How the Dutch Fietsstraat "Doesn't Exist"
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2023
- This video was the hardest I've made yet
A big thank you to Anton and Thomas for helping me produce this video.
The drone footage of Amersfoort is not from me. All credit to the author which you can see below
• AMERSFOORT UTRECHT 4K ...
I love the fact that you zoomed out a bit and focused on the networks and the overall planning aspect. Because you're 100% correct - the only reason bike infrastructure in the Netherlands works as well as it does is because it isn't slapdash, but holistic and integrated. It's a bicycle network, not small individual bike lanes. Cyclists can't teleport, we still have to ride everywhere, and we need to do that on infrastructure. And if you make it so that cycling is a safe, convenient and comfortable alternative to driving, then a lot of people will use their bikes.
We wouldn't accept it if a highway just ended, and then restarted somewhere else. We shouldn't accept the same for bike infrastructure either.
like that highway in china? that just ends dead stop and you have to turn around onto the other half of the highway and go back the other way.
"We wouldn't accept it if a highway just ended, and then restarted somewhere else."
Uhm... several mobility-hostile cities like Utrecht, Amersfoort and Amsterdam have done exactly that. 😆
Random road closures to limit mobility, cause dangerous situations and bully people into being forced into public transport.
Utrecht even wanted to shut down the entire city center to cyclists and turn it over only to able-bodied tourists and able-bodied yuppies who fit into their agenda, with everybody else having to go around. A prelimary calculation by Utrecht University's faculty of geosciences suggested that would be a 15-20 delay for a west-east cycling trip and a roughly 10 minute delay for a lot of inner city trips.
10 minutes extra on a commute equals to 80 hours or two full working weeks lost in traffic every year.
There was even an unholy plan to make a Social Credit System in Utrecht and carve the city up in 4 sections that are impossible to reach with anything other than public transport. The Utrecht Social Credit System would limit people's voting rights and legal rights under governmental law if they for example owned a car, or had paid work outside the city. Regaining voting rights after making an 'unacceptable lifestyle choice' would mean you have to work for the government for free every week which they call volunteering but which the 1930 Geneva Conference (not the war one, the labour one) calls forced labour.
Someone who wants to read the details: Cees Bos from the Stadspartij photographed their notes and put it up on Twitter.
Fortunately this insane attempt at a dictatorship over people's lifestyle was shot down by the VVD joining the coalition at the time and reacting to dictatorship with typical liberal fervour, but worse is coming:
The Merwedekanaalzone doesn't feature any roads at all. Residents are forced to use public transport for everything, and if you want to have a package delivered, or a fridge delivered, you have to pay through your teeth and schedule an appointment weeks in advance with a monopolist city-owned company that does all the deliveries. You are legally banned from even furnishing your house in any way other than what Utrecht city council has mandated. 😆
Unsurprisingly, despite being downtown CBD and the extreme housing shortage in the Netherlands (300K-500K too few), that place is hardly selling, prices are dropping and some houses are left empty.
@Fred Puntdroad I laughed my ass off when you said "mobility hostile". My man, having worked in Utrecht it's a fantastic city to get around. It has excellent public transit and a great bike network, and is extremely well connected by rail on account of having the busiest train station in the Netherlands. Not to mention, it is still plenty possible to get around by car. What you call "mobility hostile" is actually just discouraging driving in favor of more efficient modes of transportation, which ironically even speeds up cars.
If you compare getting around Utrecht with any comparable US city you will find that Utrecht is much easier to get around.
I was unable to find anything about social credit systems in Utrecht. No idea where you got that from or who "they" is in your story.
I'm gonna call bs on the 15-20 minute delay thing as well. If a busy city center is so busy that cycling becomes unsafe, then regardless of the rules it's often faster anyways to just go around. If you've ever tried to make your way through a busy market street on bike, you'll know that that is not a very quick route for cyclists.
With regards to the Merwedekanaalzone: the people who want to live there can make that determination for themselves. You don't need to go and tell them what's good for them. If you don't like it there, then don't go and live there. FWIW you can get a dispensation for moving vans, so if you need motorized transportation to move something in, it's not like that isn't possible. But yeah, it's a neighborhood for people, not for cars. Again, don't like it? Don't go and live there.
Anything else you wanted to share?
@@alex2143
Well, if you refuse to see that people who are different from and have a different lifestyle exist, then I doubt there's a point in explaining you anything.
You'd probably just reject all the facts based on your political ideology.
If I explained that it takes nearly an hour to cross the city internally and reach some destinations, where you then can't park because it's not allowed, so you for example can't do renovations or fix technical breakdowns in buildings, you'll likely just scream "Just take public transport!!" implying that busses drive in the middle of the night and you can carry 450 kg of inventory on your back.
But I prefer facts over ideology, so I in turn won't bow to ideological BS of 'just adapt your entire lifestyle to my ideology and we'll get along fine within this shitty deliberately bad planning system, so it's in fact a good system'.
After all I was taught urban planning should facilitate and serve society and the people.
Not dictate to the people what a minority of weirdos in their ivory tower want ideologically.
So debate is probably pointless.
@@fredpuntdroad8701 Nah, I'd just reply that I don't believe the situation that you fabricated is one that actually happens. And if we're gonna make up scenarios anyways, then how about the 5 hour traffic jam that your hypothetical midnight moving company would get stuck in, before realizing they forgot to check if they can even park at their destination.
The most interesting part of the fietsstraat for me is the psychological effect of driving on one. It literally feels like I'm driving somewhere I'm not supposed to.
Do you mean a bicycle street in Germany or in the Netherlands, or both ?
And in result you drive carefully and slowly, and so more safe for all.
That's the idea. And it works pretty well if they are designed well, including for drivers. You get slowed down, but traffic keeps flowing smoothly, more so than busy car and bike traffic mixing on a regular road. So it's a win-win, or at least no great loss for drivers.
@@wilwulpje5684the Netherlands one, (i am from Netherlands), the German one doesn't feel like one. We got better infrastructure
Yeah, the red asphalt really helps me feel more at home as a cyclist. I'm not someone whose cycling along a road meant for other traffic, I am the intended traffic.
I always say, a fietsstraat is not about a sign, it's about a design.
i like how that rhymes
Because the sign itself hasn't any meaning, there's the need for other signs. Speed limit, give way, etc.
Many Dutch don't know that the sign doesn't mean anything and think that the Fietsstraat is 'theirs'. That cars can't overtake or drive 50 km/h when there isn't a speedlimit.
If the sign does get a legal meaning, than it has some value.
Now it's just an expensive drawing on a pole.
@@ffortissimowell it isn't clearly, that's the whole point. While it has no legal meaning it does change behaviour, and that is what matters. If you have a 30 km/h sign with no speed monitoring it doesn't mean anything either, laws without enforcement have no meaning at all after all. But if you design a street right people will drive the intended speed anyway. The same with a fietsstraat, just seeing the sign and the entire way the street is designed make people feel like they should drive slowly, and in practice you'll see that car drivers will rarely even go faster than 20 km/h even when they are legally allowed, because the design makes you want to drive slow. That is the whole point. Also signs cost absolute pennies compared to basically everything else in infrastructure construction. It's about 100 euro's all things considered, that's about the same price of just the asfalt for 1m of a 2 lane road. So no, the signs are actually really cheap.
The German Fahrradstraße is just a joke. Most motorists do not know the rules on the streets. You will be overtaken closely, horned off if you drive next to each other. basically it's just a road with different signs. there is no sense of security. Often the right of way rules are also surprising for motorists when bicycle streets cross other priority streets. I live in Mannheim and have seen a few accidents in those Fahrradstraßen between cars and cyclists. for politicians it is a simple and, above all, cheap way of building a kind of bicycle infrastructure. I am always amazed at what is possible and how nice cycling is when I go on holiday in the Netherlands.
The color of the asphalt is so important imo. I also hate it when I see other countries implementing bike paths in different colors or non at all. The orange/red color makes you feel safe instantly here on bike paths (I think you would agree). If this Fietsstraat would also be simply grey asphalt I would feel less safe instantly. And id I would drive here I would drive slightly fasters since it feels like the road is designed for me in a car.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
@@Random.ChanneI You are right. In the Netherlands it is very common to use red asphalt for cycling lanes. Everyone knows a street with red asphalt is for cyclists. The signs on a "Fietsstraat" are needed for motorist to tell them they are allowed there too.
About the colour:
In other countries they often use a colour green or blue for cycling paths, mostly just paint on regular asphalt. The paint makes the road slippery. When a green or blue colour is added to the asphalt the asphalt will deteriorate much faster. For the red colour only a little dye is needed and the asphalt will not deteriorate that fast, although a bit faster as regular asphalt. Disadvantage of paint is that it wears out fast, but it is a quick way to create a cycle path.
i really tried hard to explain how the difference all arises from making it a legal category and then just applying it on a street without starting it from the regional need to contiue an existing bike route. maybe some of those german politicians will listen
You do have less car traffic often but sometimes care drivers just aren't careful enough. They drive like it a one way street.
They don't give way to cyclists
As a Dutch civil engineer I like how indepth you went to explain what is actually happening without most people noticing.
Nothing demolished, removed or changed too much. That's amazing. The time saved on public hearings and redesigns alone has to pay for the renovation entirely!
Simply rearranging the priorities of the streets solved the problem. Compared to the German solution that still want to accommodate cars with as little hassle possible.
I always assumed Fietsstraats where the goal for a street. Not the tool to connect bicycle networks together through streets that don't want car traffic.
Stellar work as usual! You make learning fun!
I forgot which of my friends you are 🤣 who are you again??
@@buildthelanes Cool you thought I was your friend! I'm just a fellow subscriber from Sweden!
If you're considering any behind the scenes content I'm fully for it! Your thought process is awesome.
Dutch engineering never sees to amaze me. Literally the best. They dont even bulldoze through a neighbourhood just relocation of priorities and traffic calming.
I think the standardized red road color for bikers plays a big role in the Netherlands, while I do not think red specifically is necessary, I do think having some color that as a car you practically never drive on and especially never drive fast on makes it very clear when you are somewhere where you should slow down (I've seen green picked in some other countries which probably works fine but man it's ugly, in that case I'd still go with red)
> while I do not think red specifically is necessary
I looked it up, the red colour isn't a legal requirement, nor does it hold any legal weight over a non-coloured cyclepath. It just helps out a lot, like you said. A line can fade, but a specific colour of asphalt makes it a lot easier to spot the difference.
Yeah the red is a lot nicer to look at than the green or blue that is used in other countries. Also the red can be relatively easily mixed into the asfalt. Green and blue are painted on, which has a lot more wear and tear and needs to be repainted all the time, which than doesn't happen, so you get these ugly half painted bicycle paths. Maybe green and blue can be mixed into the asfalt as well, than it might not be so ugly as the paint is, but red just works in the Netherlands at least.
It seems the red color is very hard to distinguish from grey for people who are color blind. Blue seems to be the best color, but it is also the ugliest option. 😏
I kinda like blue 😅 ♿️ it contrasts really well with white and matches the color of traffic signs and is different enough to make drivers proceed with caution. A lot of US cities use green but drivers are used to it now and don't respect it.
@@veelastname I don't think the being used to it has anything to do with the respect. I think that has to do with the US car culture where cyclists are viewed as some kind of weird cult that is annoying on the road. Really the only way to change that is to normalise mixed use (so people who own a car still use a bike) and better training (as far as I've heard getting a driver's license is a joke in the US anyway). In the Netherlands almost the entire population has used a bike very regularly before they got a driver's license (if they have one). The exceptions are almost all special cases like certain disabilities. And the vast majority of drivers still cycle regularly after getting a licence. This means that drivers have a lot of respect for cyclists, because they know very well how it is to be in their shoes.
I live 3 years in the Netherlands now, and thanks to your video I just realized I'm legally allowed to cycle side by side on a road lol
@@Roberto_o I know, literally one paragraph above says that cyclist must be as right on a road as possible
Good video! The unedited ridethrough at 6:30 said more than any words could about how intuitive the design is.
I think another thing is that Dutch are good at visually setting expectation on how to behave in traffic
Are you supposed to go 10, 30, 50, 100? Do you have right-of-way? How likely are you going to encounter pedestrians? All that you can usually guess without even looking at the signage.
And the fietsstraat sets the expectation "Going slow, expecting to share the road, be prepared to break at any time" visually even if you never looked at any traffic sign
Absolutely! And I think that helps me more than any sign, not just with a fietsstraat but with things like 30/60 km/h zones too. You just look at the road, and you know how to behave.
agreed, but this is also why i hate the blue rectangular 15 km/hr signs. theyre on 30 designed roads and i think are dangerous for being unenforcable and setting wrong expectations. Unfortunately car brain is trying to make its way back into dutch planning with varying degrees of sucess
@@buildthelanes To be fair, those blue rectangular signs show the suggested speed to use, not the speed limit. This is taught at driving lessons and if people could be arsed to remember it the problem of wrong expectations probably disappears.
@@PGraveDigger1 What you mean is a square sign. The rectangular sign he is talking about is the G5 or "woonerf" variant. Though I must disagree that they aren't always on roads designed for 30. And that 15 km/h isn't a suggestion either. Although you will never encounter a radar on those roads. But they are characterized by their design where the road itself doesn't really allow you to go much faster. They are usually narrow and have no cycling paths, or even sidewalks. The space is shared by everyone.
@@Evolixe Every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. A square is a special kind of rectangle because it has four sides of equal length, but it is still a rectangle. I agree with the rest of your comment.
By continuing the red asphalt, priority on side streets, and always in a 30 km/h zone, bicycle users voluntary follow the route through the neighborhood where traffic management wants them to go.
Normal rules continue to apply, no specialties needed.
By making a short stretch a bicycle path, traffic management prevents cars from taking this route, usually the shortest and most convenient route, and forces car drivers to take alternative routes. Thus making this route car-less and safer for bicycle users.
It can only be done where cars have an alternative route that is slightly longer, else they will get annoyed by slow bicycles that prevent them from going 30 or faster. A bad example can be found in the same city of 's-Hertogenbosch at the parallel roads to the Othenseweg and Orthen. The stretch is too long, there is no interruption by a true bicycle path that stops cars from continuing, and drivers lose their patience from being unable to pass cyclists. Honking and dangerous actions are the result. A driver will pass a mother with four ducklings, swerving around her, at any costs.
The trick is to not make them too long. In the Hague there are several short stretches, with no good alternative routes for drivers, but they are short enough to not tax the drivers' patience too much. I've never seen drivers there get irate.
I noticed one dangerous error at 6:33 . As cyclist you think you're riding on a bicyclepath because of the sign and the road configuration. But you're not. There can be cars.
@@ffortissimo Get it! On the other hand a sign should be repeated after every crossing, this is a T crossing with priority, but nevertheless a crossing.
There is no repeat sign, no sign at all, so normal rules apply directly after the street from the left. This is done after every sign, a crossing and back to normal streetrules.
Very interesting video! In Belgium, we have somewhat of a mixture between the Dutch & German implementation of the 'fietsstraat'. The signage is part of the legal code, and makes it so any street that's marked as a 'fietsstraat' has a speed limit of 30km/h. Additionally, cyclists cannot be overtaken by cars (or other motor vehicles). Cyclists are allowed to bike side by side within the 'bebouwde kom' (city limits, marked with signs) unless oncoming traffic cannot pass them. Seeing how different the rules are to our neighboring countries, I finally understand why so many Dutch/German cars in my hometown seem to misunderstand the rules that apply on our main street through the village.
The usage of the red tarmac is key to straighten out any navigating errors and doubt about priority.
I like your last line. Traffic (cars) diversion. We tend to think design is limited to just that street and forget the surrounding streets contribute to its success. Or failure. Thanks!
Nice video! I've been living in that part of Den Bosch since a few months now and I was really surprised by how they implemented the cycle infrastructure in that neighbourhood, awesome that you covered it :)
When my parents were still alive a would go to visit them on my bike. 45 kilometers and 98% of the route was a bike path. Even next to the highway
Very very safe.
What I never get: it says cars are a guest, but whenever I drive there, nobody ever takes my coat or offers me a drink! Very inhospitable indeed!!
Nice! Well done, once again. Cheers! 😀
When I cycle from Groningen to Delft every once in a while, the only fietsstraat I recall on my route was in Zoetermeer (granted, I try to avoid as much urban area as possible, going around cities in South Holland is like adding 30 kilometers/1,5 hours to your ride) It was a pleasant surprise, the sign even says “Drivers are guests” i.e. motorist have to adjust to accommodate the cyclist, not the other way around.
This is a really well made video! I've experienced the same thing since moving to the Netherlands. In some smaller towns the amount of motor traffic can sometimes be annoying on fietstraats, as there's not many "main roads" for the cars to take instead, but it still does an overall great job compared to the "share the road" signs on super wide streets in the US.
In Montréal we're seeing the first "Vélorues". I live on one. It used to be a transit route between two major streets with stressed out car commuters burning stop, now you see complete families with kids riding side by side. It's a joy.
This is a wonderful video! Thank you for defining what a fietsstraat is and its purpose.
To summerize, what I understand is that a fietsstraat is not legally binding, it is just a part of a larger bike network vs only being a traffic calming measure.
It's almost like neighbourhood bikeways in North America. We just don't make that as visible and obvious with modal filtering and traffic calming.
Yea in a way
A fietstraat is just describing what you see when you have a lot of bicycles going through a seldomly used car street. Because theres a regional route where theres not an easy open space for it to continue.
Think of it like a sign that says "shopping district" on it. In almost every country this isnt some legally defined term so its jsut a description that a lot of shops in the area and the sign is meant to be a helpful reminder to people who might be looking for an environment. Its not the sign that create the thing. Unless you're in a weird country where it is a legally defined thing and the creation of a shopping district literally starts by placing a sign.
This of course is made more confusing in the netherlands when bad designers simply try to recreate the effects of a fietstraat in an inappropriate area by making it look like one
A major difference between NL and Germany or US are liability laws in accidents
By default Dutch law starts with the assumption that car drivers are assumed at fault in a collision with bikes (or pedrstrians) . At least that is the starting point . Vehicle drivers are held to a greater responsibility to weaker traffic participants ..
Even when a cyclist might be at fault ( red lighting, not giving priority) the car driver is supposed to be precautious with that , with their car ...
That means that the car driver never can get more than 50% of car damage from a cyclist's insurance, even when not causing an accident....
That alone will make a driver more cautious among cyclists than in US for example.
You really don't want a collision .. fietsstraat or not ..
In practice the fietsstraat here is pretty much just a bicycle lane where cars are able to drive behind your bicycle at your pace rather than having to move aside and let them pass. I had no idea there wasn't any law to enforce this but it just works and it's pretty comfortable to use I regularly use them to get around here.
Another fun thing I spotted idk if you've ever covered that before but I haven't seen this in any other country so far is the "groene golf 50" signage the camera passes at 9:08. This is a way our traffic planners encourage drivers to just chill their tits and not try to race the next traffic light when a long series of lights has to be placed. Basically that sign tells you if you drive at 50 kmph on that street your green light here will lead directly to a green light on the next light as well. Any faster and you're just going to have to wait anyway so there's no reason to race people for the green light in those streets.
Interesting!
The Fahrradstraße, too, is very much dependent on its implementation. Take Konstanz in southern Germany for example. There is one main Fahrradstraße going through the city in a very straight manner, mostly paralleling a main road. "mostly" is the key here, as it crosses the Lake of Constance/Rhine and allows for a nice shortcut that cars can't take. Along the route there are also multiple bollards stopping car traffic. My daily commute by bike is ~15-20 minutes with only two smallish intersections and one level railway crossing. Trying to do the same by car or scooter takes more or less exactly the same time because of forced massive detours and multiple large intersection. Also this Fahrradstraße is used quite heavily. In the summer there regularly are more than 10'000 daily users (there is a counting station), while Konstanz only has a population of ~95'000
meanwhile the Fahrradstraße to the center of Augsburg barely sees 2000 cyclists most summer days, due to heavy car traffic, directly going into a Fußgängerzone with no good bike routing and more car parking in the area than bike stands.
The Molenstraat in Enschede has been turned into a fietsstraat a few years ago, which I found out when I took the only route I used to know from my workplace to the bouldergym. It works somewhat, cyclists are abundant but so are cars. However I gauge this solely on my experience in rush hour traffic as the ringroad is completely clogged during those times. They added traffic calming in the form of speedbumps, but the end result is that you'll still be faster off than taking the ringroad instead and are still mingling in between cyclists. You might enjoy having a look at Enschede, it's a mix of new infrastructure (fietsstraat) and old "cyclist friendly" infrastructure where they just added a red patch to the roads for cyclists.
Another example is the one in my hometown of Oldenzaal where they took what was basically a cobblestone road and already horrible to drive on, and turned it into a fietsstraat. It didn't help at all because the new asphalt is way better to drive on, and there's absolutely no traffic calming; so people actually speed there now as opposed to before when it was a cobblestone road. (Ootmarsumsestraat).
Great video nonetheless however, I like getting a more in-depth view on the country's infrastructure.
3:00 & 9:00 - Neat, i used to live near there, cycled that bit a lot ^^
(Its Halfweg, small nice village between Amsterdam and Haarlem, across the water to the far right in first bit of footage (behind the pumping station) is Zwanenburg, another nice village, its a super relaxed area that's great for young families, people who work in those 2 cities & retirees. Can recommend for both cycling and living)
I think you hit the nail on the head, there's a lack of definition of "fietsstraat" in a lot of government documents simply because the color of the road and the wider layout (and often elevation change) compared to a normal bike lane already makes this clear, we're trained to recognize red asphalt as "this is for cyclists and you better be careful with your car because you will be blamed if something happens".
That's an important thing to take into account when talking about Dutch traffic rules and cyclists, by definition the heavier vehicle is to blame, unless you get lucky and there's camera's on an intersection you are the one that has a problem if some kid runs a red light on his bicycle, it will be _your fault_ as the car driver unless proven otherwise, so we all constantly look out for them and are used to giving them priority even if technically we have it. That's how there's so little cyclist accidents while there's so many cyclists in the Netherlands.
Nice new setup and very informative as usual! 😊 Thanks.
If you want a follow-up video, take a look at Houten were het fietsstraat was inventent. A city build for biking. (De straat in Amersfoort was modeled after Houten)
I visited Bergen Op Zoom this summer to visit my wife's family, and saw several of these "Fietsstraats". I actually stayed at a residence off Duitslandstraat, which seems to be bike only except for a few service vehicles. But the one street my wife and her family told me to be most careful driving on was Halstersweg. "This is a bike road! Cars are allowed to visit, but bikes have the right of way!" It seemed ominous when they said it, but it was actually pretty cool in my eyes.
The only way to get on Halstersweg to the north is by bike, there is no car traffic from the Randweg (where Randweg West and Randweg Noord meet). And the street itself looks like two bike lanes with a brick "hump" median. It goes all the way to Bergerhout/Pomonalaan to the south, and it looks like they could expand it further if they wanted (and if my memory serves me correctly, it does go further south, but Google Maps/Street View is from 2017 here, so it stops there).
Now, if only I had a proper sized Dutch vehicle while I was there, instead of the Lynk & Co. I was forced into because my flight was 3 hours late and I was deemed a no-show. I needed a car that could carry 4 people and two pieces of luggage, plus 4 backpacks, but that car was overkill, and too big/wide. The Peugeot 308 I had last visit at least felt much better because it wasn't a crossover.
I love your pronunciation of the Dutch language. "straat" at 4:57 is spot on.
The w is crucial in English-Dutch accents. It's all a matter of putting it in where it shouldn't be, or leaving it out where it should be in.
Street and Straat are great examples.
It's easy to speak Dutch with an English accent: say "stwraat" instead of "straat"
It's easy to speak English with a Dutch accent: say "street" instead of "stwreet"
Forget about the next bit of information, but technically, if there is actually a w to pronounce, then:
The English w is pronounced bi-labial (double lip)
The Dutch w is pronounced labio-dental (upper teeth, lower lip)
bedankt :)
Great Video! Very informative and a lot of insight into the Dutch traffic system. 👋
Thank you for that explanation.
And still there are lots of places in the Netherlands where cyclists could be better facilitated by these fietsstraten. Keep up the good inspiring work in your videos 👍
we have this in my city (Stavanger in Norway) Legally its not any different from any other residential street but its red, has cobblestones along the sides, parking is reserved to pockets, you have the right of way and there are lots of traffic calming flower boxes, its been a great success and cycling in the street tripled
The video started playing while I was on my phone, and randomly I see the street from my hometown. I am from Amersfoort! Nice video!
Great video. Learned a lot. Thank you very much!!!
I live in Leuven, Belgium, which tries to be the national 'fietsstad', and we have fietsstraten everywhere. Unfortunately they just put up a sign marking the street as a fietsstraat, and then leave it like that. The street I live at is a fietsstraat, even though we have regular busses and trucks coming through and I absolutely do not feel safe biking there. If only they'd look at what the Netherlands is doing and invest in some proper biking infrastructure..
truck traffic (that's not a rare delivery)? OK, that even beats the bad German ones…
In Sint-Niklaas, they turned a 30km/h zoned paved street that has an elementary school in the middle into a fietsstraat: first they asphalted it. Then they broke it up and asphalted it again but now in red because the construction crew had mistakenly used black asphalt ... And now it is the favourite racetrack of the local motorcycle and cartuner enthousiasts because it's straight and has a surface as smooth as a billiard table... The only obstacle they may have to deal with is me cycling in the middle of the road because a fietsstraat is in the code of the road as a street where passing bicycles is forbidden. And yes I'm a jerk like that.
I almost moved to Belgium from the Netherlands. But then I realized I wasn't gonna bring my kids to school on a bike on those streets. And I definitely wasn't going to let them cycle into town to get a beer with their friends later when they're teenagers. Stayed in my row house in the Netherlands and skipped the Belgian villa. We learned our lesson.
The traffic sign that you used as the movie poster, this video and is on the kerklaan in Amersfoort, expresses how I feel about cars in such streets, impatiently tailgating me.
i grabbed this one in amsterdam actually but fair enough!
I must say, the Dutch variant is occasionally being applied in the wrong situations as well. In Twente, in the east of NL there has recently been made a change in a rural route between the city of Enschede and the town Losser. The local government decided to make a "fietsstraat" with included 30km/h limit as long as the entire route between these two places, which is about 6km! The route is fairly straight. The confusing part is that this is a rural area. Not a residential zone. It is outside the city limits and herefore the speed limit feels very unnatural in this situation, which flies in the face of making traffic rules reasonable. Besides that the street is often underutilized by bicycle traffic, especially in the winter months. My guesses is that the local government just wanted to score some points and reel in some money to subsidize their "bicycle friendly" project. In practice, no car travelling over this fietsstraat keeps the 30km/h limit. There are no sideroads that require the fietsstraat to have priority, but when there is an intersection, the fietsstraat just briefly ends and starts again right after. The project was a waste of money.
yes, i wanted to also discuss how they are made wrong in the netherlands also by simply trying to copy the visual appearance and putting down l52 signs but alas there was soo much i wanted to mention it would have taken a year to make this video if i included everything. maybe i can talk about it more in a follow up video
Great video to show how they connect the cycling network, without much disturbance to car accessibility of the residential zone. Cycling through residential areas in Netherlands is usually mixed use, no cycling lanes necessary. So the residential streets are mixed, and there are a few main car routes (with separate cycling lanes) to get out of the residential zone onto the car network. I think the fietsstraat is a perfect way to accommodate cyclist through a residential area with lots of alternative parallel routes. The one fietsstraat brings most through traffic to that street, with right of way and safer design. And people with cars can still reach their homes and park on the sides, as it is just the last few hundred meters of their journey (or first when leaving).
Sometimes the fietsstraat replaces or complements a cycling lane in a parallel main car route to separate them more and provide more space for cyclists.
Thanks for great and very informative video!
thank you for encouraging me :)
It's the same in Slovakia as in Germany - speed limit of 30km/h, cyclists have priority on intersections, no car access by default, but there are also no recommendations on where to build Cycle streets (Bicyklové cesty), so I would expect that not many will be well utilized.
Great video, you just gained a subscriber!
In Belgium there are also fietsstraten whom are different from both of them. It basically is a standard inner city car one-way road. Bikes are allowed to use the entire brevity of the road. Cars are allowed to enter, but have a maximum speed of 30km/h and are not allowed to overtake any bikers. For traffic (bike or car) that is entering the fietsstraat from a side street, general traffic rules apply unless otherwise indicated (ie right has right away).
Interesting to see how all these countries implement the same word so differently.
The term "Rue cyclable" is the corresponding french term, which is used in Liège/Luik for example. It's a bit the same issue, the roads or infrastructure were not redesigned. It was just putting up sign without any bike lane connection, the cars (me included) are still driving through as before, even buses and trucks, so no enhanced security for bikers.
In my city of Erlangen there are a couple of Fahrradstraßen. I use them almost every day as a cyclist and mostly it works fine. But that’s probably also due tot the fact that Erlangen has a pretty big amount of Uni Students living there, which know the rules, whether when biking but also in their cars. Whenever some motorist takes my right of way or starts honking rudely etc. even though I‘m following the rules correctly I can pretty much always assume in that context that that person isn‘t living in the city or is considerably older.
Trying this in Canada would cause an uproar in NIMBYism. But one can still dream of being able to safetly bike to work.
it has an interesting affect on NIMBYs. because when they understand it, they realize that it keeps most other people from driving cars on their street and because of that, no one will be taking their own street parking spot.
I was considering bringing this idea to my local city clowncil in Ontario as an option on low traffic stroads in winter without bike lanes or without having to plow bike lanes that exist but still give cyclists a safe way to get to school, work, store, ect. Our STROAD speed limits are 50, though cars often do 70 so of course people dont bike on the road
Good video on an important piece of infrastructure
But...*cries in Australian
There there mate
Great video. It's essentially cargo culting.
If you ever want to do some more research on fietsstraten, i would suggest to research the fietsstraat in the kruisstraat in Eindhoven! it is a very difficult to design street, with a lot of traffic, side streets and conflicting neighborhoods. In my opinion the most interesting fietsstraat in netherlands
Damn, lovely lanes!
Do you have a download to a copy of the RVV; in English or French if you have it?
Is there an English translation of the various Dutch traffic/cycling manuals available for download or purchase?
there is one available for the bicycle guide. But unfortunately not for the other texts. I have been talking with them trying to convince them to do this.
Your way of pronouncing dutch words is suprisingly good!
dank je wel :). Ik woon in Nederland voor 2 jaren nu
@@buildthelanesKleine correctie (om je te helpen):
“voor 2 jaren” is Engels vertaald in NL. Wij zeggen “Ik woon al 2 jaar in Nederland” of ouderwets “gedurende 2 jaar”. 😊
Great video as always, i get it now and it all makes sense. I’m really curious what CROW has for the 2023 manual? If they release it this year.
How much is the CROW?
Are they working on a 2023 version ?
CROW references the entire organization. There are many design guides and specific manuals, it depends on the one you want and its often not in english
@@pbilk depends but usually quite a bit for a book.
@@randoguy7488 they’re working on many manuals for different types of infrastructure, road design, parking, bus services, etc
There is also one in Hilversum, but i'm not sure motorists know that it exists.
Important detail though, its not just "some traffic calming" that makes the dutch fietsstraat work. They're usually carefully designed following the norms set by the government. This also adds immensely to the feeling of safety for cyclists and is sorely missing in the german example. It's not just the red asphalt, but the narrow width of the street, the speed bumps at every intersection where cars might join, priority given to cyclists always, zig zag street design, cutvoff trhough traffic, and so on. By non-dutch norms, this is pretty extensive traffic calming.
We've had fietsstraten here in Belgium for years now too. And here they are legally defined in the road code/rules. But here too, they only really work if the street is completely redesigned with extensive traffic calming measures and priority completely given to cyclists. And here in Belgium it IS illegal for a car to overtake a cyclist in a fietsstraat, and CAN be (and sometimes is) enforced by police, earning a fine of 58 euro. But even then it really only works if the street design forces it.
I now understand what has been made in my country, Belgium. A few years ago the traffic rules were amended adding the "Fietsstraat / Rue Cyclable" sign, looking as the one in tne NL. Rules say that in such a signed street the speed limit is 30 km/h, the cyclists may use the full width of the street if it is a one-way streeet and the full width of the right half of the street if it's a two-way street, and the car drivers are not allowed to take over cyclists.
After a few years of testing this thing in appropriate locations and also in non-appropriate locations, some lessons have been learnt. Car drivers do not yet get the novelty that they may not overtake cyclists, leading to dangerous situations. Some local authorities did add some plates to explain what "Fietsstraat / Rue cyclable" plates mean. I have also seen in Germany some plate inspired by the "forbidden for a truck to take over", but on the left you have a car and on the right a bike seen from behind, it looks like a band aid on the same problem as here in Belgium : using this legal tool in a context where it will never work. However I've seen in Germany some road markings making very clear that bikes are the king, however I fear this will jeopardize the status of a "real" plain vanilla bike lane...
Back to Belgium : Local authorities, which are pushed in the back by regional authorities and expectations of a part of the public/electors to build bicycle infrastructure (because Belgium is still so well in the "car dream" of the 1950ies in many parts of the country, though it is slowly beginning to change, among others in Brussels) thought they had found the perfect & easy tool to make big figures very quick : put some plates and that's it, you can tell you added 100 km of "bicycle infrastructure" to your city in one month... and recencly it went even worse as these plates, which had to be put after each junction, have now been upgraded by a recent traffic rules change as the "Fietsstraat / Rue cyclable" is abandoned in favor of a "Fietszone / Zone cyclable" concept. That concept means, alike the other "zone" plates (like the "zone 30", "zone 50", ...), that the plate only needs to be erected at the entrance of the zone and a crossed-out version erected at the exit of the zone and that's it. The zone gets through junctions. You can make a "Fietszone / Zone cyclable" of a whole neighbourhood just with a few plates at the entrance/exit roads of that neighbourhood, and fill the statistics form for even more "bicycle infrastructure" mileage realized at almost no cost.
Cyclist associations did protest when consulted, and requested that at least some road markings had to be made mandatory to legitimate the cyclist being the king in these zones and the cars being tolerated guests, but these requests have been turned down by the lawmakers. We all hope it's not the end of the story...
The core of the current national traffic rules, road signs and signals in Europe and a big part of the rest of the world have been derived from the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of 1968 (and the Convention on Road Signs and Signals). Do you think like me that some new meeting should be made to upgrade the convention about bicycle infrastructure, personal light electric vehicles (e-scooters, EUC, e-skateboards), e-bikes and speed pedelecs ? Looking at Europe only, countries are going in all possible directions with new signs, road markings, rules, colors, ... which is good because that is matter for in-depth comparative studies but after some time, some lessons should be learnt and the best ideas should be standardized and applied everywhere. Road marking and road signs have a short life, which means that like in 1968, giving 10 years to the parties to align their infrastructure to the standard looks legit...
What many country call a bicycle street where you have calm traffic and cyclists riding side by side is just called a street in the Netherlands or the ETW.
Thank you for your insightful comment im glad that I was able to help!
But there is no rule preventing cars from overtaking cyclists on a fietstraat in the Netherlands since regular ETW rules apply
the dutch fiets straat is only destination traffic for cars but a main/connector road for bikes
I have cycled there (Amersfoort) basically my entire life multiple times a week, never seen a car there, always loads of bikes
when i was here for 30 minutes i saw probably 2-3
@@buildthelanes yeah that's probably pretty accurate for a normal day there
1:20 By the way. I love to new logo, animation, and music. 😉😊
I actually used that steet in 'S Ertogenbosch and was annoyed i couldn't use it during the reconstruction. Good to have some closure on that😋
* 's Hertogenbosch
*Chef's kiss*
the town i went to school in in germany recently turned a road into a fahrradstraße. they changed nothing about the road, except putting up the signage. it’s still used mostly the way it was always used, by cars that is. the decision also feels random. most cyclists who use bikes to commute are students and there is a local school not that far away but the road is a very insignificant part of the commute. it’s like 100 meters. it leads into the very car dominated center of town where you have two one way lanes going around a parking lot and the students use a different lane, that does eventually lead towards the fahrradstraße but nothing around it is particularly accommodating to cyclists. it feels like a start but in a way where someone on town counsil said ‚hey, a fahrradstraße could be good here‘ and then everyone agreed but did nothing to make the route around it more cycling friendly
A German "Fahrradstraße" can vary greatly between this lazy effort (well, one end at least has some red asphalt…) and nothing more than an oversized bike path with no cars at all. A very common issue is to allow not only residential (which was the original idea) but all car traffic. The one in Dortmund however also looks useless or maybe disconnected with that little bike traffic. We have a similar one here, which has clearly more bikes than cars.
i love my city so beautifull
So, this is more like a late stage kind of thing, you already need to have a robust network before this is possible. There should be some sort of tier.
Network planning. That's why they're different. Network planning.
yes! its the inevitable result of planning the bike route
Extremely interesting.
Wow I really like how to tied Germany and all these cities into the policy. Also nice animations on the policies, maps and other things. Your transitions are getting really smooth. Loving the background music too. It’s a nice touch.
Around minute 6 when you are talking about a ballot? Being added to keep cars out. I think it’s helpful for dummies like me in your field if you have an arrow that just points to it for a second. I know you gave a lot of context for it tho so I know what your talking about.
Love that you are talking about these things that have the same words but different meaning. Your like a Pythagoras traffic engineer
I think he said “bollard”. Basically: a small pole used to block off a street or another zone you don’t want cars to be able to go.
Thanks for another great video. In reality Germany is king when it comes to laws and bureaucracy but still Cars are No. 1 on the road even with definitions in place. How many Fahrradstrassen do actually exist? At least I don’t seem to pass any in our area. When driving a car I notice how car centric this country still is and that cyclists are seen as nuisances rather than equal participants on the road like they are in the NL. Changing street design will take many more years for sure as long as the car centric mindset is prominent
There is one in Ingolstadt on my former way to school
It fits the Dutch description here (it is the connecting piece between two pieces of cyclepath, it's a residential side road so few cars are going through, ...
But I think the difference is - it still looks like a street. Hence car drivers behave like on a regular street. The Dutch ones look like a cyclepath - so car drivers behave like the guests they are
like so many things in germany, the number totally depends on where you live
i will always love that american dad meme😂
idk maybe I'm wrong, but the Fietsstraat is quite a new thing even here in the Netherlands and your book states on the cover that it is the 2018 version, Fietsstraat might be in the 2023 version
It's not new. The red asphalt usage is relatively new, but they've always existed.
@@therealdutchidiot Ik heb het over de fietsstraat, niet het fietspad, de allereerste fietsstraat in NL was in Utrecht 1996, maar werd teruggedraaid in 1999, in 2005 werd er pas een officieel besluit gemaakt om fietsstraten in te voeren, dat is "vrij recent", let op dat betekent niet dat al die fietsstraten die er nu zijn, allemaal in 2005 gemaakt zijn, ik denk dat de grootste hoeveelheid in de laatste 10 jaar gekomen is
@@user-kc7vw5co9u Daar heb ik het oo over. De fietsstraat bestond al voor het fietspad. Er is alleen pas de laatste jaren besloten het ontwerp te veranderen en dit van asfalt te voorzien inplaats van klinkers.
I lost my bananas laughing at minute 8:15 🤣
Could you say that a Fahrradstraße is primarly a car street trying (not necessarily successfully) to accommodate bikes, while a fietsstraat is primarily a bicycle lane that accepts local car traffic? Would explain why it isn't in the dutch book.
sure! you could also think of it as one country where a "shopping district" isnt a legally defined term and just what we use to describe a thriving commercial area compared to another country where it is a legally defined term and country 2 tries to build one by putting down a sign and announcing it and also putting up some fake buildings to mimic the look
It's also in Belgium.
Have to start somewhere, it takes lots of small changes over the years so even while the German version doesn't really work, it's one step. And that's good.
This is the key to improvement. Do not wait until you have the perfect design, start building now. And if it doesn’t work, improve.
But it's already legally defined, meaning you can't really improve without changing the law again.
There are so many of these near Nijmegen, while probably all of them could've just used a woonerf or a 30km/h street and everything would've been lawful, clear, and safe. I feel like they shouldn't need a whole separate fietsstraat concept, and just designing the car street as though it was a bike lane would do the job
Woonerven are defined as 15km/h.
I live in Amersfoort and I'm not sure if I've ever seen a car on the Keerkring
Wait so you're saying the Germans basically cargo culted the fietsstraat?
used to cycle on the first street mentionned twice daily
The way i understant it, cycle streets, which are currently quite slapdash in terms of design, will eventually be regulated much like everything else in traffic. They're in the experimental phase. Usually in traffic we do things in experiments and then make the best practices from those experiments into a national required guideline
think of it just as the result of how the hell do we run cycle route 23578 through this area when we have no space.
Personally, i am against the L52 sign. i dont think it should have been introduced or used because it can cause some misunderstandings about what a fietstraat is and how it will tempt people to put one in a non residential area to just try and replicate the calm traffic by making it look similair.
@@buildthelanes while i agree on all points, i do think the recommendations for how to develop a fietsstraat project should eventually be absorbed into the legal standards how we design public space.
Most 30 km/h residential streets could be called fietsstraat, with cars being operated as guests.
The German Fahrradstraße is not always that bad though. Several cities viewed as "bike friendly" by German standards have them everywhere and many are very heavily used. The official ruling about Fahrradstraßen doesn't automatically lead to useless infrastructure in my experience, but it certainly makes the meaning of Fahrradstraßen hollow and it gives cities too much freedoms on how to implement the concept. But as I sad, Dortmund may well be an extreme example, I don't know any bike street in my city (Kiel) with so few cyclists (and to be honest, I know several normal residential streets with more cyclists around here...). I think one of the defining features of German traffic planning is that all design guides are from like 2005 or something and that these are so car friendly, that not a single city really wants to follow them. So every city and every village has a separate design standard, leading to very mixed results. But you can usually filter out those cities following the guides, because their bike infrastructure sucks lol
as somebody from amersfoort i knew the street from the first shot before you even said where it was
The key of this, is to make sure cars dont want to be there :). That way there are little cars and bikes are safe , without even asphalt colour or signage or whatever. Make sure cars only want to be there if they really really have to. Make better faster routes for cars outside of this (by slowing down this or optimizing other routes ). Bollards , speed bumps, etc... This allows people living there to still reach their house but just make sure no one uses it as a route to get somewhere else. Now you have quiet , safe calm street . Make it red and put up signage to make it official now: it's a fietsstraat now.
yes, i wanted to animate more maps to show how the car movement works when you put the bollard down, but alas im new to this animation part and there was already so much i wanted to include. Perhaps ill make a mini video highlighting this part a bit more.
I want to make animation a key feature of this channel since itll be so vital to explain some of the concepts in a distinct but also subtle way
07:45 quite a street indeed
Quiet is an adjective used to describe something or someone that makes very little noise: For example:- During the exam the classroom was very quiet. Quite is an adverb used to describe when something is a little or a lot but not completely. For example:- It was quite quiet at work today.
How old is the fietsstraat concept now ? Because I know it's not been around that long, right ?
i believe around 20 years but dont quote me.
@@buildthelanes thanks, and then I won't 🙂
@@buildthelanes The concept in the manual? I'd agree with that. But the way of designing streets and bike paths to connect in that fashion (with diverting traffic in mind) go back around 40 years. Because as you said, it's not about its appearance, it's about function. In my hometown there are still a lot of these, with no plans to upgrade to asphalt because it wouldn't be an immediate improvement.
Eh but is that means all 30 km/h limited street in nederland is a fietstraat? 8:07
No because not all streets connect regional cycle directly to one another and are used in that way
@@buildthelanes yup just found it in the hague
Great video! Just need to tweak the audio levels... Ouch 😵💫
im sorry :o
The sign isn't there as a cherry on top. Rather, it's function is to reassure car traffic that even though the road they are entering looks like any other bike path but wider, it is in fact a fietsstraat and as such cars are allowed to use it as well. This, more than any definition or lack thereof, is why they work so well in The Netherlands, and why they may not work elsewhere. Through daily experience with highly standardized road design, Dutch people have an intuitive understanding of what their place on any given road is. It's not foolproof, but the basic principles are obvious enough to make any car driver approaching a fietsstraat question if they are allowed in at all, much less have the right of way at any point.
well yes, but the absence of the fietspad sign and no center striping is usually enough in of itself. the fietstraat in s' hertogenbosch didnt feature any L52 signs and it was very intuitive too everyone
@@buildthelanes Which is because the L52 sign has no legal standing in the Netherlands. Den Bosch decided to forego the use of L52 signs before going down a path of legal hurt when cyclists get hit. There are other variants like "wandelstraat (fietsers te gast)" as well. Which could be used for pedestrianised areas where cycling is still allowed, but it rarely is for the same reason.
I actually never heard of a fietsstraat before.
I live like 30 meters away from the fietsstraat in amersfoort
we have fietsstraten literally everywhere in belgium
In Amsterdam, sample the Sarphatistraat, really is a Fietsstraat.
I do have a question. Why did you use a Dutch traffic manual from 1990? That means your traffic maual is almost 25 years old!!! Isn't there a more recent copy available? One that also has the term Fietsstraat in it?
No,
It’s not a traffic manual, it’s the traffic law. These haven’t really changed so they include the 1990 to indicate the year of passage
There are no “legally required” design manuals you must follow. There is CROW, which is best practice, which you have to have a pretty good reason for ignoring
@@buildthelanes One change in 1995 was full legalisation of what Americans would call jaywalking. Before 1995 you were only allowed to cross the street without using a crosswalkk if the crosswalk was more than 30 meters away (around 2/3 the distance between streetlights).
I live in the Netherlands, and I hope that more dutch cities and villages become less carcentric here in the east. The achterhoek is a big mess and a lot of cities are incredibly grey and ugly with little thought out support for cyclists or public transport
the _town_ of 's-Hertogenbosch??
yes?
@@buildthelanes Den Bosch is a city
@@A992_ in english we use "small city or town" until you hit a population around half a million. For us a city is like 2-3 million people
@@buildthelanes That means that according to your definition, the Netherlands have no cities at all. Even Amsterdam only has I think about 900000 inhabitants at the moment.
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I'd expect cars have to overtake safely in EVERY case .. not just bikestreets. But hey I'm not German so I might be mistaken