The countries where everyone rides in front

Hi, it’s Alicia from the design team. In this Weekly Chart, I took to the streets for a closer look at cars and people.

Last week, I cycled to our office here in Berlin for the first time and let me tell you, it was stressful! On top of the regular trying not to get squashed between cars driving on my left and parking on my right, I also had to maneuver around construction sites and wait at red lights next to big trucks, hoping they even saw me. Sometimes the bike lane would just randomly end. Unfortunately, I am not the only one with this experience: Eighty-three percent of cyclists don’t feel safe on Berlin’s roads, and that’s largely because of conflict with cars.

When you're stuck in traffic between a truck and an SUV, sometimes it feels like the whole country is trying to share the road. And that's about half true. In 2023, Germany had 49.1 million registered cars — that's one car for every 1.7 people. In other words, if every person in Germany got into a car at once, nobody would need to sit in a back seat. And that’s including children!

I was wondering what that ratio looks like outside of Germany and went to investigate the numbers in other European countries.

Much to my surprise, this “no back seat” fact applies to more than half of European countries. Even places like the Netherlands that are known for their great cycling infrastructure don’t meet the line of two people per car. Looking at GDP per capita, you can definitely see that most people don't go without cars unless they really can't afford them.

And I get it! Especially when living in a region where the local public transport system is not sufficient, people are reliant on their cars. They can be massively useful when buying groceries, getting your kids from A to B, or transporting big and heavy things. But the majority of the time, cars are just parked and taking up valuable space, especially in cities. In fact, the average car in Germany is only actually used for 46 minutes a day – that’s 3% of the time! The other 23 hours and 14 minutes, it doesn’t move at all.

I don’t want this to only be a rant about cars – I understand that it’s a highly debated and even emotional topic, and that there are a lot of good reasons why people own cars. Cars can offer freedom, flexibility, and security. But the reality is that they also take up a lot of public space, pollute the environment, and aren’t accessible to everyone. And it’s not impossible to get freedom, flexibility, and security from other transportation methods.

I just think it would be nice to live in a society that’s not so dependent on one form of transport alone. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a system where everybody had access to various modes of transport? And where we had the freedom to choose which one to use — whether that’s a bike, train, bus, car, or our own two feet?

I feel like there has been a lot of progress in the last couple of years with offers like park and ride, car sharing, the Deutschlandticket (a monthly public transport ticket for all of Germany), and (e-)bike and scooter sharing, all of which make it easier to get around without owning a car. I hope we continue to push in a direction that supports more flexible, inclusive mobility and therefore a better quality of life for everyone.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have a sunny Thursday wherever you are and that you get safely to where you need to go – whichever mode of transport you choose. We’ll see you next week with another Weekly Chart!