Bike Infrastructure: Bike Traveling the Netherlands/Belguim

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam is the only city I’ve ever flown into for a bike trip and been able to get on a bike lane directly outside the airport and follow it all the way to the city center. After two weeks of biking around the Netherlands and Belgium, 100% of the time I rode on either a designated or protected bike lane. Cars actually yield to cyclists, and at times, the bike lane was bigger than the car lane. When a bike lane crosses through traffic, there are designated lights signaling when it’s the cyclist’s turn to cross.  This is all very foreign to me. Having done a lot of bike tours across America, I’m used to airport transportation being really congested and dangerous for cyclists, bike lanes suddenly ending and merging directly into the flow of traffic, and aggressive cars bulldozing past cyclists. There’s approximately 880,000 bicycles in Amsterdam alone, making it more bikes than people living in this amazing city. I don’t know what came first, the bike infrastructure or the massive amount of bicyclists , all I know is that we have a long way to go to make U.S. cities more supportive of comprehensive bicycle transportation.

Brugge, Belgium

Netherlands during Spring tulip season

Netherlands during Spring tulip season

Netherlands during Spring tulip season