Cyclists commuting, past the Portuguese Synagogue, in the Jewish Cultural Quarter, Amsterdam
Amsterdam is well known for being bicycle friendly. Nevertheless, though people outside of the Netherlands consider Amsterdam to be one of the most famous and important centres of bicycle culture worldwide, the city itself is actually not at the top in terms of bike-friendliness compared to many smaller Dutch cities. By 2012, cycling in Amsterdam had grown tremendously in popularity — up by some 40% in the previous twenty years.[11] The city had 490,000 fietsers (cyclists) take to the road to cycle 2 million kilometres every day according to statistics of the city council. This has caused some problems as, despite 35,000 kilometers of bicycle paths, the country's 18 million bicycles ( per citizen old enough to ride) were clogging Amsterdam's streets at peak times and parked bicycles were overcrowding train stations and other areas. This is being addressed by building even more bike lanes and bicycle parking stations with much greater capacity to tackle a problem many other cities in the world would envy, that of bicycle traffic congestion. Safety is also a concern, mainly on infrastructure that does not yet conform to the modern Dutch road safety policies of Sustainable Safety. Advance stop lines or otherwise little protection at traffic lights on distributor roads is a major cause of collisions, including the death of a 7-year-old girl under a garbage truck in 2013 on a road which did not include protected cycle paths
Size: 5616px × 3744px
Location: The Jewish Cultural Quarter, Amsterdam
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: accidents, amsterdam, bicycle, bicycles, bikes, busy, chain, city, commuters, commuting, congested, congestion, crossing, cultural, culture, cycle, cyclists, friendly, green, handlebars, holland, issues, jewish, junction, lights, markings, mudguards, pavement, portuguese, quarter, road, safety, spokes, synagogue, theft, traffic, transport, trees, tyres, van, wheels
