The Dutch bike fleet is probably over 22.7 million by now – and that means 1.3 bikes for every man, woman and child, roads lobby group Bovag said on Wednesday.

‘We can’t give exact numbers because bikes don’t have number plates and are not registered centrally,’ a spokesman told news website Nu.nl.

Some 20 years ago, Bovag put the number of bikes at 16 million, or just over one bike per head of the population.

Bovag bases its estimate on the population growth, the number of households and the fact that not every new bike which is bought is a replacement for an old one.

Bovag said in March that bikes sales in the Netherlands had risen in 2017 after years of decline. Some 957,000 bikes were sold last year, 3.2% up compared to the previous year. One in three of bikes sold was an electric bike.