The guide claims that nevertheless on average one car a week falls in. That information along with some other claims made on those tapes tends to puzzle Amsterdammers who accompany their tourist friends for at canal tour.
In Amsterdam whenever a car falls into a canal a special diving team of the Fire Brigade springs into action. Amsterdam is the only city in the Netherlands that has four professional divers on call 24 hours a day. Nicholas, there are four extra divers on standby.
In most cases cars end up in a canal as the result of an accident, but sometimes vandalism comes into play. That was the case in, for instance, April , when a Fiat was pushed into the Leidsegracht. Many Amsterdam houseboats are connected to the sewer system; many not yet.
Family bike. An overabundance of bicycles has appeared in the city. There are , bicycles in comparison to a population of , city inhabitants. Even before they can walk, Dutch children are immersed in a world of cycling. As the children grow up they take to their own bikes, something made easier and safer by the discrete cycle lanes being wide enough for children to ride alongside an accompanying adult. Cycling is an expensive hobby. The fact that there are also other extremely expensive hobbies does not mitigate that.
The fact that cycling is a great form of physical fitness also does not mitigate the fact that it is expensive.
There are also a lot of very inexpensive hobbies. To begin cycling, all that you really need is a bike. In all the city wants to initially create Well, that was true in and at least, according to the bi-annual Copenhagenize Index. But in its edition, Copenhagen edged out Amsterdam. Referring to the latter, the Index noted that. While the city finished with a higher baseline score, it lagged behind in the race for bonus points.
Amsterdam, like most Dutch cities, suffers from their insistence on maintaining a status quo, rather than trying to improve, think modern and take things to the next level. Then, in , the index ranked Amsterdam in third place — with Copenhagen still leading the list, and the Dutch city of Utrecht ranking second.
Amsterdam remains the most amazing bicycle city. It scored highest in the baseline score in the Index, as it did in , but it stumbles when it comes to the bonus points that reflect the dynamics in a city moving forward.
Indeed, watching Utrecht passing by into second place shows that the city needs to dust off its gameface. In the edition Amsterdam is in second place again — still behind Copenhagen, but ahead of Utrecht. But Copenhagenize notes that. Since the last index, the City has released an ambitious new bicycle plan for that focuses on improving bicycle parking and existing bicycle infrastructure. These corridors include measures to allow for a lower stress cycling experience during rush hour periods.
Some of these measures include widening existing cycle tracks to 2. By , the City will be removing over 11, car parking spaces from the city centre 1, per year , to be replaced with bicycle parking, street trees and better walking environments. More bicycle paths have been added. Existing bike lines most of which are red in color have been upgraded and where possible widened. Since April mopeds have been banned from using bike paths in the center of town.
They now share the road with other motorized traffic. Not surprisingly, unofficial statistics already show a marked decrease in the number of accidents on bike paths since then. Observers note that the Copenhagenize Index of Bike-Friendly Cities is in essence a marketing tool for the city of Copenhagen.
But we are better at communicating how well we are doing. Meanwhile, reality is that Amsterdam remains the bicycle capital of the world. Effective July 1, , it is illegal to hold or touch your phone while riding a bike anywhere in the Netherlands. During a television speech, prime minister Den Uyl urged Dutch citizens to adopt a new lifestyle and get serious about saving energy.
The government proclaimed a series of car-free Sundays: intensely quiet weekend days when children played on deserted motorways and people were suddenly reminded of what life was like before the hegemony of the car. On one of these car-free Sundays, Maartje van Putten, together with a group of other parents and children, rode her bike through a tunnel to the northern part of Amsterdam, in which no provisions for cyclists had been made. Our trip ended at the police station, but we made our point.
In the s, Dutch towns and cities began introducing measures to make their streets more cycle-friendly. Initially, their aims were far from ambitious; the idea was simply to keep cyclists on their bikes. The Hague and Tilburg were the first to experiment with special cycle routes through the city. It certainly helped to keep people on their bikes, but in the end it turned out that one single bicycle route did not lead to an overall increase in cycling.
Subsequently, the city of Delft constructed a whole network of cycle paths and it turned out that this did encourage more people to get on their bikes. One by one, other cities followed suit. Nowadays the Netherlands boasts 22, miles of cycle paths.
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