This post looks at the length of safe and comfortable bike infrastructure in Dutch cities by area and population and compares it with a few of the cities from our BC Bicycle Infrastructure Index. Some BC municipalities are near the start of that journey, some are further into it, but how far do we still have to go to match Dutch levels of infrastructure? Answers within…

Using generally the same methodology as the BC Bike Infrastructure Index, i.e., comparing length of bike infrastructure with area and population, we’ve compared many of the main cities in the Netherlands with a few of the communities that came out on top in BC.

A Mode Share Challenge

We haven’t been able to find a Dutch nationwide source of bike commute mode share, so we couldn’t fully recreate our BC index. If you have a source of bike commute mode share consistent across Dutch cities, let me know.

From what I can determine, Dutch mode share data is collected at a provincial level during the census and also collected by the municipalities themselves but maybe not always collected in the same way so it’s hard to compare accurately across cities. Maybe there’s a way to disaggregate the data to city level?

Numbers in the range of 30-60% aren’t uncommon. But where 60% is referenced often for cities such as Amsterdam, Groningen and Utrecht, it’s often for trips within the City, or even within the centre of the city, and often includes all trips compared with the commute percentages I have for BC.

Cycling mode share of course drops for trips to or from further afield locations where the bus, train, and even the car start to be more attractive to more people, but if we could get anywhere close to 30% that would be huge! How much infrastructure would it take?

Let’s compare kilometres of bike infrastructure

The goal here is to specifically understand how much safe AAA-like bicycle infrastructure these Dutch cities have per square kilometre and per head of population and compare that to where a few leading communities in BC currently are. I haven’t included all cities from the Netherlands, but rather those we’ve been to, as that’s of most interest to me, and covers most of the big ones. We’ve included bike paths, any sort of bicycle street or designated minor street and woonerfs.

Network Density - Length (KM) v Area (SQKM)

Well… That is and isn’t what I was expecting in different ways, of course the Dutch cities are leading, but the five high scoring Canadian communities (shown in bold) are not all at the bottom, to the point some manual checks were done… But the data looks generally correct. I’m maybe somewhat surprised at those that feature at the top, Leiden pictured above, for example. They’re all great cities, but I would have expected Amsterdam, Groningen or Utrecht to be up there at the very top…

Format is Rank. Municipality Name - Length (KM) - Area (SQKM) - L/A

Delft - 151.5 - 24.1 - 6.3
Gouda - 108.1 - 18.1 - 6.0
Leiden - 130.5 - 23.3 - 5.6
Schiedam - 99.9 - 19.9 - 5.0
The Hague - 380.4 - 85.6 - 4.4
Haarlem - 131 - 32 - 4.1
Utrecht - 400.8 - 99.2 - 4.0
Amstelveen - 169.2 - 44.1 - 3.8
Amsterdam - 819.1 - 220.8 - 3.7
Nijmegen - 205.9 - 57.6 - 3.6
Eindhoven - 310.8 - 89.4 - 3.5
Amersfoort - 171 - 63.8 - 2.7
Rotterdam - 773.1 - 294.2 - 2.6
Arnhem - 266.3 - 101.6 - 2.6
Maastricht - 147.6 - 60.1 - 2.5
New Westminster - 45.9 - 19 - 2.4
Den Bosch - 277.3 - 117.8 - 2.4
Dordrecht - 231.7 - 98.7 - 2.3
Zwolle - 258.7 - 119.3 - 2.2
Victoria - 43.2 - 21 - 2.1
Tilburg - 264.5 - 128.6 - 2.1
North Vancouver (City) - 30.6 - 15 - 2.0
Vancouver - 260.4 - 137 - 1.9
Purmerend - 173.1 - 96.6 - 1.8
Groningen - 349.7 - 197.8 - 1.8
Houten - 98.8 - 59 - 1.7
Burnaby - 158.2 - 97 - 1.6
Hattem - 33.3 - 24.2 - 1.4
Apeldoorn - 395.2 - 341.1 - 1.2
Alkmaar - 144.7 - 117.3 - 1.2
Texel - 181 - 166.5 - 1.1
Leeuwarden - 282 - 255.3 - 1.1
Zandvoort - 31.4 - 33.8 - 0.9
Coquitlam - 77.9 - 130 - 0.6
Whistler - 47.8 - 246 - 0.2

It’s interesting to compare… New Westminster, Victoria, and City of North Vancouver take up an area of 19, 21 and 15 sqkm respectively, so perhaps the closest comparison in the list above is Delft at 24.1 sqkm, New Westminster, Victoria, and City of North Vancouver have 45.9, 43.2 and 30.6 km of AAA infrastructure respectively compared to 151.5 km in Delft. That’s around three times the extent of the network today in these leading small cities.

It’s surprising to see several BC cities sitting above say Groningen, the City of Bicycles. Likewise, Houten is often cited as a model city but scores pretty low in the list, but both it and Groningen’s municipal boundary includes some farmland that lowers their density scores, just as the natural areas in BC municipalities such as Coquitlam struggle with this metric. Let’s see how they compare by population…

Network Per Capita - Length (KM) v Population (PEOPLE/1000)

You might wonder why I included Whistler when it scores so low above, but it does very well when comparing against population, and the same can be said for the Island of Texel (pictured above). It’s small in population terms, but scores well due to its large network of bike paths across the island. With this metric we see most of those other BC communities drop to the bottom of the list which is not unreasonable. It would be most peoples expectation…

Format is Rank. Municipality Name - Length (KM) - Population - L/(P/1000)

Texel - 181 - 14,008 - 12.9
Whistler - 47.8 - 15,854 - 3.0
Hattem - 33.3 - 12,774 - 2.6
Apeldoorn - 395.2 - 169,589 - 2.3
Leeuwarden - 282 - 130,363 - 2.2
Dordrecht - 231.7 - 123,070 - 1.9
Zwolle - 258.7 - 134,601 - 1.9
Houten - 98.8 - 51,035 - 1.9
Amstelveen - 169.2 - 95,668 - 1.8
Purmerend - 173.1 - 96,393 - 1.8
Zandvoort - 31.4 - 17,272 - 1.8
Den Bosch - 277.3 - 162,551 - 1.7
Arnhem - 266.3 - 172,237 - 1.5
Delft - 151.5 - 109,402 - 1.4
Gouda - 108.1 - 77,977 - 1.4
Groningen - 349.7 - 243,655 - 1.4
Alkmaar - 144.7 - 11,3186 - 1.3
Schiedam - 99.9 - 82,029 - 1.2
Eindhoven - 310.8 - 249,497 - 1.2
Maastricht - 147.6 - 125,259 - 1.2
Utrecht - 400.8 - 378,601 - 1.1
Nijmegen - 205.9 - 189,831 - 1.1
Rotterdam - 773.1 - 674,647 - 1.1
Tilburg - 264.5 - 230,389 - 1.1
Leiden - 130.5 - 130,460 - 1.0
Amersfoort - 171 - 163,670 - 1.0
Amsterdam - 819.1 - 946,447 - 0.9
Haarlem - 131 - 168,961 - 0.8
The Hague - 380.4 - 568,901 - 0.7
New Westminster - 45.9 - 91,798 - 0.5
North Vancouver (City) - 30.6 - 66,901 - 0.5
Burnaby - 158.2 - 296,109 - 0.5
Coquitlam - 77.9 - 172,819 - 0.5
Victoria - 43.2 - 103,077 - 0.4
Vancouver - 260.4 - 748,788 - 0.3

Taking Vancouver as the example this time, only Amsterdam has a higher population, while Rotterdam is just below, and they both have three to four times as large a bike network as Vancouver does. Interestingly, if you compare say Burnaby and Groningen, which are somewhat closer in population, Groningen only has about twice as much infrastructure. Likewise comparing Coquitlam with say Nijmegan, it also just over twice as much infrastructure.

Plotting the Above on a Chart

Looking at both metrics on a chart might give a better idea of where we compare both based on density and population. Does one make more sense than the other? Can we look at this and say Victoria is ahead of Groningen based on density, probably not, but if we matched on both density and length per capita, I feel we’d be in a pretty good place! I’ve removed Texel and Whistler as outliers…

Dutch Bike Infrastructure Map

Wonder what the bike infrastructure in these Dutch cities looks like on a map? We have the entire Netherlands mapped below to scroll around on. All data in this analysis and the map below uses data extracted from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) in April 2026 for BC and May 2026 for the Netherlands, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Of course it might not be fully up-to-date, but it generally is, especially in densely populated areas. As I said, the numbers above include Paved Bike Path, Woonerf, Cycle Street, and Shared Road (Minor). They exclude Unpaved Bike Paths, Painted Lane/Shoulder, Shared Road (Major). No weighting was applied, but corrections were made to balance uni-directional and bi-directional bike paths. Want to look at the Map full screen? Click the link here… https://nlbikeindex.netlify.app

One of the best things about this map might be the ability to figure out where certain types of infrastructure are located… It’s not hard to find a fietspad in the Netherlands, they’re literally everywhere, but if you know the amount of time i’ve spent scrolling Google Maps looking for wiggly lines that might be a woonerf, you’d appreciate how stoked I am on this… Hopefully others find it useful too…

Conclusion

So the numbers show that, as expected, we still have a way to go. But we knew that going in, the point of this was to understand how far we still have to go, and it turns out it’s between twice as much and four times as much as those BC communities that are furthest along in their journey.

The ratios, of course, vary widely from community to community, but looking at a city such as Utrecht as something to aspire to, they have approximately 4.0 km of infrastructure for every square kilometre of their municipality, or 1.1 km for every 1,000 residents of the city! Take those ratios and see how they work in your community…

The job is never done though, and even cities such as Utrecht keep iterating! It makes sense… As more people start getting around on bikes, it becomes a no-brainer to keep investing in it, given the positive impacts it has on society.

The naysayers often struggle to appreciate that it’s possible to achieve an ambitious mode shift to cycling early in the journey, but I think there is a tipping point somewhere between where we are and where the Dutch are… They started their journey over 50 years ago, while in BC we started it at best, about 16 years ago, much more recently than that!

How Far Ahead Are the Dutch? How Far Do We Still Have to Go?