What a cycling city looks like

By Richard Scrase

Richard is a trustee of Cyclox

Oxford famously has signs on the ring road describing it as a cycling city, despite its lack of cycling infrastructure. But to see a city that does empower people to ride bikes, visit Utrecht.

I went to the Cargo Bike Festival in Utrecht in mid-October. As I strolled from station to festival venue and later to and from my overnight accommodation, I experienced a cycling city. Road space devoted to cyclists and pedestrians. Enough dry, supervised spaces to park tens of thousands of bikes, some with bike repair shops on site. Lifts to take you and your bike over the railway lines. Places to rent bikes. This ubiquitous infrastructure allows business to flourish.

Cycling to work

At the festival Pim de Weerd, Global Mobility Manager at tech company ASML, told us his target was to get all his colleagues who lived within 15 km of the factory to cycle to work. With a workforce of 40,000 or so, this meant about 25,000 people. So far, around 16,000 have got on their bikes.

How does ASML do this?

• Last year it partnered with a company called Drop Mobility to make 1,000 shared e-bikes available to employees.
• At the company site there is extensive cycle parking as well as changing rooms with showers.
• Employees can access loans akin to our cycle-to-work scheme.
• Awareness campaigns show staff how their journey can include cycling.
• Staff from countries that don’t have a cycling culture can learn to ride in company time and at the company’s expense.

Finally, ASML listens to feedback from its staff about their commutes and is using this information to work with the local authority to improve cycle-network bottlenecks. This means, for example, asking for some new bridges over canals.

The effort ASML is making to facilitate its staff cycling to work is a case study I’d like to see emulated by our city’s largest employers: the universities, the hospitals and BMW.

As I went to catch my train home it suddenly struck me. I had seen no van deliveries obstructing the pavement. What I had seen were a wide variety of cargo bikes and trailers whizzing by. The future is here.