Unlike Mark Rutte, we prefer to drive to work instead of cycling.
Cycling is healthy! Lovely to get those legs moving while you breathe in the fresh spring air. A new day is about to begin, what a cheerful start to the morning. The reality is different for a large part of the (working) Netherlands.
We prefer to take the car. Because well, it's already there. Despite today's sky-high petrol prices, we prefer the trusty four-wheeler to the trusty two-wheeler. From research by Marktplaatsconducted by PanelWizard among Dutch people aged 25 to 65, shows that almost 30% of Dutch people prefer to use the car for distances of less than five kilometers.
So we are not talking about commuting distances of 40 kilometers. Because yes, then I understand why you take the car instead of the bicycle. This research concerns shorter distances. 51 percent choose the car for a trip to the supermarket. When we go to the gym, the car is still popular with 20 percent.
That does not mean that the bicycle is not popular. On the contrary. Marktplaats talks about a shift within the world of mobility. Interest in a folding bicycle has increased by about 71 percent in four years. E-bikes are also in demand, with an increase of 132 percent. In 2023, no fewer than 22.3 million searches were made for an e-bike, compared to 9.6 million in 2019.
Different form of mobility
Just because we prefer to sit in the car does not mean that the bike is collecting dust in the shed. More than a third of Dutch people (35%) indicate that they have used the car less in the past 5 years. The five most frequently given reasons for choosing another form of mobility – such as cycling – are weather conditions (35%), cost savings (33%), convenience (33%), wanting to get to your destination faster (32%) and avoiding crowds on the road (20%). And there are still a few tree huggers in the survey, 19 percent give sustainability as a reason.
The research also shows the five most used means of transport among Dutch people. The petrol car is number one. So the petrol sniffers are well represented.
- Gasoline car
- Regular bicycle
- Electric bike
- Train
- Bus
This article Would rather be in the car than on the bike first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
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