[mcv]

Average cycling speed depends a lot on how hard the cyclist is willing to work for it. Most aren not willing to work at all, and on a regular city bike, that means most people will go about 15 km/h. Speed maniacs (like me) will have an average speed of over 20 km/h (on a cargo bike) or even 30 km/h on a sport or racing bike.

I'm completely unable to not work myself into a sweat when cycling, but I'm not remotely average. Average cyclists include children, elderly people, disabled people. People with kids, people with cargo, and many, many people not in any kind of hurry.

  > There are many streets in cities that have multiple-lanes for same direction traffic.

In Amsterdam, there's about a handful, and some of those have higher speed limits. They're the main thoroughfares that you don't want obstructed with slow traffic. The vast, vast majority of streets have only a single lane for cars in each direction, and a bike lane or bike path next to it.