What can Seattle learn from Dutch street design?
youtube.com
youtube.com
I started biking to school at age 6. No helmet, no parent accompanying. So did all my friends.
Later, I had shitty jobs in far flung industrial areas. All had proper bike lanes.
The list goes on. Remember though, as the video mentions somewhere, this is the result of hardcore decision making since the 60ties. Not an overnight succes.
It is unusual globally for six year olds to cycle to school?
Only when children reach about 11 would it be normal to allow them to travel unaccompanied.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k
It's fairly normal in Japan to let five year olds travel alone by train, apparently.
I have to say I noticed before that the Anglo-Saxon often considers the minor to be seemingly mentally deficient and incapable of making the most basic choices and having the most basic responsibilities.
It's too much of a culture of “Children are incapable; adults always know better, and must make every decision for them.”.
I was very much warned by my parent not to go with strangers in a manner I later realized was completely counter effective as it implied that there was an easy way to tell which strangers were dangerous and which weren't.
I since learned that my parent would be wiser to warn me for relatives and teachers and strangers, if he were truly so concerned for my safety rather than assuaging his moral panics.
It is still however nonsensical and the chance of ill happening is considerably smaller than letting a relative babysit me.
In fact, one could argue that children are safer when they be left alone, than when they be properly babysat, because the babysitter is one of the ones who would be most likely to hurt them.
How do they attend school? they are driven to it?
I said this in another comment, but I find Anglo-Saxon culture to unduly assume that children are completely incompetent.
https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/21/living/mom-arrested-left-...
At least there is a debate here. I was left alone to play unsupervised at ages around four or five to no ill effect.
What exactly do they believe could happen? Assume I somehow be hurt: I would cry; bystanders would be drawn near over the noise; they would ask me what was wrong; and I would receive medical attention if need be, and even if I would be driven to a hospital, I would easily be able to tell them my name and address and thus my parent would easily be contacted as to what had transpired — this all in the most unlikely event that I would hurt myself from playing on a playground designed for children.
Yes. An extreme example: https://mobile.twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/12757189152...
When my parents caught me cycling home unattended during the longer school lunch breaks, and I confessed I've been doing that for most of the school year, they were like: "oh. Guess you know how to do that safely then. Carry on." I think I was 9 at that point. (It was a very safe route, which is common for Dutch home-primary school situations.)
I was one of those 1980s kids; the bicycle sheds contained several hundred bikes, all year round. I never heard of any kid being killed on a bike, out of 1,200 students over six years.
For example, the city I live in has really doubled down on the bicycle (and walking) being the primary method of transportation. So not only are all road maintenance jobs required to comply with updated requirements, but roads are being actively transformed to make them more bicycle-friendly as part of a multi-year infrastructure plan.
Which just goes to show: you can make great strides by improving the situation iteratively.
In the Netherlands everybody is a biker at least some of the time and a driver at other times. A hostile attitude towards a biker is just simply very weird to see and read about. It's like people being hostile to someone for breathing your air or something.
Edit: I looked into it a bit more, apparently videos of our prime-minster on his bike went viral! [0], how funny for such a normal thing. The dutch comments are pretty telling indeed:
- "Up next: Karel (56) bumped his toe"
- "Wow, he's almost like a real human, right?"
This is a very intentional and knowing part of Mark Rutte's brand. You often see him being filmed jumping on his bicycle - I mean, here, in the Dutch news. He is doing that deliberately to invoke national pride.
Compare image searches: "Mark Rutte fiets" (the prime-minister, apparently thousands of results), "Hugo de Jonge fiets" (the most media-friendly deputy prime-minister, no relevant results)
Also, there are frequent news stories within the Netherlands that are just "look, the Royal Family cycles".
It's something the Dutch are very proud of. Strange to claim otherwise.
I can only speak for the UK, people certainly see you (on a bike) as something that is impeding their journey, rather than a fellow human getting to work/out to enjoy the location.
I've been told so many times that I don't pay for the roads (I do) and that I'm slowing them down - in London while you might overtake a cyclist they will certainly catch you up at the next light.
Cyclists are always seen as a nuisance, since they block the road for the "real" traffic. Cycling lanes are also somewhat rare outside the Netherlands and Denmark, so bikes and cars almost always share the road.
I have a particular pet peeve, which is the term "cycling city". I see it everywhere because it is sexy to proclaim that bikes are on your priority list as mayor/government. As an example, in Manchester (UK) the mayor has proclaimed that Manchester will be a cycling city, yet bike lanes are rarely included in new projects. There was a redevelopment for one of the larger streets in Manchester, obviously without _any_ consideration for bikes.
If you want cycling cities, there are a few scattered around Europe, but nothing compared to the Netherlands and Denmark. The rest is just bs.
The urban planning in this town has been the product of decades of bike and pedestrian friendly planning. Making the city really nice to live in.
It probably takes decades to convert a car centric city like Seattle into something like Groningen. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't strive for it. It makes a city much more friendly to live in, makes the population healthier and is more sustainable on the environment.
Which basically boils down to that any non motorized traffic participant will get benefit of the doubt when determining blame in collisions or other traffic accidents over a motorized participant.
Due to this, right of way laws work for cyclist/pedestrians, instead of them just being coerced by cars into giving up their right of way or place on the road.
[0] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artikel_185_Wegenverkeerswet
Here is a recent blog post about a street redesign on a busy road in Seattle that was very successful in preventing accidents.
https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2020/09/17/report-ne-65th-st...
Driving on this road before the redesign was very strange -- it was essentially two-lane but without stripes and no explicit bike lane. Since the redesign, the turn lanes, bus stops, and bike lanes are clearly marked and it has lead to a significant decrease in accidents.
What other means of transportation would one use for short distances where a bike is simply faster than a car due to ease of parking?
Personally, however, I use a skateboard fitted with 100 mm all terrain wheels for even greater ease of parking.
Sadly in many other places cycling only really works for confident riders. Lots of drivers are either unaware of cyclists or downright aggressive. I would have near misses on a weekly basis. Things are getting better but very slowly.
There are car parks literally 200m from the centre of Birmingham where you can park all day for less than 10 pounds, and cheaper still nearby.
Things are starting to change (oddly during COVID) by addition of bus gates, but they're making very slow progress. We've already delayed and diluted our congestion charge multiple times.
However if you get a mountain bike and stick to the dirt roads along the rivers and hills, it is a great place to enjoy cycling through the countryside. One of the best bike trips I've done is cycling for 30 miles along the Thames river.
So the UK is great for scenic cycling, terrible for a cycling commute. And yes, any Dutch expat you meet is silently judging your country on the safety of its cycling infrastructure.
And so you should. The UK's cycling infrastructure is embarrassingly bad.
An example. Local to me, recently, the government spent over £100m on a new road junction, to replace an old one. One of the main reasons that they had to build a new junction was that they claimed they could not remove traffic lights from the roundabout to improve traffic because pedestrians and cyclists both crossed the junction at 'street level'. A local cycle organization submitted a proposal with modelling (I can't find the link atm.), that showed that the desired increase in capacity could be achieved by adding bridges for pedestrians and cyclists, removing traffic lights, and altering the road layout.
And save about £90m.
Needlessly to say, the junction was built. I have no idea whether their proposal was considered, or not, unless I submit a freedom of information request to the UK government.
Regardless, the bridges should have been built anyway, because the junction is between two suburbs.
The new junction did get a new cyclist/pedestrian bridge to replace the old one. Except it's about 1km further away from the suburbs that the previous junction, so adding 2km to bike journeys.
So roads are as narrow as possible and congested, which in itself is not great for bikes but also makes bike lanes near impossible. And when a bike lane is built (i.e. painted on the road or pavement) it is usually also very narrow and interferes with traffic.
Obviously this is difficult to change for existing roads, but we could at least make sure that new roads are wide enough, but this is not the case.
I'm not talking about very central roads that can be mostly restricted to pedestrians, or city areas with narrow streets but also little to no traffic. I'm talking about roads in general. Amsterdam has many roads that look hugely wide for British standards.
Example: hhttps://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7524584,-1.2749531,3a,75y,...
This is one of the main roads into Oxford. Note the "cycle lane"... Still, that road is not too bad because it has an exceptionally wide pavement on one side.
It's usually more like this: (Henley on Thames, where Boris Johnson used to be MP, again one of the main accesses to the town) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5375008,-0.8998416,3a,75y,...
2. Henley Bridge - Overall, Henley could be ideal for cycling around. OK, one of the main routes into the town crosses a river. Yet, if this was in the Netherlands, they would simply have built a parallel cycle bridge at some point in the last 20 years. Or, if there still wasn't one, they'd build one now.
Here you go, Rijswijk swingbrug, opened 2014 (watch the video for relevant commentary): https://www.oozo.nl/video/rijswijk/84608/rijswijk-cycle-brid...
Or Delft's Gelatinebrug, scheduled to open in 2023: https://www.delft.nl/wonen/bouwen/bouwprojecten-de-stad/schi...
There are plenty of other examples.
Amsterdam's narrow roads have little to no traffic only because of political decisions that cars are not the only form of transport that need to be considered. You can see in archive footage that this wasn't always the case.
I'm stating facts here: UK roads tend to be very narrow to the point that it is difficult/impossible to just add cycle lanes, and even new roads or development do not include space for cycle lanes (when they should).
You show me examples in the Netherlands where they have built or are building new infrastructures where cycle lanes are accounted for. Well, yes exactly what I'm saying is not the case in the UK and often it is not even doable (it's not only a matter of building a new bridge if the access roads don't have the space, either...)
No, I'm showing you extremely old infrastructure (Delft: founded 1246, Rijswijk: pre-historic) that have invested in modern solutions for cycling.
The towns I have picked that are almost exact equivalents for Henley here, except that Henley has not bothered.
[For what it's worth, I agree there is no point in starting out by constructing a cycle lane from the middle of nowhere into a town with no cycle provision - but the UK is 5 decades behind in this aspect, and continuing to fall further behind]
> I picked towns that are almost exact equivalents for Henley, except that Henley has not bothered.
Well, that's my point, isn't it? Glad we agree... The thing is that it is difficult to resolve when that has been the case for decades, if not centuries because it's like that everywhere and you cannot decide to re-do half the country's road network and to raze everything that's in the way, especially in the UK.
19th century Paris: They did raze a large part of the city to make way for new avenues. 17th century London: After the Great Fire they rebuilt following exactly the previous narrow roads because no-one wanted to lose an inch or pay for an inch, and it's still the way any new projects are welcomed...
My point is only that this is exactly what the Netherlands has already done, which shows that it is perfectly possible to resolve (and, in general, without any razing - the Dutch are at least as proud of their history as the British)
The fact that the Netherlands looks good now is because these exact same problems have been solved over time. The UK could even benefit from an easier time, since it gets to just copy the best-working solutions.
19th century London: they razed whole neighbourhoods to construct the Underground.
21st century London: they propose to raze the St Pancras estate (with compulsory purchase orders) to build the HS2 railway.
But cycling doesn't require razing: the solutions I have given to your suggested problems don't raze a single thing.
> So roads are as narrow as possible and congested, which in itself is not great for bikes but also makes bike lanes near impossible.
They replied:
> Do you think the centre of Amsterdam has wide roads? It does not.
That is the relationship with your comment. The centre of Amsterdam does not tend to have wide roads (with a handful of exceptions) and yet has bikes. Indeed, it is possible to drive down most of those roads, however the city has put a lot of effort into discouraging it which reduces the congestion and makes biking nicer.
Now, newly built areas tend to have wider streets, but there are plenty of old city centres in the Netherlands that are bike friendly, despite their being as narrow as possible. Congestion can be dealt with much more easily.
Stay away from the cities, and it's generally safer, but at the same time you'll find cars doing 60 mph on single carriageway roads (the national speed limit), which can also be marked as a national cycle route. If you cycle somewhere where cars don't normally encounter cyclists, it can be "fun" as the motorists don't know how to behave.
The trouble with the UK is that even so-called cycle paths are shared with footpaths, so pedestrians are all over the place, and cycle paths that are getting built as 'joint' footpaths, mean as a cyclist you also stop at every road junction. Compare that to Europe, where the cycle path is an additional lane next to the road/main carriageway and is usually physically separated in some way for safety. In the UK this has the unfortunate effect of making a large percentage of cyclist just us the road (which they are legally entitled to do), because the cycle path next to the road "stops" every 100 yards because there's a road joining the main carriageway that you have to cross.
Town planners/local planning departments are under so much pressure that they literally just end up ticking boxes, and rarely push back on house builders to change their site plans. The 'desire path' is a straight line, for both pedestrians and cyclists, yet new housing estates are allowed to put in bendy cyclepath/footpaths next to otherwise straight roads. It is ridiculous.
Anything 'new' to car drivers in the UK is a problem. We definitely should try and change UK roads to be more bike friendly, but that's the reality. The new bike roundabout in Cambridge, unique in the UK, but common in Europe, and.... accidents: https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambrid...
With respect to roundabouts, I'm not sure there is a way to do it right.
For me, the form factor of a battery powered lazy person's vehicle is not yet perfected, and they should be more akin to a sit-down vespa scooter than the current scooters.
The centre of mass is just too high, the wheels too small.
They should also be restricted to roads - as a cyclist I've never seen one ridden safely in a bike path, and I don't think standing allows for quick enough braking for the average user.
Not to mention that in my country, outside of a few city specific rental deals, all scooters are illegal for use in public - so literally everyone on one is a dangerous criminal.
In those situations taking the car for short distances becomes the convenient, fast and safe thing to do.
P.S. from your name I suspect you're Dutch. In that case you don't even have to go far to find that sort of situation. I live in Belgium, which is generally considered to be a rather bike friendly country. I beg to differ. Everything I describe above applies, at least in a region of a few kilometers around my house. I can only assume it also applies elsewhere in Belgium.
I've only seen the new 'megafietsenstalling' at Den Haag Centraal train station complained about because 8000 bike parking spaces was not ambitious enough and is not expected to be enough space. And yet, it's the second largest in the world after Utrecht (also in the Netherlands).
At a comparable train station in London, you would be lucky to find 10 bike parking spaces.
Yet you will find many Dutchmen in this thread, including the comment you're replying to, that express that this is the first time in their lives they've given it thought.
> I've only seen the new 'megafietsenstalling' at Den Haag Centraal train station complained about because 8000 bike parking spaces was not ambitious enough and is not expected to be enough space. And yet, it's the second largest in the world after Utrecht (also in the Netherlands).
One of the many reasons I favor the skateboard over the bicycle — it joins me in the train.
> At a comparable train station in London, you would be lucky to find 10 bike parking spaces.
Well I have never been at a London train station. I've been at Belgian, German, and French ones, and I did not notice any particular difference that stood out.
Car as driver: 4854
Car as passenger: 2127
Train: 350
Bus/tram/metro: 407
Scooter: 163
Bike: 4041
Walk: 2702
Other: 242
Source: https://www.ad.nl/ad-werkt/auto-populairste-vervoermiddel-na...
Uber (half-joking)
In large parts of the USA, cities are cut into small parts by wide 50-mile per hour streets, it’s illegal (and dangerous to try, if not made impossible by barriers in the middle of the street) to cross streets between road crossings, road crossings are a quarter of a mile or so apart, and there aren’t any cycling facilities. Those wide roads often don’t have sidewalks.
Also, as to ease of parking: the USA loves parking space, for cars (https://www.mba.org/documents/18806_research_riha_parking_re...) That makes cities larger, further discouraging cycling and walking.