Who cycles in the Netherlands ?

I’ve mentioned before that in the Netherlands, everyone cycles. This graph shows how cycling rates vary with age and sex within the Netherlands, expressed as the average number of cycle journeys per day made per person.

It shows a number of things: that cycling is very popular with school age children, for instance, and that it drops off a bit for working age adults as for some the commute is “too far” by bike. You’ll also see that women in their 30s, 40s and 50s cycle more often than men. This is due to women being more likely to be at home looking after children than their male partners. As a result, they more often cycle with young children to school, or make shopping and other utility trips by bike. This is what leads to the Netherlands uniquely having 55% of trips overall by women.

Cycling stays with people through their entire life. Even the over 75s make an average of around 0.3 trips per day by bike.

Here we see the reasons for bicycle journeys. Only 16% of all cycle journeys are commutes. The largest percentage, 22%, are shopping trips, 18% are school journeys, 14% are social, and 11% are to go visiting.

This level of cycle usage, across both sexes, all ages, and for all purposes, requires infrastructure which has a high level of subjective safety.

These figures came from the same source as last week’s post, the Fietsersbond. Marc has also written about these statistics.