In my experience living in Hilversum (between Amsterdam and Utrecht) they’re great for covering that last “last mile” between a person’s home and mass public transport like the train and often do the same on the other side (between train and work place).
Given the massive (massive, MASSIVE) bicycle parking areas near the larger train stations, I would say that at least when it comes to trains the infrastructure is designed purposefully so that people can live further way from train stations and still get to the station quickly without requiring a car, since if they do require a car, in my experience, not just in The Netherlands, people often end up just taking the car all the way to their destination and skip the train altogether.
However, I can see how such a design that assumes bicycles are used like that, would be problematic for people who don’t use bicycles like that, since it will have fewer buses feeding the train station than if bicyles weren’t expected to cover most of those flows.
Bikes aren’t for everyone. I personally don’t like them (and I’m Dutch, lol). I’d much rather see great public transport.
In my experience living in Hilversum (between Amsterdam and Utrecht) they’re great for covering that last “last mile” between a person’s home and mass public transport like the train and often do the same on the other side (between train and work place).
Given the massive (massive, MASSIVE) bicycle parking areas near the larger train stations, I would say that at least when it comes to trains the infrastructure is designed purposefully so that people can live further way from train stations and still get to the station quickly without requiring a car, since if they do require a car, in my experience, not just in The Netherlands, people often end up just taking the car all the way to their destination and skip the train altogether.
However, I can see how such a design that assumes bicycles are used like that, would be problematic for people who don’t use bicycles like that, since it will have fewer buses feeding the train station than if bicyles weren’t expected to cover most of those flows.