Keepng the cars from the city

Dear Bloggers,

As a bus driver I also need to drive in the city of Groningen to get students into the right directions from Central Station to the biggest student campus you have to drive straight through the city and I must say that this is not the easiest job as bicycles are passing you on all sides and you have to try not to kill any of them. The streets are pretty narrow but there are not many cars on these roads as they are only available for busses and taxis and of course bikes are allowed here as well. I must say it is quite a challenge to drive in a city that you only know from the outskirts. The city itself is famous for its one way traffic so it is easier to walk or bike if you want to go shopping. The big shopping malls for construction, gardening and furniture are on the outside of the city and have plenty of parking space.

In Groningen, the Netherlands' sixth largest city, the main form of transport is the bicycle. Sixteen years ago, ruinous traffic congestion led city planners to dig up city-centre motorways. Last year they set about creating a car-free city centre. Now Groningen, with a population of 170,000, has the highest level of bicycle usage in the West. 57% of its inhabitants travel by bicycle - compared with four per cent in the UK.

'57% of its inhabitants travel by bicycle '

The economic repercussions of the programme repay some examination. Since 1977, when a six-lane motorway intersection in the city's centre was replaced by greenery, pedestrianisation, cycleways and bus lanes, the city has staged a remarkable recovery. Rents are among the highest in the Netherlands, the outflow of population has been reversed and businesses, once in revolt against car restraint, are clamouring for more of it. As Gerrit van Werven, a senior city planner, puts it, 'This is not an environmental programme, it is an economic programme. We are boosting jobs and business. It has been proved that planning for the bicycle is cheaper than planning for the car.' Proving the point, requests now regularly arrive from shopkeepers in streets where 'cyclisation' is not yet in force to ban car traffic on their roads.

'Businesses, once in revolt against car restraint, are clamouring for more of it'

A vital threshold has been crossed. Through sheer weight of numbers, the bicycle lays down the rules, slowing down traffic, determining the attitudes of drivers. All across the city roads are being narrowed or closed to traffic, cycleways are being constructed and new houses built to which the only direct access is by cycle. Out-of-town shopping centres are banned. The aim is to force cars to take longer detours but to provide a 'fine mesh' network for cycles, giving them easy access to the city centre.

Like the Netherlands nationally, Groningen is backing bicycles because of fears about car growth. Its ten-year bicycle programme is costing £20m, but every commuter car it keeps off the road saves at least £170 a year in hidden costs such as noise, pollution, parking and health.

Cycling in Groningen is viewed as part of an integral urban renewal, planning and transport strategy. Bicycle-friendly devices seen as exceptional in the UK - separate cycle ways, advanced stop lines at traffic lights, and official sanction for cyclists to do right hand turns at red lights - are routine.

New city centre buildings must provide cycle garages. There are tens of thousands of parking spaces for bikes, either in 'guarded' parks - the central railway station has room for over 3000 - or street racks. Under the City Hall a nuclear shelter has been turned into a bike park.

"We don't want a good system for bicycles, we want a perfect system", says Mr. van Werven. "We want a system for bicycles that is like the German autobahns for cars. We don't ride bicycles because we are poor - people here are richer than in England. We ride them because it is fun, it is faster, it is convenient."

Following Groningen's van

Groningen undoubtedly leads the way in the 'cyclisation' of Europe's cities, but many others are putting two wheels in motion to follow its example. In Germany and the Netherlands in particular, where car culture and the Green movement have both made significant impacts, many cities are building on their provision for bikes. The UK, where transport policy priorities are still dominated by motor vehicles, rather lags behind Groningen's van.

No other European city can match Groningen's record, where fiftyseven per cent of all trips around the city are on bikes, but in quite a few the ratio is rising to a third or more. Delft and Munster now have 41 per cent, and Freiburg's 27 and Heidelberg's 22 per cent are only the leading examples for what is becoming a trend across the continent.

Uniting these cities is a dual commitment on the part of central and city planners to discourage cars and to encourage bikes. Amsterdam, along with 30 other Dutch cities, for instance, voted to eliminate motor vehicles from their city centres in 1992. The Norwegian cities of Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen levy a toll on all cars entering the town centre.

Matching the disincentives for car drivers are carrots for cyclists, such as Bremen's designation of certain streets as bikes-only zones, or Denmark's provision of cycle lanes on three quarters of its roads.

Such legislative commitments do seem to be the key in getting citizens to kick the car habit. Tthe cost of the 'motorised society'. Traffic jams cost about £15 billion simply in terms of delayed deliveries and time that is wasted.

New roads, the maintenance of old ones and administration cost £6 billion. Noise pollution, racks up a further £2.1 billion in lost productivity, medical care and depressed property values, and other kinds of pollution waste another £3 billion. Road accidents, in grim addition, soak up another £5 billion.

For the moment such striking statistics have failed to steer British transport policy away from its infatuation with road building as the solution to traffic congestion, and it will be some time yet before London charts on Bicyclist magazine's top five world biking cities. In 1993 this featured Tianjin, Copenhagen, Harare and Seattle. Straight in at Number One, perhaps predictably, was Groningen

The Old Sailor,

Father's day is today

Dear Bloggers,


Here’s to all of the dads who understand that the key ingredient to being a great dad is showing up, no matter what. It seems like such a simple and obvious task. Just be there when your child needs someone to talk to or when there’s a flute concert or when there’s a football practice and they asked the parents to be there.

But, if you’ve shown up at any of these events you know from the empty seats how often it doesn’t happen. There are so many great and worthwhile excuses like having work that no one else could do or at least sending your spouse or maybe even a even worse excuse. The average person would nod their head in agreement with each one of them and say, well, you tried.

However, parenting is not about you.

Most people get that in a general sense because particularly when the child is small, they obviously need us to focus. At first, everything about being a new parent is exhausting and makes the head spin because it’s all so new, it’s necessary and there’s really no choice if the job is to be done even halfway right.

I remember when my daughter, Frédérique was brand new and I drove by a café where my friends were sitting outside, laughing and chatting. I wanted to stop and join them but Frédérique needed my attention and that came first. That was the moment I knew things had changed forever and I just needed to give in and do it.

But here’s an added twist.

In order to achieve greatness we have to be willing to show up and believe it’ll all work out. We get that belief in doses every time a parent shows up for us. That goes double when we know they had to put something else aside in order to be there, in that seat.

All of us want our children to reach beyond what seems possible or easy and go for what challenges them, what brings out their talents and then tests the boundaries at least a little. We’ve learned by now that that’s where the real rewards are waiting but if you can’t risk it and show up, your chances of finding it go way down.

That’s the exact spot where it comes in handy if you had a dad who went beyond what seemed easy or convenient and just showed up without wondering what was in it for them. They were there fitting in to the small desk or at the dinner table or standing on the sidelines and they were cheering for your success.

You wade out again into the choices and believe in the possibilities of what might be there because you have a great dad who showed up and believed in you even though you were blowing the wrong note during the flute concert or were distracted by fireflies during an outdoor game.

Dads are great at being open to the idea that your greatness is still evolving and chasing fireflies might be a part of the bigger picture.

When our children are grown up, it’s even about showing up to say nothing at all and encouraging our children to need us less because we know they now have all the tools that they need to build their own dreams. To all of you, whose great dad has passed away, may we live our lives in a way that honors their humor, their passion and their beliefs in us. Happy Father’s Day everyone!

The Old Sailor,

My world of soccer

Dear Bloggers,

Don't get me wrong if I say that I do not like soccer or as we call it football in Europe. It is just not my kind of game and I find it still hard to understand that people enjoy watching 22 overpaid guys chasing a ball. Maybe it is me that I am not gay enough to watch a bunch of running men? I have always been surprised by the effect that soccer has on the average Joe, who is in daily life a bankclerc or a headmaster, an IT specialist or even a bus driver. As all of a sudden after two beers the fully have lost their sanity and act like Harry the caveman. (including their vocabulary.)

For me these are hard times as the coming month I will be saddled up with soccer idiots. I think it’s fine that you support your national team but do we need to behave like morons? I like the way of dressing up and I do not hate a glass of beer. What I dislike is the loud and stoneage sounds that some people produce when they score a goal. Some people do not understand that you have to get up the next day to go to work. And I my job you need to concentrate as you have the most precious cargo on board.

I will watch the games when I am free, but I will not call in sick or take a day of for it. As we know by soccergames there will be hundreds of reruns afterwards if something “important” has taken place. And yes I will wear something orange too. If it comes too dressing up for sports events we prefer wearing orange in style of our Kingdom. Even our crown prince is wearing orange in these days.

It’s one of those weird, unexplainable things when a nation’s colors aren’t really what they seem. Technically, the Netherlands national colors are red, white, and blue, but that’s not how the Dutch see it. Orange is the national color in their eyes because the royal family once owned the principality of Orange. What do the principality of Orange and the color orange have to do with the each other? Not a damn thing.

Even though the occurrence is fortuitous, the Dutch have a strong-hold on the color orange and wear it whenever the chance presents itself. I had the privilege of being in Amsterdam for Queen’s Day a few years ago, where I got to experience the wrath that is this nostalgic phenomenon. For those of you who don’t know what Queen’s Day is, on this day the Queen is visiting a few cities in her Kingdom to celebrate her birthday with the people but on the other let’s just say it’s a day for drunken madness and selling your life away. Oh, and everyone’s wearing orange!

When asked to wear red, white, and blue, leave it to the Dutch to say, “Nah, I think I’ll wear orange!” It’s that sort of independent spirit that probably led to the invention of “Total Football.” I mean they didn’t want to go along with the national colors, so why go along with the same brand of soccer as the rest of the world? You have to love a nation that is passionate about the most forgotten color in the spectrum. It’s what makes them unique, and they know it. That’s why I like this jersey. You know who it is. There’s no second guessing.

Please let it be a good one as South Africa is not the safest country to play. But wouldn’t it be nice for them if the World Cup was played with no incidents. Let us hope that sportsfans will not turn into hooligans. I have seen quite a bit of the world an I must say it is a beautiful but poor country. And if you will not provoke them your chances are fair enough to get out alive.

Just don’t be surprised if the team holding the World Cup trophy likes the color orange too. There is only one way to find out.

The Old Sailor,