City administrations across Europe and beyond have made real progress in planning and providing for cycling in their cities. Support both for cycling measures and this book has come from the European Commission. Their support has been most valuable, but this was not the start of their involvement. In 1999, the then European Environment Commissioner, Ritt Bjerregard wrote the following foreword to their publication ‘Cycling: The way ahead for towns and cities’:
Urban utility cycling is being promoted widely due to various health, social, economic and environmental benefits. This study seeks to identify and rank which munic- ipal-level policies and other factors are most influential in increasing cycling as a means of everyday transport and improving the real and perceived cycling safety in car-oriented urban centres. This is achieved by identifying the key factors thought to influence cycle use and by establishing a hierarchy of effectiveness of municipal cycling policies.
With its high cycling mode share, the Netherlands is often seen as a best practice for cycling policies. However, there is little insight into the drivers behind this phenomenon, specifically which policy interventions increased cycling rates and which did not. The knowledge gap on the effec- tiveness of cycling policies seriously limits the potential for learning from the Dutch experience. This paper will address this gap, by exploring the performance of Dutch cycling policies in 22 medium- sized cities since 2000.