A short ride? Then you take the bike, right?

Good intentions

State Secretary Heijnen: “Living healthier and exercising more is at the top of many people’s list of good intentions at the beginning of each new year. With this campaign we lend a helping hand. It is often wonderful to take the bike for short distances. A bit of exercise, a breath of fresh air and an empty head. Where there is more cycling, the air often literally and figuratively clears”.

Cycling Country Netherlands

The Netherlands is already a true cycling country. A quarter of all travel in our country is by bicycle, which is nowhere in the world as high. Moreover, our country has more bicycles than inhabitants. Yet there is also much to be gained. Half of all car trips are shorter than 7.5 kilometers and a third are shorter than 5 kilometers. Behavioral research by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Works shows that nearly 7 in 10 intensive car users would like to take the bike more often for short trips.

Increase awareness

Targeted communications that highlight people’s motivations, such as health, environment and money, can help. That is precisely the goal of the campaign; to raise awareness and positively encourage people to take their bikes more often for short trips. It’s good for your body, for your wallet and for nature.

Three-year campaign

The campaign will last three years. Expressions of the campaign can be seen from today on all national TV channels, on radio, online and outdoors. Think about the back of buses, advertising pillars and on bus shelters, both digitally and with a large poster. At several points each year, the central government monitors whether the campaign is achieving its intended effect.

Biking more often

The government would like more people who can do so to take a bike, for example to work. One of the concrete goals is to have 20% more people biking to work by 2027 than in 2017; another is to have 100,000 more people biking to work by early 2025 than by early 2022. To make that possible, the government is working with provinces in municipalities to invest in better bicycle facilities. In October last year, State Secretary Heijnen therefore announced an investment of nearly 800 million euros in cycling.

Forward bike routes

Consider better parking at stations, more through-bike routes and new bicycle connections to make residential areas more accessible. In addition, the government is working with provinces and municipalities to improve safety for cyclists in traffic. There will be a multi-year bicycle safety plan and state, provinces and municipalities are making investments across the country to make busy places or places with high accident rates safer. There are also now programs in more than 200 municipalities to help seniors who want to and can cycle into old age do so as safely as possible.

Fun fact

On a regular bicycle, workers cycle an average of 4.5 kilometers per trip. That’s 9 kilometers there and back. People with e-bikes on average travel longer distances to work, 7.6 kilometers. Average of 15.2 kilometers round trip.

Of 8.6 million employees, an average of 30% come to work by bicycle. Cycling is most popular in the nonprofit sector, and even in highly urban environments, people are so far more likely to choose cycling than outside it. (Source: Pilot bicycle monitoring NVP, Kantar, June 2019.) Knowing more? Check out this website: www.daszogefietst.nl.