A couple years ago I went and traveled around Europe for a month with my family. For the first three weeks we were stationed out of Holland so I got to see many of their cities. One of my favorite cities to visit was Amsterdam. It was just a really cool place, and not because of the red light district or its marijuana laws, but because of the way it looked, and the overall character of the city.
A major difference from our cities that I noticed in Holland and especially Amsterdam was the amount of bicycles that were around. There were entire parking garages dedicated to bikes, which to me was crazy. Some random stats I came across while looking up Amsterdam is that there are over a million bikes in a city of 700,000 people. This is double the amount of cars and because of all the bikes there are over 15,000 km of bike lanes in Amsterdam. We had a rental car for traveling around, but you could immediately tell that if we were staying solely in the city and not traveling why this would be a bad idea. Many of the roads were very small and could barely fit two cars going in opposite directions, especially if there were cars parked on the side. I was very glad I was not the driver, as I could tell it would take more than a little time to get used to this. We ended up walking many places in the city because it was more of an inconvenience to move the car around.
This is just one of the reasons why I really liked Amsterdam. It was a completely different atmosphere, and not having the crazy amount of cars around that we do was nice as well. One day I want to go back, and instead of renting a car, rent a bike and experience traveling the city the way the majority of its citizens do.
Yes, amsterdam is an extremely fascinating study on the development of Urban Planning. Although i have never been, one of my closest friends from UBCO is currently studying there and has told me that she uses her bike to get absolutely everywhere. Furthermore, something i have learned independently of that is that they have even implemented and devoted numerous tax dollars to developing effective cycling infrastructure, including roundabouts, and overpasses devoted to cyclists. I find especially fascinating the fact that there are even more bikes than people!!!! My one question would be how and is it even possible to institute such an ideal in our own urban environment. I would love to be able to bike to school, but the 18 wheeler trucks going down the highway would surely stop me from doing so. I thus really do believe we should implement similar measures and devote similar amounts of tax money to do so for both the sake of our environment and our own health. Think about how much good such a system could generate for Canadians and British Columbians alike.
Yeah getting a system like that here would be really awesome, as biking to school and anywhere would be so much better for personal health and much more enjoyable than busing. I have seen improvements in this area with the addition of some bike lanes and such, but like you said, even with those kind of lanes, I don’t feel much safer with having big trucks flying by me. I think it is also the culture that has a lot to do with the way biking is in Amsterdam, which is something I don’t see here. In places like that, bikes own the road, I almost got hit by numerous bikers because I am used to walking down a sidewalk and not having to worry about it, whereas the bikers in Amsterdam pretty much have the right of way over even vehicles. The biking culture that has developed there is to me why they spend so much money and effort into making it a viable way to get places. I think if we want to develop it more here, there has to be more of a cultural shift towards that kind of transportation.
Personally I have travelled and spent some time in Europe as well, however never in Holland. However I totally agree with the idea that a car is not necessary in many European cities. In Paris for example I stayed there for just under a month and never once stepped foot in a car. The public transport system and the way the city is laid out makes it so much easier not to use a car. I wish that more cities in North America would adopt this ideology, as I find especially in the Okanagan everything is so spaced out which makes it much more difficult to not use a car. When I first moved to Kelowna I tried using my bike as my primary source of commuting but living in Glenmore does not play well with that idea and I quickly learned that I could use the bike however it would take a lot longer and in many cases would be very inconvenient.