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The
World’s Best
Cycling Cities
24 Hours in the City: Amsterdam. In this new series we check out the cities with the most vibrant cycling cultures, starting with one of the most famous, where bikes even outnumber people
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Words & pictures Phil Gale
ention to anyone that you are heading to Amsterdam and a smirk immediately crosses their face. As with any known location, it is the stereotypical view that first springs to mind. For the capital city of the Netherlands that image includes red lights, brown cafes and sex shops. Narrowed-minded as all stereotypes are, this is a small but highly publicised portion of a diverse, cultured, hip and cycling-dominated city.
a city on wheels We’re stood outside Amsterdam’s central train station at 9am and the rush hour traffic is dying down. Unlike the majority of Britain’s larger
cities, London especially, there are fewer traffic jams here, no double decker buses and few people walking. That makes it sound like a very quiet city yet there is a constant flow of people everywhere you look – they’re all on bikes. The sheer number of bikes is what strikes you most vividly when you arrive in Amsterdam, like the slot machines in Las Vegas and red buses in London, bikes are everywhere you look. Bikes parked, bikes being pushed and, most of all, bikes being ridden. It seems as though everyone of any age is out on their bikes, riding on the multitude of bike paths, casually dodging the trams and completely outnumbering the cars. This first observation is soon overtaken by another realisation: For a city so in love with cycling, where are all the cool bikes? It’s ironic that although Amsterdam is full of bikes – city authorities estimate that there are around 881,000 bicycles for a population of