De Telegraaf on its hind legs. In the large-scale housing plans of Minister Hugo de Jonge, a million houses for the people, the bicycle takes precedence over the car. “Fairytale of a socialist cargo bike idea”, foams the Wakker Nederland newspaper, although it is actually not news. The parking standard in new housing estates has been under pressure for much longer. Cars on the street take up too much space and public space is a precious commodity. Then you build parking garages, right? Whoa, then the houses will become too expensive again, which the state wanted to make cheaper.
So the people are going to cycle, it has been decided. The overcrowded bicycle paths must be adapted and the bicycle networks improved, because it can be quite busy on those paths. New indoor and underground parking facilities will have to be built to store all those two-wheelers. Costs something, 13 billion, but then you kill two birds with one stone. The bicycle is cleaner and the cyclist becomes healthier and happier. In Tour de Force’s National Bicycle Future Picture, a consultation platform of ‘governments, business, social organizations and knowledge institutions’, the blueprint of paradise is revealed in flowery meeting tiger language. We will work together on a ‘climate-proof, healthy and liveable city’. Because of his approachability does the bicycle contribute to a inclusive society, because it is easier for you to go to school or ‘participate in social life’ – it really says it. The countryside is also being opened up, because the electric bicycle brings outdoor people faster to the train.
Future visions such as this one revolve around extrapolations and assumptions in which the wish seems to be the father of the thought. We want to make it greener, so let’s leave the car parked. That ‘we’ is the paternalistic pluralis majestatis of the report writers and policy makers, folks who are paid for sweeping statements. Unfortunately, no one knows for sure that they will come true, or whether the people they are talking about can make the turn. As a great proponent of the bicycle, let me counter it with a few other equally speculative hypotheses.
One: Commuting distances will increase. Due to the overstrained housing market, this process has been going on for years. Highly-educated city dwellers with decent jobs exchange the city for the countryside, where they can still buy a house that is no longer available to the less-educated.
This relatively privileged group is increasingly crossing the outer borders of the Randstad. At the regional level – for example in the province of Groningen, where I live – you see the same thing happening on a smaller scale. There too, the suburbs of the city are now unaffordable for starters and even young families. Ten or twenty kilometers away the prices are more bearable. There you get a driveway and a garden for your money. Do you live in a village where public transport does not run day and night? These young couples and families are all dual earners before the mortgage. So they have not one but two cars. The same applies to the housing market refugees in Arnhem and Amersfoort. Demand for cars will increase further now that the Dutch population is growing so unexpectedly.
Two: In the cheaper neighborhoods that the government wants to build, not fewer but more people will need a car. If the promise of affordability is fulfilled, people with low incomes and difficult working hours will also settle there. People in care, workers with alternate shifts on time slots that are impossible for public transport. They do not necessarily work in the city where they live; they don’t have a choice of their work address. They cannot live without their car, whether they have to drive ten or a hundred kilometers to work. If they are also unlucky enough to be female, the car is inevitable for safety reasons alone. An electric bicycle is of no use to them, regardless of whether they can still afford it after transferring the rent or mortgage. Their cars are probably cheaper.
Three: In many rural areas, the bicycle is absolutely not a solution. You wonder whether the Tour de Force team has ever been to Northeast Groningen or the north of North Holland. I did, because I made a lot of meters on two wheels in recent months. As a working class you will not be without a car there. While Groningen has quite nice local train connections. But go check it out. Pure desolation. Yet people live there. With a bit of luck you still live there for well under two tons. But only thanks to the car that makes the farthest corners accessible.
Don’t talk to me about inclusion. This report is preaching to their own parish by a privileged class that can afford appropriate solutions to mobility problems. If only it were only a Dutch problem. Last month I crossed the former East Germany. There I ended up in desolate GDR neighborhoods where twenty-year-old Vectras were the latest cars. They really don’t buy electric bikes there. They are looking for work there. If they find it at all, it can only be reached by Vectra.
I predict that it will become very full in the new housing developments of De Jonge, and that the call for more parking space will eventually drive many municipalities to despair.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl