The Netherlands will pay people to ride bikes

The Dutch gov­ern­ment recent­ly announced that it will invest $390 mil­lion (€345 mil­lion) in cycling infra­struc­ture to get 200,000 more peo­ple com­mut­ing by bike in three years’ time.

Fif­teen routes will be devel­oped into “cyclist free­ways” (high­ways that cater to those on bikes), 25,000 bike park­ing spaces will be cre­at­ed and more than 60 bike stor­age facil­i­ties will be upgrad­ed, accord­ing to the Min­istry of Infra­struc­ture and Water Man­age­ment.

“My ambi­tion is to ensure that peo­ple can eas­i­ly get to work or school, or vis­it fam­i­ly and friends,” says Stien­t­je van Veld­hoven, state sec­re­tary for that depart­ment, who is spear­head­ing the project.

Getting more people on bikes

It’s not that peo­ple aren’t already cycling in the Nether­lands. In 2016, over a quar­ter of all trips made by Dutch res­i­dents were by bike, accord­ing to the Nether­lands Insti­tute for Trans­port Pol­i­cy Analy­sis.

But only 25% of those trips were work-relat­ed, com­pared to 37% which were made for leisure. The rest were for school, shop­ping, or oth­er activ­i­ties.

Accord­ing to van Veld­hoven, more than 50% of peo­ple in the Nether­lands live less than 15 kilo­me­ters from work, and more than half of com­muters’ car trips are under 7.5 kilo­me­ters long — a dis­tance that “can eas­i­ly be cov­ered by bike,” she says.