Bike Rush Hour

[uhhuhlex]

I found this video on www.likecool.com today and thought I'd share here.

Morning rush hour in the 4th largest city in the Netherlands. Streets look like this when 33% of ALL trips are made by bicycle!

This is an ordinary Wednesday morning in April 2010 at around 8.30 am. Original time was 8 minutes that were compressed into 2 minutes, so everything is 4 times faster than in reality. The sound is original.

Comments

[beachlass]

That is so awesome. Thanks for sharing it!

[dragonfly]

That is very cool!

[temve]

Heh - cool video. And having once gone to the considerable trouble of trying to park a car in Utrecht, I say biking is definitely the best way to get around the place. Especially as many of the old lanes and alleys by the side of the canals (yes, it's not just Amsterdam that has 'em) are too narrow to be useful for car traffic but make for excellent two-lane bike roads :)

Odd to see almost no helmets though...

[beachlass]

There was an article in last month's Walrus magazine about European urban/ecological design, and in it there's a bit about how eventually the author and his family gave up wearing their bike helmets, because without all the car traffic, the danger isn't as present.

[juliet]

Helmets are a minority thing in the UK as well, fwiw. (Although not nearly-zero as in that video.) After a lot of effort by the various London cycling campaigns, promo photos etc for cycling in London usually don't have helmets in, either. (or lycra, or... cycling shown as a-thing-you-do-in-normal-clothes, as it is in other places where lots of journeys are made by bike.)

That is a v cool video! I like seeing the number of bikes around in London at rush hour (especially now the sun's come out again) but it's nowhere near as many as that. Yet! :)

[darkemeralds]

I LOVE that video! I've watched it a bunch of times, and there's so much to love in it: the nice clothes, the Dutch bikes, the relative quiet of the commute, the simple, sort of businesslike riding...and of course the fantastic infrastructure.

They don't wear helmets in the Netherlands (or Denmark for that matter) because they see no evidence that riding a bike is a dangerous sport, and from all I can gather, would see a helmet on a bike rider as silly, much like a helmet on a pedestrian.