We landed yesterday afternoon in a City in southern Holland called Eindhoven and one of the first things we noticed as we got off was the bikes and the transit layout. This town is really quiet and was easy to navigate, there were no traffic jams, and not many cars on the road...yet there were ~20 story buildings, and 750,000 people living there. How did they do it?
Everybody rides bikes to get around town. The city is layed out to allow for bikes everywhere very easily and conviently. There are seperate lanes for petestrians, bikes, cars and busses at some places. Tunnels and special bike traffic lights make it easy to cross intersections. All of Holland is like layed out similar to this.
I think it is rad! The results of this system:
- Less traffic
- More healthy people
- Less polution
- More people that can wheelie really well
- Faster for intermediate/short distances
- More biker gangs using their chain locks to terrorize the town
- Better mulit-tasking while biking
- More bike accidents
- Dumb tourists that don't know bike ediquette (we only got honked at once)
- A lot of people on one bike
Amsterdam
With a more bustleing city, it was way tough for us to get a handle (pun intended) on navigating a city on a bike. We never knew when it was ok to cross when the bike light was red; other people would go on the red light and be fine...then right when we try, the cars would start going.
Although difficult to navigate, it was fun. I think I would love it if I knew the town really well and could just cruise to where I was going.
A Sore Butt
We rode around 50 km today on a trip out to an old fishing village north of Amsterdam. Originally we thought the clunkers we rented would be nice b/c they had a big, cushoned seat. We were wrong.
Here is our journey on google maps.
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