However, road rage is now in the past for me. I don’t suffer from it being directed at me and nor do I feel it against other people. The change came with our emigration to the Netherlands.

There is a different way of planning things here which removes conflict from the roads.

I’ve always enjoyed cycling, but I have to say that it is very much more enjoyable again for being free of stress.

In Groningen, the average distance covered by a car in 10 minutes is just 1.6 km. By bike the average distance is 2.4 km.

Neither are very quick, but that’s the nature of rush hours, and of bikes ridden on crowded streets by people who are not necessarily very interested in going quickly.

It is by policy that the infrastructure allows higher speed by bike than by car, and it’s a very popular policy. In Groningen 60% of all journeys are by bike. The 180000 residents of the city own 70000 cars and 300000 bikes.

What’s more, the average speed when you take into account the time spent on maintenance on less practical designs, is probably higher. I spent decades riding dropped handlebar “racing” bikes to commute. I also spent many hours repairing punctures, replacing chains or other parts of the drivechain etc. Bikes with enclosed chains, hub gears, hub brakes and all the other goodies are incredibly reliable. These days my family gets around on a a fleet of them and I rarely need to touch anything on any of their bikes.

I think you’re making the same mistake as I used to make when I lived in a non-cycling culture (in my case in the UK). I was part of a small band of people who actually rode bikes at all, and thought the way we did it made sense.

I though the Dutch were mad to ride those funny looking bikes which I thought to be slow and not suited to riding very far.

Now that I live over here I know how wrong I was before. Despite the “inefficient” bikes, both the distances travelled and the speeds at which bikes are ridden are much greater than in the UK, as is the frequency with which the bikes are used. Necessarily when bicycles are relied upon, the reliability needs to be better too.

The average amount ridden by the Dutch works out as 2.5 km per person every single day of their lives. They do most of it on practical bikes designed for maximum reliability. No toe clips required. The bike shops here are full of them:

http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2008/09/visit-to-bike-shop.html

Your 8 mile round trip sample distance is nothing at all out of the ordinary in a country where a significant proportion of 11 year olds do a 20 km round trip to get to school. Having started cycle commuting at the age of four, it’s not a big deal to carry on through life.

My name is Megan Peterson, and I work at an Internet map-content start-up company in Boulder, Colorado. I just perused your My Bike Is My Car blog. In general, we’re trying to bring information about biking (among a variety of interests like art, birding, camping, etc.) onto the Internet (Google maps, for example) as well as onto GPS devices and in-car navigation units. Our initial focus is on the US, Canada & UK. Our site will be structured and dynamic, driven by our users who will create and edit content (like a Wikipedia page). Also, our site will be free to all users, registered or not.

I’m very interested in having you participate in our private site review occurring in several weeks. Essentially, we’d give you login information, have you create a user profile, peruse the site (i.e. the bike routes & paths), and give us detailed feedback. Also, we will enable you to invite others who may be interested in our site. Ideally, you enjoy and contribute to our
site, and blog about it. We’re hoping this is something you’d be interested in.

Thanks for your time. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. I look forward to your response.

Cordially,

Megan Peterson
Marketing Specialist