The Netherlands: Bicycling the Dutch Way - by Martine Powers

The Netherlands, a biking paradise

The intersection at De Koppeling Street is the kind of sight that might render a Bostonian speechless.

It’s a double-decker roundabout.

The top level functions like a normal rotary, cars entering and leaving from four directions. That bit of controlled chaos New Englanders know well.

But on a level just below the cars, there’s another rotary, this one is just for bikes. As cars flow through the circle overhead, a steady stream of businessmen and moms and 12-year-olds wind their way through the intersection on their bicycles, safe, separated from cars, and undisturbed.

It was enough to draw stares from four visiting Northeastern University civil engineering students who gawked from a grassy shoulder, taking photos on their iPads of this gleaming vision from a bicyclist’s Oz.

“This,” howled Andrew Brunn, a burly 22-year-old engineering student   grinning like a kid at Disneyland, “is totally crazy!”

To the average American, that’s exactly how Dutch bicycle traffic seems. This is a place with more bikes than people, where about 26 percent of commuting trips are taken by bicycle, where toddlers and 85-year-olds ride happily in traffic, and where the likelihood of getting killed on a bike is among the lowest in the world, about five times less than the United States.

Almost every major street features separated bike lanes, bike-specific traffic lights, bike highways, and yield signs that, together, deliver one message: The bicycle is king.

Read more: Bicycling the Dutch Way - Metro - The Boston Globe