The Netherlands is the country where I learnt to separate my refuse and found out what can be produced from rubbish. While I was living there, I also adored the many wind generators, and I would curiously ask about the factories that made use of refuse, factories that one can see almost everywhere while travelling by train.
But for me, the Netherlands is mainly the place where I had a year-long total blast of going everywhere by bike, having cyclist’s rights, special lanes, streetlights, huge and well organised parking lots and all kind of facilities that made bicycle use easier.
The Netherlands is the country that most definitely has more bicycle lanes per capita and per square metre than any other in the world. Terms such as bicycle boulevards and bicycle underpasses are not unfamiliar to Dutch residents or city planners. Perhaps not unwittingly, Sofia’s chief architect laughed when he heard the term “bicycle boulevard”.
Anyways, a group of people in Bulgaria who also realised that bike transport is not only more environmentally friendly and healthier, but also a more cost-efficient transport mode, are currently trying to encourage Sofia’s city planners to understand this, too, and to facilitate bicycle use in Bulgaria as well. Some good examples, on top of which, of course, is the Netherlands, have been pointed out to Sofia city hall as role models.
Not accidentally, the northern Dutch city of Groningen has been called one of the most bicycle-friendly cities of Europe. The city’s population of 185 000 owns an astonishing number of bicycles: about 300 000, according to a publication in the alternative lifestyle magazine Monocle.
Public transport buses in Groningen, as well as in Alkmaar, where I lived, pass by almost empty, as everyone is on a bicycle. The Dutch let themselves be stopped from crossing the whole town on two wheels neither by the wind, which is too strong for any Bulgarian, nor by the rain, which they seem to not notice at all.
Groningen is one of the best examples, for other reasons as well.
Cycling in this city is considered a part of its integral innovation, city planning and transport strategy. After, in 1977, green areas, pedestrian zones, and bicycle and bus lanes replaced a six-lane part of the highway in the central area of the city, more than 50 per cent of the local population started using bikes on a daily basis. Moreover, immigration to other regions of the Netherlands decreased, while the companies that had initially protested against the restrictions on car access started wishing for even stricter regulations.
In a typical Netherlands manner, Gerrit van Verfen, a Groningen city architect, said: “We don’t want a good bicycle system. We want the perfect bicycle system, which is as good as the German autobahns for cars. We do not ride bicycles because we are poor here; we ride them because it is fun, faster and convenient.”
After I read his words, knowing what it could be like because I had lived in the Netherlands before, I started to dream that our city planners would also be able to think in such a fashion.
According to Van Verfen, Groningen’s programme is “not an ecological but an economical programme”.
Projecting bicycle networks is cheaper than projecting car roads, and maintaining a bicycle is also much cheaper than maintaining a car. Therefore, most of the Dutch ride a bike, and one can see elderly people next to pregnant women on two wheels. Of course, when you have well-organised infrastructure for cycling, it only encourages the taking up of such a pleasurable activity.
When discussing how to achieve at least 10 per cent of the bicycle lanes that the Dutch have, some Bulgarians say that there it is flat and therefore it is easier to ride. This is true, but there it is also much windier and it rains much more, which does not stop a Dutch person from using his bike. I suppose that a hill would not stop him, either. Many of the Dutch living in Bulgaria miss cycling. However, fortunately some of them are working to have more places to ride even here, in underdeveloped Bulgaria.
