Building the Cycling City

by Melissa Bruntlett

  Because the project involved four municipalities, those local governments didn’t know how to deal with it and so offloaded it onto the regional agenda, fully expecting it to get shelved. But that quickly changed when the national government passed a budgetary amendment to invest more in cycling infrastructure, suddenly earmarking substantial funding for the region. “At a meeting, it was agreed that in addition to €5 million [$6.2 million USD] from the national government, the province would pay €5 million, and the region €3 million [$3.7 million USD],” recalls Van Duren. “We started developing the project, and we got commitments from the municipalities for a total budget of €17 million [$21 million USD].”

  Having ditched the decades-old idea that cycling is simply a local issue, Van Duren and his team got to work. They defined a network of links between the places that people lived and where they worked, of distances up to 15 kilometers (9.3 miles), and identified a number of key policy goals. “One of them was reducing car dependency, and seeing if we can provide drivers alternatives to sitting in a traffic jam,” he explains. “We saw the connection between accessibility to our main nodes—such as the university and the city center—and the availability of cycling. So it was really a congestion-based approach.”

  According to Van Duren, one of the secrets of their success was giving the local governments the largest share of ownership, despite their supplying the smallest share of financing. “The municipalities were responsible for tendering the infrastructure, for building the infrastructure, and doing the engagement process themselves,” he clarifies. “We would facilitate with studies and support. But it never felt to the municipalities as a top-down project, so they felt like a co-owner of it.”

  The first such cycle superhighway in the country—named the Rijn-Waalpad (“Rhine–Waal Path”) after the two rivers that shape the region’s landscape—opened in July 2015, connecting its two largest cities: Arnhem (population: 150,000) and Nijmegen (170,000). It enables the user to ride 16 kilometers (just under 10 miles) in under 45 minutes, without having to stop even once.

  Not entirely a new cycle path, the RijnWaalpad pieced together a few existing roads—which were transformed into fietsstraten—new stretches of cycle path, and some tunnels and bridges. The overall quality was a significant improvement over the existing, but less direct and desirable, 2.5-meter- (8-foot-) wide, 19 kilometer- (just under 12 mile-) long route. The path was widened to 4 meters (13 feet), with smooth red asphalt, a few shortcuts were added, and several intersections were redesigned to give priority to the bicycle. “It was already safe. Now it was comfortable and convenient,” explains Van Duren. “Besides going quick, cyclists also want an attractive and easy-to-navigate route.”

  As they continued to put other pieces of the planned network into place, Van Duren and his colleagues had to get creative in chasing funding. “A cycle superhighway is nothing more than a concept, consisting of 10 or 20 interlocking projects,” he concedes. Not likely to have another €17 million ($21 million USD) fall into their laps, they were forced to identify, assess, and then pursue funding for these individual schemes; a great deal of the money was secured by making the economic case to the general public.

  Figure 4-4: As the nation’s first cycle superhighway, the RijnWaalpad (“Rhine–Waal Path”) allows cyclists to travel 16 kilometers in under 45 minutes without stopping once. (Credit: Modacity)

  “We did predictions about how these routes would impact congestion, and quite a bit of funding became available because we were providing alternative modes to travel to and from the city,” Van Duren points out. Traffic modeling and cost–benefit analyses became transformative tools in securing financing partners. Van Duren recalls one specific instance where a bicycle tunnel was financed by the road department: “It was near a major intersection, and we said, ‘If we build this tunnel, we can remove cyclists from the traffic light, and the phasing will be 30 seconds shorter.’” That junction moved 30,000 cars per day, saving drivers a combined 15,000 minutes in travel time. “Those travel time savings are worth so much, so the tunnel was worth building from a car driver’s perspective,” asserts Van Duren.

  This reinforces the powerful idea that cycle-friendly street improvements can be win–win scenarios for all modes of transportation. “That’s the whole idea behind the concept of the cycle superhighway—that you improve conditions for cyclists in order to also improve conditions for the drivers that stay on the road,” states Van Duren. “So you provide more alternatives, and you make it more attractive. We’re pulling people towards the cycle highway, not pushing them out of their cars.”

  In the case of the RijnWaalpad, the province found itself in an enviable position as they neared completion: they had approximately €1 million ($1.24 million USD) to allocate to innovation. “We had €17 million in funding, but €16 million in infrastructure investments,” recalls Van Duren. “So we decided to invest the remaining €1 million in making the route more attractive, and making sure more people know about it. After all, the stated goal of the project is for people to change their behavior and start using the route.” So they went about increasing the impact of their investment, devoting just 6 percent of the budget to an exciting branding and marketing campaign.

  A region-wide public contest led to the naming of the route, as well as adopting a logo resembling three rivets of a bike chain. This motif was repeated in a custom-designed and -built light installation that stretches the length of the snelfietsroute, colored green when cycling northbound to Arnhem, and purple when heading south to Nijmegen. “They were, of course, intended to light the cycle superhighway,” admits Van Duren. “But because it is alongside the railway tracks and motorway between Arnhem and Nijmegen, they make people aware of the project.” That proximity isn’t an accident, and serves as a constant, glowing advertisement to a captive audience stuck inside a train or in their automobiles. “That’s the first step to change, knowing there’s an alternative.” It worked. In the neighborhoods surrounding the cycle superhighways, surveys showed that 95 percent of residents were aware of the route and where it was located.

  In addition to the fixtures, the province also experimented with gameification techniques, developing an app that allows the user to play with the colors inside one of the underpasses. Riding the route regularly unlocks new colors in the tunnel’s lighting system, encouraging its use, and giving people a sense of pride and ownership in the RijnWaalpad.

  Finally, the remainder of this budget was spent reaching out directly to citizens who frequently commute between Arnhem and Nijmegen by automobile. “We said to them ‘go ride two in five,’” remembers Van Duren. “From the five days you travel to work each week, try riding your bike one or two of those days. We wanted to convince them there’s an alternative, and make them aware of their options.”

  These investments appear to be paying off, with the busiest segments of the RijnWaalpad seeing upwards of 6,000 cyclists per day, and the project receiving international plaudits as a model to be replicated elsewhere. But most importantly, the route is having a meaningful impact on the behavior of the region’s residents.

  In late 2015, Van Duren and his team completed a large survey of current RijnWaalpad users, who overwhelmingly noted an improvement in quality, directness, smoothness, signage, and travel times over the previous conditions. Most impressively, one-third of the users were new cyclists, and 20 percent had bought an e-bike because of the RijnWaalpad. “That was really remarkable,” notes Van Duren. “I think the combination of the e-bike and the cycle superhighway, it really amplifies the positive effects of the e-bike, which are higher average speeds with less effort.”

  “It’s about setting the right conditions for new cyclists, and that’s the group of people that are changing from the car to the bicycle,” explains Van Duren. “Because they are buying an e-bike, and they are doing a five- to ten-kilometer [three- to six-mile] commute to work. It’s that length of commute that causes the biggest traffic problems, becau
se it’s too short for the train, and it’s too long for the bus or bicycle. And really, on that level, the cycle superhighway and the e-bike form the perfect combination.”

  This provides an effective, real-life anecdote to back up Kevin Mayne’s insistence that the places with the best bike infrastructure are the ones that sell the most pedelecs, and the global e-bike market won’t fulfill its potential without great places to ride. Concludes Van Duren: “Even without the e-bike, the concept of the cycle superhighway can be a game-changer. But with the e-bike it makes it even stronger.”

  05 DEMAND MORE

  Up to here the old city pattern disappeared.

  Urban renewal began in this neighborhood.

  In commemoration, this memorial set in 1986.

  — JODENBREESTRAAT MONUMENT

  Amsterdam

  Amsterdam is a city filled with monuments, commemorating everything from beloved royalty to forgotten war heroes, but few are as overlooked as the nondescript stone turtle on Jodenbreestraat (“Jewish Broad Street”) in the city’s historic Jewish Quarter. Nestled between two bustling cycle tracks, and sitting on a stone pedestal that bears a short poem by writer Jacob Israël de Haan, it has come to represent the slow, deliberate pace of a city that consistently chooses the bicycle above all modes of transportation, making up a staggering 70 percent of traffic (including pedestrians!) in the center on a given day. More importantly, this memorial embodies the rejection of a different type of built environment, one that would have looked and felt very different today. While many assume that Amsterdam’s status as a world-class cycling city was a given, it quietly reminds passers-by how hard the regular citizens had to fight for that status, and how razor-thin the margins of success were.

  “Before the Second World War, Amsterdam was a city where the streets were public spaces,” says Cornelia Dinca, graduate of the University of Amsterdam’s Urban Planning program and founder of the consultancy group Sustainable Amsterdam. “They were not only for movement, but places for interaction and exchange. There was a lot of buying and selling, and exchange of goods; and because people were living in such small apartments, there was an overflow of activity and street life into the public realm.”

  Life was highly localized, with neighborhoods centered on the local church, market, and school. “The city was smaller and destinations were closer together, so people were moving less,” claims Majorlein de Lange, an Amsterdam-based sustainable mobility and road-safety consultant. “Most movement was done by foot, bike, and public transport. With about ten cars per thousand inhabitants, there were many fewer cars than today, and a lot less space that was dedicated to them.”

  After the bombing of Rotterdam and a bleak, five-year German occupation during which the streets, buildings, and plazas throughout the Netherlands were neglected, Amsterdammers were desperate to revitalize their city. And modernist planners were more than happy to oblige, selling them on a model of growth that provided more light, air, and space. Plans were drafted to separate the functions of the city, pushing housing to the outskirts, from which residents would commute into the center, now solely dedicated to the economy. With no room for nostalgia, such plans slated much of the old city fabric for demolition so that large, mono-functional buildings for banks, institutions, and services could be built, along with the roads and parking garages that would support the growing volume of car traffic moving in and out of the suburbs.

  Crucially, this scheme also involved a rethinking of the street as a shared amenity. “The idea was to move the public-space function into a park, or somewhere else,” argues Dinca. “That’s the fundamental difference between the pre- and postwar mentality. The postwar city was about the street acting as a channel of movement for cars.” That seismic shift in attitude—along with a rise in distances traveled—had an obvious effect, and the growth in automobile traffic was much swifter than anticipated: “The car traffic overran the city,” explains de Lange. “But in the existing, prewar city, streets were narrow, and there was no space for them. There you could see a clash between cars and cyclists, traffic jams, and problems with parking.”

  Proposals to address the clogged streets were myriad. Perhaps the most egregious was a 1954 scheme by Police Commissioner Hendrik Kaasjager, who suggested filling in most of the canals to build a series of ring roads and parking structures. “I stand behind Kaasjager: fill in nine-tenths of the canals as soon as possible,” wrote businessman Pieter Van Dijk in Het Vrije Volk (“The Free People”). “Construct wide ring-boulevards. Our children and grandchildren will not care about those canals. And you can always leave a few.” While a similar plan was started—and eventually abandoned—in nearby Utrecht, Amsterdammers were not the least bit interested in losing one of their most treasured assets. “That plan was ridiculed by most people in the city,” says de Lange. “That ended the discussion of filling in the canals for roads.”

  Figure 5-1: Jodenbreestraat’s stone turtle reminds passers-by how hard the citizens had to fight for Amsterdam’s status as a world-class cycling city. (Credit: Modacity)

  Another such proposition was a 1961 study written by young American traffic engineer David Jokinen, working in the Netherlands as a well-funded lobbyist for Stichting Weg (“Road Foundation”), a pro-business pressure group. Jokinen’s report, entitled Geef de Stad een Kans (“Give the City a Chance”), envisioned a motoring metropolis in the spirit of Robert Moses, who—at the time—was busy devastating New York City neighborhoods, waterfronts, and shopping districts with his own grandiose network of freeways. Jokinen proposed American-style expressways that would segment Amsterdam in virtually every direction, along with large-scale parking garages near common destinations. “What it really meant was ‘give the city a chance for the car,’” submits Dinca. “Having living and working together was seen as incompatible.”

  In the 10-year period between 1960 and 1970, the number of cars in the city quadrupled, spurring outrage and discontent among a small but ultimately influential subculture of society. “The asphalt terror of the motorized bourgeoisie has lasted long enough,” declares the first line of the manifesto distributed on the streets of Amsterdam via a stenciled leaflet dated May 25, 1965, by the young activists and provocateurs who called themselves the Provos. And with that act, a political movement was born, demanding that the city center be closed to all motor vehicle traffic and instead be served by a fleet of 20,000 white bicycles, free for everybody to use. “The bicycle is something but almost nothing,” it concluded, poetically capturing how such a simple machine could solve so many complex problems.

  In 1966, at the peak of their powers, the Provos managed to secure a single seat on the city council, but they didn’t directly affect any decision-making during that period. However, their regular “happenings”—on-street gatherings intended to disrupt the flow of traffic—planted a seed of dissent that would soon grow into the mainstream. “They were really among the first ones to put their finger on the negative impacts the car was having on the city, on public space, and on livability,” recalls Dinca.

  And then, in 1972, in what many consider a major turning point, the Amsterdam city council considered a draft Verkeersplan (“Traffic Plan”) that adopted some of Jokinen’s ideas and was fixated entirely on moving people via cars and trains. The 1972 Traffic Plan implied that these two modes of transportation would eventually “win out” for road space, and it failed to mention cycling once—an anachronistic mode seemingly in decline. “Because you’re putting everyone further away from where they live,” explains Dinca, “the distances that were being traveled increased significantly. And the only way for that to be acceptable is if you can travel these distances at a high speed.”

  Part of the draft plan involved constructing a four-lane, at-grade motorway on top of an underground metro line; together they would connect commuters living in Amsterdam’s eastern suburbs with the city center. Much of the corridor in between would be unceremoniously razed to the ground, including the historic neighb
orhood surrounding Jodenbreestraat. Its Jewish inhabitants had largely abandoned this area after the traumas of the Second World War, and squatters, artists, and poets—many of whom were members of the Provos—then populated it. “The idea was to give the street level to cars, and to put people underground in the metro system, and they would all travel at high speeds,” says Dinca. “This would be the city of the future.”

  The blowback was swift and monumental, leading to the founding of dozens of grassroots activist groups, the largest and most persuasive being Stop de Kindermoord (“Stop Child Murder”), formed in response to an eponymously titled, full-page editorial in De Tijd (“The Times”) by journalist Vic Langenhoff. Langenhoff—grieving the death of his six-year-old daughter, killed while cycling to school one morning—was understandably enraged at the 150-guilder ($50 USD) fine imposed on the driver, as well as a flawed street design that prioritized speed over human life.

  His scathing editorial, which claimed that “This country chooses one kilometer of motorway over 100 kilometers of safe cycle paths,” struck a nerve with parents across the Netherlands, leading to the creation of a nationwide road-safety pressure group spearheaded by Maartje van Putten, a 23-year-old new mother. Their stated goal was “to break through the apathy with which the Dutch people accept the daily current of children in traffic.” At that time, motorists in the Netherlands were killing upwards of 3,000 people, 450 of whom were children, each and every year.