Killing Civilians

In Amsterdam, the right of way goes something like this:

1. Bicycles
2. Scooters
3. Pedestrians
4. Buses
5. Cars

In some parts of the city, trams/trains obviously take the first spot, but even then they’ll have to wait until the bicycles get out of their way to start moving.

Every street has a bike lane that, to Americans, looks suspiciously like a sidewalk, which means that many times you’ll be walking down the street before hearing the ringing of a bell behind you (which is how cyclists politely advise you to get the fuck out of their way).

Here’s a couple of photos, but it’s kind of hard to express the sheer pervasiveness of bikes in the city. Old people, kids, people in formal business attire, people all dressed up for going out, everyone rides a bike. Looking around Amsterdam (population-wise, a bit smaller than Portland), it appears that there are more bikes than people living there.


The parking structure in this second photo is enormous, and it’s crammed with bikes, most of which are fixed speeds or cruisers.

True, the Netherlands is mostly flat, which makes it ideal for cycling as a primary form of transportation, and Amsterdam is incredibly compact, which makes it easy to get across town in a manner of minutes on a bike, but goddamn, this is a mostly-medieval city that’s had to do a lot of infrastructural work over the past few decades to ensure that biking remains the preeminent mode of personal transport.

Beyond the amazing infrastructure, though, is the attitude of the culture at large. I don’t know how many times we saw bikes, cars, pedestrians, and trams all jammed into one narrow street… and it worked. People understand the right of way, and traffic flows smoothly, and no one gets too angry at the millions of near-misses or occasional minor bumps.

Actually, for your amusement, here are the two worst conflicts I witnessed on the streets and alleys of Amsterdam:

1. The Gollem (the best bar we found in Amsterdam) is on a tiny alley/street near the middle of the city. It’s barely wide enough for three people to walk down side-by-side, but as elsewhere, bicycles have the right of way. So do scooters, although most people on scooters realize that it’s a cramped space and kind of coast through the alley. Not so with the pizza-delivery scooters! They gunned their engines and raced down the alley a couple of times while we were standing outside with a couple of regulars having a smoke. This pissed the native Amsterdamians off, and the next time a scooter whizzed by, one of the dudes reached out and grabbed the delivery guy’s arm. The scooter must’ve been going close to 25mph, but the dude who grabbed him pulled him to a halt (and almost made the delivery guy fall off his scooter) and gave him a piece of his mind for about a minute before the dazed delivery guy was able to recollect his bearings, tell the dude to go fuck himself, and speed off again.

2. A construction worker was on his cell phone and had absent-mindedly wandered into the middle of the bike path (the construction materials and equipment outside the house he was working on was blocking the pedestrian sidewalk). A lady on the bike rang her bell, but the worker didn’t hear her. The lady got closer and shouted “Hey!” and had to brake hard, and the worker looked up, stricken, and said, “Sorry! Sorry!” and got out of her way. She shot him a dirty look and shook her head before pedaling off.

And now that we’re back home in Portland, I look around and it looks like there are no cyclists at all. Which is crazy and depressing, considering how we’re known for being a bike-friendly city. Someday maybe we’ll inch closer to Amsterdam… but it probably won’t be soon.