The 16.3 million inhabitants of the Netherlands travelled a combined 194 billion kilometres (121 billion miles) in 2005, as was published today by Statistics Netherlands. This averages out to 11.9 thousand km (7.4 thousand mi) per person for the entire year or 32.6 km (20.3 mi) per day.

About three quarters of the total distance of 194 billion km was travelled by car, either as the driver (95 billion) or as a passenger (54 billion). We spent a collective 4.2 billion km (2.2%) on foot, 14.1 billion km (7.3%) in trains, and 6.5 billion km (3.4%) in buses, trams and subways. Honouring our image as a cyclists’ country, we cycled a little bit more than we travelled by train: 14.4 billion km (7.4%). That’s an average of 883 km (549 mi) per person for the entire year, or 2.4 km (1.5 mi) per person per day. Clark or Theresa, any idea how much the average US citizen cycles per year?

I’ll see if I can give you an estimate of my travelling distances later this week. First I need to get the distance between my home and the university.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 17:12 and is filed under Cycling, Travelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.