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Comment by Mattasher | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how common this type of intersection is. I live and bike daily in Amsterdam and it took me about a minute to fully understand what's going on here. The picture seems to show a special case where the intersecting road is bike only, and instead of the normal painted arrows that show where bikes should queue up when making a left, there's an open area off to the left where one would wait behind the "shark teeth".

FYI if you are ever biking here in NL, the thing to remember is that if the "haaientanden" point at you, watch out!, as that means you do not have the right of way.

Edit: The side roads are for cars as well, which means you have a strange turning lane in the middle of the intersection where traffic might back up. A simple roundabout seems like a much better solution here unless the goal is to keep cars moving quickly and the turn lane is rarely used.

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I never understood why people have a tough time understanding the lovely shark teeth signs.

It's literally a painted give way sign.

Fellow Amsterdam resident here, this kind of layout is very common all over the city (I live in the south of the city but I have seen these all over).

Can someone explain this, the italicized part below, in more detail?

>> When you approach from the side street, as a driver, the order of dealing with other traffic is different, but the priority is similar. First you will notice a speed bump. The complete intersection is on a raised table. Pedestrians would not have priority if the street was level, but now that it isn’t the “exit construction” rule could apply and in that case a crossing pedestrian would have priority. But for that rule to apply the footway should be continuous, and that is not the case here.

That's some word salad but let me make things clear,

All intersections have signs indicating priority.

All intersections have road markings indicating right of way.

All intersections have a level change indicating priority. Either you bump up to pedestrians, which also reduces your speed. Or pedestrians step down to asphalt.

All intersections have/dont have color change to indicate right of way.

All intersections have/dont have pavement type indicating right of way (usually bricks for street or pedestrians, black asphalt for roads, red asphalt for cyclists.)

Although you could probaly find some rulebreakers in there, its universally accepted as such.

https://www.theorieexamen.nl/theory-exam/what-is-a-entrance-...

An entrance or exit construction is a place on a road where you aren't just turning onto the road but exiting the road entirely. The most common example from any country would be a private driveway. Pedestrians, cyclists and cars going along the sidewalk, bike path or road have priority against anyone turning into the driveway or turning onto the road from the driveway.

The Netherlands generalizes this concept to some low-priority side streets. If there is a continuous sidewalk (i.e., the cars go up a bump to the level of the sidewalk as opposed to the pedestrians stepping down from the sidewalk to the level of the street). This is not the case in this specific intersection.

And yet the photo in the article shows piano teeth markings before the shark teeth, which indicates a level change for the car. In that case I would assume that cars are required to yield to pedestrians crossing the side street even though the sidewalk surface is not continuous.

This is a part of the national design language of the roads in The Netherlands.

Almost universally the following two rules hold: pedestrians walk on a raised pavement next to the road, and through roads have priority.

To compliment those existing rules, exits from side streets where pedestrians on the through road have priority include a raised hump that brings motorists up to pavement level. That emphasizes that it is the motorist who is crossing into a pedestrian area, where pedestrians have priority. The pedestrian footpath is continuous, while the car road is interrupted.

Here's a typical example of the "exit construction" with continuous footway: https://rijbewijshulp.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Uitrit-7...

And an obvious added benefit is that motorists will slow down for the speed bump.

The author phrases this a bit awkwardly without really making a point. But what I think they are saying is that because the footpath isn't continuous despite the raised bump this is not a typical exit construction, and pedestrians on the through road don't have priority. Even though most motorists would yield to them anyway because of the shark's teeth on the cycle path.

I think it's debatable if the pavement is continuous or not, I would say "kinda". But either way the intersection in the article is not a "typical" example of the exit construction.

The linked photo actually shows a really bad example. For the 'exit construction' to be valid, the footway must continue uninterrupted with the same surface. In this example, different pavers where used, making the situation ambiguous.

See the pictures in this article:

https://www.anwb.nl/juridisch-advies/in-het-verkeer/verkeers...

The first two examples are how it should be done. The third is similar to your link, and is ambiguous.

I've had a cyclist curse me to hell and back for taking priority on one of those raised tables as a pedestrian because the paving didn't match the sidewalk. :)

Is there priority for the pedestrian if they are already crossing the side street when a car driving down the side street approaches the intersection, or can the pedestrian be run over by the car without consequence to the driver?

I haven't read the entire article, but this is a very common situation: main road with two cycle paths crosses a minor road (or has two side roads at the same place). All roads are also for cars. I'm not sure why the article makes such a difference between the two side roads: they seem quite similar apart from the one-car waiting space before the cycle path.

These types of interactions are pretty much everywhere outside of historical city centers and the like where you don't have space for it. You might not find them in the old town of Ams, but as soon as you head out a bit, you see them everywhere. Same in Delft and pretty much anywhere else with historic architecture.

Yeah there is not really space for these eleborate intersections in central Amsterdam. Most are signal controlled or pure spaghetti with trams coming from four directions with almost absolute priority, like this one https://www.google.com/maps/place/52%C2%B021'49.1%22N+4%C2%B...

In general, separate bike lines are nothing special in the Netherlands, even in Amsterdam. However, it's an old, compact city with narrow streets, so you're unlikely to see these types of intersections in those streets. Same is true for other old city centers with compact layouts.

You're more likely to see this if you go to places with more space, such as suburbs built in the last century (which basically means going to another town or city that Amsterdam grew into, because in the Netherlands city distribution is also compact). As you can see from the picture this street is in such a neighborhood.

Also, the general concept of having a distance of one car between crossing and bike lane is universal whenever there is space. I can give you a personal anecdote (at the cost of doxxing myself). I grew up in Oldeberkoop, a tiny village with around 1500 people in it that somehow has its own wikipedia page[0].

Just outside of the village is a crossing with an N-road, which is Dutch for "provincial national road but not quite highway". In the early nineties it was still a simple crossing, no separate bike lanes, and I recall traffic accidents happening once or twice every year. For context, nowadays the speed limit on provincial roads is 100 km/h[2], although in the early nineties it was still 80 km/h. That didn't matter though: everyone was speeding as if they were on a highway and going 120 to 140 km/h.

In mid nineties the crossing was changed to a roundabout, solving the speeding problem, and separate bike lanes were added (this also reduced traffic noise a lot). In the early 2000s the roundabout was changed to the safer design described in the article: more space between corner and bike lane, and a bigger island in the middle of the road for pedestrians[3]. I haven't heard of any incidents in the years since.

Recall: this is a village of 1500 people. When the article says:

> I would like to emphasise that this intersection is not special in any way. You can find many similar examples all over the country. That is because the design features stem from the design manuals which are used throughout the country.

... it is not exaggerating. This is the norm with any new intersection that is being built, or any existing one that is due for its two-decade maintenance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldeberkoop

[1] https://www.wegenwiki.nl/Provinciale_weg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_Netherland...

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9331081,6.1326563,3a,75y,49....

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