for a simple errant or commuting is elementary stupid. And it is cheaper and healthy, and you meet nice people.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Polder road

Just a polder road. What a polder is? I take the Brittanica definition, although one might want to detail bits better: Polder, tract of lowland reclaimed from a body of water, often the sea, by the construction of dikes roughly parallel to the shoreline, followed by drainage of the area.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Cycling in the Fly Forrest, het Vliegenbos

Parks and small forests are very important for recreational cycling as well as for commuting

Cycling in Amsterdam

From Central station to the Ferry across the IJ with Shared Space

Especially the offloading of the quite frequent ferries surprises guests

Cycling in Amsterdam

Central Station Amsterdam

As a consequence of constructing a North South Metro line, also Central Railway Station Amsterdam underwent huge changes.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Cycle Street Part 2

Cycle Streets become standard practice in Amsterdam; car drivers are invited guests and are expected to behave as such.

Cycling in Amsterdam

Cycle Street part 1

Cycle Street become the standard in Amsterdam

Cycling in Amsterdam

From Canal District to Central Station

Central Station Amsterdam undergoes main reconstructions. This goes in coordination with the new metro line that passes underneath Central Station and goes all the way from Amsterdam North to the business district in Amsterdam South in 15 minutes.

 

Cycling in Amsterdam

After Rush Hour

Car drivers in Amsterdam are very courageous or fatalists?

The Velo Mondial Blog can be temporarily viewed via VeloCittá

VeloCittà aims to provides inspiration and build capacity in local authorities and BSS stakeholders. We work with stakeholders that are engaged with the design and implementation of effective and resource-efficient solutions.  This has resulted in a boost in the uptake of BSS’s and set in motion a beneficial snowball effect on urban cycling as a whole. The project ended in February 2017 but will see its results continued in the ‘Platform for Cities on Bike Share ’ and the ‘Bike Share Workspace’.

New OV-Fiets in The Netherlands

The OV-fiets is a convenient rental bicycle to use for the last leg of your journey, for example to visit friends and family, go to the museum or attend a business lunch. What you need to know about the OV-fiets When you arrive at the station on the train, you can quickly rent an OV-fiets to cycle to your appointment. There are more than 250 rental locations: at many stations, at bus or tram stops, in several city centres and at P+R car parks. The OV-fiets gives you the freedom to choose where to go, when to depart and what route to take. So transfer to the OV-fiets too! The OV-fiets is a quick and healthy way to reach your final destination. You can rent an OV-fiets for 24 hours using your OV-fietsabonnement for just € 3,15 (from 1 January € 3,35) per ride from more than 250 locations at many train stations, bus and metro stops, a few city centres and at P+R car parks. The bicycles are stored in both supervised and unsupervised storage areas, or in self-service bicycle lockers or carrousels. This way you always have access to a bicycle, and can continue your journey. Read on here

.

The Hague Cycling Plan; state of the art in cycling planning

The previous programme expired in 2014 and will continue into this Bike 2015-2018. The starting point for this new multi-annual Bicycle is the Coalition Agreement 2014-2018: “Trusting in The Hague's Strength”. Under the heading “More room for the bicycle”, the following is stated: "Safe, recognisable and comfortable cycling facilities are the basis for further growth in bicycle use. There is an ambitious programme for the expansion and improvement of bicycle facilities, a number of star routes will be expanded this period, we will continue with the asphalting of bicycle paths and create more (free) parking facilities at stations in the centre and at the beach. Abandoned bicycles are addressed throughout the city and we are expanding the number of neighbourhood bike parking facilities and routes in areas such as the Stationsbuurt and Schilderswijk." These ambitions along with the focal points for the bicycle policy of The Hague Mobility Policy and the continuation of the bicycle policy of recent years are detailed in this new Cycling Programme 2015-2018. 

Sharing schemes within the CIVITAS DYN@MO project

Sharing a vehicle, whether it’s a car or a bicycle, has many advantages such as saving money for the individual and improving the environment due to fewer vehicles on the road. In addition, it paves the way for multi-modal use of transport systems since the vehicle-sharing concept excels at high flexibility due to the independency of timetables and predetermined routes. Automated sharing systems can reliably be in operation year-round, day and night. Furthermore, the user freely chooses the fastest route to his destination not being bound to bus or train lines. In other words, a vehicle-sharing system adds customer value to the whole transport chain. The DYN@MO cities of Aachen, Gdynia, Koprivnica and Palma have been strongly committed – each city in its own way and own scale – to introducing and extending the usage of sharing schemes, with traditional bicycles, electric bicycles as well as with electric and hybrid cars. This brochure describes the partner cities’ practical experiences of their establishment of sharing schemes within the CIVITAS DYN@MO project. Read more here.

Bikeshare safer than riding personal bikes

Anyone who’s ever ridden a bikeshare bike can tell you: they are hardy, aluminum tanks on two wheels. But does that translate to an inherently safer experience on the street, especially when many casual riders are likely unfamiliar with a city’s bike infrastructure? A recent study from the Mineta Transportation Institute determined that yes, bikeshare systems in major metropolitan areas have low rates of collisions, and are in fact safer than riding a personal bike. The report, “Bikesharing and Bicycle Safety,” examined at data from three active bikeshare systems: Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., Nice Ride in Minneapolis/ St. Paul, and Bay Area Bike Share in the San Francisco Bay Area. Researchers also met with focus groups of bikeshare riders and non-members in San Francisco and San Jose to determine riders’ habits and perceptions, sought insight from road-safety experts, and analyzed crash data from the various operators and state transportation agencies in the three metropolitan areas. Read more here

.

Salt Lake city street removes parking, adds bike lanes and sales go up

Protected bike lanes require space on the street, and removing curbside auto parking is one of several ways to find it. But whenever cities propose parking removal, retailers understandably worry. A growing body of evidence suggests that if bike lanes and parking removal are part of a general plan to slow traffic, everybody can win. In an in-house study of its new protected bike lane, Salt Lake City found that when parking removal was done as part of a wide-ranging investment in the streetscape — including street planters, better crosswalks, public art and colored pavement — it converted parking spaces to high-quality bike lanes and boosted business at the same time. On 300 South, a street that's also known as Broadway, SLC converted six blocks of diagonal parking to parallel parking and also shifted parallel parking away from the curb on three blocks to create nine blocks of curb-and-parking-protected bike lanes on its historic downtown business corridor.It added up to a major road diet on part of the street (from five general travel lanes to three) and much less auto parking on another part (a 30 percent cut total). Read more here.

Bike Share System organisation in UK

Bikeplus is a new representative body for the UK’s bike share schemes. Sixteen towns and cities have bike share schemes, with at least another four in development. Over 10 million trips were made by shared bikes in the UK in 2015. Bikeplus roles can be summarised into three key functions: Collect data to provide evidence of for the benefits of bike share schemes. Collecting and sharing information on: statistics on bike shares status in UK, good practice for setting up successful schemes, developments overseas, Development of pioneering projects to ensure the social and environmental benefits are maximised and evenly spread. A selection of fact sheets and research from the European Cyclists’ Federation, the Obis Project, the University of West England, and Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (US). Contributions to this resource archive are welcome, please email info@bikeplus.org.uk European Cyclists’ Federation fact sheet. Go to their webpage.

London could soon have more cyclists than motoristen on its streets

Londoners are aking to bicycles in record numbers. The number of commuters taking to bicycle in the city have tripled since 2000, while commuting by car has been cut in half. Since the turn of the century, London has seen the number of commuters traveling by bike triple from 12,000 daily commuters to 36,000. Jason Sayer of The Architect’s Newspaper reports that despite the growth, London still lags behind other European cities, including Madrid and Oslo, which have moved to limit automobile access to their city centers. However, as ridership grows better infrastructure is being built to meet demands for safety and access. Britain now boasts over two million weekly cyclists—an all-time high, according to British Cycling, a governing body in the UK. Sales of U.K. manufactured bikes subsequently grew 69 percent in 2014 and the effect of this is most evidently seen in the capital. “You can probably trace it back to the bombing attacks in London in 2005,” points out Simon Mottram, founder of cycling clothing firm Rapha, in a BBC report. “Not to forget the government’s Cycle To Work scheme [introduced back in 1999 and which allows people to buy a bike tax-free]. Read more here.