New green bike lanes on Market Street in San Francisco were
inspired by those in the Netherlands, where 27 percent of all
trips are made on two wheels. (Photo by San Francisco Bicycle
Coalition under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com) The
single biggest reason for Dutch success in making biking safe
and popular is their policy of separating bike lanes from moving
vehicles on busy streets, either by physical barriers such as
curbs or bright painted markings on the pavement. From a
bicyclist’s perspective, the San Francisco Bay Area and the
Randstad—a part of the Netherlands encompassing Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague—seem to have little in common.
There’s hardly a hill anywhere in this Dutch region, while a
trip around the Bay Area feels like a roller coaster ride. But a
closer look shows plenty of similarities. The places are almost
identical in population (7 million), and both stand as forward-
looking places dedicated to making bicycles an integral part of
their transportation systems—a