How the Dutch got their cycle paths

For the entire tour, the Netherlands wonderfully designed cycle paths had me scratching my head, why were the Dutch able to crate a set of interconnected, safe and functional bike paths and not a large percentage of other countries?

The following video will give you some insight into how the country was able to turn away from automotive concentric transportation to human powered local transportation.



Maybe it was the perfect storm to lead to this transportation solution. Would it be possible to reproduce the same outcome in the US or any one state?

I ran some numbers; the Netherlands has:

• population of 16.9 million
• land area of 13,86 square miles
• population density of 1,291 people per sq mile

If you collectively take the Southern California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo you would have:

• population of 12.0 million
• land area of 9,470 square miles
• population density of 1,268 people per sq mile

Very comparable numbers

If we wanted to solve many of our transportation issues, we have the Netherlands as a model.

Brian