March 26, 2013

Dutch still own most bikes per capita in the world

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:11 am

With a population of some 16.6 million inhabitants, the Netherlands still topping the list of most bicycles owned is not very surprising. However, when it comes to calculating the actual amount of cyclists, this quirky list has some issues, as not everyone who owns a bike is necessary a cyclist and other leaps of logic.

I also noticed that the picture used to represent Amsterdam was not right, and now I see it is Delft (to the right of the train station is my guess), a major student city.

In the Netherlands 27% of all trips and 25% of trips to work are made by bike. About 1.3 million bicycles were sold in the Netherlands in 2009, at an average price of 713 euro each. Amsterdam, the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, is one of the most bicycle-friendly large cities in the world, with 400 km of bike lanes and nearly 40% of all commutes in Amsterdam are done on bike.

And no, we don’t do bike helmets and yes, please get over it. You didn’t point that out about Asian countries now do you? Reads like a major cultural bias to me. The Belgians who cycle a lot as well have to wear bright yellow vests to get around and if you’re ever cycled in Brussels or Antwerp, you’d be wise to do the same, especially considering the constant construction.

I had to laugh when a good friend from Canada suggested that cycling was a great way to meet new people and that I should do it to. I told her that would be like her driving a car to work to meet people. We had a good laugh.

(Link: top10hell.com)

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March 7, 2013

Trendy Ghanaian bikes, Dutch business savvy

Filed under: Bicycles,Design,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 10:31 am

The BlackStarBike has a unique bamboo frame that is ecologically sound and ‘as solid as steel’. The company has two secret weapons: bamboo from the West of Ghana and cactus fibres from the North, processed in an innovative way, giving the bikes their unique, woodsy look. As well, a large part of the profits from the sales of BlackStarBikes goes to craftspeople in Ghana.

During the years we lived and worked in Africa, one of the issues that kept us thinking is the lack of export of manufactured goods. Africa provides enormous amounts of raw materials, from crude oil to tea, cocoa and coffee, but what does Africa manufacture? Africa’s raw materials are shipped to western countries and to China, to be processed there. In other words, African countries are unable to enjoy the maximum of profits from their natural resources. The profits made by a Ghanaian farmer on a bag of cocoa beans are low, but the profits made by household chocolate brands, which contain those very same beans, are very high.

(Link: blackstarbikes.nl, Photo of BlackStarBike by Zapdelight, some rights reserved)

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March 3, 2013

Parking bicycles in the magic rectangle

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 3:01 pm

Yesterday I spotted this rectangle in the centre of Amsterdam which had a lot of bicycles in it and true enough there were two little icons at the corner that suggested it was a designated parking area for bicycles.

I’ve seen these rectangles before, but only next to bicycle racks. In those cases, the rectangles were intended for two-wheeled vehicles that did not fit into the bike racks: mopeds, scooters, cargo bikes, and so on.

To my knowledge the Dutch are allowed to park their bicycles everywhere except where they would hinder access. Cities sometimes interpret this rule as “we can prohibit bicycle parking wherever we desire”, and then get shot down by the courts.

To get back to this rectangle on Rokin in Amsterdam, it is just a suggestion that you park your bike in the box. But the box seems to have magical qualities because people actually do park their bikes within it. The city took a leaf out of the book of design student Roosmarijn Vergouw, whom we wrote about before. (Funny, as I am googling I come across a discussion of her project at Retecool, a popular Dutch blog, where one Swanfeather writes: “She should do this along the construction sites of the new subway. Apparently it makes sense to designate areas for people to park their bikes rather than doing the opposite, i.e. put up a sign that says ‘no bike parking allowed’. The latter doesn’t work.” Rokin is one of those construction sites.)

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February 22, 2013

Nonsensical road signs in Noord Brabant

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 7:29 pm

In a country with so many traffic rules and regulations, many of which involve bikes, some set of road signs are so weird you won’t find them in theory books on learning how to drive.

Some of the ones in and around Eindhoven are easy to understand even if you don’t read Dutch, but for the rest:

No. 12: A bike path where bikes are allowed.
No. 20: A bus lane where bikes are allowed, a dangerous place to cycle.
No. 23: Probably the shortest bike path in the country.
No. 24: Neighbourhood being built, forbidden for construction vehicles.

(Link: www.ed.nl, Photo by Photocapy, some rights reserved)

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February 11, 2013

How cities clear bike paths of snow

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 1:15 pm

Bicycle blogger Mark Wagenbuur has enough clout these days that when he calls the city’s department for public works to tell them they forgot to clear a bike path of snow, they go out and clear the bike path.

The city of Den Bosch went even further and invited him over for an in-depth explanation of how clearing the roads works, which led to a fascinating blog post and video (in English):

A city of the size of Den Bosch (140,000 inhabitants) in this day and age works with sophisticated technology to detect and combat slippery road surfaces. Sensors in the road, weather reports from different sources and agreements with other governments and other departments all feed information to the five people who make sure someone is on duty around the clock during the winter months. “The city in turn warns the smaller towns in the vicinity, which cannot afford to have such a sophisticated system themselves.”

(Photo: me. Video: YouTube / Markenlei)

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December 7, 2012

Biking in the snow safely, Dutch style

Filed under: Bicycles,Design by Orangemaster @ 10:35 am

When snow starts falling in the Netherlands, the Dutch often continue to use their bikes to commute even when there’s ice on the ground. It’s dangerous and there are accidents. It can be done more safely, although this blogger lives in a small town that cannot compare to an Utrecht or Amsterdam as far as bike traffic is concerned, but it’s definitely a good primer.

Cesar van Rongen may have found a quick, easy and cheap solution for stubborn Dutch cyclists.

With Cesar van Rongen’s Bike Spikes wintry slips and slides are a thing of the past, without having to change tyres. A rubber casing with iron spikes to cover the bicycle tyre gives you grip on icy stretches, and on ordinary asphalt they will still be comfortable. The special winter bike tyre can easily be fixed to any city bike with the little key that comes with it. And when it thaws, the Bike Spikes can be taken off in an instant and folded into a compact little package.

Bike Spikes By Cesar van Rongen from Design Academy Eindhoven on Vimeo.

(Links: www.cesarvanrongen.nl, www.blessthisstuff.com, Photo: Cesar van Rongen)

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November 4, 2012

Heated bike paths and glow in the dark roads

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 9:43 pm

The towns of Utrecht and Zutphen will start experiments with heating bike paths, DutchNews reports.

The news site quotes a Telegraaf article that says these experiments will start ‘soon’. The idea is that ‘asphalt collectors’ will collect and store the summer heat, and release this energy in the winter to stop ice from forming. This could reduce accidents:

‘The result is cooler asphalt in summer and a warmer surface in winter,’ Marcel Boerefijn, the project’s leader, is quoted as saying. In the future, footpaths could also be kept ice-free using the same techniques, he said.

Boerefijn says the new surface and heat collection system will cost between €30,000 and €40,000 a kilometre – about the same as it costs to lay new asphalt.

Car drivers need not feel left out. In 2013 a “few hundred metres of glow in the dark, weather-indicating road will be installed in the province of Brabant” according to Wired.

The special paint needed for these glow in the dark roads was developed by Studio Roosegaarde and will be used to create road markings.

The studio has also been working on a paint that will be invisible until the temperature drops below a certain point. This could be used according to designer Daan Roosegaarde to indicate that the road is slippery.

The idea is to not only use more sustainable methods of illuminating major roads, thus making them safer and more efficient, but to rethink the design of highways at the same time as we continue to rethink vehicle design. As Studio Roosegaarde sees it, connected cars and internal navigation systems linked up to the traffic news represent just one half of our future road management systems — roads need to fill their end of the bargain and become intelligent, useful drivers of information too.

See also: A Dutch bike path with solar panels

(Photo by Flickr user comedynose, some rights reserved)

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October 29, 2012

Bicycle bags transform into picnic set

Filed under: Bicycles,Design,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 11:23 am

The Springtime picnic set has three life stages, as a pair of bicycle ‘bags’ (pupa), as a basket (larva) and as a table and two chairs (imago).

The set was design by Jeriël Bobbe. It is made of wood and contains pockets for tableware. It is currently not for sale, according to Bright.

(Photos: Bloon Design)

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October 5, 2012

Parkour in Rotterdam, Jackie Chan style

Filed under: Architecture,Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 4:19 pm

Despite a whole bunch of bad jokes about the Netherlands’ second city, Rotterdam, it is often praised in the foreign press or in Wallpaper magazine, mainly for its modern architecture.

In this video, the city’s best know poet and jazz fan Jules Deelder sarcastically says, “I swear to you, Rotterdam can’t be filmed. It has no past and not a single stair-step gable,” echoing the opinion of many who think Amsterdam is top dog and Rotterdam must be treated like a less posh younger sibling who tries to mask their bombarded past by going modern.

The Willemswerf is the name of the office building martial arts star Jackie Chan slides down in his 1998 film ‘Who am I’, which has some excellent shots of parkour-like action in Rotterdam. Apparently, when asked back in 1999, Chan put it on his list of 10 favourite stunts, which can be read in his book ‘I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action’. Oh, and he performed that stunt himself by the way like he did so many others.

Even though one of his stuntmen proved it could be done from a lower level, it took Chan two weeks to get up the nerve to try it himself. The sequence begins with him fighting it out with some thugs on the top of a very tall building in Rotterdam. After battling with them around the roof, and nearly falling off once or twice, he finally took the quickest possible trip to the sidewalk below –sliding down the side of the building, which is slanted nearly 45 degrees, all the way to the ground. Twenty-one stories.”

At least Rotterdam has 21-storey buildings.

The movie also prominently figures the ‘koopgoot’ (underground shopping area), the cube houses and the Erasmus bridge. He also tries using a recumbent bike, a stunt in itself.

(Photo of Rotterdam, KPN building by Roel Wijnants, some rights reserved)

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July 28, 2012

Anti-social bicycle racers a pest on the cycle path

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 1:07 pm

Now that we finally have sunny weather, parents with children and older people are hesitant to get on their bikes for fear of being run over by bicycle racers.

Cyclists union Fietsersbond told Spits that anti-social bicycle racers even take the second spot of issues that cyclists complain about, after tuned up mopeds.

Apparently sports riders cut off regular cyclists, and their high speeds create a sense of unsafety. This year two cyclists were killed in accidents with bicycle racers on bike paths.

Fietsersbond thinks that wider cycle paths may be a solution. An idea they feel warrants further study is letting groups of bicycle racers move to the car lane—cycling on the road is illegal in the Netherlands where there are obligatory cycle paths. The union is supported in this by the union for bicycle racers, NFTU, but road safety organisation VVN is vehemently against the concept of cyclists in the car lane.

See also: article by Mark Wagenbuur about how the Dutch differentiate between regular cyclists and bicycle racers.

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