Bike Sense
Bike Sense: the podcast of The BC Cycling Coalition.
Join Host Peter Ladner as he interviews guests to talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education, and road safety in BC. Listen to stories that can influence changes that make active transportation and mobility safer, more equitable, and more accessible, so we can meet our climate, health, social justice, tourism and economic development goals.
Please visit our website at bccycling.ca to find out more about what the BC Cycling Coalition is doing and how you can join and support us.
Bike Sense
The Dutch Cycling Revolution: Lessons for BC
Consul General for the Kingdom of the Netherlands to BC, Sebastiaan Messerschmidt, shares his firsthand experiences of growing up in a country that prioritizes cycling. From his nostalgic childhood memories of biking freely and safely to his current efforts in promoting active transportation projects globally, Sebastiaan offers a unique perspective on the transformative power of cycling-friendly infrastructure, what we can do to up our game, and where BC is getting it right.
www.nederlandwereldwijd.nl and/or www.netherlandsandyou.nl
Facebook www.facebook.com/NetherlandsEmbassyInCanada | Twitter @NLinCanada @smesserschmidt
Share your BikeSense with us! Send us a text message.
***********************************************
The Bike Sense podcast with Peter Ladner is produced by the BC Cycling Coalition – your voice for safer and more accessible cycling and active transportation in British Columbia.
Membership in the BCCC is now FREE! To find out about BCCC's projects and add your voice to the chorus please visit BCCycling.ca
Welcome to Bike Sense, the BC Cycling Coalition's podcast, where we talk about all things related to cycling advocacy, education and safety in BC. I'm your host, peter Ladner. I'm the chair of the board of the BC Cycling Coalition. I hope you enjoy the show. I hope you enjoy the show. My guest today is Sebastian Meijerschmidt, who is the Consul General for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and we are going to talk about what BC looks like from the point of view of someone who grew up totally immersed in a cycling culture and what the Netherlands perhaps could offer us, and a bunch of other stuff. But before we do, I'm just going to explain how he ended up on this podcast.
Speaker 1:I was at a conference about the future of transportation in cities and it was almost entirely preoccupied with EVs, charging stations, regulations and so on. And right at the end I stood up and said well, you know, that's great, but there's also a whole other world of active transportation, particularly empowered and opened up and expanded by the arrival and popularity of e-bikes. And after I sat down, a man called Martin van Ouden came up to me, said I'm with the Dutch consulate and we are very interested in this topic. So that led me to a party at Sebastian's place to celebrate the birthday of the King of the Netherlands, the King and Queen, or just the King Just the King, just the King.
Speaker 1:Okay, but the Queen could have been there too. Anyways, and Martin Sebastian has also stepped up to support the Active Transportation Summit that the BC Cycling Coalition is organizing in collaboration with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, june 18th 19th the Anvil Center. So welcome to the podcast, sebastian.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I'm very excited. I'm very excited.
Speaker 1:Peter, before we get into the issues, I just want to find out a little bit about you. And first question I've got four questions. The first one is can you remember your first cycling experience or your first time you got on a bicycle?
Speaker 2:oh you know, was it just well, the dutch people bored with cycles on the feet, so I don't know. Okay, so right in the right out of the womb, yeah, you know, we, we, we get on tricycles and like early stage, early, early, early, early stage, so we play, we play outside, like in my childhood. Might be different now, I don't know how it is now because I'm old, but my childhood we got outside like right immediately on tricycles and then you get the little bicycle with a side wheel to support you, but you want to get rid of those as quick as possible. And then by the time I was like four, like early four, I was riding on, you know, without the side wheels, on my little bicycle through the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you, not just necessarily about cycling, but have you any other specific memory from your childhood that you would say defines you Well? I think my youth, which also kind of shaped part of my character, was really characterized by a lot of freedom. You get on your little bicycle and I was like five or six and my mom and dad would not see me. I would just morning come back from school, I would say, bye, I'll get on my little bicycle. I was like five or six and my mom and dad would not see me. I would just morning, like, come back from school, I would say, bye, I'll get on my little bicycle, I would go outside and I would play outside all day and the only thing I needed to do was back home before dark. That's the only thing, and then we'd have dinner or whatever. But so so, and that's really I love that, because also the towns were shaped like, especially in the 1970s.
Speaker 2:The town environments were shaped to really cater also to kids and to cycling infrastructure. You could ride around in a whole neighborhood without feeling unsafe. My parents weren't worried. I think today's parents maybe including myself, are a bit more helicopter parents. We're way more on top of the safety and security of our children. They're a bit more scared and anxious about that. Back then I could just go outside and play and that involved bicycles and one of the things that we would make noise. We'd get these little. You know how you get these things where yogurt is put in like they're plasticky, if you cut them up and you take a peg and you put it on your spokes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it makes a lot of noise. And when you're six, seven years old, that's fantastic. And if you have like 12 of them, you make a lot of noise.
Speaker 1:No, I have to just throw a plug in here for Yutai Lee's video that he did about why kids don't walk to school anymore. It's about 12 minutes long, it's had 1.3 million downloads and it gets into that whole question you were just talking about. Back to you is there a specific project you're proud of that you've been involved with at any point in your career?
Speaker 2:There's many because I happen to love what I do. The fact that I get paid for this stuff is amazing. There's many things I get to do which is fantastic, um, and some of them are also bicycle related. Uh, we supported the bicycle mayor of cape town. My former posting was in cape town, south africa, and issues around public transportation and local transportation and active transportation are different there from here.
Speaker 2:Um, and this guy was, and also this predecessor, the woman, lebo Gang, and since both were kind of amazing people, they work in the townships to teach people how to ride the bicycles and that's more healthy because you find more people that are having an unhealthy lifestyle. It's cheaper. You find a lot of people that don't have the money and public transportation into town is sometimes a quarter of what people earn and it's more fun. And they made such an impact with just these projects. So the bicycle mayor that kind of advocates also towards the municipality and towards the city, like guys, if you make the infrastructure, people will be less reliant on public transport or cars and it will be better for all of us and and it was, they were very passionate people and for us to put a little bit of a money with that to make them work better and then also support them in the, in the infrastructure and also in the in the governance fantastic could you explain what?
Speaker 1:what is a bicycle mayor? That's not like the real mayor who happens to be a cyclist. It's somebody who says they're a bicycle mayor.
Speaker 2:No, no, bicycle mayors are more or less, yeah, they're like ambassadors for bicycle riding. There's an organization called Bikes B-Y-C-S in the Netherlands and they have come up with the concept, so the bicycle mayor of Amsterdam Fietsburgermeester is the Dutch word, if you have any Dutch listeners and they started in the Netherlands to kind of advocate more bicycling infrastructure and it's spread around the world. It reads everywhere there is one in Toronto, there's one in Victoria, there's one in Waterloo, not one in Vancouver. Yet We'll get there. I'm here now. I'm here now. I'm here now. So it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. I was gonna ask you what? What can we learn? Don't worry, okay, later.
Speaker 2:So that was really, uh, it was, it was a low-hanging fruit for us to, because it serves our global challenges and our global ambitions for the sustainable development goal and and supporting uh, our adaptation towards climate change and also mitigating the, the effects of climate change.
Speaker 2:So it serves a bigger goal, but also serves the, the goal of of development cooperation, where you want people that are less fortunate to have money to do, to go in different ways of transportation, to be able to actually go from hb uh in a sustainable manner, and so it serves so many. And then also it's a social cohesion. I did a tweet like if people are on x, still you can have all the kinds of debates, whether that's a good or a bad thing. I'm not going there, but uh, I did a tweet in cape town level hung was her name, the bicycle mayor there and she explained really eloquently what riding a bicycle for for a so-called black woman in cape town means and how you also meet other people. It's a social thing, it's a social fabric thing, it's a transportation thing, it's a health thing and it's a money thing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, quite interesting so is cycling, promoting cycling. Is that a policy of the Dutch government? I mean you. You stepped up to support our, our active transportation summit. Yeah, is that part of your mandate to get people onto bicycles wherever there's a Dutch consul general?
Speaker 2:well, you know, we we aspire still to be bicycle country number one, but we also aspire to help achieve the sustainable development goal. So, yeah, it's definitely part of our mandate. Also, we really as allied countries like Canada and the Netherlands. We really share norms and values. We share an outlook on the world in many aspects, so we are natural partners to work together to improve each other and inspire each other. And one of the ways to improve and inspire each other is looking at mobility, and there's many things that we can learn from the Canadians. In many areas, many things you excel and the Dutch can learn a lot. There's a few areas where I start being very arrogantly bragging about what we can bring to the table, and when it comes down to active transportation and mobility, I think that's an area where we excel, but at the same time, it's an easier win for us.
Speaker 2:Our country is flat. Our mountains are called the wind. There's no mountains, it's all flat. So there's a song called the Dutch Mountains. You might want to look it up on YouTube one day. It's actually about the wind. So there's no mountains, so it's easier to ride your bicycle right and the infrastructure is there.
Speaker 2:It wasn't always there. People think that it was always like that? Forget it. Look at pictures of Amsterdam in the 1970s. It was infected. It's just too many cars everywhere and people were stuck in traffic the whole day. It looked horrible and there's a lot of pictures on it If you go Google it.
Speaker 2:We transformed that in a matter of one and a half decades. How did that happen? Oh, it was a bit of a revolution and not everybody was happy at the time. There was a lot of opposition, especially from people owning shops and people thinking that you need to be able to park your car closer to the shop to actually be able to sell something, because people will not carry it otherwise to their bicycle and get home you know what research shows otherwise through their bicycle and get home. You know what research shows? Research shows if you make an area car-free but make it really accessible by both public transport and by foot and by bicycle, your revenues go up. They don't go down, they go up. As long as you make it the connectedness and intermodality and that's very important, the intermodality if you get that right, then more people will flog in and go to your business.
Speaker 1:Explain more what you mean by intermodality.
Speaker 2:So it's really important to look at transport not just from a single mode of transport point of view. If you connect the dots really well, more people will be able to move from A to B in a way that's more sustainable, more healthy and more efficient. People get there quicker and happier. So that means if you have a bicycle infrastructure that's really well connected to a train infrastructure. Research has shown in the Netherlands that people that take the train the numbers have gone up substantially substantially, like tens of percentages because they started building really good bicycle parkings where the bicycles were safe, and then the train stations also started to appear repair shops. So if you get to the train station you happen to have a flat tire, you don't need to walk home for eight or nine kilometers because you have a repair shop right there. You come back from your day of work, you get out of the train, you do that last five, six kilometers. Your bicycle is there. It's repaired for you.
Speaker 2:Also, what happened in the Netherlands is we have our public transportation, especially the trains. They've started their own bicycle rent-out schemes, which is called the public transportation bicycle, the OV-feets in Dutch. They're yellow and blue. You see them everywhere. You get to the train station. The major train stations all have them. You have a subscription, you have a card, you can just get a bicycle. If you don't have a subscription, you just pay and you arrive there and there's hundreds of them so you can choose one. You get on your bicycle and you go to where you need to go.
Speaker 2:And especially that intermodality, if the last five to 10 kilometers, if you can do that on a bicycle, it saves a lot of congestion. It saves a lot of infrastructure for parking of cars, which take 28,. It's 28 times the size of infrastructure you need for a car than for a bicycle. It's not just about parking you can't park 28 bicycles on the side of a car but also the car lanes and everything. Everything that comes with a car infrastructure is 28 times as big One car, 28 bicycles. So if you can make that jump your efficiency also with town planners or cities that are congested, the benefits are enormous. But you got to connect the dots Because if you have the bicycle infrastructure not well connected to your public transport, it's not going to work. Then nobody's going to do it.
Speaker 1:So, sebastian, you've talked about two things the flatness of the Netherlands and the number of trains that are out there. We don't have. Well, we have SkyTrain in Metro.
Speaker 2:Vancouver, beautiful SkyTrain. Translink is doing well. It's a beautiful thing. I like the SkyTrain.
Speaker 1:But when you think about the whole province, you arrive here as the Consul General and you're aware of all these things. With this kind of experience, what observations do you have about how we might do some of the same things, knowing that we have mountains, hills, bigger spaces, fewer trains?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you have a few challenges and a few opportunities here that are different from where I'm from. So because you have more space, it's easier to build infrastructure somehow right. So you can have more terrain track because you have more space. We don't have it. We have to be all very efficient on very small plots of land. So you can do more and you can see it also in your buses. Your buses are big and your buses in vancouver also have a. You can put your bicycle in front of the bus on a rack. Fantastic stuff. We don't have stuff. Also, the modality with the buses is quite impressive. I find the bus system in Vancouver quite well organized. I take the bus a lot and even on Google Maps you can see when the buses come. It works.
Speaker 1:I know some shuttle buses between regions have accommodation for bicycles and some of them have a trailer in the back that they can take a bicycle the one from Worcester to Vancouver. Yeah, exactly, talk more about regional transit.
Speaker 2:Well, there's your opportunity, because nobody's going to ride a bicycle from here to Kelowna, right From Vancouver to Kelowna. Nobody's going to do that unless you are a mammal, middle-aged man in Lycra and you like working out which I might want to do one day because I am one of those then it's fun. But for transport, if you talk just normal transportation, people going from A to B nobody's going to take the bicycle from here to Kelowna, so you need the bus, the train, the car to actually do that. So then you're aiming for a really healthy and good and active transportation, at least for the last mile or for the local area where you are. And if you have a really sustainable way of doing the bigger distances, then great. But that opportunity is not always there. So then you have to think cars, so that the buses have racks and trailers that you can put your bicycle on is really awesome. That's something we don't have in the Netherlands. It's a big opportunity, it's great that you have it and it works. So in some ways we are a bit ahead of you, but we had an easier environment.
Speaker 2:The Netherlands is maybe what? One and a half times Vancouver Island in size, and we have what? 17 million people, 18 almost so we're all densely packed together, so our bicycle lanes don't have to go for hundreds of kilometers, because then you're in Germany or in Poland or in France or in Spain. So we don't have that for hundreds of kilometer, because then you're in Germany or in Poland or in France or in Spain. So we don't have that, even though also there you see, european, we have a really dense network of bicycle lanes and it's nodes and it's a well-structured system and that's also spreading to. The Belgians have it too. So we're connecting the two. So we now have we call bicycle highways, almost door fietsroutes, which is kind of how would you translate that Thru-go bicycle routes, that kind of more long distance for people that are wanting to go longer distance. You can go from town to town, it's all connected.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to how you get there from here, and you mentioned the pushback, and then you said there was data that shows, and we found the same thing here. When a bike route goes in, it's quite typical for the adjacent businesses to scream horror, it's still. We're still fighting this out in vancouver on commercial drive, and then the data shows that they actually do better. Is there other data that shows the benefits of of cycling that somehow help tip the balance and win public opinion? Or is it just a matter of having the courage to put something on the ground and then let people see and experience it for themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the courage of having people experience it for themselves and then demanding it from their cities, from their towns, from their councillors, from their mayors. Please do something about this, because we want more of this.
Speaker 1:So, other than these kind of exhortations for change in public policy, are there Dutch businesses? I know part of your job is to promote Dutch businesses in exchange of commerce and so on, but are there levels of expertise or new technology in this field that you feel we could benefit from that you already have in the Netherlands? I mean, you mentioned the bike garages at the train stations, but other things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. Now let me just first jump a little bit back. So modern diplomacy is really about building ecosystem, especially between allied countries. So I'm not here only to sell Dutch product. That would be the old style diplomatic way. We really want to innovate together. We want to get to those solutions together. So if there's a really good Canadian company that does business in the Netherlands, I think we both profit, or the other way around, I don't really care, it needs to happen. And also in the transportation system, same thing. There's some really good thinkers out here and in the Netherlands. If you connect them, you get a more beautiful product.
Speaker 2:Actually, to continue on that note for a little bit before I get to your question, george Liu, who is coming to the Act for Active Transportation Summit, is working for the Amsterdam municipality, but he's actually a Vancouverite before, so he's Canadian. Chris Bruntlett, who is a Vancouverite before, is now in the city of Delft in the Netherlands running the Dutch cycling embassy, like the Canadian becoming totally Dutch, like super Dutch, wonderful, super Dutch so, and actually promoting this now. So, and that's the kind of thing you want to happen, because that's where you start to innovate together. There is, if there's research institutes and universities that kind of collaborate on these things. That's what you want to happen. So that's actually also as we are, as a consulate, also stepping into this ecosystem. That's what we're hoping to get to, where we get people to talk to each other across the ocean, across the big land that we have between us, but start exchanging ideas.
Speaker 2:And there's so many revolutions going on at the moment which will make active and sustainable transportation more attainable, and some of them are small, some of them are big. The big one, of course, is the electric bicycle, the e-bike. There's no more excuse for you, if you live in Vancouver, to not take a bicycle because it's so hilly. So what? It's hilly. If you have an e-bike, you can get on your e-bike and get across those hills, and that would apply to any town in BC, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:So the e-bike, although they're still expensive, so it's more. It's maybe not the elite elite, but you have to be. You have to earn a pretty good buck to to to buy a nice e-bike. But the second hand market, second hand market is coming up because the first generation is coming on to facebook, marketplace and what have you, and craigslist, so you can get there. You can get there. I've seen really good to offer, so e-bikes are becoming attainable. Other things, um well, just on the attainable e-bikes are becoming attainable.
Speaker 1:Other things. Well, just on the attainable e-bikes, just a footnote there, the city of Saanich has had an e-bike rebate program. Depending on your income, you could get a subsidy to buy an e-bike, and UBC has just published the results of a survey to find out what the impact was, and they were very positive about a lot of car trips replaced. What the impact was, and they were very positive about a lot of car trips replaced. Yeah, nine out of ten of the people who got the major subsidy would not have been able to afford an e-bike otherwise.
Speaker 2:So this is something again the bc cycling coalition is pushing for and they go and look at your bike share system really well done. There are stations everywhere over vancouver. I haven't seen in other municipalities as much, but in Vancouver it really strikes me. If I want to just get on a bicycle, I can get the app out. Usually within a kilometer I can get to a bicycle Fantastic. Some of them are electric even Really great and you see the trucks coming by to load them in, to make sure that they're all maintained, bring them into the workshop and put them back out again. That's a really strong proposition for a better way of transporting your people in your city while saving making sure there's no congestion, saving some bucks for the people that maybe have to save some bucks or want to save some bucks, and keeping people healthy. It's also relieving some pressure on the health care system.
Speaker 1:When you ride your bicycle around Vancouver, when you're not out for a serious ride with your Lycra, do you wear fancy clothes? Do you just wear ordinary clothes? Or do you not even bicycle around Vancouver? You said you go on the bus.
Speaker 2:No, I take the bus occasionally. I prefer the bicycle and I sometimes unfortunately have to take the car because of the distances and the time that is to me. So that always irritates me. I don't have the time to go on the bike. I'm always a bit frustrated.
Speaker 2:I rode my bicycle this morning. I put on my jeans and I ride the bicycle to work and I change at work, put my suit on or whatever I need to wear that day. I have a little backpack on my back where my clothes are in Works, fine, and you know what? We don't melt in the rain. So when it rains or even when it snows, there's gear out there which you can put on your rain pants or your rain over shoes and then you're fine.
Speaker 2:You get home, you're happy and riding in the rain actually people don't know that. People that are driving in a car all the time do not know that the experience of riding in the rain is actually fun. It's only that transition from that time when you are still inside and you look at the weather outside you go oh, it's raining. That's when you kind of don't want to go. And then also the first maybe two minutes when you're in it, when you first start getting, oh it's raining, but actually, when you're in it and you feel those little specks of rain on your face, it's actually nice. It's actually really nice.
Speaker 1:One of the things I always think when I'm riding in the rain and I can see people in the cars going by, I think do they know that I'm warm and dry and having a good time? Probably not.
Speaker 2:No, they don't. They won't believe you when they tell you. There's one thing, though, before you go on to the next question, there's one thing, though. That's different from me here than riding in many cities in Europe, not just the Netherlands is I'm a bit more scared of the traffic here, so I really commend the city of Vancouver of having worked out lanes where bicycles are more safe. So I know my routes. Now I know how to get from my home to my office and taking routes that are fairly traffic low or even have a separate bike lane.
Speaker 2:But in the beginning, when I didn't know, I sometimes made a mistake to take the wrong road, and then it's just scary because people are not as used to bicycles out here. So I can't rely on a car when I'm passing, when I'm riding my car, car passing me taking a right, I can't rely on that person to look over the shoulder to check whether there's a bicycle there. That's the first thing you learn when you're taking driver's lessons in the Netherlands. You have to look over your shoulder to make sure there's no bicycle, look in your mirror and look over your shoulder to make sure there's no bicycle when you're turning right. Now, you can't rely on that here. So I'm wearing a helmet here, which is the way. More is the law. But my wife always screams at me when I try it out too, because I'm done, we don't do it, but it's also, it makes sense. After the first few times I'm like, yeah, I do want to wear my helmet here Because it's just, it feels a little.
Speaker 2:And that's where I think there's an improvement to be made, like making people aware that there's different modes of transport. People that are in a car, there's people on scooters there, people on bicycles there. Those people on bicycles and on scooters need to behave, because if they irritate the cars drivers, then it's going to get worse, and that's what you see sometimes. I'm irritated when a bicycle rider takes the Granville Bridge, because you will just make the car drivers very angry, and it's not good for me either, because then they will look at all bicycles go, oh you, and then beep bicycles. So you got to be sensible about this. So you got to educate each other and share the road, but then make it in a way that bicycles understand. Okay, this road is really for cars. I should not be here. Let me just go a different way.
Speaker 1:So that brings me to. We're going to wrap this up in a minute, but we've talked quite a bit about Vancouver and the places that have a higher level of bike lanes and protection and bikes on buses and so on, but a small community where the prevailing necessity, let's say, is that everybody's in their car on the roads and the roads are not designed for cyclists at all. Do you have any advice for people in those smaller communities, what they can do, based on the experience in the netherlands of converting from a pretty much all car culture to a pretty much all cycle culture?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, I think think it maybe takes groups like the BC Cycle Coalition and HubCycle to kind of work out maybe programs first where they can have people experience being on a bicycle going from A to B and negotiating with the municipality hey, can you close this road off? We want to do a bike to school week. Can we just try this out for one day a year to kind of have people get in touch with it? Because you first need that base of people saying, okay, this is feasible and I will do it once it's there, because no policymaker is going to put in very expensive infrastructure if the policymaker doesn't believe that that it's going to pay off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and then and then and then maybe you know you can take the back alleys. First, if the, if the, the city doesn't have the bicycle agency, you can take the alleys. That's the nice thing about city infrastructure in canada usually you have the major road and then you have the small back alley which you can, which can work for a while and that can get people on the bicycle, and then you actually really just have to lobby your decision maker, your town planners.
Speaker 2:Well, speaking of back alleys, the town planners that look further ahead and who talk to the developers of area.
Speaker 1:On the matter of driving back alleys, of course sometimes people bail out and ride on the. On the matter of of uh, driving back alleys, of course sometimes people bail out and ride on the sidewalk, which creates problems with pedestrians yeah and is not a good idea. However, I just wanted to ask you about in amsterdam, with all those uh cyclists driving around, there are conflicts with pedestrians and uh, what? What's your, your thought, what are your thoughts about that?
Speaker 2:yeah, it can get. It can sometimes even get ugly. Um, not just in amsterdam. There's this, this intersection in the hague, which always fascinates me. There's an internet section in the hague, very close to the town hall, where tram goes through tram, tram line. There's cars coming through, not many, only taxis and buses, and then there's bicycles and pedestrians and there's no signs on the road, there's no lines, there's no dotted lines, straight lines, nothing, nothing. And it's a big intersection. The first time you see it it's intimidating, it's scary, peter, you know what research says it's safer, fewer accidents. You know why? Well, people pay attention. They don't rely on signs and stuff. And now it's my way, so I can just go 100 miles an hour through this area. No, they have to actually pay attention themselves. And it works. And the first time I saw it I thought it was intimidating. I was like this is scary, I need to get from here to the other side of the road. I'm Dutch, I was born there and raised. But you know, it worked and it seems to work. Data shows it works.
Speaker 2:And Amsterdam it's usually people that are not accustomed to the way of moving. So the tourists that walk on a bicycle, road Bicycle of moving. So the tourists that walk on a bicycle road, bicycle paths in the Netherlands are red. They're very visible. They're red, red tarmac, red asphalt. So it's quite clear to everybody who knows it that you're walking on a bicycle path and that might not be the smartest thing to do. It's like walking on a highway while walking your dog. You don't do that right. You don't walk your dog on the highway, so why walk with your suitcase on a red asphalt bicycle lane? The thing is, people that come in as a tourist don't know this. You can't blame them because nobody told them. So they usually find out the first 15 minutes that they're there because there's bicycle coming by and they first ring jing, jing, jing, jing with their little bell on the bicycle. Of course tourist doesn't know what that means, keeps walking. Then you get a little bit of a Dutch directness thrown at your head in verbal, verbal, not very nice way, because it's unfortunately who we are. We're quite direct, but then you know. Then you know you figure out oh wait a minute, this maybe. Figure out. Oh, wait a minute, this maybe is not my place, and that usually goes okay. But you have to like and also you have the youngsters Like I was a student in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2:I was very irresponsible. I had a very irresponsible game which I maybe should not talk about on the podcast. I was studying, I was living on one side of the Amsterdam, I had classes on the other side of Amsterdam. My game was to go from one side of Amsterdam to the other side of Amsterdam without stopping. Now that, peter, is a very irresponsible bad idea. It went okay because I was quite agile and the police stopped me once and said really, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm like, yeah, maybe this was a bit yeah, but the fact is it's kind of organic. The good thing about it is it's kind of organic. The good thing about it is it's kind of organic. The bicycles and the cars they know each other and they organically move with each other. If you know that a car is taking a left, as a bicycle, you kind of tail because you know that car. When the car is going, it's safe, so you can kind of tail. Dutch people do that. It's organic. And when you approach as a car coming and you see you always check is there anything around it? Is there a bicycle around it or moped? You know it's an organic wave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it works so I I don't think we want to go on the record saying that the recommendation from the consul general no, it isn't, it was stupid, I told you no, no, not that you drive around without stopping, but that you take away all the traffic signs and let people just sort it out.
Speaker 1:There is an example of that in Vancouver, by the way, which is Granville Island. There are no traffic signs there, and the pedestrians and cars and cyclists all work it out by being more careful. Well, we're happy to accept your label of us as frontrunners in anything regarding cycling and would love to stay in touch and encourage you to join in with any of these advocacy movements and help us achieve even part of what you've done in the Netherlands, which is such an inspiration for us all. So thanks so much, sebastian.
Speaker 2:It's a passionate subject for me, so I like talking about it. Thanks so much for the opportunity, much appreciated.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Bike Sense and supporting safe cycling in BC. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. The BC Cycling Coalition relies on your support to continue our work. The BC Cycling Coalition relies on your support to continue our work. Please consider becoming a member and adding your voice to the call for safer and more accessible cycling in BC. Special thanks to our sponsors BC Hydro, richards Buell, sutton, icbc Moto and the Bicycle Pro.