How Amsterdam became the bicycle capitalof the worldIn the 1960s, Dutch cities were increasingly in thrall to motorists, with the carseen as the transport of the future. It took the intolerable toll of child trafcdeaths and erce activism to turn Amsterdam into the cycling nirvana oftoday

Renate van der Zee

Tuesday 5 May 2015 08.04 BST

Anyone who has ever tried to make their way through the centreof Amsterdam in a car knows it: the city is owned by cyclists.They hurry in swarms through the streets, unbothered by trac

rules, taking precedence whenever they want, rendering motoristspowerless by their sheer numbers.

Cyclists rule in Amsterdam and great pains have been taken toaccommodate them: the city is equipped with an elaborate networkof cycle-paths and lanes, so safe and comfortable that even toddlersand elderly people use bikes as the easiest mode of transport. Its notonly Amsterdam which boasts a network of cycle-paths, of course;youll nd them in all Dutch cities.

The Dutch take this for granted; they even tend to believe thesecycle-paths have existed since the beginning of time. But that iscertainly not the case. There was a time, in the 1950s and 60s, whencyclists were under severe threat of being expelled from Dutch citiesby the growing number of cars. Only thanks to erce activism and anumber of decisive events would Amsterdam succeed in becomingwhat it is, unquestionably, now: the bicycle capital of the world.

At the start of the 20th century, bikes far outnumbered cars in Dutchcities and the bicycle was considered a respectable mode of transportfor men and women. But when the Dutch economy began to boom in

the post-war era, more and more people were able to aord cars, andurban policymakers came to view the car as the travel mode of thefuture. Entire Amsterdam neighbourhoods were destroyed to makeway for motorised trac. The use of bikes decreased by 6% everyyear, and the general idea was that bicycles would eventuallydisappear altogether.

All that growing trac took its toll. The number of trac casualtiesrose to a peak of 3,300 deaths in 1971. More than 400 children werekilled in trac accidents that year.

This staggering loss led to protests by dierent action groups, themost memorable of which was Stop de Kindermoord (stop the childmurder). Its rst president was the Dutch former MEP, Maartje vanPutten.

I was a young mother living in Amsterdam and I witnessed severaltrac accidents in my neighbourhood where children got hurt, vanPutten, 63, recalls. I saw how parts of the city were torn down tomake way for roads. I was very worried by the changes that took placein society it aected our lives. The streets no longer belonged to thepeople who lived there, but to huge trac ows. That made me veryangry.

The 1970s were a great time for being angry in Holland: activism andcivil disobedience were rampant. Stop de Kindermoord grew rapidlyand its members held bicycle demonstrations, occupied accidentblackspots, and organised special days during which streets wereclosed to allow children to play safely: We put tables outside andheld a huge dinner party in our street. And the funny thing was, thepolice were very helpful.

Van Putten remembers the 70s as a time when Dutch authorities wereremarkably accessible: We simply went to tea with MPs and theyreally listened to what we had to say. We cycled with a group ofactivists and an organ grinder to the house of the prime minister, Joopden Uyl, to sing songs and ask for safer streets for children. We didntget beyond the hallway, but he did come out to hear our plea.

Stop de Kindermoord became subsidised by the Dutch government,

established its headquarters in a former shop, and went on to developideas for safer urban planning which eventually resulted in thewoonerf: a new kind of people-friendly street with speed bumps andbends to force cars to drive very slowly. Nowadays the woonerf hasgone out of fashion, but it can still be found in many Dutch cities.

Two years after Stop de Kindermoord was established, another groupof activists founded the First Only Real Dutch Cyclists Union todemand more space for bicycles in the public realm organising bikerides along dangerous stretches of road, and compiling inventories ofthe problems encountered by cyclists.

Somehow we managed to strike a chord, says Tom Godefrooij, 64,who got involved with the Cyclists Union as a young man. Heremembers noisy mass demonstrations with tricycles andmegaphones, and nightly ventures to paint illegal bicycle lanes instreets the union considered dangerous.

First we would be arrested by the police, of course, but then thewhole thing would be in the newspapers and municipal politicianswould eventually listen. We had a great ghting spirit and we knewhow to voice our ideas. And in the end, we would get our bicycle lane.Even in the 70s, you know, there were politicians who understoodthat the general focus on cars would eventually cause problems.

The activists of Stop de Kindermoord and the Cyclists Union wereresourceful and undaunted, but there were other forces helping tocreate a fertile soil for their ideas. The Netherlands possessing fewhills and a mild climate had a great tradition of cycling to begin withand the bike was never completely marginalised as it was in someother countries. The intolerable number of trac deaths really was aserious concern for politicians, and there was a nascent awareness ofthe pollution caused by vehicle emissions.

The 1973 oil crisis when Saudi Arabia and other Arab oil exportersimposed an embargo on the US, Britain, Canada, Japan and theNetherlands for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war quadrupledthe price of oil. During a television speech, prime minister Den Uylurged Dutch citizens to adopt a new lifestyle and get serious aboutsaving energy. The government proclaimed a series of car-free

Sundays: intensely quiet weekend days when children played ondeserted motorways and people were suddenly reminded of what lifewas like before the hegemony of the car.

On one of these car-free Sundays, Maartje van Putten, together with agroup of other parents and children, rode her bike through a tunnel tothe northern part of Amsterdam, in which no provisions for cyclistshad been made. We didnt realise that what we did was dangerous,because there were still some cars on the road. Our trip ended at thepolice station, but we made our point.

Gradually, Dutch politicians became aware of the many advantages ofcycling, and their transport policies shifted maybe the car wasnt themode of transport of the future after all. In the 1980s, Dutch townsand cities began introducing measures to make their streets morecycle-friendly. Initially, their aims were far from ambitious; the ideawas simply to keep cyclists on their bikes.

The Hague and Tilburg were the rst to experiment with special cycleroutes through the city. The bicycle paths were bright red and veryvisible; this was something completely new, says Godefrooij.Cyclists would change their routes to use the paths. It certainlyhelped to keep people on their bikes, but in the end it turned out thatone single bicycle route did not lead to an overall increase in cycling.

Subsequently, the city of Delft constructed a whole network of cyclepaths and it turned out that this did encourage more people to get ontheir bikes. One by one, other cities followed suit.

Nowadays the Netherlands boasts 22,000 miles of cycle paths. Morethan a quarter of all trips are made by bicycle, compared with 2% inthe UK and this rises to 38% in Amsterdam and 59% in theuniversity city of Groningen. All major Dutch cities have designatedbicycle civil servants, tasked to maintain and improve the network.And the popularity of the bike is still growing, thanks partly to thedevelopment of electric bicycles.

The Cyclists Union has long ceased to be a group of random activists;it is now a respectable organisation with 34,000 paying memberswhose expertise is in worldwide demand.

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We have achieved a lot, but were facing many new challenges, saystheir spokesman, Wim Bot. Many old cycle paths need to bereconstructed because they do not measure up to our modernstandards some are used by so many people that they are no longerwide enough. We have the problem of parking all those bikes, and weare thinking of new ways to create even more space for cyclists andpedestrians. What our cities really need is a totally new kind ofinfrastructure. Theyre simply not t for so much car trac.

The battle goes on, says Godefrooij. The propensity of urbanplanners to give priority to cars is still persistent. Its easy tounderstand: an extra tunnel for cyclists means you have to spendextra money on the project. Weve come a long way, but we can neverlower our guard.

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