Go seemingly anywhere in Amsterdam or more widely in the Netherlands and you’ll find it that seemingly everyone cycles. Certainly more than most other western nations. But why is this so?

Weather and landscape play a factor. Having nice weather, basically just not raining, and flat roads to cycle on do play major roles but I think the more important one is that the infrastructure is there. Look around and you see segregated cycle lanes that don’t just end randomly like they do many other cities. They’ve even built an underwater bike shed instead of leaving it up to you to find somewhere to put your bike like many other cities.

Socially too it is accepted or even expected to cycle.

So why is this so. If you went back to the post World War 2 days of the 50s and 60s you’d probably find the popularity of cars rising at the same rate as most other western European nations. Oil was cheap and the car was the ultimate expression of freedom. The continent was rebuilding and the economies were growing rapidly.

This all began to change in the early 1970s with a series of major oil shocks. Over the decade the price of a barrel of oil rose from about 3 dollars to about 12 dollars, a 300% increase. For comparison, today the price of oil sits around 80 dollars. A similar increase would move it to 240 dollars. Nowadays we are somewhat used to oil prices fluctuating daily but back then in the post World War years they simply didn’t change. Exporters and companies set the prices and that was that. Consumers were more used to price wars between producers vying for market share.

The first oil crisis happened in 1973 which was set off by the Yom Kippur War or the fourth Arab-Israel War. Israel used it’s technological superiority to overpower the Arab forces in previous wars so in the fourth war the Arab nations of Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack.

Some western nations supported Israel politically and militarily. Most vocally in western Europe was the Netherlands. In response to this the oil exporting Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia launched an embargo. Initial targets were Canada, Japan, the UK, the USA and the Netherlands. Japan was the most hard hit of these nations as they relied on the middle east for 90% of their oil supplies.

So the first oil shock set the stage for the Netherlands to re-embrace the bike. It did not have to be this way however. Most western nations were impacted one way or another and not just by rising prices. In the UK and the Netherlands Sunday driving was banned for a period. However once the shock subsided most countries resumed driving more and more. It did lead to higher fuel standards but none of the changes were as dramatic as the Netherlands which from that point forward put in more and more policy changes and infrastructure improvements to promote bicycle usage. Of course other countries did have large automobile manufacturing industries and oil companies to go with which probably did their best to promote their own interests.

It shows that one external shock can have a widely varied impact on many countries. Without the oil shocks of the 1970s and if the Netherlands wasn’t targeted so heavily I wonder would cycling be as popular in the country as it is today.