I really don't have a car or else.
I don't like cars, I hate cars.
I love my bicycle.
It's very easy, you go all around.
All my shopping is in my "fietstassen".
How much does that weight?
Well, I think 20 kilos.
Distances are short.
So, that makes it very easy.
Especially here in town it's easier by bike than by car.
A lot easier actually.
Now we are in Groningen.
I lived here from 1979, quite a long time.
It's a town with 190 000 inhabitants
and 50 000 of all the people here are students.
So, we've got a lot of young people in this town.
PROFESSOR ASHWORTH: This is
or was a fortress town
for a thousand years.
This was the town that guarded the routes into Germany.
The "Fortress of the North".
Consequences of that, the city was contained
within the military fortifications.
Until very late in the 19th Century.
So, there is no explore.
It didn't expand outwards.
Which meant to cost that now we say: "Hey we have a wonderful compact city
and we can reach everything by foot, or bicycle or whatever".
In 1972 Groningen gets a left-wing local government
and that's the start of the bicycle culture.
PROFESSOR ASHWORTH: A small group of young,
enthusiastic, left-wing ideological people said:
"Right, we're gonna change everything radically".
And one of the things they picked on was transport.
In September 1977, they introduced a traffic circulation plan.
Which means the city center was diverted in four different quarters.
Cars couldn't go from one quarter to the other quarter.
They have to go around the city center.
But cyclists and pedestrians can go through.
You put a ring-road around the inner city.
You prevent traffic from crossing the inner city.
You divide it into sectors, you pedestrianize the center,
you move all your car parking out to the edge,
you have parking ride schemes, etc., etc.
If you're making a journey inside the city
then you can start and finish
in a different part of the city taking a direct line between the two.
But if you go by car you have to take a detour.
This is not really an anti-car measure,
This is making the neighborhoods where people live more pleasant
and making cycling a viable option.
PROFESSOR ASHWORTH: Everyone said: "It can't work, this is impossible".
The shopkeepers said: "We'll leave the city immediately".
"Everyone must park in front of our door, otherwise we'll lose all our business".
And then, wonder of wonders, the world didn't collapse.
The shops didn't leave the city.
The police found: "Yes, people could learn how to handle this plan".
People adapted to it, and that was 1977.
VAN DER KLAAUW: In the last couple of years
the area of calm traffic has increased.
So, nowadays it's just normal
that you go on a bike to the city center.
In Groningen, the average person cycles 1.4 times a day.
That's how it goes, ten times a week people ride a bike somewhere.
It's a very comfortable way of transportation.
Above everything, it's very economical.
So, you don't have to pay for buses or train.
WOMAN: With a bike, I go
downton, through the center of Groningen.
And at my work,
when I use my car, I have to go through the "ring weg",
they call it here,
and it takes, I think, about half an hour.
With my bike it's ten minutes.
STUDENT 2: You need your bike here, definitely,
because you need it to go to your residence,
you need it to go to party.
You can transport everything on a bike
so you see people here riding a bike.
You can even transport a fridge if you want to.
Better put the fridge on the back of the bike and push the bike.
Bring it somewhere somehow.
VAN DER KLAAUW: We arrived to the central station of Groningen.
We call it "hoofdstation", main station.
We've got three different places where you can park your bike.
Now we are just in front of what we call "stadsbalkon".
Town balcony, you can call it.
With free parking place for about 5 000 bicycles.
It's free, you don't have to pay.
But people are looking after it.
So, it's kind of a guarded bicycle park.
All the place has got a sensor.
The "stads" balcony is diverted in different areas.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
When you see the sign over there.
It shows you how much places are still free.
But the one over here, on the right-hand side.
That's the formal bicycle parking.
Which is a guarded one.
You have to pay for it.
A day ticket, a month ticket.
And it's open till the last train
arrives in Groningen round about 2 a.m.
And then,
we've got further back what we call a bicycle "flat"
which is free but is nobody who looks after it.
And on the south side of the station
there are also parking places.
So, the total amount
of bike parking facilities is round about 10 000.
And on the weekend, it's all full.
That's an OV-fiets, a shared bicycle system in the Netherlands.
You can pick up those bikes at 340 stations around the country.
So, it's probably the biggest bike-share system in the world now.
It's intended to people who use public transport.
So, the idea is that
if you have cycled to the railway station in your own town
and then you've taken the train,
you can use one of these bikes on the other end.
As the other part of your commute.
STUDENT: Why ride a bicycle?
Because it's much easier than taking the bus
and the car is way too expensive to have in the cities.
The infrastructure is great, bicycles are everywhere.
So, that's basically the reason I ride my bike everywhere.
I have to go, good luck filming.
You're not going to get a cycling revolution
by having a few 30 km/h streets.
And you're not going to get it by building just a few cycle paths.
And you're not going to get it by traffic coming just a few streets either.
You have to do everything and you have to do it everywhere.
You never have to ride more than a few hundred meters from your home in the NL
in order to find yourself on a facility of such quality
that you will be happy to cycle on and you'll be happy for your children to cycle on.
VAN DER KLAUUW: We've tried to make new areas
around the town
within the boundary of 5-7 km.
not that spread all the new areas far away from the center.
Out of a point of a compact city and to mobility aspects
it's much better taking the bike or walk into the town
instead of using car.
This bridge is one of the projects which gives you the opportunity
to use your bike or go on your feet
to the shops which are on the other side.
So, it's a very easy and the quickest way
to go from the new area over here
and to go to the other area down there
not using your car, but go on the bike.
PROFESSOR ASHWORTH: Employers must submit the local authority
a plan, a scheme, a set of ideas
on what are they doing in order to encourage
their employees not to use motor cars.
And this can come in all sort of forms.
It could be they do no more than putting some
covered bike parking and some showers or lockers.
But some places have offered free public transport.
Others have offered a bonus to people that
are not using their motor cars.
So, the idea is to discourage parking.
HEMBROW: This Ikea is one of the largest in the world.
It's the largest this side of Berlin.
So, there is also a lot of car parking.
But the cycle path in here is still quite generous.
Here you can see there's a special cycle path
just right into the entrance.
We go straight on and we cycle just right into the shop.
Although it's summer.
As you can see how much people are using the bike to go into the Ikea.
So, I presume that maybe in the next couple of years they will put some more.
This is the parking place for the employees of Ikea.
And you can see that most of them are coming on the bike
and use the bike place to park the bike.
Yeah, I think it's great.
Cause, one: you save room for the customer because we don't park there.
And if you haven't "private" still in place, it encourages people to go on.
It's quite common to see students moving house with these
because there are 50 000 students in Groningen
and you can hire these for just €2.50 an hour.
So, people will hire one of these to move house.
So, you'll see students riding through the town with all of the worldly goods
on the bike "fiets".
We are growing up with a bicycle.
When you are three years old in Holland, you learn how to bike.
It's easy, you are quick everywhere.
I'm used to go on bicycle, it's cheap,
it's good for the health, for your movement.
Bye!
On the car you're always alone.
And on the bike it's funny, you interact with other people.
On the streets you talk, you laugh.
You can study for an exam on the way to the campus if it's necessary.
You go all around on a bicycle.
You go there or you go there.
With a car you can't do that.
You can't park here, you can't park there.
Or you get fined by police here.
One thing you'll find is very apparent when you're here is that
it is almost completely silent.
This is the quietest city that I've ever ridden a bike in or been in.
For example, in this street
you could stand on the roadway for minutes at a time without seeing a car.
HEMBROW: The reason why is pleasant to cycle here
is because the infrastructure removes conflicts.
So, you don't have people cycling
in close proximity to fast cars or large trucks.
Not terribly often anyway.
So, this is relatively peaceful.
And by having the streets
as streets mainly for bicycles as this is.
We have enormous numbers of people
using the streets and able to get to the shops.
We can make the whole place look more attractive.
So, the first thing you see when you come out of the train station is
this massive bike parking structure.
The taxi stand is located away from the front of the station.
Over there, that very small parking lot, that's where you can get a taxi.
You don't have taxis jostling for customers.
If you want a taxi, you have to go and seek it out.
We are here in the north-western part of Groningen.
The Korreweg bike, it's built in the 1930's
and behind me you'll see the Van Starkenborgh canal.
It's the canal which leads from Amsterdam to Germany.
So, it's an important canal and lots of ships are here.
The whole day and the whole night it's open 24h six days a week.
Behind here there's a suburb area
with lot of young people with young children.
They all have to go to work or go to school, they have to pass the bridge.
Each day 30 000 cyclists pass this bridge.
It's an old bridge, it's a swing bridge.
It opens sometimes ten minutes so it will take a long time to pass.
That means we have made this separate bridges you can use when the bridge is open.
So, you can never say when you have to go to school:
"Well I'm late because the bridge was open".
It gives you options.
Some people will wait,
some people will take the bridges just behind the swing bridge.
In the morning hour
you might see that a lot of people will use the separate bridge
to go to their work.
But then you go home and you think:
"Well, I have been working for a long day, I will wait".
There are so many things that have been done
to improve livability here in Groningen.
As you've seen everything is attainable by bike.
With a smart transportation planning all obstacles have been on goo.
The result is a beautiful city that's quiet, healthy, fun and pleasant.
Say if you want to go to the movie theater
there are hundred of bike parking spaces out front.
And hundred more protected if you reach out back.
But that's just something that's not remarkable.
Look at the quality of the pathways throughout the city.
Grip pavers are flawless and on spot.
It's hard to find a defect anywhere or spots where’s uneven.
Mainly, this is a priority because they want people to have a smooth ride.
That's because the city does not encourage travelling by car
and thus, the money they save, they can continue to build
beautiful places that you can walk on, bike on, take transport on.
And yes, you can even drive your car when you need to.
PROFESSOR ASHWORTH: A bicycle isn't considered to be a strange toy.
It's not a sporting object.
It's a simple method of transportation.
You no longer think about cycling
any more than you think about your feet when you are walking.
Well, we came here because we look for the best place in the world to cycle.
Therefore, we ended up moving to Groningen.
Cause when you've looked everywhere that there is.
There's simply nowhere quite like this.
VAN DER KLAAUW: So, because using your bike
you can go to the town, have a drink like the students.
Go to the town, go to the market,
go to your work, go to see your friends.
So, it's a mode of transport that keeps you alive.
Transcription and correction: Ricardo Sanz