[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".