In Bicycle-Dominant Amsterdam, Officials Face Trouble Promoting Electric Vehicles

In Bicycle-Dominant Amsterdam, Officials Face Trouble Promoting Electric Vehicles

By Scott Doggett December 21, 2009

Cars in the pinched, medieval streets at the center of Amsterdam can quickly clog traffic. The policy has been to find myriad ways to discourage them, making the popular Dutch city increasingly friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians.

The Dutch have tried stiff fees, a maze of prohibited lanes and other ways of outright discrimination to limit the number of cars in the antique city of arched bridges and canals. It was originally built to cater to boats.

The city's charm campaign was then shifted to bicyclists, but now officials are trying to switch gears and mount an aggressive effort to encourage people to buy new electric cars. That jibes with this country's fight against global warming, but it is also warming the tempers among cyclists. They worry that their traditional right-of-way over cars will be sideswiped by more cars and more parking ramps.

The city council is giving free power to new electric-car owners for the next two years and has agreed to pay half of the extra cost of purchasing plug-in vehicles, as compared to cheaper gasoline-powered models. And the city council is looking into adding more parking spaces for cars in the space-squeezed city.

There is electricity in the air there. Amsterdam wants to have 10,000 electric cars in the city by 2015, and four times that number by 2020. In 30 years, every car in Amsterdam is expected to whir quietly on electricity. The city has already installed 19 charging points in the last month. Motorists can fill up and zip off without dropping a dime.

"Now we're going to explode it," said Peter Duijn, who manages the electric-car program.

Not everyone is excited about the emergence of cars that plug into the wall like a vacuum cleaner, and the city's emphatic promotion of them. The Netherlands breed bicyclists. The narrow streets of Amsterdam siphon legions of upright riders on heavy black bikes to work, pubs and retail stores. Long ribbons of cyclists dominate roadways. Couples sometimes ride side by side, holding hands.

Up to now, they have ruled. There are 180,000 parking spots for cars in Amsterdam, compared to 550,000 bicycles. Last year, 38 percent of transportation "movements" in the city were by bicycle, compared to 37 percent by car. In the city center, cyclists reached a critical mass of 55 percent of movements.

"We are afraid. If you add more parking spaces, you get more cars," said Marjolein de Lange, a member of the cycling union Fietsersbond, which is concerned about the electric car program. "We think the cleanest means of transport is the bike. Definitely."

The city budget has shone on cyclists for years by providing bike lanes that are separated from roads, by building soaring parking ramps that hold thousands of bikes, and with anti-theft initiatives that include free tattooing on cycle frames.
Some cars get tossed in canals

Electric cars are the newcomers. The program is expected to cost in total about $15 million. Its emphasis is on replacing gas-powered cars from city streets. "We don't want more cars," said Duijn, who oversees the program.

The program comes as small changes are visible on Amsterdam's roadways. Dozens of Smart cars, the small and fuel-efficient two-seaters with gasoline engines, have reportedly been thrown into the city's canals this year. Also, more gas-powered scooters are racing along the city's bike lanes, where they are legally allowed to roam.

But these are all interlopers to Ria Hilhorst, the city's cycling official. "I think it [bicycling] is the future way of transport. It's very fast. You can go anywhere. It keeps cities livable and safe."

Scott Doggett:  is an AutoObserver.com Associate Editor.