The Do's and Dont's of Cycling Design (Lecture)
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- čas přidán 8. 05. 2023
- I was invited to give a lecture at Cal Poly about the dutch approach to designing bicycle facilities. These are the five lessons in my opinion that encompass the design philosophy of this country.
We Dutch always complain about everything wrong in our country among ourselves , but love it when people from other countries compliment our accomplishments 😉
Lol yea😂
Never stop complaining. That's why you don't seem to stop at "good enough" but instead keep progressing.
Het regent godverdomme al 2 maanden
Oh for sure! Blijft een fijne hobby 😊
Some thoughts on "won't people complain about bike highways" is that you have to consider that pretty much all car owners are also a bike owners. Unlike the US in the Netherlands people are not exclusively tied to their car. For example bringing your kids to school, doing a small grocery run or errand is mostly done on bike. Together with the ingrained cycle culture, this means that most people are quite in favour of cycling incentives and are willing to go slower or longer in a car.
If more people cycle, then there is more space on the road for the cars to go faster as well.
@@rogerwilco2 And the argument for separation of cycling to a parallel path from roads, then the car travel on the road is faster. Less interference from cars entering or leaving the road so often. Less lane switching.
To be honest. At the start ppl complained a lot to. Because ppl still had a verry car centric mindset. But as so obviusly worked. Ppl stopped complaining. It's hard to claim you need more road space for you car and thus there can be no bike lane, when you everyday exeriance is just that trafic moves at a steady pace.
Driving experience in the netherlands is one of the best of the world as well. There is very low roadrage and high satisfaction of car drivers.
Mostly because sooooooo many trips are done walking, biking or using public transport, every single one person you see walking or cycling is a car that isn't clogging up the streets. And congestion rises exponentionally with numbers of cars. So few cars more or less can make a big difference in congestion rates.
I'm Dutch. I drive among cyclists all the time. It sucks. Cyclists are unpredictable vulnerable assholes who think they are immortal. Especially if they are young, and even worse if they have any kind of engine on their bike. Bike highways get those bikes off my danm road, making traffic easier for me if I'm in my car.
Complaining about them is stupid. They improve traffic for everyone. So sure, people will complain about them. But you know what that makes those people.
This is amazing. By now lots of people know that North America is behind Europe in street design. You're the only person I've seen who explains how, in detail. Not Just Bikes tells us how much better it is in The Netherlands, but you explain their methodology in depth. Great stuff!
thank you. that is exactly what i want this channel to be
Just to clarify as a European: this is how the Dutch do it. It's not necessarily how the rest of Europe does it and there's definitely a lot of US style suburbs and stroads in Europe as well.
yes, but i did try to say " the dutch" as much as I could. Its a big mistake to treat europe as a single whole
@@buildthelanes Europe surely isn't a single whole! We just started to cooperate among the many stubborn nations and cultures. It's hard to accept another nation has a more taste cuisine, better life-work balance, or less traffic accidents because of their infra. But we are opening up...
@@Rebasepoiss however there are a few typical US things, almost all Europeans would call insane - like always right on red, store access without a sidewalk or pedestrian crossings for more than ~4 lanes without a middle island.
27:41 - The answer to this question is _mixed zoning_
It seems unthinkable to americans, but there are small shops dotted around the neighborhood parcels, mixed in with the houses. In bigger and more dense blocks of access-streets they even have shops and residential in the same building! Crazy, I know 😅
Well… we have plenty non-mixed zoning as well. There are just more (and more flexible) levels and the zones are just human sized.
What always surprises me about American stroad design, is that they haven’t even seem to have figured out parallel streets…. Just remove 2 of ur 6 lanes, put in a green strip and a parallel access street for one or more blocks to get to the destinations and half the problems are solved. Using the same amount of space, same amount of cars, but reduced amount of conflictpoints, easier crossings for peds etc.
We also have shops outside the residentszones on old roads. They ussually have parallel acces streets nowadays. i do like the more modern "shop plaza's" at the outskirts of the city's better. Just park your car in the centrale earia and walk to the different shops.
As the lecturer noted, the NL has also forbidden development that's directly accessible via road. This is radically - almost unthinkably - different from the US approach, even though it directly parallels the highway/feeder dynamic we see in a lot of sunbelt cities.
I think one real issue is that too many Americans cannot conceive of 60kph (about 38mph, not 45 as the lecturer said) being their fastest allowable speed in a city - even though it almost certainly exceeds the average speed of their commutes now.
@@pjotrh most of them are very egocentric and don;t want to pay for public stuff, everything has to be as cheap as possible . result: their shabby infrastructure almost nationwide. rich people live in their own bubbles, where they pay a little more for their own surroundings , so they don't see the problem.
Yes, this is very much also a zoning problem.
The most common thing I hear from US people is. “American suburbs are so large, you need a car. You can’t cycle anywhere because it’s too far away” but the truth is: if you make a nice cycling road that fun & safe to ride, from your home to somewhere people WANT to go to. People will ride on it. No matter the distance.
Also it's the North American zoning laws that prohibit from any shops being built in a suburb. In the Netherlands nearly everyone living in an urban area has a convenience store or supermarket in walking distance from their house. This is simply illegal in the US.
Facts. When I was in middle/high school in the Netherlands, quite a few of my classmates had 10 mile (one-way) commutes. They all traveled by bike every day. One of my classmates even lived 20 miles away from school, yet he still came by bike, every day, from age 12 to 18.
@@erwinmulder1338 if they would just remove that prohibition, then suburbs could turn into small towns. But NIMBYs don't like that kind of change.
@@MarceldeJongWhy not? You do things like get groceries, meet someone in a bar, relax in a park etc. Why don't the NIMBYs want that?
The first two illustrations of this lecture were actually taken in my home town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. This drew my attention. Many interesting issues were being discussed, but as much internet material has taught me: being told is one thing, actually experiencing it on site is another. i
I was impressed by your coverage of the latest developments in Dutch traffic, being the alarming rise in death rates among cyclists. This highlights the importance of Lesson 5: we are never done, there is always room for experimentation and improvement.
First image is from the bicycle roundabout in Veldhoven/Meerhoven near Eindhoven.
The bicycle express routes connect two cities, but go through numerous villages in between. You do not have to do the entire route, but a good connection from city to village, or village to village is used by many. Usually they use existing streets, that can handle increased bicycle use, upgrade them where necessary, and give them priority. People will use them because they are safe and you can continue cycling because of priority at almost every crossing.
Dutch kids cycle to school and from the age of 12 (after primary) have to go to another town or city where the school of their choice is located. They will use the safe route even if there is an alternative, because of its advantages.
It is just like a highway. If you go on in new york you are not forced to keep going to california, you just get off where you need to go.
And you can join on half way and go off again 2 exits later if you only need to go to the next village over.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Somehow Americans cannot get it...
The max speed within the city is 50. But on big roads it is 70. Outside the default is 80, but many roads reduced speed to 60.
Those are Km/h not Miles btw.
In the video he was speaking in km/h. Op is right.
Yes, but most Dutch people drive a bit above the maximum speed. So on a 50km/h road most people will drive up to 60km/h.
Most people drive on GPS and on the margin for getting caught by automatic speed cams. >100 km/h there is a legal margin of 4 km/h before getting a fine and there is a 3 km/h legal margin in the measurement of the speed. So with 57 km/h you are not fined but at 58 km/h you get a fine. @@burgienl
One of the main reasons that the cycling design works so well in the Netherlands is the fact that everyone is a cyclist. Every car driver knows how vulnerable cyclist are and where they can expect cyclist to be on the road. The whole thing hinges on making transport for short trips easier to do on bicycle than in a car. Things like making cars take the long route and special shortcuts for cyclist makes it so that it saves time to take a bicycle.
For example, i live in a small city of about 60-70k people. If i want to visit someone on the other side of town it's often faster to get on my bicycle than it would be taking the car. There are hardly any traffic lights for bicycles, there are a few of course, but easily 80% less then a similar trip by car. I don't have to look for a parking spot when i'm at my destination, i can just ride my bicycle right up to where i need to be and park it there. It's not really about making it more difficult for cars though, it's about making it even more convenient to get on a bicycle.
North America used to have a lot more old towns. Not medieval, but built before the car.
But most cities and towns bulldozed those places to make space for parking lots and high ways.
The biggest exception I know is Quebec City.
Manhattan is an even bigger exception
I like this saying - the american cities weren’t built for the car, they were bulldozed for it
In the Netherlands, trees/bushes/shrubberies next to the cycling path help reducing the wind there.
As a Dutch person most of this felt very obvious, kinda surprising not everybody gets it. I grew up this way so I get that it's more normal for me but still..
If your regular 20 mile streets look like highways they are not safe. If you don't have bikes on a 45 mile road you can drive faster and without casualties. Differentiate between 45 and 20 mile road in residential areas. Kinda obvious why that's beneficial.
It would be interesting to know if the rise in deaths by older cyclists last year was no only because of an ageaing population and an improved cycle infrastructure, but also the explosive growth of the number of e-bikes where people can reach speeds (withoug helmets) that they are not used to and thus crash.
I had heard that the e-bikes themselves were partially responsible for the fact that so many old people (who would otherwise be stuck at home) were out cycling.
In my opinion when old(er) people use e-bikes they forget that their reflexes are also less fast/sharp as when they where younger.
They often cycle faster then their ageing reflexes can handle.
so when something unexpected happens they don't have the time to react on it and crash/fall.
The only "good" way to prevent a lot of those accidents is for the people that use e-bikes to acknowledge their limitations.
But older people often don't like to acknowledge things don't go as good as they used to physical.
@@TheRealE.B. True. It is a risk and a benefit. Everybody will make their risk calculations.
@@ChristiaanHW Yex, my own father was a prime example of that.
@@TheRealE.B. This is a tricky one. On the one hand the people who are otherwise stuck at home due to old age and would lead an inactive lifestyle are getting more active, but on the other hand they shouldn't take e-bikes, because those require more skill to use than regular bikes, never mind a faster reaction speed.
I don't know if it's mentioned already on this excellent channel (I'm new here): that it wouldn't be scalable to the USA.
But it is. I also don't cycle from Venlo to my sister in Hilversum. Cycling would take 8 hours, driving takes 2.
But... I could make the whole trip safely on the bicycle if I wanted to.
Of course also zoning is a thing. Zoning in the Netherlands is very different ("mixed use" kind of).
Maybe that's also already on this channel (want to check out more). Definitely on Not Just Bikes.
You could make that distance with a recumbent or velomobile, using (mostly) snelfietsroutes.
The nice thing about a hill is that when you go up, you always go down as well, but with the wind it is ALWAYS in your face , as any Dutch schoolkid will tell you
Small correction, nearly every residential area in the Netherlands has 2 or 3 access roads for cars. Because the throughfare is faster, there is no risk of people cutting through the residential area anyway. Having exits in a few directions alleviates congestion during rush hour commutes, when everyone is taking their kids to school and leaving for work at the same time.
And, also important, it prevents drivers from feeling like they are being funneled in one direction when they want to go the other way and would have to loop around the residential neighbourhood if there was only 1 exit.
Making sure people in traffic arent frustrated or annoyed is one of the most important aspects of road safety. Its why we put countdowns on street signals as well. You know down to the second when youre allowed to wak. This reduces jaywalking.
Residential neighborhoods (like in the city of Best at 30:00) are often pockets (they cannot even be used as a shortcut because they often have one car access into the neighborhood). This also helps greatly with card driving fast in neighborhoods because they want a short-cut.
i really enjoy the fact that you post your knowledge resources for everyone for free, the subtle details of good design are often not easily accesible and im glad they are here. it seems like when it comes to getting things done in north america, i think many civil engineer students think that they will have the power to make the change, but really the larger obstacle is gaining the political support to reform the old bad systems.
WOW! Now this is some quality content. Thank you so much!
8:29 I am always surprised how many driveways exit onto roads in the USA, even high speed multi-lane roads.
Yeah this is something that really shocked me about driving in the USA 😂
As a just a Dutch guy who has been following the topic for many years, you did great introduction of the concept we've developed over the decades.
Don't know how relevant it is, but their is a video from 12 years ago on BicycleDutch CZcams channel: Junction design, the Dutch - cycle-friendly - way [120]
I wonder how relevant it still is (especially the comparison with the US design guides).
15:52 like the average American tourist in Amsterdam ;-) I don't think it's very common for the average Dutch pedestrian to NOT know which one bike path is, because of the red color.
45:07 Honestly, I've been wondering if we'll go with helmets for e-bikes, because they are faster.
48:50 I think the US needs more mixed development. Have some small businesses in the suburbs, this should help reduce car usage.
54:39 this used to be better, one of the problems some have suggested is: to few people take the public transport because biking and cars infrastructure is to good.
Great story about learning Dutch. 🙂
The red color has worked tremendously, psychologically. As a driver on red roads I simply KNOW subliminally to take care. But it's not yet used everywhere, unfortunately
i can go 45 on a non electric bike so if we wanted fast moving bikes to have those protections we would have done so a while ago. but with the aging populous we may indeed see such a regulation in a short while even though many will not agree since the traditional way's are difrent so there will be a lot of pushback.
@@leeuwengames315 When you are going that fast, you really should wear a helmet, one bad crash can kill you. I've seen cycling races even someone with a helpmet can have a really unfortunate fall and die, but the chance of that happening is almost 0. Wear one and reduce the chances to almost nothing. So I was wondering. For those participating in official cyling races KNWU (because they are part of UCI) regulations requires a helmet. I checked, for those participating in official NTFU (part of KNWU) cycling tours it's only recommended, not required.
@@autohmae it is top speed. you have those speed detectors here which is fun to try and get highest speed. normal speed is much slower around 18 km/hour. and yes i should wear a helmet if i were to go at such speeds consitantly or semi consitantly
@@autohmaeif an electric bike can go over 25 it's supposed to have a license plate and have you wear a helmet which is fair but I'd think it'll make a lot of people pass on taking their bicycle if you'd have to wear a helmet by law, i know i would be less likely to go somewhere by bike if i had to wear a helmet
Great lecture with good information! I learned a lot and enjoyed watching and listening to it. 👋
39:56 note, 30 centimeters is about a foot. What you indicated with your hand is 3 centimeters, about an inch. That is indeed the thickness of the colored top-layer of a bike path in the Netherlands.
yup brain fart on my part.
30 millimeters is what he wanted to say i guess.
Great lecture!
As a Dutchy, I can vouch that you have understood our system. Though there is obviously a lot more to be said on the Dutch road infrastructure ;-)
And as a Dutchy, I always have to laugh when Americans complain that they don't have space for great bicycle infrastructure. They have no idea. The American way of infrastructure is just plain dumb, the result of corruption not intelligence. Well, they call it "lobbying", by the car industry.
we do have overpopulated highways though.. not sure if it is because of bad infrastructure or because of overpopulation. or maby a mix of both.
@@leeuwengames315 It's most likely because people don't have legitimate alternatives. As an example: I'm a huge proponent of getting around using anyting but a car as the first option, but when I lived in San Diego, if we wanted to go to LA to see friends, it made almost zero sense to take the train. It would take about 2-3 hours by car, and MAYBE 5 hours by non-car means of travel (door-to-door). Within San Diego county, it would take about twice as long to go from near the city centre out to see family in the suburbs.
As long as car is the clear winner in time and comfort, people are going to choose it (even in massive congestion).
That's such an odd argument here in Calgary as well. We have these MASSIVE stroads cutting through the city. By definition, they have a lot of space. These would be the easiest places to build great bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. So much space!
@@leeuwengames315 I don't know if you are talking about the Dutch or the US situation. In the Netherlands, they are a conscious choice. Doubling the width of a highway does not double its capacity, and demand will increase to use all available capacity until the delays become unacceptable to individual drivers. So widening highways beyond say 6 lines (3 lanes each direction) is not an effective solution.
(with unacceptable I mean really unacceptable, i.e. enough to change their habits to avoid the delay. I don't mean enough to become an irritant.)
@@TheEvertw i was talking as a dutch person. and what your saying is true as far as i know. my comment was to highlight that the dutch transport system may be better then US transport system but is not perfect
Another point that was mentioned, shops can be along a road, but you cant park there. You have to exit the road, drive down a street, and look for a parking spot. Then you can walk back to the shops that are facing the road and go inside. Parking directly in front of a shop is only possible if its 50km/h or less. Even then they will have very limited parking likely reserved for the disabled, able bodied people have to go park around back and walk to the front.
In my experience the first low car traffic area is hard, expanding it tends to have more support
They key is to create multiple areas that are bike friendly.
Your neighbourhood can be friendly, but if everywhere you want to go is just sht beyond the bounderies of your neighbourhood you still won't bike anywhere.
Same with public transport. Trains are not supposed to connect parking lots like so often is seen in the usa. They have to go to somewhere people actually want to go.
Deploying it as simply a replacement for a highway where you drive to a station, sit in a train for an hour and then find a way to go somewhere useful with an uber is just set up to fail.
In the netherlands you can get from every adress in the country to every single other adress in the country with public transportation with about a 10 minute walk maximum at each end.
You can take a bus in your neighbourhood that goes to the small train station in your suburb, there trains go to the big stations in the city. From there you go to your destination city with the express train and there you do it in reverse. Every city or village is connected in the same way.
And for shorter trips you just cut the train out of the journey ofcourse.
9 times out of ten it is faster then driving a car and you can do whatever you like while you are moving. Read a book, watch a movie, do some work, socialise if you are traveling with company or simply relax and watch the world go by. Or even sleep if the trip is long enough.
While driving you can do nothing but, well, drive.
In a 5km radius from my house I have multiple supermarkets, multiple high schools, public transportation (metro, train), multiple stores and malls, a hospital, a university, sport facilities and 2 major parks. In a 15km radius I even have an airport, 3 more hospitals, college's, a major city center, etc etc. All connected to cycle paths. I cycle to my work, my kids cycle to school.
I love the USA, but every time I'm there I'm amazed about the badly designed infrastructure
Lesson 4 is related to the concept of "ontvlechten". I.e. unbraiding. Separating car routes and cycle routes, so that cycles get the nice, safe routes through parks, and cars are nowhere in sight.
5 years of biking to college in San Luis Obispo gives me good reason to say that it does not feel safe to bike those streets (compared to biking through Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam). The painted bike lanes really don't do much at all when the streets are not designed to make drivers think and act safely. There are protected bike lanes that work very well and ongoing efforts to connect more protected bike lanes through the nature areas of the city are making biking more enjoyable and safer. SLO incorporates bikes better than most other US cities I have been to, but the biggest problem I see everywhere is that the footprint of roads is too large to accomplish any good designs for bikes and pedestrians. I wish Cal Poly would have let me switch my major because this is way more interesting than accounting and marketing.
Excellent presentation. If there were just one thing I could change, it's the way road deaths are often presented (in general, not just by you) in absolute terms. If we look at the graph at 4:37, you see that road deaths are down by roughly a factor 4 from their peak in 1972 to the latest data from 2021. What it doesn't show you, is that the population also increased from 13.3M to 17.5M in the same period, so it's more like a factor 5.5.
The same problem occurs with the graph at 7:23. Yes, road deaths among cyclists and pedestrians are up, but if people are walking and cycling more, that's not unusual. I want these sources to show me road deaths per 100.000 (bike/foot)km.
Again, with the discussions on the dangers of e-bikes. Yes, there are more fatalities, but what percentage of those can be explained by e-bike users who otherwise wouldn't be cycling at all? And from a national health policy perspective: how many years are gained from improved fitness among that group, compaired to years lost from an increase in road accidents? Surely that data exists, and if it doesn't, some agency has badly dropped the ball.
Great point. I suspect that data exists, but is yet too sparse to really draw solid conclusions
But at the same time cars have become exponentially safer as well since 1972. I don't thing seat belts where even obligatory back then.
So it works both ways.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Absolutely, but that's part of the thing you're trying to quantify: road safety. If you want to make a case for compulsory seat belts, you need data that's properly corrected for (all) other variables.
Same with policy decisions; if the cars in two similar countries get safer at the same rate, you can start by attributing a certain fraction of the safety improvement to that, whereas the remainder may be the result of active policy choices.
Correction on 10:14 :
Within cities the max is 50 km/h (31 miles/h), but on acces streets it is 30 km/h (19 miles/h)
Outside the cities it is 60 (37) and 80 (50)
On highways it is 100 km/h (62) between 6:00 am and 19:00
Otherwise is it 120 (75) or 130 (81).
Good video nonetheless
think he said that below 60 km/hour the crashes aren't lethal most of the time not that it is a speed limit here
we also have a 70km limit on large roads within the city limits sometimes. Zwolle is a good example (they also make a good amount of €€ by putting speed cams right at the spots where it turns from 70 into 50
As a Dutchie I can give North America two very simple starting points to safer roads: ban direct access to and from roads (no more stroads) and unban mixed zoning.
The first one can be easily axcomplished by making low speed parallel access streets right next to roads. All those driveways ending up on roads then end up on the new parallel access streets. This instantly reduces the amount of points of conflict.
Unbanning mixed zoning simply means reintroducing mom and pop stores in residential areas. Just bring back the 20s and soon people will buy their groceries near their homes and leave their cars on the driveway. Less cars on the streets makes for safer neighborhoods. Only then start thinking about changing street design. Go for the lowest hanging fruit first.
Loved all the varied examples from different cities and places!
It's also good to hear you explicitly say that it's not just about bikes, but all types of infrastructure combined that make the system work. NJB does IMO ironically not do that great a job in conveying how car driving becomes better and more pleasant when you make the roads safer and incentivize and improve other modes of transportation.
You see a lot of cycling advocates come to The Netherlands and only use the cycling infrastructure, and maybe a bit of public transit. Which is fine of course, but then you do risk missing the point that you make in this video. Out of curiosity, have you driven a car in The Netherlands?
Excellent presentation, very useful to start with the 1960’s when the Dutch almost became primarily car focused. I’m still watching so you might mention it, but the Dutch traffic science and infrastructure has also evolved. From sticking bike lanes to existing roads (just paint - 1970s, 1980s), to separate bike paths (concrete, bricks - 1980s, 1990s) to the mixed use roads and removal of right of way signs so people had to drive more carefully (actual change in road design approach - 2000s and on). Real change also has to meet up with existing road maintenance plans, so takes time.
Yeah, that could be lesson 6. Don't: Waste money on flashy bike projects for the headlines. Do: incorporate the bike upgrades in your regular street and road maintenance.
(usa: what road maintenance?) ok, that joke was a bit evil .... :P
amazing video
The stop de kindermoord movement was effective, but its effects are often overstated. What brought about the real changes was the oil crisis, and protests against road expansion.
Also, 9:41 is actually 70km/h, Granted, this is specific to things like ring roads, which typically do have medians. The typical limit is 50km/h (official city speed by law).
Edit: also, the Hovenring flopped. It doesn't perform as advertised for multiple reasons. It's windy, noisy, steep inclines and it's unstable at times.
In the end, it was overengineered. Four tunnels would've saved the city a lot of money.
yes, it helped started it but didnt carry it the whole way of course ;) definitely the oil crisis and other things played a major role too.
@@buildthelanes A larger role even. The stop de kindermoord movement is nice and exciting to talk about because it touches the heart, but ultimately it didn't lead to the much needed response as the violence in the streets caused during the anti expansion demonstrations. That's what really got the government to think, because people will put up with a lot of nonsense, but not with losing their homes for the sake of "progress". Especially in dense urban areas.
@@therealdutchidiot It was a good confluence of different things. Wich all on their own probable wouldn't have worked. But the stop the kindermoord action defently primed the larger public to the idea and without it the oil crisses would have probable just an inconvieniance instead of a breakthrough point.
@@arturobianco848 The major contributor was the people literally rioting in the streets against demolition of their homes. Without that, everything would've stayed as it was.
Nothing like a little violence to start a conversation.
Regarding the Hovenring and similar elevated structures: one lesson that I want to yell about at infrastructure engineers whenever I see similar elevated structures for cyclists is that tunnels are AMAZING. You build momentum going down, and you typically use that same momentum while going up while using your higher gears that give you amazing leverage to keep on trucking for little extra effort. It saves so much energy and makes people want to use the infrastructure because it is convenient. Even though electrically assisted bikes are becoming more common, there are still people who don't have them that also have less-than-ideal physical conditions, as well as those with bakfietsen or other awkward loads, so every bit of energy you can save a cyclist from using is very well appreciated during daily life. On top of that, remember that there's always wind or drag to contend with in some shape or form, and those windy conditions actually have a quadratic relationship with the effort it takes to overcome them when you are sitting on wheels. So for gods sake, please leave overpasses as a last resort when dealing with bicycles.
Riding a bicycle or small moped (snorfiets) from one city to another in the Netherlands is an amazingly fun and relaxing experience
This is i think a good way to also reach the more car centric cultures. The first lesson is actually about general road safety and better movements and so improved flow trough (you might emphisave that point more). As for the question about the shops along the roads don't just say we legistalated it. give an example how they use a parellel street to circumvent the problem.
I know its not the ideal solution in my opinion but its a workable quick and dirty one. Don't want to backseat it or critize the lesson it what just 2 points where i had nah that can be better or i wasn't fully happy with your explenation so see it as back hand complement that i could only had 2 points in everything you said that had some room for improvement.
The right picture at 33:08 is the campus road for the tu delft in the middle of delft. I also often cycle around the area of delft, i dont know any express routes, but there are many great cycling paths to Rotterdam and where they aren't every road and highway is accompanied with a cycling path that is "far"(2 to 5m) removed from it without many intersections or other obstructions.
Nice lecture. Thanks for sharing the lecture. It's interesting to have a perspective from different people that moved to the Netherlands and how they see the infrastructure.
The only thing that I don't agree is about cycling deaths in the country. As David Hembrow points out in his latest article, at A View from the Cycle Path - What's gone wrong with road safety in the Netherlands?, most of the increase in cycle deaths has been due to collisions with motor vehicles. While the age group most affected is 75+ years old, the fact is that car ownership, in-car gadgets (touchscreens, etc.) and most importantly car size (with the rise of SUVs) are still increasing to a point they are more dangerous to people walking and cycling.
I'm not expecting the EU to curb down on motor vehicles sizes, but that should be a top priority to reduce the danger they pose to more vulnerable people. It's much more important than victim-blaming and gaslighting people cycling, which seems to be what the media, even in the Netherlands, is doing.
The picture you see in the first 5 seconds of the movie is taken at the "Hovenring", in the city "Eindhoven" at the street "Grasdreef".
I worked for Arcadis for a while, great company!
Another explanation/translation of "autoluw" is that "auto" is, of course, car and "luw" is dutch for "lee". Yes, the "lee" as in "lee side" and "leeward", so "out of the wind/shielded from the wind".
Autoluw is very apt in that it means that an aera is shielded from through-going car traffic.
About the color coding, I personally prefer red because red intuitively signals "dont drive here" where green doesnt signal that. But some areas in NL use blue or green as well.
29:03 we also got the zoning of businesses mixed with housing.... And the business, when built, needs to think about their supply possibilities.
.....So you end up with shops at walking distances. For instance, I have 2 groceries within a 5 minute walk and about 20 shop where you can buy food within 15 minutes walking.
Maximum speed in the Netherlands is: 31 miles/hour on bigger roads within the city and 18 miles/hour on small roads within the housing areas.
Something I've become aware of as I've started cycling around San Francisco is how most of the city effectively has narrow stroads. Everything has been built out to have garage access at the edge of the block, so you can't have a conflict-free road, and there's an inherent squandering of opportunity to make anywhere that's a slow destination, because the cars have to go both in it and through it. Pandemic experimentation with limited-access roads as "Slow Streets" resulted in some successes but also some that prompted aggression from motorists instead since it was a halfway measure that impacted their favorite cut-overs between major corridors, but also didn't inhibit them from playing slalom run with the barriers.
I can definitely see a path towards mass introduction of Dutch ideas by attacking that question of cars being both "in and through" destinations to make more places firmly one or the other. You could slow down four-block groupings in a grid city by turning an intersection into a four-way cul-de-sac, and doing that opens up a massive space for cycling users that can be repeated to build out a larger safe network, yet it doesn't impact parking at all, it might even open up a space or two at the end of the block. I think the bigger issue on a lot of minds here is with making buses faster, though, which is mostly about reallocating existing commitments to give the bus more dedicated lanes. The BRT that's been introduced in the city works very well - it could definitely work on other major roads.
I've been to San Francisco twice and it is as you say indeed. In fact, it's a lot like just a regular grid-based city. What you would usually do I guess is make separated neighborhoods composed of streets and connect those with the roads, like in the example in the video. You could try to do that in a grid-based city, and it might work, but there would need to be a lot of work.
If I had all the say and no opposition, I would do exactly that and pave over the streets with those tiles/klinkers instead of alsphalt. Another thing I'd do is make the street for cars smaller and give it a little less visibility. That sounds unsafe, but it greatly encourages slow driving and thus discourages people from using that as a cut-through route, pushing them onto the roads.
Then, since you slimmed the streets, install bicycle paths and wide pedestrian walkpaths, remove the ridiculous rule that you can't "jaywalk" and you got a proper street. The only reason now people would have to use the car is if their commute is long, which is fine. For every other purpose, you can use the bike now, it's safe and convenient.
@@supernenechi Apparently California has thankfully repealed the jaywalking law already (quite recently!).
Great video. Enjoyed watching it as a Dutch person.
You're example of the 'fietsstraat' is not the greatest: it doesn't show that a 'fietstraat' is mostly actually also accessible for cars, although it gives priority to cyclists. That's what makes it different then a bike path and also how it saves space.
A "fietsstraat" doesn't even have a specific or legal description in the Netherlands. It's just a normal street like any other, sometimes optimized for cyclists. Road users are just made aware that cyclists have as much right using the road as cars.
one note on parales bike paths on road: some roads in the countryside have the parralel bike path a few hundred meters away from the road, for example when there is a dike with a bike path on it, this makes cycling better for your health also because you can cycle through nature without all the car polution.
check out the area around fort 'sint andries' if you want a clear example.
this all just to say, it is not as cut and dry as just adding a bike path directly next to the road
About the train schedule, we are now moving towards what is called a "5 minute train schedule" where there is a train between major cities and transport hubs every 5 minutes. This is done to get people out of cars, reduce delays and transfer time. Many 2 rail train lines are being expanded to 4 rains to accomodate this. Also, regional tram networks (street cars) are being expanded to accomodate more people, and make sure they dont get stuck in traffic in a bus.
Like was said in the video, never stop improving.
@11:40.. this literally 60 meters from my home. This bikepath was created around 2000-2001. In 1-2 years before that a child was killed 40 meter furthers away while biking on this road. One of the reasons to create this bikepath.
just a video idea for when you ever run out of them. maby talk about nature bridges and similar infrastructure that protects wildlife since i haven't seen many of those in other country's either and never seen them really be highlighted in the video's i watched on infrastructure so far.
I like how he asked 'how do you prevent the development of stroads where there are shops on roads so that they turn into a street' and the answer is just 'you ban doing that'
Seems so simple.
Instead of stroads we have industrial Zones that look exactly like the neighbourhood on the picture. Instead of houses there just are industrial businesses.
The same land is used for the same purpose, it is just set up differently that makes it a lot safer for everyone.
Just creating a parallel road on the backside of the businesses and moving the entrance facing that way and closing off the existing entrances would make a big difference. Just connect the parallel street with the road between like every 10 businesses that would get rid of 90% of the conflict points.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716tl;dr frontage roads. Even many towns in the north of Canada use them regardless of how car centric they are. It’s just better design
24:40 Just in case anyone needed a timestamp to the Best example.
an important thing to note is that we in holland often walk on the left side of the road when there is no designated pedestrian path. then you can see the cyclist/cars comming head on (and have the most important eye contact) instead of it comming up unexpectedly from your back.
Remember change from a car culture to what we have now in the Netherlands is because people where fed up with the death of children. They went and demonstrated and enforced change.
As someone from the Netherlands it's beyond be that when death reason #.1 for children in the US is getting killed by a gun and not millions of people demand change. So if that isn't something one even cares for than a healthy, safe transportation infrastructure is far, far away.
True, but we also started in a situation where things were far away. It's worth remembering that it took 50 years to get where we are now. Other countries might get it done a bit faster by stealing some good ideas, but both culture and infrastructure changed simply will take a lot of time.
thing with the netherlands is we have ''recommanded bikes paths'' (square sign : saying fietspad) and ''required bike paths'' (round sign with only a bike in it) both signs are blue.
someone has to show this to all north american planners/road designers
I know that that floating bicycle roundabout. I cross it sometimes. Saves a lot of traffic lights for the cyclists. There are still lights for the cars, but it's pretty doable.
It’s not Just not bikes, many NL based channels and other in Urban design from NL. Walkable & cycling is a big part of that, with out cycling walkable is much harder, and there are many Dutch lectures on this too.
16:50 Part of the question that kind of fell in between answers here is whether pedestrians and cyclists often share or combine on paths. The answer is pretty much never. I know this is not the case in most countries, but cycling on sidewalks is forbidden. Definitely do not do this in the Netherlands or Belgium you will get looks and/or remarks. The same goes for walking on bike lanes. Pavement is often dull gray colour, bike lanes are signaled by red or sometimes other bright colours combined with dotted lines.
On streets without bike lanes, cyclists are expected to ride on the same surface as the cars, not the pedestrians. Speed limits will be low in that case so it's still safe.
Is there a second lecture?
To minimize accidents the Govgernment passed a law whereby the stronger participant in an accident is at automatically at fault when hitting a weaker participant in traffic.
Vans/Cars/Motorcyclyes are stong; Bicycles/pedestrians are weak.
Also almost all Netherlands-born inhabitants learn to cycle from the age of 3/4 years old on small bicycles with support wheels, Most can cycle independant to their neighboorhood school from 6/7 years old, and after Primary School around 11/12 years old are going to schools further away in the cities or to a city from smaller villages on their bike.
In Primary School you will receive traffic education and will do a small exam. From 18 you can go up for you drivers license, so you will have cycled for at least 10 to 12 years and know the hazards.
Almost all cardrivers are used to cyclists because they are or were a cyclist.
The Dutch are not different from other people.
What IS different is our election systems.
I think the result is that politicians are much more aligned with the wishes of voters and less influenced by big donors and industry.
FWIW I understand the concern about pedestrians getting lost and using the bike lane, but in my experience, it's very obvious: any surface paved in asphalt in NL is pretty much guaranteed to be not for pedestrians (sidewalks are always pavers), and since about the mid 90s, everything that's a dedicated bike lane is paved in asphalt because it's more comfortable to bike on. Older fietspaden paved with pavers have mostly been replaced by now. 🤷♀️
Luw is a sailing term. It means void or a lack of wind.
Interesting you should mention Barcelona because I find those super blocks a nightmare as a pedestrian.
Hoofddorp is the main town of the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands. The town was founded in 1853, immediately after the Haarlemmermeer had been drained.
YES only 30 years old.
To be fair that part of the town is.
Typical American question around 15:30: If pedestrians don't know where they are, aren't they getting hit by cyclists? The answer should have been: They have their own space! It's called the pavement. Fun fact: The number one annoyance of Dutch cyclists in Amsterdam is the damn tourists who cannot tell the pedestrian pavement from a bike lane.
What you missed out on, as one of the questions indicated, are US zoning laws. In my humble opinion, if oning laws change infrastructure changes. The short explanation is, if you create more mixed zoning, you need cars a lot less. Because if shops etc can be in the same zone as housing, than you create a walkable distance (or one for a short bike ride). If this bit exists, than people want to walk / ride a bike more. (why use a car if the distance is way less than a mile away.) And if people really want to walk / ride a bike, for the shorter distance than better pavements/sidewalks/bike lanes/paths are created. Same applies if a school is in the neighbourhood where the kids live.
It is easy, to overlook some of the basics. I mean a supermarket, being next to a freeway about 7 or 8 miles from home is not exactly a safe bit of infrastructure for those without a drivers license.
Some time later, I'm wondering, and this is more of a cultural question: what did learning Dutch do for you on the general understanding of the people themselves? In a sense of why the things are the way they are, why people are much more open to change, things like that?
Being Dutch I do wonder about these things.
The reason I ask is because there's a cultural element to to language barrier. In a way, you don't really understand people until you can actually speak their language. Dutch people may be the best non-english English speakers in the world, but they use it in their own way, they don't speak English like the British do, or how Americans speak English.
The fact that the word "learn" and "teach" are the same word in dutch demonstrates a lot why a more senior person is more open to learning something new
Verblijfsfunctie means "staying function", i.e. an area where people live in.
Live, shop, eat, anything but traveling.
Autoluw literally means “car lee”. As in the lee side of a mountain where there is fewer wind.
Rideau did book of early Dutch love of cycling before ww2.
Any cyclist on pedestrian accident will likely not have any deaths or serious injuries. The reason is that cyclist and pedestrians don't move that fast and are not giant metal boxes. Therefore any accident will be minor.
In Canada I would like cycling infrastructure from residential and stores & such.
22:16
He really liked that he put a meme in there, look at that grin xD
Damn right
@@buildthelanes Haha, havent even finished the video :)
Its well made.
I live in Sliedrecht, a village on the river Merwede. If a new district is created in our village, the speed in this district is only 30 km, so it is a lot safer for children to play. sidewalks and bicycle paths are immediately constructed and the thoroughfares are made narrower to reduce speed. and the Netherlands has few or no stop signs, in most places in the Netherlands cyclists have priority over other traffic.
And right-hand traffic has priority unless otherwise indicated
greetings Harry
Hey Harry, welke wijken heb jij het over? Of heb je het over de ideeen voor de nieuwe wijken in Noord?
@@laurensdenbesten5125 Ik heb het over alle nieuwe wijken die in Sliedrecht gemaakt of vernieuwd worden, er worden vele oude wijken opgeknapt en er zullen in de toekomst nog vele oude wijken deels verdwijnen in Sliedrecht, aan de andere kant van de spoorlijn komen ook nog nieuwe wijken, sport velden komen daar ook en waar nu de sportvelden zijn word industrie gebied volgens, de nieuwe plannen van de gemeente Sliedrecht dit heeft in de krant gestaan
Cities allow up to 50kmh with an exception of ringroads having a general max of 70kmh.
I would not brush off the topography with the Netherlands. Don't underestimate that problem. The wind issue is often solved with wind barriers. Often those are just trees. I can tell you from several cycling vacations in France, hills and mountains are a bigger issue than wind. Unless you're cycling directly along the coast or on dykes. Having many urban areas in the Netherlands, you have buildings do that too. The Netherlands is also much more compact. The distances you need to travel to meet even close family on a regular basis were shocking to me. "Only traveling 2 hours" is over half way traveling through the country. And to get anything done in general, something as simple as grocery shopping. Which is another problem you'd have to deal with.
Luckily the places you need to to change the most are cities which are flatter and closer together unless you live in San Francisco or something.
You didn’t mention about the huge influence of the Dutch cycling union played in early days
29:15 As a Dutchman I can assure you that if we have a choice in the matter, we'd rather not fill up along the motorway, because it's much more expensive. If it happens en-route because you forgot to fill up, then yes. It's really practical to be able to pull into a motorway service station and fill up. But if you can plan it even the least bit, it's often very worthwhile to go the 5km off the motorway into a little village or into a city in order to fill up. It might save as much as 25-30ct per litre. So even if your car has a small fuel tank and you're only getting 30 litres of petrol, it is often well worth it, not to go to a station along the motorway.
However, with the exception of grandfathered in petrol stations, it's practically impossible to get permission to build a new one within city limits. Even in my city of over 200k people there are maybe 6 or 8 petrol stations in residential areas, while there's a bunch of them at the outskirts of the city along just about every A and N road that connects to the city.
People usually do this near a destination. As time = money too.
people with tankpas don't care, the company pays their petrol anyway . but yeah, I work in education, I don't have one, the times I tank at a highway station is usually 0 per year (except on summer holidays, but it is rare for me to go by car on holiday) I also have at least 5 gas stations within 2km of my home and I live in the center of a medium sized city (Enschede) i don;t know why we have so many (16) 9 of those you could say are near the center
The sign to the left at 3:41 says "No bullshit, more public transport"
38:00 - I cycle there almost daily!
36:53 Do note the blue sign, saying "fietsstraat, auto te gast" (bike street, car is guest) which again clearly states cars are not prioritized here.
To a Dutch person it doesn't matter if it's 5 or 20 km. If they wish to cycle, they will do so regardless of distance and weather. When I was a teen I was cycling 40 km a day to get to school and back (about 25 miles) This trough hot, cold, rainy or even icy and snow weather types. Kids these days, specially in more rural areas, will do so as it is a good way to get from A to B if they learn from young ages to do this. However the problem in the US isn't the roads, but the people itself. Aggressive in traffic and very agressive over all towards each other. This due to road rage, political views, etc.
Asphalt can have multiple colors aside from the regular black. Red, blue, green, yellow and white (this shows more as if it were gravel). However each in the Netherlands has a different goal in mind.
Red = Bicycle paths
Green and blue = sport fields
Yellow = sidewalks (although very rare to see at this moment)
White = bicycle tunnels as it would make visibility better and lighting, this would increase safety. You however do also see grey concrete color as it's faster and easier to install for this reason.
There are many more color options, however these are not in official usage. You do see at campings mostly also a few different colors to indicate specific things. But this is nothing official and just a thing the owner of the camping decided on.
For the saying that fits the color question: "You can paint a turd gold, but that doesn't change the fact it's a turd".
So yes, you need to actually change the situation before you apply a color to indicate a improved situation as additional measure. Changing a color on it's own doesn't change the fact it's a bad situation causing trouble.
Let me paint a scenario to show what I mean.
I was born in a tiny city that has a large farming population. With this you used to have tractors driving trough the city center with multiple trailers, sometimes even up to 12 of these things filled with grass or hay. As cyclist you would go off the road as these things were speeding on top of that. It means it was extremely dangerous and you really didn't want to get near this situation. So the multiple trailer thing was banned all together and tractors were after that banned from the city center as well. This made it a lot saver to start with. After this the road was made a little less wide (brick road) and optical illusions were added. This in the form of stone benches that faced each other but made it look like the road was more narrow there. In addition the optical illusion of a bump in the road was also added. In reality it was more a tiny bump but in a different color making it much bigger as the illusion part. This made also other traffic slow down a lot making it saver even more. And if that wasn't enough, the linebus was also banned from the city center as these also were causing issues with traffic safety, not a big problem as the population was about 2000 people at that moment. Now also other bus traffic is banned and heavy traffic (trucks for example) is only allowed if their destination is within the city limits. So the city center became so safe that it attracted more and more tourism at the same time. The train station is however 1 km walking from city center which is a problem to some extend, but can perfectly be done as there is a bike lane and pedestrian path going straight to it which includes a tunnel to get there safely.
Dammit, I was doing my internship at Arcadis this winter. Could have talked to you then.
you can talk to me anytime :) connect with me on linkedin
i like how they said if the US has any change of becoming like netherlands with their design and infrastructure but you could say the same thing with germany since germany doesn't have a lot of cycling infrastructure either.
In Germany bike lanes were originally build to get bikes off the roads - so they were common where cycling was common, but the quality was and sometimes still is very questionable. Also this almost by accident led to the same two-level system; with the issue of "through-streets" (build like a street, traffic like a road). When a road is newly build or completely redesigned however (which happens far to rarely), the concepts are very similar to the Dutch.
@@kailahmann1823 i’ve been seeing those dutch alike streets more in germany but they’ve yet to even adopt that pavers are standard which unfortunately isn’t the case but it could all change soon. You never know
@@miles5600 pavement in streets feels like completely random here. What's however added everywhere here are continuous sidewalks and in one case even a full raised intersection.
@@miles5600 Slowly the 'Dutch approach' to traffic is spreading like an inkspot into Germany and Belgium.
Along the border more and more towns and cities see the advantages and copy the designs.
@@dutchman7623 and sometimes the ideas are good enough to go the other way - like the "fietsstraat" originally being a German idea (however we also have more than enough examples for how not to do them… Hello Berlin?).
After rewatching the lecture, I sadly do have to agree with you, and I'll have to put it bluntly is that American traffic engineers seem to be merely cosplaying as traffic engineers. They're civil engineers with a detailed rulebook. In the Netherlands, there are guidelines, but they're just that. General guides. Every single one of them has the subtext "use common sense".
I don't believe American civil engineers with the training they're getting are up to the challenge of designing effective infrastructure, especially considering they're forced to follow the rulebook.
If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I don't believe I am.
I wrote a whole article on exactly that topic ;)
nextcity.org/urbanist-news/america-has-no-transportation-engineers
@@buildthelanes Great article that mirrors what I've seen, and it certainly explains a lot.
The older people also have electric support on their bicycles. These new electric bikes are an issue in general, because people don't realize how fast they are going relative to their effort. Scooters you don't underestimate and often need to be on the road, unless designated otherwise. And require a helmet by law.
The personal feeling I have on top of this is that people have become more reckless and rushed as time goes on, but I'm much less sure of that. That could just be me.
Make cycle paths mandated. We mandate sidewalks regardless if some walks there
Strip malls ? There were laws in NL about big box stores.
bedankt voor het leren can onze taal (thank you for learning 9our language)
for those who are qurious afvalwaterzuiveringsinstallatie litteraly translates to garbage water filtering instilation. think about drains and water filtering facilities
Maybe I am not the first to mention it but the max speed inside cities in the Netherlands is 50 km/hr.
you are not ;) my mistake
4:58: see that dip in traffic deaths around 1973? Oil crisis. Which proves that cars were actually a major cause
20:47 Actually the situation has a bike path at the right (for cyclists moving away from the point ov view) cars, buses and also cyclists would be moving towards the point of view on the left side.
wrt question at 14:00 - one of the big things is to change the culture. Cyclists need to be seen as people that choose to use a bicycle for transport, rather than people that can't afford a car. That then makes everybody equally relevant in transport - bicycles, motor cycles, mopeds, pedestrians, cars and buses - so roads are obviously designed for all of them.
The trash can at 23:00 is hilariously out of reach. It's an underground unit, where only the top bit is supposed to be visible, but it looks like this one was not installed underground... and just kinda parked there.
34:06 that's actually car infrastructure.
Look how huge the intersection is, SO many lanes! And the cyclists have to go up a ramp.
This is of course correct. However you need some highways, and you need to cross them somewhere somehow. While most of this crossing is fulfilling the function of the highway, the grade of these ramps ARE bike infrastructure in themselves (there are manuals full of permissible grades and lanewidths for these types of ramps and corners).
This video starting at 1:09:00 talks about it and is a good introduction to the how and why of this thing. czcams.com/video/Kpo0paCa5g8/video.html
The point is that for crossing a highway it's much better to use a tunnel instead of anoverpass or bridge. A tunnel can be about 3 meter below the surface, but a bridge has to be at least 5 or 6 meters above the surface. So a tunnel is much more comfortable for bicyclist and pedestrians to use.
@@ce17ec perhaps, not saying this was the best choice, but definitely a choice. But a tunnel (which is car infra as well btw), in an area like this, at night, would also be intimidating and possibly unsafe. There is a short tunnel under a highway in my Dutch city (to connect a similar suburb) and it’s a recurring location of harassment, intimidation and robberies. Bike tunnels need very specific conditions and counter measures to avoid such problems.
Which s exactly why it flopped. It's not usable. There's too much wind up there and it's unstable at times.
Eindhoven was advised against going with this design, but they wanted their prestige project. 4 tunnels would've been cheaper and more effective. Install some lights and Bob's your uncle.
The funny thing is how the Hovenring is often used in presentations, but not in the way it's supposed to be used: to show people what NOT to do.
Verblijfsfunctie: "Van een verblijfsfunctie is volgens de Belastingdienst sprake als het gaat om energie voor een pand waarin mensen kunnen verblijven. Denk daarbij aan een woning of een bedrijf, zoals een fabriek of restaurant. Een toiletgebouw, parkeergarage, volkstuin of aanlegsteiger hebben geen verblijfsfunctie."
Translation: "According to the Tax and Customs Administration, there is a residential function when it comes to energy for a building in which people can stay. Think of a home or a company, such as a factory or restaurant. A toilet block, parking garage, allotment garden or jetty have no residential function."
In short: No this doesn't mean "access functions"
i littarly live there its in Eindhoven
You are wrong about 60km/h max speed in cities. On the main roads in cities, it's usually 50. If you go into living areas, it's 30 or 15. Amsterdam is 30km/h only.