Cycling in Amsterdam

The novice cyclist is astonished by the audacity of the cycling Amsterdammer, blithely ignoring red lights, cutting in front of cars (even police cars), trams, and other cyclists, and of course lowly pedestrians.

When you think of Holland, the bicycle stands right up there with dikes, windmills, cheese and wooden shoes. It’s very flat here of course, so hills are almost nowhere an issue. Bridges represent the steepest vertical challenge. Many people in Holland travel to work by bicycle, including mayors, Prime Ministers, and even, it was said, former Queen Beatrix.

But every advantage has a disadvantage. If most of the Netherlands is as flat as a pannenkoek, then instead of hills there is the wind to contend with. The wind, friend of cross-pollination and of the windmill, is the enemy of the cyclist. Cycling uphill is a solitary battle against a fixed, perhaps known, quantity. But cycling against the wind (especially on the cold, rainy days that comprise half of the days here) is to fight against another actor, one who seems to respond to your efforts to master him; who can knock you down; who can make you wonder why you are so stubborn as to keep cycling under such conditions.

Amsterdam presents special challenges for the cyclist, especially the congestion, which can be found not only in the bike lanes themselves, but also in the many other places people…