The mayor of Amsterdam in the late 2056, 30 years time, no one's going to be riding
a bike in Amsterdam. You know, the car is the future. The businessman, political parties
were all for it, so the car is completely overwhelmed the city in the 1960s. We're
worth standing there. We're going to cars parked absolutely everywhere. Fairly see a
parked car from where I'm standing right now at all.
What a lot of people don't know, we've been where you've been. You know, where cars were
everything. You know, cars were progress, and they try to build highways through the
downtown area. You know, and a lot of kids got killed in traffic. And halfway to 70s,
people here said no more. It was too much. So they rose up and they made a change for
the better because it was just unacceptable.
This is a special spot in Amsterdam. It is right at the edge of the city center. Behind
the camera, you see the narrow streets of the city center and right behind me, you see
a wider profile. This street had been widened and the idea was in the 1970s to make this
street so wide that it would connect to a circular route around the city center that
was placed here. Six lanes of cars so that all the city center could be easily reached
by car. But the people in Amsterdam, they realized what should happen, what has to happen
to make this a six lane car street, then you have to break down houses over there and even
further and fill in parts of the canals. So many people opposed this plan. In 1972, early
1972, it was in the city council. This part of the plan was rejected and that in the end
was sort of the end of the old traffic plan for the city.
So many people realized, oh, this thing with everyone owning a car in the city, it's not
working. It's, they're loud, they're polluting, they're noisy. There's just no room for them
all and they're dangerous so that the tide began to turn.
In the inner canal rings of Amsterdam, like where we are here, there's a lot of shared
space in terms of pedestrians, cars, bicycles, mopeds. It's very easy. It works. The cars
aren't driving so fast and the bikes aren't even going that fast either. So, everyone
takes turns, everyone is nice and civilized about it. On the main arterial roads, it's
a different story. The cars are driving much faster and so there's off street cycle paths
which range between six and eight feet in width and so cyclists then have a straight
shot to wherever they're going and they're protected because they're on a raised cycle
path.
The system is built for utilitarian cyclists, for grandmas, for little kids, for mamas
and papas, for executives, for whoever is riding their bike and you're riding on simple
bikes, you're not going fast and people show a lot of respect, especially if you're riding
with kids.
Here we are at the busiest bicycle junction in Amsterdam and actually it's also a very
busy car junction and underneath we have the metro line. If you start counting now how
many cyclists are crossing this junction, you have high numbers and then the bikes have
to stop because the cars are coming. And these cars, you think, oh there's many, many more
cars then you have bicycles but it's not true, there's way more cyclists going here
in only 30 seconds than cars are crossing in the other direction in one and a half minutes.
So there you see the big advantage of cycling for a city is that you have way higher capacity
of people if they go by bike than if they go by car.
People do anticipate better than any other place you'll see because it's so busy crowded
in a small space, people have a sixth sense for what's going on around them, they have
a very good spatial awareness.
In general, you see cyclists, they can fit in a small space but they need their space
as well as their balance. The bicycles in Amsterdam are capable cyclists. If things
are not clear they negotiate. It's very interesting to see but the best way to see it is to experience
it yourself.
You have signals, you don't see them. Amsterdam cyclists don't stick their arms out, they
don't do this to go right, you don't see that kind of thing. They make a subtle little
gesture, I'm going right, I'm going left and everybody understands that and people adjust
and they spend so much time on a bike it's no big deal if somebody bumps their handlebar
against your hip or something like that. You don't get scared, you say excuse me.
I'm sure an intersection like this would be considered extremely dangerous in the US
because it's uncontrolled. There are no stop signs and no traffic signals here. Of course
this does look like chaos but in the end it all works. Everyone does what they're supposed
to do. Actually when you see something not working here, I would say 9 out of 10 times
it's because it's a tourist on a bike.
On streets where there are no traffic lights, you're really much more in touch with all
the other cyclists on the road and with the drivers as well. People look at each other
in your eyes, you make your hand signals, you're much more in touch with humanity on
your bike than I think anywhere else in the world.
For an outsider to come in and see what the Dutch are doing creates a very weird, warped
perception about what it takes to become a cycle city.
When I first came here, the very first thing I did, before I'd even arranged housing, before
I'd bought groceries, before I'd bought breakfast, I went and bought a cheap second hand piece
of crap bicycle and I just jumped in because I wanted to see what it was like to ride a
bike here.
It wasn't a shock but it was a surprise. I have to say even after years of being a bike
racer and riding in the Peloton and rubbing elbows with everybody, it was very strange
to be on an upright bike in street clothes, riding through the streets of Groningen up
north elbow to elbow with regular people going to work, going to school with their kids,
with their groceries, whatever and just seamlessly flowing through the world on bicycles.
I lived in the Bay Area for about six years in Berkeley and Oakland and used my hybrid
commuter bike for nearly everything but my household had two cars for two people and
here we have three bikes for two people and no cars.
When I first arrived in Amsterdam 11 years ago one morning on my way to school I came
through the Rijksmuseum Tunnel over there and when I came out and I got to this intersection
there were so many cyclists that I thought I need to count but I counted 927 cyclists
passing through this one little tiny space in 20 minutes. That was enough for me after
that when Dutch people had asked me why did you leave America and I said because I saw
927 cyclists in 20 minutes. Of course the Dutch all scratched their head thinking what the
hell is that? What's the big deal there?
One theme throughout my book is that discusses the reputation of Amsterdam cyclists. They
have a current reputation as being anarchistic and causing chaos. These guys were supposed
to let that tram pass by. They were supposed to yield to the tram but they didn't but there
was five of them so power in numbers. But yeah on this street particularly there is calls
of how anarchistic and chaotic the cyclists were in the 1920s, 1950s, 1970s right up to
the present day. There's two sides of the amazing things you see people doing in Amsterdam
on a bike thing. For one these people have grown up on bicycles. They've been on their
parents' bikes since they're babies and they've been riding every day of their life probably
so they're very good bike riders. And second it's just human nature. People do what they're
going to do. People drive cars talking on phones carrying stuff tending to their screaming
kids in the back seat and they're going to do exactly the same thing on bikes here. The
big difference is when a bike rider makes a mistake and rams into something he probably
only hurts himself and nobody else. And when a motorist does it they take out a store or
a sidewalk full of people. It's not necessarily that kind of bike culture where people are
very aware of that they have a culture. Abroad a bike culture is usually a subculture. It's
an acknowledgement of subculture as in you stand out because not many people do it. Here
it's so ingrained. It's so part of everyday life that if you tell a Dutch person like
oh you have such a nice bike culture what do you mean? Because a Dutch person will think
of bike culture as something subcultural as in well you have a bike culture when you're
on a fixie or on a BMX or something like that. So it's kind of strange contradiction.
It's something so normal, so ingrained into everyday life that nobody treats it as something
special. It's just the way life is. Riding with my kids once or twice every day is probably
the highlight of the day. It's really fun. My kids have been riding on bikes since they're
maybe a month old. First on a box bike and then later sitting in the handlebars or behind
the handlebars on my own bike and they see how it all works and they learn how the flow
works and how where to go, when to go left, when to go right, how the traffic signals
work and how the whole interaction and system works. So now Pascal at almost five is a perfectly
competent little city cyclist.
