Convoys of mopeds speed down Amsterdam’s bike lanes, beeping their horns and flouting their bare heads. This isn’t some strange Dutch festival, though. These were protests from some of the thousands of furious moped riders ahead of a new city regulation which came into force this week to force them out of bike lanes, on to main roads and into helmets.

The cycling city of Amsterdam is stepping up a gear – with plans to ban petrol and diesel vehicles from the centre by 2030, the removal of 10,000 car-parking spaces, a hike in parking charges and a wide range of measures to take from the car and give to pedestrians, cyclists, green space and children.

Even in a city where 35% of journeys are by bike, not everyone is happy. Almost 50,000 people have signed a petition protesting about potential accidents for mopeds in much faster-moving traffic, and 4,000 commented on the policy when it was at a consultation level – an unheard-of response.

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Motoring organisations such as RAI Vereniging are furious about the threat to diesel and petrol vehicles from the Clean Air Action plan, and one Amsterdam resident, Frank Bakker, even tried to take the city mayor to court last year to enforce traffic regulations and stop bikes running red lights.

Mopeds have been blatantly flouting the new law by riding in the bike lanes and without helmets, risking a €95 fine. “It hasn’t been properly thought through,” said one woman defiantly riding a moped on the bike lane, who asked not to be named. “It’s very unclear when we are allowed on the bike lane and where we aren’t, and there are certain junctions where there’s just not enough space on the road. I find it absolutely terrifying.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Moped demonstrations in Amsterdam

Paul de Waal, a spokesman for the BOVAG transport retailers’ union, goes further and calls putting mopeds on the road a “dangerous, life-threatening experiment”. “It effectively blames one group of riders for all of the problems,” he says, “and you haven’t solved the bike lane overload. We think it would be far better to widen the infrastructure for two-wheeled vehicles – at the expense of space for cars. The car isn’t holy, but nor are the cyclist or the pedestrian: you need to look at it all together.”

None of this is stopping the green-left city government, though, which points out that nine streets already break EU air pollution limits and that the city is predicted to steadily get larger and busier. “I think that the car is a symbol of freedom,” acknowledges the municipal head of transport, Sharon Dijksma. “Many people are attached to the symbol even if they in their daily life don’t use it a lot. I’m not fighting cars but what I do fight for is more space for pedestrians, children to play on our streets, for cyclists, public transport and trees.

“We really want to make a change and people need to see the change on the street: a fundamental improvement of public space. Public space is probably the most scarce item we have – like a jewel – and we need to take care of it. That’s not so easy sometimes as there are a lot of interests.”

The protests are a good sign, according to some academics. “The fact that there is resistance is a perfect sign that people are [implicitly] aware that there is much more at stake than just a technical engineering question of optimising the traffic system,” says Marco te Brommelstroet, associate professor in urban planning at the University of Amsterdam. “It is about lifestyles, and about what cities and society should be.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A cyclist and a moped rider on a bike lane in Amsterdam. Photograph: Elena Rostunova/Alamy

Some residents believe the city is not going far enough, and needs to send an even clearer sign that cars should play “second fiddle” to active mobility. “The challenge is that the current infrastructure isn’t just good enough – it might have met the needs of 20 years ago, but cycling has grown enormously,” says Martijn van Es, a spokesman for the Fietsersbond Dutch cyclists’ union. “There are a lot more types of bicycle like cargo and e-bikes, which go a lot faster, and Amsterdam’s narrow bike lanes aren’t built for them.”

Katelijne Boerma, the bicycle mayor of Amsterdam, says the 100,000 people on bikes every weekday between 8am and 9am clearly do not have enough space. “If there’s a lack of space – which is the case for cyclists – then people start behaving badly and the bike lanes and a lot of pavements in the centre for pedestrians have a kind of ‘surviving the jungle’ attitude. We all need to work on our fietsfatsoen, which is an old-fashioned word for courtesy. The taxi driver blames the cyclist, the tram driver blames the car driver … but at the end of the day traffic is all of us.”

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Te Brommelstroet points out that there has always been resistance to transport innovations in Amsterdam, and that the city’s residents actually voted in favour of a car-free inner city in a referendum in 1992. “Now the time is ripe for a more radical next step, taking back the street as a ‘sticky’ place where society flourishes and motor vehicles are a guest,” he says. “An unwelcome guest.”

And while car-heavy areas such as the Zuidas business district have been weighing up how they could get people into shared, possibly self-driving electric transport in the future, some Amsterdammers are convinced they have the future of transport right in front of them in the form of the bicycle. “Every time they talk about autonomous cars, we say we already have such a great invention,” says Boerma. “The best mobility solution is already sitting in your shed.”

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