In a world where bikes are cars... one must act accordingly

A few weeks ago, I went to the library as I normally do, locked my bike to a small pedestrian bridge, as normal, and went inside. When I finished my work for the day that evening, I came out to get my bike, only to find that another had taken its place, and mine was nowhere to be seen.

Before I left home, Rachel (my sister) gifted me a tracking device which I had taped to my bike in the event that it was stolen. I checked the corresponding app to see where it had wandered off to and found that it was across the city, in a warehouse district. 

My immediate assumption was that it had been stolen, as is common here (and everywhere). I spent the next several days sending curses and ill will to whoever had taken it upon themselves to steal my beater of a bike. After complaining to several friends about my misfortune, someone suggested that I look on the municipality website to see if anyone had turned it in. To my dismay, I did find it on the municipality website, complete with its own mugshot and list of offenses.

Bike Mugshot 

Now you might be thinking "nice, now you can get it back". Wrong! I, like many others in this country, got my bike from facebook marketplace, and as a result, the bike is not registered to my name. You can see in my bike's rap sheet that it is registered to someone names Charlois from Rotterdam. The only way I can get my bike back is by showing up with an ID (of Charlois), the corresponding bike keys, and payment of the fine for parking my bike "dangerously". 

While I cannot get my bike back, this experience highlighted once more the robustness of the bicycle infrastructure in this country. This system of "towing" and fining bikes is very similar to the way cars are treated. It seems that the level of physical infrastructure investment corresponds to the level of rule enforcement for transportation modes. In the US, had I locked my bike to a post on the road, sure it might've been stolen by a citizen, but certainly it would not have been picked up by the city within an hour of being parked. Then again, we barely have painted bike lanes.

Another example of rule enforcement in the form of a bike parking "ticket"

Back to the idea of  level of investment vs the processes involved in maintenance of rules, the systems at work for bike laws and regulations is very similar to that of a car, however, the investments made for this mode go so much further than they do for a car. Bikes are very affordable and therefor accessible to a much wider range of people than a car is. On top of that, other than occasional maintenance, bikes are a one-time payment that lasts for an indefinite period. For a car you must continue to fill it with gas, pay for insurance, as well as maintenance. And, for most cars, there is a finite number of miles you can go with them before they halt forever. In terms of the infrastructure provided, the same holds true. You can install a bike lane and then not have to maintenance it for years. A road for cars on the other hand takes constant wear and tear from heavy vehicles relentlessly grinding it up.

On the topic of cars and cost, the other day I was talking to one of my colleagues and she mentioned that she was waiting on a large sum of money so that she could get her drivers license. Well, I thought to myself, damn, you don't need that much money to get a license. Ha. I joked to myself that it must also come with a car. I then proceeded to look up how much it costs to get a drivers license in the Netherlands, and it costs, drumroll please..... 3060 euros just to get the license! Damn. In the US, you can get a license for under $200 in just about any state.

Proof of this fact

You might be thinking that this is an exclusionary rate, inhibiting less affluent individuals from experiencing the pleasures of driving. However, in a society where other modes are accessible (like transit and cycling), this has a negligible effect on transportation equity, and a vastly more meaningful impact on the quality of the environment, both built and natural.

This kind of bike infrastructure and rule enforcement dynamic is possible to achieve anywhere, even the US. Someday, possibly soon, I will be back in the US to help us achieve a world of transport equity and environmental pleasantness.