I rode a bike around Amsterdam for three days last week. How easy was it? When I walked into the convention center to register for the 2010 meeting of the Global Reporting Initiative, the first person to greet me was a young woman from a company called MacBike offering free bike rental for the remainder of my visit to the city. Fifteen minutes later, I was on my way to explore the city center.
Amsterdam, I’m told, has 550,000 bicycles and 800,000 people. It has 400 km of bike lanes. And about 37% of all commuter trips are made by bike, according to Amsterdam Cycling to Sustainability website. (You’ll have to trust me; it’s in Dutch.) Clearly, the Dutch love their bikes. More important–this city, its businesses and its people have found a way to make bicycling easy, convenient, fun and (mostly) safe for people of all ages. If American cities could become more bike-friendly, we’d do the planet and ourselves a favor.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Amsterdam: Cycling to Sustainability | Marc Gunther
Author: Marc Gunther
