Excellent video from Streetfilms in Groningen plus more information about the city

A couple of months ago, Clarence Eckerson Jr of Streetfilms fame visited Assen and Groningen. He's now finished the wonderful film above and I recommend that you read about it on the streetfilms website.

More about Groningen
Much has been written about Groningen. It's the world's leading "cycling city" by modal share and has held this position quite consistently for many years. While roughly 60% of journeys in the centre of the city are by bike and about 50% for the city as a whole, cycling doesn't fizzle at the suburbs or at the edge of the city. Roughly 30% of all journeys made in the whole rural and sparsely populated province of Groningen (which shares its name with its own capital) are by bike.

A high student population is very often related to a high modal share for cycling, and this holds true in the Netherlands as well as in other countries. Groningers have the lowest average age of any Dutch city due to the high student population who make up 50000 of the city's 190000 population. However, people cycle in Groningen far more than can be accounted for only by the size of the student population. Groningen took deliberate action in the 1970s to make the city a better place to live and to grow cycling and there has been a continuous programme of change since that time.

While the centre of Groningen is dense, the overall density of the city isn't actually particularly high and many people make longer journeys by bike. There has long been a network of routes which cover the entire countryside and during the period that I commuted to Groningen, I videoed some of the other commuters on a different route. Groningen is now building new high speed cycle routes to aid commuters making longer journeys from villages.

The high cycling modal share causes problems which are like no other place:

1. Congestion due to students using particular routes by bike resulted in alternative cycling routes being promoted to improve journey times.
2. People complain about the number of bicycles parked, even though they themselves are cyclists.
3. It's almost impossible to keep up with the demand for cycle-parking. The main railway station in Groningen featured in Clarence's video currently has spaces for around 11000 bicycles, up from about 3000 ten years ago. However the cycle-park in not adequate at the weekends so current plans are for the number of spaces to rise to 19000 by 2020.
4. Pedestrians are provided with red carpets outside shops in order to discourage the parking of bicycles in particularly difficult locations.
5. Local laws prohibit parents from driving their children to school in Groningen as this caused a problem for cyclists. This is, of course, greatly to the benefit of children.

Note that the main railway station cycle-park featured in the video isn't the only large cycle-park in the city. See also the cycle parking at an award winning smaller railway station in Groningen and the bicycle light vending machine at one of many free guarded cycle-parks in the city.

Read more about the triple bridge where cyclists can still cross the canal when a ship requires the bridge to open and about how simple automated counters are used to gather accurate statistics about cyclists.

You may also like to see if you can spot some of the same places in the city centre featured in Clarence's film as well as some of my videos and photos in some films shot in the car dominated Groningen of the 1960s.

Despite all this, Groningen isn't perfect and local campaigners made sure that the city would lose the "Cycle City 2011" competition in large part because the city contains the most dangerous road junction in the whole country and a bridge "as steep as Alpe d'Huez". I made sure that I showed Clarence some of the problems with the city but they unfortunately didn't make their way into the video.

Do you want to see it for yourself ?
We're organising study tours again next year. The first open tour will be in April. Please contact us to book a place.

Groningen was a leader in redesigning itself as a "cycling city" but all other Dutch cities followed similar policies. To achieve the same success as the Dutch have it is necessary to copy from the best examples and don't do anything just because it's "Dutch". It won't work to just try to pick one aspect of what makes cycling work in the Netherlands. The comprehensive network of routes which allow cycling journeys to be direct and subjectively safe requires everything that has been done here.

Note that Zwolle has been snapping at Groningen's heels for many years now and recent figures suggest this smaller Dutch city may actually have surpassed Groningen for the proportion of trips by bike.

Groningen Europapark railway station. Can cycle-parking be beautiful ?

Groningen has three railway stations. I have often written about the largest of the three, where there are over 10000 cycle-parking spaces but the other railway stations are also important and they also have bicycle parking. Europapark is in the South of the city. The station was originally built in 2007 as a temporary structure and re-opened in 2012 after extensive rebuilding. It won an award earlier this year as the most beautiful building of 2013. The inviting cycle-park is part of the reason why:

The temporary station in 2007. Bicycle parking was outdoors -
it's in the left of the picture on the other side of the railing.

The temporary railway station had several hundred unguarded outdoor cycle-parking spaces. The permanent station has 740 indoor spaces with a guard and is designed to accommodate double that number of spaces if the parking is made two level (as shown in a video here). The cycle-park is open from before the time of the first train in the morning until after the last train at night. This means it opens on most mornings at 5 am and doesn't close until 2 am.

There are bins here and they are used. This station is spotless.
(cleanliness is important for cycle-parking)

It has been understood for many years in the Netherlands that a smelly, dark or otherwise unpleasant cycle-park is not attractive to potential users. This is a social safety issue. If people are to feel safe on entering an enclosed space, especially late at night, it is best that this space is well lit, well maintained and staffed. This new cycle-park has all of those features and the cycle-path to it has

The parking is accessed from an underpass. The underpass also provides a new and very useful crossing of the railway line which didn't exist before now. Because it doesn't stand alone, it links up with the existing network in the city to form a very convenient route directly to the city centre and is useful for those cycling to school and work from homes South of the station.

The approximate location of the new cycle-park is shown in blue. The red lines show the new cycle-paths which are part of this development, including the new access under the railway line as shown in the video above. Google Maps does not yet have imagery even of the temporary station.

Why we must be wary of great infrastructure...

The new station has a shelter built of titanium and it is the
first in the country to receive a new type of furniture. The
station cost €40M in total and the luxury bike parking is
perfectly in keeping with the rest.

I like this cycle-parking design a lot. It will invite users because it's attractive and will be well maintained. It was expensive, but actually the amount spent on the cycle-parking is not out of proportion to the amount spent on the rest of the station.

However, I always caution against taking too much notice of exceptional pieces of cycling infrastructure. It's not that I dislike seeing such things, but that they don't mean much in themselves. I think I perhaps need to explain this stand.

Cities across the world like to boast of their best, but we must be wary of attention being diverted from the most important issue so far as encouraging mass cycling is concerned - the need for a comprehensive network of very good quality routes which go everywhere.

It's difficult for a politician to achieve a quick win by proposing, let alone delivering, a truly extensive network so it is far more common to see emphasis placed on what will look impressive in a short amount of time. Sometimes such projects are even named after the person who proposed them. Campaigners need to guard against such vanity. It has been known for at least 30 years that individual paths, bridges and tunnels are not enough to encourage cycling. Building only exceptional pieces can consume a large proportion of the total available budget for cycling, and the high expenditure on large items can hide that overall levels of funding for the more important but mundane cycling infrastructure is actually very low.

No piece of infrastructure, no matter how good, is particularly valuable to cyclists unless it forms part of their route. This is why a comprehensive network is the only way to reach all people. In the Netherlands, there are many piece of exceptional infrastructure and all of them form a part of the already existing comprehensive network. As such, it makes more sense to build them here than it does elsewhere. This example, due to providing a useful new route under the railway line, the building of this station improves the existing grid of cycle paths and therefore is useful for people who don't even use the station itself.

The video was made when I was accompanied to the Europapark station a few weeks ago by Cor van der Klaauw, senior beleidsmedewerker in Groningen and a true expert in cycling matters. He appears briefly in my video. Cor also wrote about the new station in an article on the Verkeerskunde website.

"Alpe d'Huez" in Groningen and what this means for London and the rest of the world

My mother and the rest of the family
riding through a nearby village

We've had a few very busy weeks. First my Mother came to stay and cycle with us, and then several different cycling visitors have come to see us and find out what's been achieved for cyclists in this area.

As a result, we've done several short tours and because we've been doing things for other people I've mostly not been able to take photos or make video for myself or this blog.

However, an opportunity did arise yesterday when I rode to Groningen with Clarence Eckerson Jr. On our study tours we make a point of showing people the worst as well as the best infrastructure and to explain why the less good parts are considered to be a problem. Cherry-picking of a few highlights might be possible in a few hours it takes a lot more time to give an accurate impression of what cycling in the Netherlands is about and we try to do this even with people who have less time than the three days of our usual tours.

Streetfilms in The Netherlands
 Clarence and I rode between
Assen and Groningen

Clarence and I talked about many things including how despite having the highest cycling modal share in the world, Groningen missed out on winning the Dutch "Cycling City of 2011" award. It's still a wonderful place to cycle, but the city had not invested enough in making it better. In particular, two pieces of infrastructure were picked out by campaigners as a stick with which to beat the city and I was keen to show Clarence what "bad" was in this context. Cor van de Klaauw from Groningen city visited both of them with us and discussed the problems. Some time ago I wrote and made a video about one of these points: the most dangerous junction in the Netherlands. Yesterday I had the opportunity to video the other: a new bridge which is steeper than cyclists would like it to be. It's considered to be "a challenge like Alpe d'Huez" for elderly people. By international standards it's not actually very steep and the cycling provision on both sides of the road over the bridge is actually very good. However cycling has a very wide demographic in The Netherlands and there are very many elderly people riding bikes here. This bridge genuinely does cause some difficulties for some of them as you can see in a previous post.

Here's the controversial bridge. In any other country new infrastructure of this quality this would likely have been the subject of boastful press-releases:


This bridge, which provides a new good quality link for cyclists and drivers alike, is considered to be not quite good enough to win a "cycling city" award. It's one of the things which was used to criticise Groningen in 2011.
And then we return to earth with a bump...
Sadly, the problems in London have continued with more deaths of cyclists on the roads. I have criticized London's absurdly named "superhighways" since they were first announced in 2009 because even then they were obviously not up to the job of creating an environment in which mass cycling could take place in safety. These "superhighways" have a far grander name than anything else, but they are not even remotely close to the quality of infrastructure which is the subject of criticism in the Netherlands. London's more recent plans are equally lacklustre.

For decades, British politicians have pacified cyclists by making vague promises about future change, producing impressive looking press-releases and plans, hyping up projects which divert attention to the wrong things, using lots of words to describe remarkably little, and making endless promises of jam tomorrow while not actually starting the process of change at all.

In the past, the votes of cyclists have been captured by making these vague promises and relying on the short collective memory of cyclists so that people will believe the same story yet again. Due to the frequency with which people give up cycling in the UK, there is a high churn rate amongst cyclists and this has assisted the very short collective memory of what has happened before. The internet offers the potential of allowing younger campaigners to benefit from the experience of those who have already seen these things happen. It has the potential to make the collective memory of campaigners longer.

More people are waking up now to the fact that plans made by London are simply inadequate. The death of 65 cyclists during Boris Johnson's term of office is a high price to pay for incompetence. If you don't click on any of the other links in this post, please do read that last link to a post by Markbikeslondon and this one from an obviously angry Voleofspeed.

There's yet another protest in London today. I urge any of you who are there or near by to try to get to it.

September 2013 update - nothing stands still in NL
The Berlagebrug is being changed. The last two study tour groups which I took to Groningen saw some of the works going on around this area, cycling conditions are improving.

A still from July taken from the video above compared with the situation in September when the cycle-paths were being reworked.

On-road cycle-lane being replaced by off-road cycle-path on
adjacent road.

At the end of the video above, after the bridge, I turned right onto one of few roads which still had just a cycle-lane. This is being upgraded into a proper segregated cycle-path and the cycle-paths leading right up onto the bridge are being improved. I don't know as yet whether this will decrease the slope. However campaigning in Groningen about the quality of the Berlagebrug will in any case have paid off. The bridge will work far better for cyclists after these works are complete than it did immediately after the bridge was built.

Nothing stands still in the Netherlands and this is why no-one can "catch up" by doing less.

Readers from places other than London: Please realise that there is nothing to be gained by any other place trying to copy London's policies which consist almost entirely of hype and hot air. If you want to achieve mass cycling in your country, emulate the best example. This means The Netherlands. Take a study tour.

Groningen railway station cycle parking revisited

I often cover the problems with providing enough cycle parking at railway stations in the Netherlands. These problems are continuing, as are attempts at solving them.

In 2006, Groningen finished a very impressive new underground cyclepark at the main railway station, called the stadsbalkon. I covered it 18 months ago (including a video showing how the double layer racks work). The new park was originally to hold around 3000 bikes, but during the design stage it was expanded to around 4150. This brought the total number of bicycles which could be parked around Groningen station to around 6500, which is about one for every 30 residents of the city.

However, before the stadsbalkon was even completed, the cycling officer of the city, Cor van de Klaauw, expressed concerns that they had not actually done enough.

The cycle park has strict rules about not being allowed to leave a bike for longer than 12 days, and also removes badly parked bikes, but there are still not enough spaces.

The number of spaces in the stadsbalkon has now been expanded to 5150 places and along with other additions the total number around the station is to be around 9800, bringing the number of cycle parking spaces at the station to around one for every twenty citizens.

There are two other smaller railway stations in Groningen, each with substantial cycle parking, though not as much as this main station.

The sign at the end warns people who have parked their bikes here that they will have to move them for the period of the expansion of the cycle park. This has now been completed.

Cycle usage in Groningen continues to grow rapidly. The fietsberaad recentlty reported that regular measurements made in spring-time at forty locations in Groningen show a continuation in growth in cycle traffic. At the 40 locations of the count, 230000 cyclists were seen in a day. Six of the locations had more than 10000 cyclists per day, the busiest two both seeing more than 14000 cyclists per day. Overall, cycling has increased by 7% over 2008 and 15% over 2007. The population of Groningen is 188000.

The photos were taken on different days by Judy and myself.

Fietsberaad article in Dutch.

How Groningen grew to be the world's number one cycling city

Groningen in the North of the Netherlands, just 30 km north from where we live, has the highest rate of cycling in the world. Nearly 60% of all journeys are made by bicycle in the city. These three slides from a presentation given on the 2008 study tours and previously at the 2006 European conference on Mobility Management by Mr Cor van der Klaauw.

In 1964 the city was small. There were no restrictions on cars being driven through the centre of the city and there were few main cycle routes. The motorist was king at this time. In some locations in the Netherlands in the 1950s and 1960s, cycle paths were removed in order to make more space for cars.

Urban motorway in Groningen. Some
were built before policy changed.

In Groningen, just as in other cities across the world, the 1960s brought planning and building of motorways right into the city itself (west to east and to the south in the next map).

A few of these large roads were built in Groningen. Notably the motorway which leads from the South and also access to the North, West and East.

However, in 1972 a new local government changed the emphasis of planning in Groningen. The centre of the city was to be considered as the "living room" and town planning was integrated with transport policy. The city was to be designed to be compact.

By 1980 the city had grown considerably with a lot of new housing around the outskirts. There was a ring road around the centre of the city, but access to the centre by car had been reduced. Many more high quality cycle routes had been created.

In 2006 the city has grown rather more, and cars pushed out further from the city centre. The city is now split into four segments between which it is impossible to drive without going out to the ring-road and back in again. There are many more cycle routes than before.

I should note that there is nothing stopping you cycling through the centre these days. The last few minutes of one of my videos shows the centre by bike. However, it isn't designated as a main cycling route. It is impossible to drive through, though, as the only way out by car is the way you came in, and many streets are entirely closed to private cars.

Groningen has 84000 homes, 38% of which were built after 1970. 180000 people live in those homes, and they own 71000 cars and 300000 bicycles. There are 0.4 cars and 1.7 bikes per person.

Seventy eight percent of residents now live within 3 km of the city centre. 90% of employees live within 3 km of the city centre. These short distances of course help to make cycling a viable mode of transport for most journeys,  but we should note that Groningen is actually not particularly densely populated by world standards. In fact, Groningen is far less densely populated than many cities in other countries with less cycling.




There are an average of 1.4 bicycle trips per person per day in the city, making up 59% of the total journeys, vs. under 37% by car. The average speed for driving within the city is 9.6 km/h, the average speed for cycling is 14.2 km/h. The cycling figure may seem slow, but note that it refers to whole journey average speed, not peak speed sprinting between lights. It also reflects the wide demographics of the cyclists. Fast Groningen cyclists travel appreciably quicker than this, but drivers can do little to increase their speed.

It isn't only Groningen which has followed such policies. Most, if not all, Dutch cities have done this to an extent. For instance, Assen also has a car free town centre, as does Nijmegen.

In summary, it is quite possible to grow cycling so that it accounts for more journeys than any other mode within a city. However, it does take a helping hand. Groningen's achievement came from policy to exclude cars from the centre of the city (a form of segregation without cycle paths), and to provide high quality and mostly traffic free cycling routes from the outskirts to the centre.

Also bear in mind that Groningen has the lowest average age of any city in the Netherlands and a high population of students (approximately 50000 in a city of 180000 people). This factor of course also boosts the level of cycling. However, due to the design of the city, even students in Groningen tend to cycle more than students anywhere else.

There are quite a few other posts about Groningen, including the huge railway station cycle park, an extraordinary bridge, how congestion on busy cycle-paths is avoided by providing other routes and how despite all this, the city still didn't manage to win the "Cycling City of the Netherlands" competition in 2011.

See this for yourself and have what you are looking at put in context for you and explained by a native English speaker. Book a study tour.

Are these figures accurate?
Note that it is not entirely clear what the 59% figure for cycling actually means. Who was counted ? Only residents or also people who travel from outside the city ? What methodology led to this result ? Clearly some people are excluded as pedestrians do not appear to have been counted when walking could possibly account for anything up to a fifth of total journeys made in the city (as is the case in Amsterdam) then this would reduce the cycling percentage to around 50% and driving to around 30%. We should always be skeptical of figures which are presented in a promotional way as most figures presented all around the world on cycling are not reliable. Exaggeration of cycling modal shares is extremely common around the whole world. The lowest figure we've seen quoted for Groningen comes from the possibly more authoritative Fietsberaad Cycling in the Netherlands publication. This states that the cycling modal share for Groningen is 38%, though they also don't tell us exactly how they came to that figure.