mattheus wrote: 17 Jan 2025, 10:38am
... and what about France, Belgium, Italy, Eire ...
Have the stats been cherry-picked?!?
[I'm not saying we can't learn from Germany and NED by the way; just be careful how you interpret statistics ... ]
Yes these statistics have been cherry picked. They have purposefully chosen the countries with the best representation of female cyclists to show what could possibly be achieved - that's the point. Probably are quite a few countries that are worse than us.
Why is fewer female cyclists worse?
I replied to you with an answer to this earlier up the thread, in response to an earlier post.
Why do you think that fewer cyclists is not worse?
Yes these statistics have been cherry picked. They have purposefully chosen the countries with the best representation of female cyclists to show what could possibly be achieved - that's the point. Probably are quite a few countries that are worse than us.
Why is fewer female cyclists worse?
I replied to you with an answer to this earlier up the thread, in response to an earlier post.
Why do you think that fewer cyclists is not worse?
Different choices isn't a bad thing. Around here swimming is roughly 50:50. Perhaps a few more female runners. Fewer female cyclists. Exercise is a good thing. It isn't any better if it is cycling. It is neither better or worse that female cyclists are a minority.
irc wrote: 20 Jan 2025, 9:30am
Exercise is a good thing. It isn't any better if it is cycling. It is neither better or worse that female cyclists are a minority.
I will politely disagree, but looks like we are looking it from different angles.
Transport isn't always a good thing. It is better if it is cycling. It is worse that female cyclists are a minority.
irc wrote: 20 Jan 2025, 9:30am
Exercise is a good thing. It isn't any better if it is cycling. It is neither better or worse that female cyclists are a minority.
I will politely disagree, but looks like we are looking it from different angles.
Transport isn't always a good thing. It is better if it is cycling. It is worse that female cyclists are a minority.
If you are only including trips where a bike was transport as an alternative to bus/train/car/walk I think the numbers are so low as to be just noise. Most cyclists I see in my suburb north of Glasgow are recreational riders, either roadies or MTB riders. The number of bikes used for the commute into Glasgow or for local utility trips is tiny. A recent survey found that the number of trips to school or to the supermarket was 2%. However that was based on asking people about past journeys. I suspect those numbers are inflated by people saying what they think is a good thing. Our supermarket has around a couple of hundred spaces. Most times I visit there is no bikes parked outside. We are on the main route to the local secondary school. The catchment area is up to two miles from the school. Ideal cycling distance. I can't remember the last time I saw a kid cycling to school.
So whether female cyclists are 0.5% of local journeys or 1% will not really make much difference.
Come to think of it I cycle around three times a week and never to replace a local car journey. Very often I combine a short trip with taking the dogs somewhere to walk. Doesn't work with a bike. Or more than a panniers worth of shopping the car is more convenient.
Of course this is just one local area, Other places are different.
According to stats from Cycling UK, 75% of cycling trips in the UK are made by men - but women are increasingly turning to the gym and indoor classes for their biking fix. Nuala discusses how we can get more women cycling, inside and outside, with Michelle Arthurs Brennan, digital editor at Cycling Weekly, and Clare Rogers from the London Cycling Campaign women's network.
I think this comes back to "what do we mean by cycling" and how it fits in with culture (which is in turn determined to quite a degree by the environment, physical and psychological and political).
I have a couple of cycling sisters-in-law. One is British, and she is a keen triathlete and doesn't really use bikes for utilitarian transport. The other is Dutch and I think only uses her bike for utilitarian transport. The former makes considerable use of a turbo trainer, the latter I doubt any.
Both are "cyclists" but are doing quite different things with bikes. Around Den Haag the culture is such that there's a fairly even split between men and women. Around Peebles the culture is quite different and one sees far more men on bikes. Why the difference? In large part, Culture.
pjclinch wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 3:45pm
Around Den Haag the culture is such that there's a fairly even split between men and women. Around Peebles the culture is quite different and one sees far more men on bikes. Why the difference? In large part, Culture.
Pete.
You might well be right but cultures evolve over time and are shaped by - amongst other things - geography. It quick look at the terrain around Den Haag - which is similar to much of The Netherlands - shows that it’s basically flat, whereas Peebles - and much of the UK - is hilly, too hilly for easy cycling.
Don’t fret, it’s OK to: ride a simple old bike; ride slowly, walk, rest and admire the view; ride off-road; ride in your raincoat; ride by yourself; ride in the dark; and ride one hundred yards or one hundred miles. Your bike and your choices to suit you.
I live in Holland, the one in Lincolnshire. Mostly flat as a table, like our namesake across the North Sea.
Once there was plenty of utility cycling, but now as little as elsewhere in this car dominated island. Culture, in a broad sense, is my guess.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Mike Sales wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 4:44pm
I live in Holland, the one in Lincolnshire. Mostly flat as a table, like our namesake across the North Sea.
Once there was plenty of utility cycling, but now as little as elsewhere in this car dominated island. Culture, in a broad sense, is my guess.
Fair comment. In general I really don’t understand why there isn’t more utility cycling -used mine today for just that - but when you already have a car and limited time to get from A to B then people are inclined to use the car; the car’s: effortless, quick, out of the weather, and only a marginal cost.
At one time we pretty much all lived with a few miles of where we worked, we couldn’t afford a car but could cycle, walk or use public transport. Now it’s common for people to commute many miles to work, a cultural shift, and car use has allowed that change. Having got a car and used to using it - or being a passenger in one - the culture no longer supports active travel and particularly so when noticeable physical effort is involved.
Don’t fret, it’s OK to: ride a simple old bike; ride slowly, walk, rest and admire the view; ride off-road; ride in your raincoat; ride by yourself; ride in the dark; and ride one hundred yards or one hundred miles. Your bike and your choices to suit you.
pjclinch wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 3:45pm
Around Den Haag the culture is such that there's a fairly even split between men and women. Around Peebles the culture is quite different and one sees far more men on bikes. Why the difference? In large part, Culture.
You might well be right but cultures evolve over time and are shaped by - amongst other things - geography. It quick look at the terrain around Den Haag - which is similar to much of The Netherlands - shows that it’s basically flat, whereas Peebles - and much of the UK - is hilly, too hilly for easy cycling.
Well... not really. Ever been to Nijmegen? Far hillier around town than Peebles manages, and lots of cycling. And while Peebles is surrounded by hills it's really not difficult to ride around, with an absence of big hills in the town itself and a fairly compact area.
And that's even without an ebike which would flatten what hills around town there are.
The assumption that the UK is built on cliffs and thus unsuitable for Normal People to ride bikes is a modern rationalisation of driving that never seemed to trouble the working population much before cars were the norm: in other words, culture.
Much as perception of risk rather than actual risk purs folk off, so it's perception of topography and bad weather more than actual contours and rainfall figures.
Mike Sales wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 6:39pm
Somehow the factors you rightly list have not applied quite as completely in the Netherlands.
That’s because the Netherlands is a sizeable geographic area that is both basically flat and has a sizeable population with a national identity. It’s their way of life to cycle and it became their way of life because the geography lends itself to it.
Don’t fret, it’s OK to: ride a simple old bike; ride slowly, walk, rest and admire the view; ride off-road; ride in your raincoat; ride by yourself; ride in the dark; and ride one hundred yards or one hundred miles. Your bike and your choices to suit you.
Carlton green wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 5:29pm
but when you already have a car and limited time to get from A to B then people are inclined to use the car; the car’s: effortless, quick, out of the weather, and only a marginal cost.
Every time I’ve been in the position where I am cycling and others are driving between two points in a town; I have arrived first. In the case of pubs I’ve sometimes had enough time to finish my first pint before they arrive.
Mike Sales wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 6:39pm
Somehow the factors you rightly list have not applied quite as completely in the Netherlands.
That’s because the Netherlands is a sizeable geographic area that is both basically flat and has a sizeable population with a national identity. It’s their way of life to cycle and it became their way of life because the geography lends itself to it.
It became their way of life because of the political will to change in light of the oil,crisis in the 1970s. We went the other way and our political classes promoted the American car centric model.
Mike Sales wrote: 21 Jan 2025, 6:39pm
Somehow the factors you rightly list have not applied quite as completely in the Netherlands.
That’s because the Netherlands is a sizeable geographic area that is both basically flat and has a sizeable population with a national identity. It’s their way of life to cycle and it became their way of life because the geography lends itself to it.
It became their way of life because of the political will to change in light of the oil,crisis in the 1970s. We went the other way and our political classes promoted the American car centric model.
See below:
Cycling became popular in the Netherlands a little later than it did in the United States and Britain, which experienced their bike booms in the 1880s, but by the 1890s the Dutch were already building dedicated paths for cyclists.[8] By 1911, the Dutch owned more bicycles per capita than any other country in Europe.[8]
Geography, built environment and weather
The Netherlands is a relatively densely populated and very flat country, which means that journey distances tend to be short, even between towns. (It can be very windy though.)
The cool climate of the Netherlands means that one can cycle very short distances without breaking into a sweat. This means that people can cycle to work or school without having to shower or wash straight afterwards, as they more often might have to do in warm, hot or humid climates.
Then, much like it had in other developed nations, the privately owned motor car became more affordable and therefore more commonly in use and bicycles as a result less popular. That is: ownership still remained high, but use fell to around 800 km annually.[9] Even so, the number of Dutch people cycling was very high compared to other European nations.[8]
The trend away from the bicycle and towards motorised transport only began to decrease in the 1970s when Dutch people took to the streets to protest against the high number of child deaths on the roads: in some years over 500 children were killed in collisions with motor vehicles.[10] This protest movement, initiated by Maartje van Putten (later an MEP),[11][12] was known as the Stop de Kindermoord ("Stop the Child Murder").[10] [13] The success of this movement—along with other factors, such as the oil shortages of 1973–74[14] and the publication of the CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic—turned government policy around. The country began to restrict urban motor vehicle use and direct its focus on growth towards other forms of transport, with the bicycle perceived as critical in making streets safer and towns and cities more people-friendly and livable.
An interesting article that’s well worth the few minutes that it takes to read.
Don’t fret, it’s OK to: ride a simple old bike; ride slowly, walk, rest and admire the view; ride off-road; ride in your raincoat; ride by yourself; ride in the dark; and ride one hundred yards or one hundred miles. Your bike and your choices to suit you.
But you're drawing the wrong conclusions from it, and missing points that don't back up your idea.
The flat landscape is not the factor it's widely assumed to be. Cross over the North Sea to the Fens and you have very similar flat geography, and actually lower rainfall, but you see far less cycling.
The historical thing is not that relevant today because many countries had strong cycling cultures in the early years of cycling, I'll refer you to Carlton Reid's "Roads were not built for cars" for a good account of how road development in the late 19th Century was mainly pushed by cycling rather than cars. And come the post-war years the Netherlands were going down the same car-centric policies as most other western nations: it's very easy to find pictures of Amsterdam from the 60s and 70s with wall to wall cars, just like other major western cities.
What changed things was probably the Stop de Kindermoord campaign, noted in the article quoted and in the quotes given here. What that led to was political will to stand against unfettered motor-centric planning and prioritising, and that has made riding around the streets for transport far easier and more pleasant than in other places. These are planning interventions mostly from the last 40 years or so, nothing much to do with what was happening in the years around WW1.
It is the planning regime in NL that makes it a great place to ride bikes. The quite often flat land certainly doesn't hinder things but it's vastly over-stated, and that cycling doesn't fall off in those hilly bits of NL up against the borders (e.g. around Nijmegen) show this. That you can be literally a few meters over the border and see the deterioration in cycle provision, just in terms of did the planners really think about things without a car-head on, further emphasises the point.
And that's why cycling is a typical transport choice for a Dutch person in a Dutch town. It's easy to do, it is easier to do than use a car, so people do it without cycling being a hobby. in other words, people treat bikes as utilitarian tools in the same way that a ttypical Brit uses a car.
This is much clearer riding around the place than reading articles. I spend a fair bit of time there as I have a Dutch wife and thus family, and after 20 years of fairly regular visits I'm still taken aback by the sheer volume of general cycling and how easy the planning system makes it compared to other places, including right next door.
