Cycling and chosing a place to live

A healthy cycling climate is not only about safe and protected cycling infrastructure. That there is much more to it sometimes becomes unexpectedly clear. In a newspaper article about moving to a different home a Dutch couple explains what their motivations were.

'When I can take the children
to school by bike
one car will go.'

They tell us that among other things their wish to move from The Hague to Leiden has to do with the commuting distance. Both work in Leiden, go to sports clubs in Leiden and they have friends and relatives there.

So far it could be a reason for a move anywhere else in the world as well. But the couple goes on: “In the Hague it was too far to cycle back home in the children's school lunch break, that is why we needed two cars. When I can take the children to school by bicycle we will be able to get rid of one car.”

The wish to be able to cycle to school as one of the reasons for moving to another home. That is a sign of a healthy cycling climate in a country. Even if the underlying reason here is also to save money, cycling is considered a sensible solution to achieve that goal. And cycling is an important factor in choosing where you live for many people in the Netherlands. They try to live at cycling distance of their every day destinations and a railway station to combine the bicycle with the train to cover longer distances.

Home builders know about this too. When they advertise new homes it is clear they show what potential buyers want to know: ‘where can I keep my bicycle?’ The artists’ impressions show exactly that.


Artist impression of a two bedroom home in the Netherlands. In the red circle bicycle parking with a separate entrance to the street. Parking your bike becomes very convenient like this.

When considering cycling as good alternative transport it is not only necessary to be able to reach your destination safe and conveniently by bicycle and to be able to park your bicycle at that destination, it is also necessary that you are able to keep your bicycle stored well where you live.

Detail of an in-home room for parking your -every day- bicycles. Also with a direct exit to the street right next to the front door.

When a society facilitates all this it changes the mindset of people and they can choose for the bicycle with confidence.

Cycle parking at home

The ground floor of this 1970s apartment block
provides secure cycle-parking for all residents.
There is a separate locked room for each flat
and also a communal area for extra bikes.
This is normal in the Netherlands. Indoor
cycle parking has been a legal requirement
for most of the time for several decades.

A law in 1992 laid down standards for the size of cycle storage that it was compulsory for all new homes in the Netherlands to be built with.

In 2003 the incumbent government overturned this legislation, and was much criticised for that decision.

Fietsersbond (the cycling campaign organisation) and some consumer organisations objected strongly about this change, and some cities implemented their own by-laws to put the storage back.

On the 19th of August this year, the law came back into force.

The regulations require a minimum of 6.5% of the floor area of an apartment or house (minimum 3.5 square metres) to be provided as storage, and for it to be a minimum of 1.5 m wide. While there is nothing to prevent people from using their storage for something other than a bike, these dimensions are chosen deliberately to make sure that there is ample secure residential cycle parking.

A friend of ours lives in one of the apartments in the block on the left. Though they were built in the early 1970s, well before the 1992 law, the entire ground floor (1/12th of the building) is storage. These apartments each have 100 square metres of usable floor space and the storage is larger than the minimum legal requirement. People who live here keep their bikes safely in this storage.

This article refers to the situation between 2003 and 2008 when the storage was not compulsory, and some developers provided storage which was down a steep flight of steps into the basement, or completely absent. The problems due to a lack of convenient storage are obvious: Raised risk of theft, bikes being stored in such a way so that they are less convenient to use than cars, risk of the bike rusting if the storage is not adequately designed. These issues are all covered by the article.

If cycling is to be popular, it has to be convenient. This includes having somewhere both convenient and safe to keep your bike, and that's why cycle parking is provided with housing.