Amsterdam has more bicycles than people, with 40% of trips made by bike. The Netherlands has 22,000 miles of cycleways and civil servants dedicated to improving cycling.
Amsterdam is nicknamed “the Venice of the North,” but rather than gliding down the canals in a gondola, residents of the Dutch capital prefer to cycle on the sidewalk. According to recent statistics, there are more bicycles than people in Amsterdam, and 40 percent of all trips there are made by bicycle, compared to around two percent in London. Amsterdam likes cycling so much that a huge cycleway system has been developed to allow cyclists to go wherever they want, avoiding what little car traffic is still stubborn enough to exist. And it’s not just Amsterdam: most of the Netherlands is all about bikes. The nation has approximately 22,000 miles (35,406 km) of cycleways, and all major Dutch cities employ civil servants specifically tasked with maintaining and improving cyclists’ daily lives.
Bikes by popular demand:
There are around 1 billion bicycles in the world, with China leading the way with around 400 million.
Bicycles existed before the word “bicycle”; in their original 1830 form they were called “velocipedes”.
The fastest recorded speed on a bicycle is 167.044 mph (268.831 km/h), set by Dutch cyclist Fred Rompelberg in 1995.
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