Cycling in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is both the most bicycle-friendly capital city in the world and, with an urban area population of over 1.1 million people, it is also the most bicycle-friendly city with over a million people in the world. In Amsterdam, over 60% of trips are made by bike in the inner city and 40% of trips are made by bike overall in the greater city area.

Nevertheless, though people outside of the Netherlands consider Amsterdam to be one of the most famous and important centres of bicycle culture worldwide, the city itself is actually not at the top in terms of bike-friendliness compared to many smaller Dutch cities. This is reflected in the fact that Amsterdam is not on the short-list for the Fietsstad 2014 (BikeCity 2014) awards, announced by the Dutch Fietsersbond (Cyclists' Union): the cities of The Hague, Eindhoven and Almere were nominated for the Fietsstad 2014 awards, while the Netherlands' most bicycle-friendly city of Groningen won the award back in 2001. It should be made clear that for bicycle-friendliness, one must consider the Netherlands as whole.

As is common in Dutch cities, Amsterdam has a wide net of traffic-calmed streets and world-class facilities for cyclists. All around are bike paths and bike racks, and several guarded bicycle parking stations (Fietsenstalling) which can be used for a nominal fee. In 2006, there were about 1,000,000 bicycles in Amsterdam.

Bicycles are used by all socio-economic groups because of they are quick from A to B, their convenience, Amsterdam's small size, the 400 km of bike paths, the flat terrain, and the arguable inconvenience of driving an automobile: driving a car is discouraged, parking fees are expensive, and many streets are closed to cars or are one-way for motor vehicle traffic (but not for cyclists). Amsterdam's bike paths (Fietspad) are red in colour, in order to differentiate them from both the road ways and footpaths.

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Wikipedia