Last week the Dutch Ministry for Infrastructure and the Environment published the latest figures of traffic mobility in the Netherlands.

The document “Mobiliteitsbalans 2011” has a summary in English (from page 123), in which we can read the following interesting facts.

Following remarkable growth in the 1980s and 1990s, the total amount of national mobility of people in the Netherlands has not increased since 2005. This particularly applies to car use.

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Half of all journeys in the Netherlands were undertaken using cars; a quarter by bicycle; one in five by foot; and one in 20 by public transport. Of the total amount of kilometres travelled, car use accounts for nearly three-quarters of this total, while public transport accounts for 13 percent and bicycles for 8 percent. This division of journeys among the various transport modes has remained relatively constant over the past 10 years. Approximately half of…

One of the interesting points that is often raised with regard to the potential of cycling in London is that it is a big city – at least, substantially bigger than continental cities where cycling forms a large proportion of journeys.

Take this example from the Mayor’s Cycling Commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, interviewed by Portland to Portland earlier this year.

We have to learn some of the lessons from Amsterdam about how it is possible to have a city where there are enormous levels of bike usage. We’re never going to be quite as good as that, I don’t think – 30%, 35% of all journeys in Amsterdam are made by bike. London’s a lot bigger, a lot busier. But we can get up towards their kind of levels, by doing some of the same things they’ve been doing.

That is, the very size of London – ‘a lot bigger’ –…