There is only one, and one reason: their country is flat.
A lot of Dutch people come on vacations in Walloon (french speaking part of Belgium) and they never ever can be seen riding a bike because our hilly landscape make it a tiresome activities. Even for inner-city short distance trip.
This reflects in the technological development of their bike: heavy frame, few gears, additional front basket while every teen here rides mountain bike made of carbon fibre, 21 gears at least and state of the art front shock absorbing mechanism. I am only slightly exaggerating. And jealous.
If you think so, it means the author did not emphasize enough that cycling is a life-style and a voluntary effort from the Dutch. There are many flat and dense cities with much less bikes, think New-York, but the Dutch seem to have decided together some time ago that biking was cool and cars not.
They were just in advance. Right now the top-du-top of the "bo-bo" chic in Paris is to not own a car. It means using the bike renting service (velib) and renting a car when you go outside.
Oh, and as I live in Beijing, I can tell you how much I would love the Chinese to take early this bike-turn: they have plenty of them, and many Chinese cities are flat. It's just that for most people in China riding a bike is sign of the past, poor and hungry China, while driving a German multi-ton mammoth is a sign of the future.
You probably know this, but for the sake of HN: Beijing used to be a lot more like Amsterdam. This wasn't a choice on the part of the population: cars were simply unavailable and affordable. You still have some pretty sweet separated bike lanes attached to major roads...but often I was the only riding a bike in them.
Yes I recall back in the early 80's on campus at cranfield we had a masters student from china and he had one of the flying swallow bikes and the uniform.
I think don't think many New Yorkers love cars. And they have just started a new bike share scheme, so hopefully things will change.
And Parisians still love there cars, which is damn ridiculous. If one city needs to take action, it is Paris. Far too many cars, so many they can park anywhere and not get in any trouble. Awful narrow streets, and badly designed as well. One way streets heading into each other. They have the Velib, but most people I know are just too scared to use it. I do, and I have no problem with cars, but I have ridden among cars since I was a kid. Even on a beautiful sunny day, as we have had the last few weeks, people would rather take the underground. They need to take some clues from London, introduce a congestion charge, lots more bike lines. But they will not. Paris would have been a nightmare if it had the olympics instead of London.
This is exactly wrong. Cycling is common in the Netherlands but it's not a life style. I intentionally do not say 'popular' there. You just buy a bike and you're all set. You don't need a helmet or a special outfit. You don't have to spend a ton of money on a super light weight carbon fiber monster. When you want to go somewhere, you don't have to check if the roads are bike-friendly, and you don't have to check if you can park your bike there.
I'm Dutch. I am not a cyclist; I just have a bicycle. It's as natural to me as having three meals a day. Of course, that's only true on a personal level. As a nation, we very much designed for the conditions that are conducive to cycling. The article gets that right.
Having been a passenger and a pedestrian in Beijing, I can confidently say that anyone crazy brave enough to get on a bike there is deserving of respect, from a safe distance.
The only trouble is that the lanes are often under-utilized, encouraging all sorts of other people, vehicles, and piles of random boxes to accumulate there.
I took an all day cycling tour around Beijing the last time I was there (2009), and it was great, except for those times you'd get close to an intersection.
Flat is irrelevant. Don't believe me? Go to Montreal. Outrageous topography, terrible weather, everybody bikes. Biking is about infrastructure and social networks. I live in Orange County, and nobody rides to work, but once they find out you ride, they begin to think that maybe it isn't such a big deal.
Not only is the previous poster's comment not true, it was even covered in the article, in the section "The 70s velo-rution."
Even the comment "one reason: their country is flat" is addressed in the article, with "The famously flat Dutch terrain, combined with densely-populated areas, mean that most journeys are of short duration and not too difficult to complete." That is, urban density is also an important reason.
It's quite clear from the article that many factors affect biking in the Netherlands, and not just, or even primarily, its flatness.
Here's my position:
All those factors are incentives, easier to promote biking but without a mostly flat country it wouldn't work. We could try adding all of the other factors but flatness is obligatory.
I'll have a look at Montreal as another poster mentioned it but I have doubts it is on the same scale as the Netherlands if it isn't flat.
Certainly flatness is a big incentive. Our reaction, however, is against the comment "There is only one, and one reason: their country is flat."
That's simply not true. As the article points out, the Netherlands, like other countries, had a large decrease in the use of bicycles in favor of the car. It wasn't until political protests of the 70s and 80s that that trend reversed itself.
But having hills is not a complete disincentive. I used to live in Gothenburg, Sweden, which has a very extensive cycling network, with many people bike commuting, etc. It also has hills. The key thing is that it's not all hills; the bike paths tend to follow the flat. But I lived near the top of a hill, at about 200 feet above the central part of town, and plenty of people would do that commute every day. (Not that I particularly liked it.)
It's of course a very complicated set of interactions. The city also has good public transportation, so if the weather is nasty it's still easy to leave the bike at home and take the trams and buses to work.
Or consider Trondheim, Norway. According to one web site, "18% of the population of Trondheim is using their bike as a daily means if[sic] transport to work or school." Trondheim is not a flat city, and certainly Norway is not a "mostly flat country."
>>Certainly flatness is a big incentive. Our reaction, however, is against the comment "There is only one, and one reason: their country is flat."
>That's simply not true. As the article points out, the Netherlands, like other countries, had a large decrease in the use of bicycles in favor of the car. It wasn't until political protests of the 70s and 80s that that trend reversed itself.
Ah yes, I see. I was too vague and biased, my mistake. I chose the wrong approach.
Where I live we are often told "why don't ride like the dutchs ?" and after a while it becomes tiresome to explain why we don't.
I think the point is that, there are a lot of cities that are in fact sufficiently flat but do not have a lot of bike usage.
Indeed I wouldn't want to bike around in cities with many sloped streets (Brussels comes to mind) without at least having some decent gears to switch (most "grandma bikes" are single-gear, because it's one less part that can break).
It is not logical to make such a conclusion. If someone is used to cycle in The Netherlands, obviously they will have a difficult time if it is not flat. Further, if the country is flat, bikes of course can adjust to that (heavier bikes, etc). If you're used to cycling in a flat country, then it will be difficult to cycle in a non-flat country. This does not prove anything regarding that you need a flat country though. A typical bike in The Netherlands is crazy expensive, easily 500 EUR+ for one of the regular brands. With a more normal market, the bikes could be way better then what we're getting now.
I'm from the Netherlands, I sweat when I cycle and my bike has 11 non-overlapping gears (similar to e.g. 24 speed overlapping one). There are a load of crappy bikes, mainly due to price of those bikes.
Density is huge. Just look at the Bay Area. I suspect there is more biking in hillier, but denser, San Francisco, than the very flat, but spread out, Silicon Valley.
A country with few bikes tends to produce sprawling cities.
You need parking space in the inner city, taking away space that could be used to build homes. More street area in the city means less greenery, worse air. But since commuting by car is not too difficult there is incentive to buy a house in the suburbs.
I don't know, plenty of cities are flat.. NYC is mostly flat?
Biking in .nl was actually quite arduous for me the few times I've been. One word: wind. No mountains or anything to break it, it's like being on an endless hill. I did a few short out of town trips (<15km) and I highly underestimated how long it would take because of the wind...
A lot of Dutch people come on vacations in Walloon (french speaking part of Belgium) and they never ever can be seen riding a bike because our hilly landscape make it a tiresome activities. Even for inner-city short distance trip.
This reflects in the technological development of their bike: heavy frame, few gears, additional front basket while every teen here rides mountain bike made of carbon fibre, 21 gears at least and state of the art front shock absorbing mechanism. I am only slightly exaggerating. And jealous.