In the Netherlands the bike is transport, so it comes with rules

In the Netherlands the bicycle is transport, not recreation, and that difference is easier to grasp in figures than in atmosphere: about twenty-four million bikes for eighteen million people, and more than 35,000 kilometres of track physically separated from cars. On infrastructure like that, cycling accounts for 28 per cent of all trips in the country.

Everything else follows from that. A cycle path has its own traffic lights, its own signs and its own right of way, and it is not a widened pavement. You don't stop on it to check a map, you don't cross it without looking, and you don't walk along it when the pavement narrows. A bell isn't a greeting but a request to move, and it is rung once.

• Lights are compulsory after dark — white at the front, red at the back. Reflectors are not a substitute, and this is the most commonly enforced rule in cities in winter.
• No phone in the hand while riding, exactly as in a car. A mount on the handlebars is fine; a hand is not.
• Ride on the right and single file when someone overtakes; signal with your arm before every turn, plainly and early.
• Helmets aren't required and virtually nobody wears one for everyday riding — which is no reason not to put one on if this is your first time in dense traffic.
• Cyclists may turn right through a red light where signed, but only where a sign explicitly allows it. Without the sign it is an offence.

Renting, and what it actually costs

At MacBike, a chain with five shops across central Amsterdam, a city bike is €17.95 a day and €13.95 for three hours. The shops open nine to six, which means the bike goes back before the evening properly begins — keep it for the evening and you pay another day.

The deposit is the part nobody thinks about in advance and should: either a copy of a credit card, for up to five bikes, or ID plus cash per bike. Insurance is optional on an ordinary bike and compulsory on an e-bike. Bike theft here is an everyday event, so the insurance isn't an upsell but arithmetic.

The railway bike scheme is the cheapest way to see the country on two wheels: €4.80 for twenty-four hours, at nearly three hundred locations, mostly at stations. You unlock a bike by holding your card against the lock, one subscription hires two bikes at a time, and from the fourth day the rate rises to €9.80 a day, with a maximum hire of seven days.

The catch is that you don't pay by card on the spot: you need a personal OV-chipkaart with the OV-fiets subscription, or an NS Flex season ticket — an account that in practice is set up with Dutch details. For a visitor arriving for five days that usually means OV-fiets is out and an ordinary rental shop is in — but it is worth checking before you travel, because a day in a shop costs several times as much.

GuideUtrecht: a canal on two levels and the busiest station in the country:Utrecht →

Where not to ride

Central Amsterdam at rush hour is not the place for your first day on a bike. It is dense, full of tram rails, and full of people riding faster and more confidently than you. Pedestrian zones are pedestrian and that is respected; the big shopping street in the centre is not a short cut. Tram rails are crossed at as near a right angle as you can manage, because a wheel that drops into the groove does not come out of it.

Leaving the bike somewhere is a separate skill. Lock the frame to something fixed, not just the wheel to the frame, and use two locks — that advice isn't paranoia but the local standard. Parking wild beside a canal or in front of a station can end with the bike removed, and you pay for that, not the rental shop.

How a pedestrian survives

A bike makes no noise and will not brake for you, because it has right of way. The rule is banal and it works: before you step onto the red, look left, then right, then left again. The same applies getting off a tram, because the path is often directly behind the doors. Photographs are taken from the pavement or a bridge, never from the path — and if you do end up standing on it, move at once and don't explain.

GuideAmsterdam, where the red-asphalt rules are learned fastest:Amsterdam →

One last note, because it is usually framed wrongly: take a bike out for three hours to be photographed on a bridge and you have paid for the picture, and you will hand it back with relief. Take it for the whole day and ride it to the market, the park and the station, and you have bought transport — and only in that second case do all the rules above make sense.