The cycling in The Netherlands has been pretty nice for the most part. I find myself keeping up with the group and not getting as physically exhausted as I would biking around Atlanta. It is also really nice that the bike lanes are away from the cars so it all feels a lot safer. One of my biggest concerns with biking around the city of Atlanta is being an inconvenience to cars and riding too slow for traffic since I am a newbie, but here I don’t have that concern at all. Even in the bike lane, if I am going too slow or slower than one of the residents they just go around and it’s not big deal. Road rage is definitely NOT a thing here.
The design here is different from the U.S. in that it makes the safety and efficiency of bikers and pedestrians the priority. Obviously having the bike lanes and the separated bike paths adjacent to the street is a big difference, but even the car yield signs and having the cars stop when the bikes are passing is completely different from the U.S. Today we biked around Delft looking at some of the bike infrastructure that has been implemented, and I was definitely that American that stopped at the bike yield to let a car go even though the bike had the right of way. It’s just so different and I am not used to feeling this safe while riding around the city.
