BIKE CITY AMSTERDAM

This book was sponsored by:

© 2019 Fred Feddes & Marjolein de Lange

© 2019 Uitgeverij Bas Lubberhuizen

All rights reserved

Translation Beter Engels Vertaalbureau

Text and picture editing Sytze van der Veen

Correction Rowan Hewison

Design Moker Ontwerp

Cover photo Ed van der Elsken/Hollandse Hoogte

NUR 693

ISBN 978 90 593 7547 5

www.fredfeddes.nl

www.lubberhuizen.nl

Deze digitale editie is gemaakt naar de eerste druk, 2019, met ISBN 978 90 593 7534 5

Contents

Hop on

1      The bicycle under pressure

2      Hidden benefits

3      Vehicle of the revolution

4      A permanent home

5      Amsterdam takes a turn

6      Redesigning the street

7      “It was hot, it was fun”

8      “A passageway fit for a prince”

9      An embarrassment of riches

10     Toward a bicycle city

Notes

Acknowledgements

Hop on

could have looked very differently, for instance the way the brothers Rudolf and Robbert Das pictured the city in 1966. Like so many of their contemporaries, they feared that the city would become thoroughly congested and unliveable. To maintain living space, they proposed the kind of intervention that had been performed in other and similar cities. They drew a network of wide highways where car traffic could circulate freely, thereby reducing pressure on the city center and residential districts. High-rise construction set in greenery and futuristic forms of public transport such as the monorail and the ‘tele canapé’ complete the vision of the future in the year 2000.¹

Some fifty years on, we can see that history chose a different course. Some predictions have come true: the number of cars in the Netherlands has indeed reached the level anticipated in 1966, and the Das brothers’ highways have been built, though not through the center but in a wide circle around the city. But the biggest and most phenomenal difference between the future then and the present now is the bicycle.

Take a close look at the Das picture, reproduced here on pages 30-31. We can see around 130 cars, and little dots here and there representing pedestrians, but not a single bike. This is remarkable, for if the brothers had glanced out the window in 1966, they would have seen thousands of bikes. But in a way those who cycled in 1966 were actually already cycling in the past; at least, that’s what most experts and politicians firmly believed. The logic of development was inexorable: everything and everyone would rely on motorized mobility, and bicycle traffic was doomed to die out.

The concern the brothers felt for the human living space in the city was justified, but their single-minded focus on advanced technological innovations means that their future vision is now thoroughly antiquated. Amsterdam managed to create a different sort of future, as anyone can see who looks out an Amsterdam window today. Instead of dying out, from the 1960s on the bicycle rolled into an ever-brighter future, increasingly consolidated by the city’s continuing commitment to accommodate the bicycle.

Bike City Amsterdam explores this patient, still imperfect yet wondrous metamorphosis. The book is for Amsterdam citizens who see cycling through town as purely a matter of course, and for international visitors who look on in amazement and wonder how Amsterdam managed to achieve what practically no other city anywhere in the world has achieved. It is a book as much about the city as about the bicycle, about their symbiosis and their conflicts, about the relationship they entered into over the past half century, and about the opportunities that await in the next half century.

Bike City Amsterdam is a story about citizens and city administrators, about bicycle activists and bicycle policy, about technology and culture, about old and new bottlenecks, about what makes Amsterdam unique and what others can learn from it, about the beauty of simplicity, about everyday cycling life and about remarkable places such as the bicycle passage beneath the Rijksmuseum. We invite the reader to hop on a bike, to pedal through history, and to experience the city through the eyes and with the cadence of the cyclist.

“Progress means replacing one habit by a better habit,” said the Dutch philosopher René Gude.² It makes an apt motto for the bicycle city of Amsterdam. Cycling is the better habit. Cycling is progress. That’s how we make this city.

Traffic on the bridge over Kloveniersburgwal between Oude and Nieuwe Hoogstraat. Photo by Ben van Meerendonk, October 13, 1949.

1 The bicycle under pressure

“It was not easy to pedal their way through the crowds.” Four brothers in traditional Dutch costumes are on their way from their home island of Marken to visit their Uncle Johannes in Hillegom, where an exciting adventure with tulips awaits them. On the way they pass through Amsterdam, where they are astonished by the number of people cycling.

Marken, Hillegom, tulips, the crowds of cyclists filling Amsterdam’s streets: the perfect ingredients for an American children’s book, and indeed, The Busiest Boy in Holland, written and illustrated by Lisl Weil, was published in Boston in 1959. It reflects the romanticized American image of the Netherlands, where the bicycle is omnipresent and omnipotent. We might see the occasional car or tram on Amsterdam’s streets, but they are literally relegated to the margins.¹

The scene in this children’s book is just one in a long series of foreign portrayals of the Netherlands as an exotic country where the bicycle reigns supreme. The first astonished accounts appeared shortly after the First World War, when the bicycle began to become commonplace. The unending stories about this miraculous cycling paradise at the edge of the North Sea have not ceased to flow ever since. In reality, the history of Amsterdam as a city of bicycles has experienced an erratic rise, decline and resurrection. When The Busiest Boy appeared in the late 1950s, the bicycle’s heyday was already over. It was in trouble, and the trend continued for the following ten years. Lots of people still cycled through the city throughout the day, especially in the morning and in the evening, but numbers were decreasing rapidly. Cycling was becoming more unpleasant and dangerous, as cars increasingly dominated the roads. The four Marker brothers may have cycled cheerfully through Amsterdam in the children’s book, but in truth the famous bicycle city was already in decline by 1960.

“By far the most important means of transport”

The first bicycles had appeared in Amsterdam more than nineteen years earlier. Their rarity meant that they easily made the newspapers at the time. “Velocipèdes are starting to become fashionable in Amsterdam,” according to the Arnhemse Courant in late 1868. “Sometimes, three or four can be seen at the same time in Leidsche Straat.”² The bicycle remained an expensive and exclusive means of transport for quite a while, mainly enjoyed by sports enthusiasts from the upper class. That all changed after 1918, when cheap German imports quickly put the bicycle within the reach of the middle class, and even the working class.

Crowds of cyclists in Amsterdam. Lisl Weil, The Busiest Boy in Holland, Boston 1959.

Lady on a Hinde bicycle, watched by admiring children. Poster by J.G. van Caspel, around 1898.

The bicycle became more and more popular as a means of daily transport, as public transport became entangled in a vicious cycle of more expensive tickets, fewer passengers, lower turnover, even more expensive tickets, and so on. “Everybody cycles. Whether they’re eight or eighty, mayor, bridge guard, street urchin or doctor, everybody cycles here,” noted the German writer Konrad Merz. Back in 1922, an American visitor had already described Amsterdam as the “city of a million bicycles.” Although he exaggerated the facts by a factor of ten, it did aptly capture the overwhelming impression created by the generalized use of the bicycle. It was now used for all sorts of purposes, and had become an integral part of every aspect of urban society: “One now goes everywhere by bike. To the office, to school, to the factory, to college, to the tennis court, to the beach, in fact anywhere one wants to reach quickly.”

The bicycle proved to be perfectly suited to Amsterdam’s size at the time. From 1850, new districts were built around the 17th-century ring of canals, which made it impractical to go everywhere by foot, but almost every destination could be reached by bicycle within an acceptable time. By 1930, bicycles accounted for one third of all traffic movements in Amsterdam. Pedestrians also accounted for a third, and public transport for a quarter. Only five percent of journeys were made by car.⁵

The bicycle was even given an official, future-orientated status in the General Expansion Plan (AUP) drawn up between 1931 and 1935 by the urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren. This plan was intended to provide a solution to urban growth until 2000. Van Eesteren wanted to create a spacious city, where the distances traveled by its inhabitants in their day-to-day affairs would nevertheless remain acceptable. The urban sprawl of American suburbia had to be avoided, as did the overcrowded slums in the inner city. He found the perfect marriage between these conflicting goals by basing his design for the new city on “by far the most important private means of transport, the bicycle.” His design limited commuting time to thirty minutes, with the bicycle as a yardstick. This was based on actual practice, rather than any ideological motive. The plan envisioned bicycle paths and lanes alongside all main roads in the development areas, often separated from the roadway by a row of trees. The AUP could not be implemented until after the Second World War, but thanks to the decision taken in 1935, the bicycle became an integral element in the city’s future for the following century. By the mid-1970s, there were already 160 kilometers of cycle paths in Amsterdam, especially in the newer districts.⁶

Careless cyclists in Vondelpark slice a dog in half, the same fate threatens a lady strolling. Satirical cartoon by Johan Braakensiek in De Amsterdammer, September 18, 1892.

However, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that city planners had a warm affection for the bicycle; the bicycle was simply beyond their control. This is clear from the words of the urban planner S.J. van Embden, whose 1931 report Amsterdam’s toekomstige gedaante (Amsterdam’s Future Shape) was a forerunner of the AUP. “In addition to the motor cars,” he wrote, “the cyclists are of great significance in our city. There is little point elaborating further on this, as the phenomenon is familiar enough.” Rejecting the commonest means of transport as a subject of study is a curious piece of reasoning, but Van Embden did have some words to say on the matter. “The bicycle is an ideal means of transport for its rider. The tractability and small size of this vehicle, however, enable the cyclist to use it in all kinds of ‘individualistic manners’ that make this means of transport extremely unruly and unmanageable for the experts.” Already at that time, Copenhagen was the only city that could be compared to Amsterdam, but there was an important caveat which the urban planner gratefully emphasized. “In Copenhagen, very useful bicycle paths are also available in the city (riding elsewhere is punishable, by the way), but only if they are present on both sides of the road, failing which they result in burdensome situations and confusion.”⁷

It is clear that the bicycle was tolerated, but not much more than that. In spite of all their knowledge, the ‘experts’ who wanted to discipline traffic so that it would flow smoothly had a blind spot when it came to the mercurial bicycle. Urban planning that understood and appreciated the ‘individualistic manners’ of the cyclist, rather than rejecting it, was still a long way off.

Forty cars per 1,000 residents in Amsterdam

To understand the later decline of the bicycle city, we have to look at the bicycles’ main competitor, the car. It also sought the favors of the citizen, the expert and the City Council, but demanded much of the limited space in the city. The car was, to a certain extent, the illegitimate offspring of the bicycle, given that it started life as a three-wheel velocipede with an auxiliary engine, although it did soon distance itself from these humble origins.⁸ It made its appearance somewhat later than the bicycle, and initially on a more modest scale. By the dawn of the 20th century, there were about 500 cars in Amsterdam. This number had risen to 7,000 by 1930, representing ten cars per 1,000 inhabitants. At this time, there were only 68,000 cars in the entire country.

Cars were still scarce in Amsterdam, but they soon came to represent power, as their owners belonged to the urban elite. In this respect, the debate in the 1920s and 1930s about Rokin, a street and canal in central Amsterdam, is quite revealing. A group of local residents and businesspeople wanted to fill in the canal and turn it into a parking lot. Other notables, especially those from the cultural field, resisted this assault on the city’s appearance from a historical and aesthetic point of view, but they did not oppose the need for sufficient parking. As an alternative to filling in the canal, they proposed that almost all the free space in the city center be earmarked for car parking. Their proposals included Riviervismarkt, a tiny square at Nes Street in front of the present-day theater Brakke Grond, which could apparently accommodate no less than twenty cars.⁹

Traffic in Leidsestraat in 1920: cyclists, pedestrians, hand carts, cargo bikes, horse-drawn carriages, and a single car.

One thing that everyone could agree on in the 1930s was that car numbers in the city would continue to grow. The only question was, by how much? Forecasts varied widely, especially because the scientists who provided them often had vested interests. According to L. Swaab, spokesperson for the commercial vehicle and bus sector, the Netherlands would soon have one car for every ten inhabitants. Based on the population at the time, that would mean some 800,000 in the long term. In 1931, when there were 130,000 cars on the road, Minister P.J. Reijmer of Infrastructure estimated that this number would triple to 400,000 within 25 years.

Jacques Reitsma, a young engineer and a railway enthusiast, believed that both forecasts were much too high. He wasted few words on Swaab, stating, “Such a frivolous estimate must obviously be ignored.” According to Reitsma’s own calculations, there was a need for a maximum of 190,000 cars in the Netherlands, a saturation point which would be reached around 1950. “Motor traffic’s golden age of growth is long behind us, and is quickly approaching saturation,” declared Reitsma. To his forecast of a maximum of 190,000 cars he added that: “The road network, bridges and traffic tunnels must be designed to accommodate this number.” He warned against excessive forecasts, because they would lead to money being wasted on oversized infrastructure.¹⁰

A radical alternative in the 1930s: filled-in canals have to be re-excavated, the advancing car has to go underground. Cartoon by Felix Hess in Groene Amsterdammer, around 1935.

In Amsterdam, the increase in the number of cars was approached as a serious, but manageable issue. It is surprising, not to say nonchalant, that the chapter on traffic in the AUP contained no forecasts at all. It referred to the schematic plan from 1930 for traffic in the city center, titled Stadsontwikkeling en verkeer (Urban Development and Traffic), as the basis for the future traffic structure. This plan assumed a strong growth in car use, with car density quadrupling from ten cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 1930 to a maximum of forty in the distant future. The planners prepared the city for cars on the basis of this forecast. They reserved space for wide roads where possible, which was in the new development areas. Although concerned about the existing city, they presented a series of traffic interventions that could accommodate the expected quadrupling. All in all, the AUP gave the impression that the increasing traffic flows could be managed well with this modest approach.¹¹

Given current levels of car ownership, these forecasts are laughably low. The Netherlands now has more than 8 million cars, so one for every two inhabitants. It is simply another country dominated by cars, or worse, considering the number of cars per square kilometer. In Amsterdam, there is about one car for every three inhabitants (lower than the national average), and an average density of 1,200 cars per square kilometer (higher than the national average).¹²

Nevertheless, the forecasts made at that time are still instructive. Reitsma assumed that citizens and businesses would base their transport preferences on rational considerations. He believed that the car had to offer financial benefits, and that in the small, densely-populated and accessible country of the Netherlands, cars were less necessary than elsewhere. An American-type situation was not expected. Car transport for the masses would be “the most expensive transport imaginable,” Reitsma argued, “which only appears to be cheaper than traveling by rail or by water because of the many hidden costs that are borne elsewhere than by car transport itself.” He therefore expected “a rational, constructive traffic policy” from the national government, which would separate the “uneconomic from the economic transport.” He went on to state that: “Constraining this uneconomic means of transport will be the next phase in the development process. This will undoubtedly reduce this generally very expensive and uneconomic form of motor traffic.”

Map of Cornelis van Eesteren’s General Expansion Plan from 1935. From the planned new neighborhoods in the west and south, one could cycle to the city center in thirty minutes at the most.

This rational approach to transport preferences was abandoned after the war, by individual citizens and politicians alike. Buying a car was no longer an economic decision, but the fulfillment of a collective and individual dream of prosperity. Mobility created its own economic reality, and the government stimulated the masses to turn to motorized transport. Since then, however, Reitsma’s distinction between ‘economic’ and ‘uneconomic’ types of transport has turned out to be prescient. The distinction still lives on today under other names in urban car policy, such as ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ traffic. Reitsma, incidentally, did not live to see his predictions swept away, as he was shot dead by German forces just before the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945.

“In the pre-war years, the government never expected the general public to travel by car,” wrote public administration expert Maarten Smaal in a recent history of mobility pricing. What is all the more striking is the introduction of the Traffic Fund (Verkeersfonds) in 1934, which was intended to finance all kinds of infrastructure. The fund was partly financed with the revenue from the bicycle tax that had been introduced ten years earlier. “It might be considered rather curious that the cyclist is having to contribute significantly to the expansion and maintenance of the car road network. (…) As a result, cyclists were systematically paying more into the Traffic Fund than car owners. And even the ANWB [Royal Dutch Touring Club] did not object.” The parliamentarian De Marchant et d’Ansembourg, speaking in 1938, was pleased with events, saying, “The modern means of transport of our time is the motor car, both for people and for freight transport. Promoting this means of transport by all conceivable means is therefore evidence of true statesmanship.”¹³

Survival of the fittest

The car only became a generalized means of transport after the Second World War as a result of growing prosperity, although the war experience may also have contributed. It is what the British urban planner Patrick Abercrombie expected when he presented his reconstruction plan for London in 1944, and announced ‘the age of mobility’. He believed the demand and supply of cars would remain high, because so many people had become used to motorized vehicles during the war, and because the strong increase in wartime manufacturing would continue unabated in peacetime.¹⁴ The First World War had likewise accelerated the advance of both the bicycle and the car. While the car was a luxury in 1914, during the war it increasingly became commonplace.¹⁵

In the Netherlands, the advance of the car only started gradually after 1945, so Reitsma’s ceiling of 190,000 cars was not reached until well into the 1950s. However, the ceiling was shattered easily, and the number of cars continued to rise. Numbers had reached 500,000 by 1960, 1 million in 1964, and 2 million well before 1970.¹⁶ In 1960, the passenger miles made by car overtook those made by bicycle, and the difference continued to grow rapidly.

The spread of the car had a significant effect on both traffic engineering and society in general. The car became “the perfect symptom of prosperity,” wrote historian Peter-Eloy Staal. “The car and the economy advanced in tandem.” The car soon became a benchmark of status and social success. “It is thought that bank managers should drive cars, that the social status of senior civil servants, shopkeepers, professors and perhaps even secretaries merits a car, but that the professions of teachers, lower-level civil servants, shop assistants and workers are more suited to mopeds or bicycles,” according to a report by the ANWB magazine Autokampioen in 1965. This hierarchy shifted continuously, as the growth in prosperity brought ‘exclusive’ means of transport within reach of more and more people. For the middle class, the motorcycle was a stepping stone to the car, while for the working class the first step was the moped. And for everyone, a second-hand car was the first step to buying a new one.¹⁷

The car was the obvious status standard in this process of class mobility. “The motives behind a purchase,” Staal writes, “were characterized less by a rational consideration of costs and benefits, and more by a high degree of subjectivity, accompanied by an underestimation and dubious rationalization of the costs.” The ‘uneconomic’ use, as Jacques Reitsma had called it, got the upper hand. It is striking that 40% of car journeys were made within a radius of five kilometers, which is the ideal cycling distance. Needless to say, the bicycle was at the bottom of the prosperity hierarchy.

The consequences were dramatic, and Amsterdam did not escape. The streets became busier, more chaotic and more dangerous as the years went by. Since the city was not designed for so many cars, the car drivers, who had won the prosperity race, took the initiative themselves. They simply appropriated public space, sometimes by driving in it but much more often through stationary use. Every bit of public space that was not road became a potential parking space. To meet parking needs, the City of Amsterdam sacrificed the most beautiful squares, such as Noordermarkt, Amstelveld and Spui, as well as many bridges and vacant plots.

Confusion reigned within city government circles, as all its policies and finished plans, which had assumed a level of traffic that was increasingly outdated, were only fit for the trash can. As long as the City of Amsterdam had no alternative policy available, it based its decisions on the 1931 Schematic Plan, elaborated and supplemented with ad hoc and incidental policy decisions, and driven by the fear of falling out of step with the modern world. This patchwork of policies did little to help, since every solution was soon rendered obsolete by the growth of the problem. Some key numbers: in 1957, there were 35 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in Amsterdam. By 1965, this had more than trebled to 128, and it doubled again to 250 by 1980.¹⁸

In the traffic jungle, the principle of survival of the fittest soon prevailed. Mounting a bicycle was like playing Russian roulette. It was hardly surprising that people increasingly chose to swap their bikes for cars, occasionally via the moped as a stepping stone. The reasoning was that you avoided the risks faced by cyclists if you traveled by car, even if doing so meant increasing the risks for those cyclists who continued to brave the traffic.

The bicycle reasoned away

All around the world, urban traffic was undergoing stormy changes. Studies to develop a new vision on traffic and the city were being carried across Europe to combat the chaos. The authors were urban planners who wanted to tame the wild urbanization, and they often set their sights on ‘the year 2000’. Just as the AUP had used the bicycle as a yardstick back in 1935 on pragmatic grounds, so these new studies accepted car transport as a given, and as the inevitable basis for their plans. The urban planners were joined by traffic engineers, a new discipline that had arisen in the United States in the 1930s to study and manage the rapidly growing phenomenon of car traffic, and which now expanded its work field to Europe. The focus of traffic engineering varied per country, partly depending on whether economists, engineers, road construction companies or interest groups such as the ANWB were the dominant party; but the emphasis was consistently on the car. The fact that the ANWB, originally a touring club for cyclists, transformed into a club serving the interests of the automobile owner, is a telling illustration of the dominance of the car.

The British report Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, published in 1963, as well as the International Traffic Exhibition in Munich in 1965, had a significant impact, also in the Netherlands. Both presented a new European vision on urban traffic, with little room or attention for the bicycle. In this traffic vision, the post-war city is designed with more space than before. Residential areas are given a lower population density, not only in new districts and satellite towns, but also in old neighborhoods where both the number of homes and the number of people per home decrease. People also travel further to work, with factories moved away from densely-populated residential districts to more distant industrial estates. A similar concentrated area is planned for offices, the Central Business District. In this diverse city where functions are segregated, the inhabitants must inevitably travel longer distances, even if we only consider the daily commute. These distances are too long to walk, and the bicycle is no longer an attractive alternative.

Cyclists under pressure on Muntplein. Photo by Ben van Meerendonk, September 23, 1958.

As a result, people will increasingly turn to other means of transport, and given the greater prosperity, the car is the most likely choice. One disadvantage of the car is that it takes up a lot of space. This is particularly problematic in the historic parts of the city, which are not designed to meet the needs of cars as a generalized means of transport. To preserve these historic areas, an attractive alternative to the car must be developed, especially for the daily commuter traffic that poses an excessive burden on the historic city. The commuter must therefore be tempted with new and fast forms of public transport.

This logic, in which prosperity, segregation of functions, suburbanization, motorization and public transport are intertwined, became commonplace in the 1960s. The city was idealized as a dual system, with a network of dynamic currents around blocks offering oases of tranquility and quality of life. All transport would be motorized, except for the very first and last legs of a journey, which would be undertaken on foot. The car was given a major role as a vehicle for the modern citizen and as a basis for ‘low-density’ suburbanization, while public transport was encouraged to combat the disadvantages caused by car use, especially in mass commuter traffic. Planners were faced with the task of giving the car space, but also delimiting that space and preserving the quality of life in the city. The British transport minister summed up the issue in 1963 during the presentation of Traffic in Towns by Buchanan et al. “Cars are a boon. But they have now started to choke movement and, indeed, to threaten the quality of urban life.” And, referring to the report: “They try to show what will happen in our towns when nearly every family owns a car. They examine ways of re-shaping towns over the next fifty years so that we can enjoy the benefits of the car and also civilized urban living.”¹⁹

As a consequence of this logic, the bicycle fell off the drawing table. “It is a moot point how many cyclists there will be in 2010,” wrote Buchanan. He made few suggestions in this regard, and even seemed willing to accelerate the demise of the bicycle. In his opinion, bicycles would have to be kept away from future main roads, “for obvious reasons of safety and the free flow of vehicular traffic,” but he was also opposed to building cycle paths: “It would be very expensive, and probably impracticable, to build a completely separate system of tracks for cyclists.” Sometimes, an obsession with removing the unruly can also be detected, a sentiment also present in Van Embden’s words before the war.²⁰

Prosperity dream: Volkswagen’s stand at the RAI car show. Photo by Ben van Meerendonk, February 16, 1967.

The traffic exhibition in Munich in 1965 was a futuristic spectacle that also attracted attention in the Netherlands. It is not known whether municipal officials from Amsterdam went there on a working visit, but Trouw journalist Wim Geradts was present. He described the reconstruction plans for German cities, which took into account the latest traffic insights. He was impressed by the plans for Cologne – “A magnificent plan to save the area around the cathedral from death at the hands of traffic” – and for other German cities. “All these cities demonstrate how a clever combination of railways, subways, urban motorways and pedestrian plateaus can protect and preserve their logistical networks for the future. The solutions are all based on these principles, which means that European cities have found a way to fight the flood of traffic.”²¹

Not surprisingly, the bicycle had no part to play in all of this, as is clearly illustrated in the book that the joint German cities presented at the exhibition in Munich, called Stadtverkehr gestern heute morgen / Town and Traffic – Yesterday Today Tomorrow. In this systematic approach to city traffic, the treatment of bicycles is sloppy and unsystematic. On one page, the bicycle is classified with the car and the motorcycle in the category ‘Private traffic’, elsewhere it is linked equally uncomfortably to the pedestrian, and more often than not it is completely ignored. The most concrete advice to cyclists, moped riders and children playing is, “Within the limitations imposed by urban structure, private traffic should be free to develop according to its own laws.” In other words, just sort it out yourself.²²

General motorization

To govern means to look ahead, and those looking ahead in the 1960s saw a world without bicycles. The bicycle is virtually non-existent in official visions of the future city, country and traffic. That also applies in the Netherlands, where the government issued the Second Memorandum on Spatial Planning in 1966, and the City of Amsterdam published the Preliminary Draft of the Second Memorandum on Amsterdam City Center in 1968.²³

The Second Memorandum was a thorough piece of work, in which the government explained how the Netherlands should prepare to accommodate the huge anticipated growth in population, prosperity, and mobility. It was thought that the population would grow from 12 million inhabitants to twenty million by the year 2000, and the number of cars from 1.5 million to 7 million. The first forecast was out by a considerable margin, but the second has turned out to be amazingly accurate.

The Dutch government also assumed a distribution of urban functions over a larger area than before. To relieve congested cities while at the same preventing American-style urban sprawl, the government devised the intermediate form of ‘bundled de-concentration’. Planned new towns or ‘growth centers’ such as Purmerend, Hoorn, Zoetermeer and Almere would accommodate the ‘overflow’ of population growth in the big cities. The term ‘overflow policy’ would enter the popular lexicon in the coming years.

The government applauded the ‘general motorization’, and not only because it made the extensive urban area accessible. “The possibility of rapid movement of people and goods is an important social and economic fact, but above all it represents an enrichment of human existence.” It did however require “drastic expansion and adaptation of the available traffic space.” The space had to be used more efficiently, especially in the city centers where traffic space was becoming “increasingly scarce.” “With the growing demand for traffic space, it is more necessary than ever to use this space efficiently. This underlines the importance of having good public transport. Moreover, in this light it is meaningful to promote bicycle and moped traffic.” That seemed like a first tentative move toward developing a bicycle policy, but in the rest of the memorandum the bicycle is never mentioned again, except once as a means of recreational transport “to access recreational areas, especially where motorized traffic on a large scale cannot be allowed.”

Buchanan’s voice could be heard everywhere. The government saw public transport as the main means to achieve efficient use of urban space. Vehicle traffic was divided into two types. ‘Necessary’ traffic, such as trucks and emergency services, was welcome in the city, while ‘unnecessary’ commuting by car had to be discouraged by improving public transport and, if necessary, by paid parking. “It is precisely in a fully motorized society that the function of public transport must be given special attention. This also applies to the facilities for pedestrians, especially in the inner cities.” Of the cyclist, there is no mention at all.

Traffic flows in Amsterdam

The intensity of traffic flows in Amsterdam, based on measurements during the evening rush hour. The flow images at the top illustrate the growth in car traffic. On the left (1956), about 2,500 cars drive on the busiest routes, on the right (1971), with a greatly expanded road network, the number is around 8,000. The green flow images show the opposite development of bicycle and moped traffic. On the left (1961), about 7,500 mopeds and cyclists ride on the busiest routes, on the right (1971) the number is down to about 2,500. Draft Traffic Circulation Plan Amsterdam (1976).

Such an economical means of transport

All these notions can be found in the policies of the City of Amsterdam, but with an undertone of concern. “Even so, the problem faced by Amsterdam is more difficult than in other big cities. This is because the character of the inner city, which must be protected, forms an obstacle to taking drastic measures in this neighborhood, in addition to the lack of funds,” wrote the City Council in its 1965 annual report.²⁴ Occasionally one can note some sense of jealousy of bombed-out cities like Rotterdam, which had much more flexibility in terms of modern traffic planning. At the beginning of the 1950s, large-scale demolitions in the historic center were still being considered, but thanks to an effective historic building lobby such thoughts had become unthinkable by the mid-1960s. There were no easy solutions for Amsterdam.

The diagnosis in the Preliminary Draft of the Second Memorandum on Amsterdam City Center from 1968 now sounds familiar. The number of bicycle movements during rush hour had halved between 1957 and 1967, and car use had doubled. “The decrease in bicycle traffic is partly a result of the increasing distances that need to be covered. For many, this distance is too great for the bicycle. Sometimes, the bicycle is abandoned in favor of the car. On other occasions people prefer to use public transport.” Government planning was based on the increase in car ownership, but in a vicious cycle the government also facilitated this increase. The end was not yet in sight, as in 1980 there were expected to be 350,000 cars in the city. That would cause increasing pressure on space, because “a car is used on average about 4% of the time. It is stationary for the remaining 96% of the time, and then causes the well-known problem of long-term parking.” Cars in Amsterdam would occupy at least 1,000 hectares of car parking lots by 1980, according to the memorandum, or twenty times the size of the Vondelpark. That is an extremely high amount in a city where every inch of free space has to be cherished.

The decline of bicycle traffic, in combination with the advance of the car, was also seen as a spatial issue, because “this is adversely affecting the total capacity of the roads.” As was the case in the national Second Memorandum, the spatial efficiency of the bicycle was also recognized here. However, it did not occur to the policy makers to view the bicycle as part of the solution. “Major structural interventions for road traffic are not possible and in any case undesirable. This is therefore the main reason why more attention should be paid to public transport in Amsterdam than elsewhere in the country. Given the decreasing relevance of the bicycle, which is so efficient in the usage of space, traveling should be concentrated on public transport.”

In other words, according to the memorandum, the bicycle would have been an excellent answer to the problems of the future, were it not that it was doomed to belong to the past. The bicycle was not mentioned further in the remainder of the memorandum, titled De richting voor een mogelijke oplossing (The Direction in Which a Solution Might Be Found).

Amstelveld as a crowded parking lot. Photo by the Spatial Planning Department, circa 1965.

Bicycle tunnel under the IJ

The history of the IJ Tunnel illustrates the gradual marginalization of the bicycle. The City Council had already studied the option of building a tunnel under the IJ in the 1930s. In early 1940, a report proposing the construction of two separate tunnels was published, one serving cars and the other reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. A tunnel for slow moving traffic was no unnecessary luxury, given the endless queues of bicycles waiting to catch ferries.

Then the Second World War intervened, so that it took until 1950 for a new report to be released, proposing one tunnel for cars and one for cyclists and pedestrians, or possibly even two. Journalist Evert Werkman later wrote, “What has to be noted straight away is that there were already doubts at the time about the need for such a separate cyclist and pedestrian tunnel. The question raised was, would cyclists really be so enthusiastic about using such a tunnel if they could also simply take the ferry?”²⁵

Amsterdam’s cyclists were never consulted on the issue, but the City Council immediately took on board the doubts expressed on their behalf to abandon the bicycle and pedestrian tunnel. “For the time being, the Executive Board of the City of Amsterdam has only requested approval for the car tunnel plan.” After an exhausting history laden with controversy, the IJ Tunnel opened 18 years later in 1968. At that point Werkman wonders, “So what happened to the initial plans to also have a separate tunnel for pedestrians and cyclists?”

A row of cyclists waiting for the ferry over the IJ behind Amsterdam Central Station. Photo by Dolf Kruger, 1952.

As we know now, that tunnel never materialized. “We have no plans to proceed immediately with the construction of such a tunnel for pedestrians and cyclists after the completion of the IJ Tunnel,” wrote the Executive Board of the City of Amsterdam in 1964. “Whether such a tunnel is still desirable will have to be re-examined in connection with the plans for improving urban public transport.” The public transport improvements referred to, namely the urban metro now called Noord/Zuidlijn, was only completed half a century later, and a permanent cycle path over or under the IJ is still debated.²⁶

The repression suffered by the bicycle was visible everywhere. In 1960, the City Council ruled that narrow Leidsestraat had become too busy to allow unrestricted access to all types of traffic, namely trams, cars, bicycles and pedestrians. It was decided to close the street to one of these, and the bicycle was the victim. The situation in the narrow alleys between Nieuwendijk and Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, such as the Nicolaasstraat was almost a parody. Parking bicycles here was banned, but cars were allowed. A more accurate illustration of the confusion reigning among the authorities when it came to traffic policy would be difficult to find.

The official neglect of the bicycle was also reflected in Stadsontwikkeling van Amsterdam 1939-1967 (Urban Development of Amsterdam 1939 to 1967), written by J.J. van der Velde and published in 1968. The author had been in charge of the post-war reconstruction of Amsterdam in 1948 to 1953 in his role as alderman. This monumental reference work of more than 400 large pages contains not a single chapter, or even a paragraph, about the bicycle. According to the register, the existence of the bicycle is limited to three keywords that occur four times in all: ‘bicycle tiles’, ‘bicycle paths’ and ‘bicycle stands’. The cycle paths are discussed when Van der Velde quantifies the “increase of the street surface in the period 1945 to 1967”, when 5.2 million square meters of paved street surface were added, 3.2 million square meters of sidewalk, and only 225,000 square meters of cycle paths.²⁷

Even William Rothuizen, Sietz Leeflang and the brothers Rudolf and Robbert Das, authors of the 1966 book Op zoek naar leefruimte (In Search of Living Space), ignored the bicycle.²⁸ This book’s most famous image is a vision of Amsterdam in the future, inspired by Buchanan. Stadhouderskade has been replaced by a modern highway with flyovers and exits that curl around the Rijksmuseum, the 19th-century districts have been replaced by high-rise buildings surrounded by greenery, and a monorail leads to the suburbs. The historic city center has not been demolished as would have been the case in a drawing from the 1950s, but left intact and only allowed limited traffic. To keep the city center accessible, there is a new means of transport: the telecanapé, which moves through the old center like a horizontal chairlift at a constant speed of 10 km/h. That means that even short journeys would have been motorized.

In Search of Living Space was not such a pro-car book as it now seems. The authors did see the disadvantages of the car clearly, such as the space they occupy, the pollution, the unfavorable ratio between utility and annoyance, and its “tendency to degenerate its environment quickly.” As a journalist for the Algemeen Handelsblad newspaper, Rothuizen had already written frankly about ‘automobilitis’, an epidemic disturbance reflected in the aggressive attitude of car drivers we now call road rage, with symptoms such as “attempted manslaughter, fights, insults, gestures, and swearing.” Despite the strong criticism of the car and its user, however, the remedies were remarkably low-key. A new harmony between technology and life would be possible if cars became smaller and cleaner, and their drivers more civilized. The authors optimistically believed “in a non-polluted, clean city, in a clean car, in a more humane living and working climate.” Reducing car usage did not cross their minds at all, as “the desire for motorization” in society was too powerful and too widespread for such notions.

It is striking, however, that Rothuizen had previously suggested a different remedy in the newspaper: “How can we combat automobilitis? Here’s a straightforward slogan: leave your Rolls in the garage and go by bike! How wonderful it would be to cross our country in highly purified air on silent two-wheelers on 4 or 6-lane highways, cheerfully whistling our way with the open road stretching out before us. And by the time we get bicyclitis (leave the old bike in the garage…) we can always go for a walk.”²⁹

This solution is not repeated anywhere in the book. A close look at the vision of Amsterdam reveals plenty of cars and pedestrians, but not a single bicycle. However much the authors might have enjoyed a bike ride, not even these brave futurists remembered to give the bicycle a place in their telecanapé future.

Filled-in Singelgracht as a highway, and the demolished 19th-century ring as a location for high-rise buildings. To the right, the surroundings of Leidseplein. Future vision in R. and R. Das et al., Op zoek naar leefruimte (In Search of Living Space) (1966).

Schizophrenic

By the 1960s, the bicycle found itself in a schizophrenic situation. Policy makers, urban planners, traffic engineers and futurologists announced that cycling as a form of transport was dying a slow death. Their visions of the future ignored the bicycle, as if it no longer existed. In their view, the future was a linear continuation of prevailing trends. Essentially, there were no alternative scenarios. Occasionally, an undertone of regret can be detected, such as the good old bicycle’s ‘economical use of space’. Even so, many forward-thinking experts were secretly happy that the bike was on its way out, because it was seen as part of the problem and not a possible solution.

For example, the authors of De wereld van morgen (The World of Tomorrow), a popular futuristic book from 1968, complained about “our nevertheless somewhat vague traffic conditions, due to the extensive use of the bicycle.” Their hopes lay in a crystal-clear remedy against this messy situation. “A city with excellent public transport will not have to contend with such chaotic street traffic situations, for the simple reason that many who would otherwise have traveled to the city center by car, moped or bicycle would use public transport.”³⁰ The cyclist also had a drab image as a loser in the drive for progress. Simply put, the car represented the future, and the bicycle the past. The words of Amsterdam’s mayor, Gijs van Hall, when he bragged in 1964 that he had only been reduced to using a bicycle once in the previous 17 years, clearly illustrate this sentiment.³¹

Even so, those who put aside the considerations, policy documents and visions for a moment, and simply looked out of their windows, discovered a city still full of cyclists, young and old, male and female, schoolkids, students, laborers and clerks, all making their way through an environment that was becoming increasingly indifferent and more dangerous. The tens of thousands of cyclists still existed, but were seen less and less, as if they were zombies who could be looked or driven through. The policy was powerless and directionless, so in practice there was a mass battle on the roads every day, and the law of the jungle continued to prevail. The power balance continued to shift in favor of the car, as the number of cars continued to increase while the number of bicycles decreased. Cyclists had always relied on safety in numbers, but this critical mass came under threat, with danger looming everywhere. Some motorists experienced a sardonic pleasure in frightening cyclists, many others were simply careless, but the effect was the same. “Cycling is now equivalent to attempting suicide,” said Superintendent H. Tielrooy of the Amsterdam traffic police. He did not conclude, however, that he should protect the cyclists, but rather that there was no room for them in the city anymore.³²

Even the ‘city of a million bicycles’ seemed to await the same fate that was already affecting other cities and would later be repeated in Beijing and Delhi: a thriving, popular cycling culture was being crushed, with the bicycle marginalized socially and in terms of space allocation, and its superior low-tech repressed. It is rather telling that even people of good will, such as the authors of In Search of Living Space, practically ignored the bicycle.

However, fears for its demise were premature. The rise of the car, which had seemed so irreversible, gradually reached its limits in Amsterdam, and turned out to be weaker than expected. That meant new opportunities for everything that had been driven out of the way by the car, and the humble bicycle began to find itself supported by some unexpected allies.