• Fair enough, I can't speak from personal experience of those places, only what I've heard.

    It is amazing how many people refer to these cycling utopias who have no experience of them.

    Segregated cycle lanes frequently make cycles a 2nd class of transport. If you are on a segregated cycle lane running parallel to a main road, the path cedes priority to every side road. This makes it a continuous stop-start journey. In quite a few countries with a strong infrastructure it is compulsory to use the lanes where they are provided. This is probably not such a problem where you are doing short commutes (eg Holland with its much smaller cities and towns). If you are riding longer distances and going faster the continual stop start is going to be a much greater inconvenience.

    To make the Dutch model work we would need to raise our cities to the ground, split them into smaller towns with a very different layout, and also add strict liability to UK road law.

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