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Dutch falling over themselves to complain about untreated bike paths + video

Low salt stocks means roads get priority, even in the low countries...

These cold winters always make us Brits feel like Europe's wayward cousin, a badly organised shambles of slushy tailbacks and queues at airports whilst over the channel it's business as usual. It may feel like that, but it's not always the case. Our Dutch friends may get a much better bike infrastructure than we're ever likely to see, but come the big freeze everyone's being careful dishing out the salt, and even over in the enlightened low countries it seems to be bikes that lose out.

DutchNews.nl is reporting that with salt stocks on the verge of running out, there have been dozens of complaints from cyclists who have fallen foul of the icy conditions. In Amsterdam, they report, few cycle lanes have been gritted at all and with more snow on the way and temperatures set to plunge to the minus teens for the Christmas weekend it's getting rather sketchy out there.

How sketchy? Well, take a gander at this video from Lelystad, 40km or so East of Amsterdam. Luckily with a dedicated path there's no motor vehicles to end up under, but even so there's some pretty nasty falls. To be fair there's some pretty funny ones too, and some impressive recoveries; predictably the YouTube comments are split between schadenfreude and disbelief that someone could film for this long without getting the salt pot out of their kitchen and doing something about it...

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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7 comments

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Michael5 | 13 years ago
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And not one wearing a helmet... should we be shocked?

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Barry Fry-up | 13 years ago
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there are alternatives to gritting:

http://www.ecotraction.com/

doesn't melt the snow/ice, just makes it grippy. so you don't need to reapply it as often and it's environmentally neutral

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Tony Farrelly | 13 years ago
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Surely what we're talking about here is just as much about how the priority given to existing grit supplies. As for the tyres most studded tyres work well in snow but not so well in the sort of sheet ice shown in the video. Be interesting to know which would have bigger environmental impact - gritting the cyclepaths, or having a large proportion of those Dutch cyclists using their cars instead?

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bjfo | 13 years ago
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the double at 1.17 is sweet,

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G-bitch | 13 years ago
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The final irony is that they are not even allowed to use the (presumably gritted) roads as an alternative...

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cat1commuter replied to G-bitch | 13 years ago
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G-bitch wrote:

The final irony is that they are not even allowed to use the (presumably gritted) roads as an alternative...

No, I think it is Belgium where you have to use the cycle path when one is provided. I don't believe it is illegal to use the road in the Netherlands.

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IanPerry replied to cat1commuter | 13 years ago
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It is illegal to use the roads in the Netherlands, where there is a cycle path alongside it.

The Dutch often maintain their cycle paths better than their roads. However last year I did use a Dutch road, rather than a cycle path due to ice, then fell, due to ice, three times on an unsegregated street! Those with winter types fared much better - but not everyone wants to take the initiative - and so leave their safety to others.

Snow and ice are natural occurrences. Gritting is unsustainable and very energy intensive - so is it wise to demand more?

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