[rexpress]

>First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country...On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles.

Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.

[tablespoon]

> Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.

I was actually considering making the same point, but sarcastically: "B b but, when I was a tourist visiting the walkable tourist areas Amsterdam where tourists go, I didn't passively observe any locals needing a car!"

It's a mistake to think tourist/visitor experiences give you a good idea what it's like to live anywhere.

[rexpress]

That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas. If you bother to cycle outside the major tourist areas of the Netherlands, whether to minor cities or villages, you'll still notice many people cycling for local journeys.

The mistake is people used to car dependence being unable to imagine any alternative, thus refusing to believe that it can be true.

[tablespoon]

> That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas.

Which is a valid default assumption, unless it's made clear the speaker didn't do that.

Especially in this case, where you have an actual Dutch person who lives in the actual Netherlands getting told they were wrong by someone who cites visitor experiences.

[xputer]

Cycling is ubiquitous in the Netherlands though. Even in small towns. The only place where it's not convenient is if you're living out in the fields in say Flevoland.

[throwaway894345]

How is that a distortion? It seems like you’re violently agreeing with the parent that many people bike to work but far, far fewer than the majority (which is essentially what the American anti-car rhetoric suggests).

> Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.

There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statista) of whom 65% drive (Statista), so an additional half a million would be a 10% traffic increase, which is probably not “gridlock”, but in any case I don’t see how this refutes the original claim that Netherlands is a car country.

[nirimda]

I think the problem is that American anti-car rhetoric doesn't speak with one voice. There are people who know what they're talking about, who are mostly saying "If we follow some of the Dutch practices, we can get a city where people can get to a local destination by bike safely. But we should also take note that even in the Netherlands, the need to engineer roads for bike safety is something they continually forget". But there's others who say "The US is a hell-hole, Americans are evil and dumb, cars are evil, they will destroy the earth, we must all copy the enlightened Europeans who are good and wise people".

It is like that for so many reform proposals. Heterodox economists (MMT or gold standard or anything really) will say "we ought to consider this evidence in making our economic decisions", and their acolytes on forums like this will say "If we adopt this reform, we will be able to solve all our problems, but it's just corruption and self-interested politicians who stop us". Voting system reform people say "The US is screwed by FPTP, if we adopted proportional representation we will depolarise and have a nice consensual politics", but people who study the politics of countries that use proportional representation don't really indicate that (I think in this case there are some political scientists who get close, but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation).

[throwaway894345]

I agree that it’s hard to represent groups accurately, but I don’t think your “person who knows what they’re talking about” falls reasonably within bounds of anyone’s “anti-car” definition. For one, it’s not actually an anti-car argument, it’s a pro-cycling argument and lots of Americans favor safer cycling without getting anywhere near anti-car. Moreover, every identifiably anti-car community I’m aware of (e.g., r/fuckcars) has a tone that is more akin to your “Americans are evil” example—are there identifiably anti-car communities that embody your former example?

[resfirestar]

I don't know of any such communities online, but in real world local politics the first example is more common. People who support things like bike lanes, bus lanes, and light rail don't describe themselves as "anti-car", but their opponents call them that among less polite names, so I'd argue it's the more mainstream definition of anti-car.

[throwaway894345]

Yeah, I think we're talking about different groups. I'm talking about people who self-identify as "anti-car". I've never heard of anyone who uses "anti-car" as a derogatory term for others, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist somewhere. Personally, it seems unreasonable to me to define "anti-car" as "supports other modes of transit"; "anti-car" by my definition (which I think is the main definition) requires emphatic opposition to cars.

[tablespoon]

> ...but only by circularly defining perfection in politics as exhibiting the consequences of proportional representation

Oh, I love "logic" like that. Another common example is: "the free market is the best economic system because the perfect allocation of goods in society is how the market does it."

[rexpress]

The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual. This is obviously incorrectly.

There are various other posts in this thread that also give statistics, and the number of car vs bike journeys is not so far apart.

In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous. Especially within cities bikes carry volumes of people that would overwhelm roads if those people used space-inefficient cars.

[throwaway894345]

> The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual

This isn't a reasonable interpretation. "the norm" only implies that it's the majority mode of transportation (in contrast with the anti-car rhetoric). This implies that other modes are not the majority, but it does not imply that those other modes are particularly rare.

> In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous.

I mean, I showed my math--feel free to point out where I erred, but just stating "it's quite clearly ridiculous" is like putting your fingers in your ears and shouting, "I can't hear you".

[CydeWeys]

You need fine-grained statistics. It certainly isn't true that 65% of the people living or working in big dense Dutch cities like Amsterdam drive to work. That statistic more reflects how much the population of the Netherlands is spread out as a whole, not concentrated in its biggest cities as is more common in many other European countries.

[tromp]

> There are 10 million employed Dutch (Statistica) of whom 65% drive

People don't just commute to work. Millions of Dutch students commute to school and I expect a large majority of those will bike.

[ikesau]

Do you mean Statistica or Statista?

[throwaway894345]

Statista. I’m on mobile and autocorrect is getting me. I edited my post, thanks for the correction.

[twic]

Generalising from the centre of a city to the whole country is a distortion. Last time i was in the Netherlands, i arrived in Amsterdam, then went out to the countryside, somewhere near Dedemsvaart. I looked at doing the trip by public transport, but it would have taken forever. Instead, we rented a car and drove there, along wide, fast, busy roads. The Netherlands is indeed a heavily motorised country.

[rexpress]

Dutch cycling infrastructure is close to ubiquitous, extending practically the length and breadth of the country. The idea that bikes are used only in city centres is another distortion. But of course the bike tends to be used for shorter, local trips.

Your (roughly 130 km) journey would have been less fast had those people making their shorter distance journeys by bike got into their cars instead.

[xputer]

You'll find plenty of people cycling in Dedemsvaart itself though. Nobody is claiming cars don't have their place. It just shouldn't be the default mode - or even worse, the only viable option - for every single trip.

[macNchz]

> The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock.

Having visited Amsterdam by chance after missing a flight to London due to NYC gridlock traffic, this was one of my first thoughts on arrival.

[hintymad]

It seems you're assuming that majority of the people live in the city or would love in a city? Many people, me included, do not want to live in a city, at least not in an American city. What a city boasts to offer are not relevant to my life: bars, shops, boutique stores, fancy restaurants, active social circles, loud parties, fashion shows, you name it. All those activities are just either too noisy or too crowded. On the other hand, there's not enough outdoor activities in a city. Things are so small in a city too. I want to stay in a spacious coffee shop talking to my friends without raising my voice. I want to have a huge gym instead of those crammed multi-floor ones in a city. I want to have a house that has large enough backyard and front yard and quiet streets for my kids to play around. I want to be able to play drum on my front yard and my neighbors won't hear a thing (I'm exaggerating but you get the idea). I want to be able to hop on a vehicle to ski in a place no more than 30 minutes away from my home whenever I want to. And I certainly don't want to take a bus for grocery shopping for a family of 6. The only thing in a city that I miss is those amazing huge libraries. God I enjoy spending my whole day there.

And if I can afford such life without a car, I'm all for it. But I don't know how.

[kamaal]

>>Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is.

Your parent comment is saying the same thing. Stay inside the city, close enough to your office that you can reach it by a bicycle. Of course in that case you could say the rent you would be pay would be equally higher. Plus not every one can afford to do that(given school availability, and your spouse office has to be close by too).

On a net basis, its again the same thing. You just pay for your time with higher rents.

[cscurmudgeon]

What fraction of Netherlands lives in a city vs the rural areas?

[yourusername]

Even in the most urbanised part of the country most people still drive for most distances over ~5km. If you have to get from one side of Rotterdam to the other side a car is much faster than a bike or public transportation.

[nayuki]

Rotterdam is much more car-friendly than Amsterdam.

Not Just Bikes: "Rotterdam: the City Rebuilt for Cars": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ovt1EMULY