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What's cycling like in Amsterdam?

You can see for yourself by taking a look at our webcam overviewing the busy Koningsplein/Singel intersection in the centre of Amsterdam.
To show that a mix of bikes, pedestrians, cars, trams, and scooters can all share the road without too much problems.

https://www.terena.org/webcam

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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bikebot | 8 years ago
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I'm commenting for the simple reason that more people need to read the comment above.

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severs1966 | 8 years ago
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I have cycled in Amsterdam. I have done it on a fully-laden touring bike, and I have done it on a Dutch bike of the same variety as the locals (provided by the splendid Bicycle Hotel www.bicyclehotel.com ).

The first thing you learn is that there's zillions of bikes everywhere. Don't do your first ride in rush hour, you will have a nervous breakdown.

There is also a local "style" of riding, and all the locals seem to know exactly what each other is doing and "get" it. Tourists, even very road-savvy bike riders from the UK, stick out like a sore thumb. Give the locals a bit of slack for the inevitable tutting and sarcastic remarks about your useless riding style... they don't mean it maliciously.

So, enough cons... On to the pros that make it an unmissable experience. Firstly, it is (compared to the UK) safe. Any road that is enough of a "main" road to have a significant motorist threat has a cycle path, sometimes segregated and separated behind a kerb or line of bollards or what-have-you; sometimes just painted on or similar. In this city, however, the lines of paint mean something. Apart from the very occasional delivery lorry blocking the (usually red) cycle paths, there will not be any moving vehicles suddenly veering into your protected space. Therefore, despite the immensely busy roads, you will get to your destination without the sensation of imminent death from motor vehicles.

Many roads simply carry insufficient numbers of motors to have cycle paths, though, and you just mix it with the cars and mopeds (lots of mopeds). Don't sweat too much though; the local drivers are used to having what seems to be an infinite number of bicycles coming from every possible direction, so they take it easy. You will not be crashed into, or even pressurised, by the local car drivers. They probably all ride bikes too, just not all the time.

The sensation, so very different from the UK, that you are no longer an outsider, no longer a weirdo, no longer hated by the legions of the stressed petrolists trapped in their hatchbacks, wanting to drive straight through you... it is so wonderful. You feel free at last. Suddenly the ride from A to B is just as normal and safe as walking to the corner shop, as normal and safe as beans on toast, as normal and safe as doing the washing up. If it were not for the novelty of the sensation, it would be almost mundane.

To pass through this initiation is a catharsis. But it is a one-way trip, as it is when making the first bicycle trip to anywhere in the Netherlands. You will never feel the same about your British rides again. The next time you sling a leg over your bike to pop to the shop for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, your yearning for the red refuge at the side of the road (or indeed, a dedicated red road unrelated to where the motorists are) will become stronger and stronger.

You will also fall in love with the signage. There are dedicated signs showing the way for bikes. They have red text on a white background, unlike the much larger motor signs with white text on a blue background. It will be a wrench for you at first, but you MUST ignore the car-routing signs and rely on the red and white bike signs. Sometimes they will point you in a totally different direction to the cars. That's because the bikes get to have the direct route, and the cars go the long way round, on fast roads that you don't want to be on, and you don't need to be on.

If you ride a Dutch bike in Amsterdam, and you come home to a UK city that is fairly flat, you may also find yourself questioning all your previously-securely-held notions about what constitutes a good bike, too.
To a bike enthusiast in Britain, especially one brought up on drop bars and lightweight frames and cleats, the brachiosaur-weight monstrosities fulfilling our cloggy cousins' preference seem at first to be dauntingly awful.
But... Just a couple of days sitting bolt upright on a big fat saddle, holding bars like something off a 1986 mountain bike and pedalling in ordinary shoes on big flat rubber pedals and it all seems to click into place. Inexplicably, you start wanting it to be like this. You start wanting to park the bike anywhere you roll to a halt, on its kickstand. You start to enjoy the air flowing over your naked head.

Just have a good look at the bikes rolling past in the webcam. Drink in the intoxicating banality of how ordinary they all are, how effortlessly they carry on with their daily lives. Note how there are no punishment passes, brake checks, hooks, T-bonings, screaming and shouting at each other. This is a capital city, mind you... a really busy one as well; this webcam shows a spot very near to the very centre of the city.

Ooh. I've come over all wistful. But the comparison between the capital of the Netherlands and the capital of Britain will do that to you. Take care when you ride there, you might never want to come back.
In Dutch terms, Amsterdam is a congested dense warren of streets, frustratingly rammed to beyond capacity with more bikes than a sane person can count (and most of it is much, much busier than the intersection on this webcam). But to a weary, car-worn British cycling enthusiast, it is a paradise that makes you think that you have left this festering mortal plane and gone to a higher realm.

Just imagine what you will feel like if you get as far as Houten, Assen, Utrecht, or Groningen, or one of the many, many other Dutch cities where the provision for bikes is far better than Amsterdam. Or even how you might feel on the ride between these places, which is just as safe and pleasant. Even Rotterdam, which is one of the poorest experiences for the bike rider in the Netherlands, makes the bike-friendliest cities of the UK (York, or Cambridge, or even Stevenage) seem like nothing more than a very unpredictable form of suicide, in comparison.

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CXR94Di2 | 8 years ago
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Having cycled in the Netherlands, granted only 50 miles or so. It was extremely pleasant safe and relaxing to get about from town to town.

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