Why does Amsterdam have so many bikes?

More bicycles than people

The city’s statisticians put the number of bicycles in Amsterdam at more than 900,000 in 2017, when four out of five residents aged twelve or over owned one. At the start of 2019 the city had about 863,000 residents. That is more than one bicycle for every person, babies included.

They are ridden, too. In 2022 one in three journeys made by people who live here was by bicycle. At the end of the last century it was less than a quarter. Cars are scarcer than you might expect: early in 2023 there were 0.4 private cars for every household, the lowest figure of any municipality in the Netherlands.

Flat, small and nearly lost to the car

Geography helps. The city is flat and small, so most trips are short. Cycling here is old, too. The first cycle paths in Amsterdam were laid in 1925, in the Van Woustraat, the Rijnstraat and on the Amsteldijk. In 1959 the Dutch cycled about 1,500 kilometres a head, a peak that has not been matched since.

Then came the car, and roads were rebuilt to suit it. Between 1964 and 1974 cycling in the Netherlands fell sharply, and in the mid-1970s people rode about 700 kilometres a year, less than half the old figure. In 1967 an American traffic expert, David Jokinen, proposed filling in the Singelgracht for a six-lane motorway and pulling down two whole districts, De Pijp and the Kinkerbuurt. His plan was buried in criticism and very little of it was built.

What changed in the 1970s

Road deaths in the Netherlands reached their peak in 1972, at more than 3,200 in one year, and many of the dead were children. A campaign called Stop de Kindermoord, “stop the child murder”, was founded in March 1973. A cyclists’ union followed in October 1975. Together with the oil shortage of 1973 and 1974, the protests turned government policy round.

Amsterdam’s traffic plan of 1978 gave priority to cycling, above all to cycle paths set apart from the road, and took space from motor traffic to make them. From 1977 the distance the Dutch cycled began to climb again. What you see in the streets today goes back to those choices.

Where to see it

Start at Amsterdam Centraal. Under the water in front of the station lies a garage for 7,000 bicycles. It opened on 26 January 2023 and was then the largest in the city. Moving walkways take you down to it. A second, for 4,000, opened a month later on the other side of the station, built in the water of the IJ.

At the Rijksmuseum, stand in the passage under the building. The museum itself says a route through it was required in the original commission, so that the building would be a gateway between the old town and the new districts to the south. Cars have been kept out since 1931. When the museum was rebuilt between 2003 and 2013 the passage was shut, and there was a long argument over whether bicycles should come back. The cyclists’ union and a committee called Red de Onderdoorgang, “save the underpass”, pressed for it. In May 2013 the bicycles returned.

Then go on to the Vondelpark, where the argument is older still. In the 1880s and 1890s the park’s managers tried to curb cyclists with special paths, limited hours and fines for anyone going faster than a horse’s trot. In 1893 cycling was allowed after much debate, and then only in the morning.