I recently had my first opportunity to try biking in Amsterdam. On past visits, I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit intimidated – biking in Amsterdam is serious business! At the same time, I’ve been looking at options for renting a bicycle during my stay in Hanoi next year. Just crossing the street in Hanoi is serious business, so cycling is bound to be intense. All of this has me thinking about strategies for cycling in a new city – especially in urban Europe, where many cities have built substantial bike infrastructure over the past few years. So, leave that helmet at home (kidding! kinda!) and let’s get biking.
Getting Ready
Not to cast doubt on your biking skills, but if you’re going to be spending a lot of time on a bike in a dense city, whether in Europe, Asia, or anywhere else, it’s worth double-checking your health insurance. This might be one of those times to make sure you’ve got travel insurance with good medical coverage.
Next, don’t plan to jump on a bike on day one. You’ll be jet lagged, your reaction times will be slower, and crucially, you won’t know the local rules. While biking on country lanes is pretty universal, urban cycling cultures can vary dramatically. Give yourself at least a day as an observer, to get a sense of what to expect. Talk to a local if you can – learn some common phrases or hand gestures, and learn which rules people follow and which they don’t. Is running a stop sign ok, or totally unacceptable? What about biking on a sidewalk? A little bit of study time can go a long way towards keeping you safe and making you feel like a local.
Getting on the Bike
Be smart when starting out – rush hour in an urban core might not be the best time to set out. Midday on a weekday will give you a chance to get comfortable with the signage and navigation, without worrying about as much bike or car traffic. Plus, you’re on vacation – why would you want to fight with rush hour?
Outside the US, biking safely relies on two factors: trust and predictability. These go hand in hand. You need to trust that the other cyclists are going to follow the rules, and you need to behave in a predictable way. In the US, we tend to learn to bike defensively – sure, that car has a stop sign, but will it actually stop? Sure, I’m in a one way bike lane, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be other bikes coming towards me.
Because we don’t have trust, we tend to ride defensively and protectively. This type of behavior can cause major problems elsewhere. For example, in Amsterdam there are many junctions where one bike path intersects another. One of the paths will have a stop sign. If you’re approaching the intersection, and you don’t have a stop sign, you need to keep riding and trust that folks on the other path will stop. If you slow down “just in case,” you’re introducing some chaos into the orderly system. The cyclist on the other path might have been planning to slow down and then coast through the intersection – now they need to slam on their brakes.
It reminded me a lot of crossing a packed street in Southeast Asia. If you step into traffic and move at a predictable and consistent pace through the sea of scooters, everything will be OK. If you try to play frogger, slowing down and speeding up, you’re going to get hurt.
Oh and lastly – many European cities have at-grade tram lines. Be careful when crossing them – they’re probably the biggest cause of crashes for inexperienced cyclists.
Cooling Off
If it all gets too intense, you can always pull over and take a breather. And if you’re in Europe, there’s probably a great cafe nearby to pop into. Which brings me to the last point – locking a bike and safe storage.
You’ll almost certainly have a kind of crummy rental bike, so you won’t be a major target for thieves. Your bigger problem will probably be forgetting which bike is yours, so take plenty of photos. Do be mindful of where you lock things up – in some cities, locking a bike to a fence or signpost might be considered antisocial. The Dutch use ring locks, which engage on the back wheel and make it difficult for someone to just grab your bike and ride it off.
So, what did I miss? What are your favorite biking cities?