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Comment by klaaz0r | Hacker News Reader

Living in Utrecht I can say: it's amazing, going to work? 10 minutes, going to the station? 10 minutes. Basically anything is within maximum 20 minutes cycling distance. In the rare occasion I do take the car, the city is still surprisingly accessible.

The only thing I hope they will change in the future is removing motorised vehicles from the bicycle lanes, scooters/e-bikes are just too fast and break the whole flow of traffic. Seeing that scooters are already banned from the cycling lanes in Amsterdam I think it will happen soon in Utrecht.

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As another Utrechter I'm really impressed with the large bicycle garages on either side of the new railway station. It really makes cycling from and to the station a great experience. There are quite a few grand new railway stations that have been built in the NL: Rotterdam central station, Utrecht central station, Arnhem station. Recently I was moved when I realised that they're the cathedrals of our time. Shared architectural spaces that are big communal efforts and will be of great value for all for decades to come.

Does the bike garage not fill up over time withlost/abandoned/forgotten bikes?

They go through every now and then and tag every bike with a paper tag, a couple weeks later they remove all the bikes with the tag still on.

I ride my e-bike at 15-20mph. The assist stops at 20 and I only ever exceed it downhill. Are there really not a ton of athletic cyclists going faster than this under their own power? Around here, serious riders would find that laughably slow.

I find the electric assist is not so much about going faster as making transportation into a non-event and avoiding exertion.

Dutch cycling culture is pragmatic rather than macho. Of course many people can go faster, but you don't want to arrive sweaty at work. Commuters don't usually use racing bikes either, but bikes optimised for comfort and carrying capacity. Biking for sport is a thing, but very much separate from daily cycling. It's the same difference as walking to get somewhere and running for sport.

The people in this video appear to be barely exerting themselves and are going around 8 MPH.

The issue with ebikes is on hills. Sure, regular bikes have no problem on flats and especially on downhills but if you are going uphill it can disconcerting when an ebike flies past you at 20mph.

I’m a pretty serious mountain biker and that is the main reason ebikes are being banned on a lot of trails.

Ah, I found the American...

Here in the Netherlands the bike paths are almost entirely occupied by people old and young biking on cheap bikes as a form of transportation, unlike in America where biking is dominated by 30-55 year old men on $1000+ bikes wearing criminally tight pants, sunglasses, and aerodynamic helmets. Nearly nobody is going 32km/hr on the bike path in the Netherlands, yes. 25km/hr, sure, there are a few (pizza delivery guys on e-bikes and scooters) but most people are not going this fast.

On the bike path inside cities you'll mostly see people going 16-10 km/h. You won't see a helmet on anyone except a confused tourist or the police. You'll also see grandmas, children, and just about everyone on a bike. Many of these bikes would horrify an American bike enthusiast with their copious rust and "deferred maintenance" to put it lightly, but they serve millions of people just fine with few accidents.

The Netherlands is free to set any laws it wants about where scooters are allowed, but if you're talking about the 25 km/h limited pedelec E-Bikes they're allowed on the bicycle lanes by an EU-wide legislation that The Netherlands is subject to.

This is for a different kind of accessibility; the one for the people you're not thinking of with your bike lanes.

As somebody who likes walkable, bikeable areas; I find that a lot of "cities for people" folks are, ideologically, a couple hops away from culling the disabled to make way for their utopia. I'm only half-joking.

And frankly, assisted or not a bike-like vehicle going 25 km/h shouldn't normally be a problem on a cycling lane.

They do have to be bike-like though, if you take a scooter slap some pedals on it and fill it to the brim with batteries and try to use that on a bike line then there are likely going to be problems, luckily this doesn't seem to have happened yet.

I felt the same way living in Amsterdam for a few months - 10 minute cycle to almost everywhere I wanted to go.

Compared to my commute in London now, 45 minutes on a cramped, hot, loud tube.

Yes, I wished they could do something about the loud tube lines. Seriously thinking I have damaged my hearing because of it

This has been such a positive change in Amsterdam

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