[HN Gopher] A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
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A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
Author : itronitron
Score : 332 points
Date : 2024-11-21 08:59 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bicycledutch.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bicycledutch.wordpress.com)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I wish more urban areas were as good as The Netherlands. Where I
| live, there are occasionally some footpaths on the sides of the
| roads that are half a cycle lane. People constantly walk in the
| cycle lanes and cycle on the footpaths. Other than that, its just
| normal urban roads
| mikrl wrote:
| As a semi regular tourist to the Netherlands from North America
| it took a bit to adjust to all the modes of traffic at once but
| now I can easily navigate and stay safe around bikes, mopeds,
| trams, skinny cars etc. But I'm also a seasoned traveller in
| the region.
|
| So, there would be an adjustment period for the population of
| your country, and it might take a while, and depending on
| culture might not be easy.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I live in England, so there are already bike lanes and such,
| they're just not as widespread as I wish they were and its
| almost always part of a car lane or a pedestrian lane
| Woeps wrote:
| My mother cycled from NL -> -> BE -> FR -> UK Stone henge
| and back again. Never again she said. It's a lovely country
| but the cycling infrastructure was ... questionable to say
| the least (according to her).
|
| Which I found surprising, as their hiking trails are
| awesome and very well kept! For example I loved hiking on
| the Jurasic Coast and Cornwall. (Even signed up a for a
| National Trust memberships)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Can confirm, I've done quite a lot of walking and
| properly marked trails are generally very well kept. I've
| walked quite a lot of the Cornwall coastline and there
| are active efforts to improve the walkability in certain
| areas in response to storms and such like. But yeah,
| you're very unlikely to find any kind of cycling
| infrastructure outside of cities, and even then its not
| amazing
| ben_w wrote:
| Surprising, sure.
|
| My memories of living in the UK is that there's a weird
| disconnect where "everyone walks" so walkers are treated
| as in-group and supported in their hobbies of walking,
| while "only lycra-clad fitness freaks cycle" so they're
| an out-group and demonised. This also extends to "how
| dare cyclists not need to pay road tax" when pedestrians
| also don't and also have essentially the same
| requirements for road surface quality, and lead to the
| same resurfacing requirements, as a bike.
|
| Also, the UK romanticises the countryside -- not just
| because it has some nice bits, but as part of its own
| national identity -- and the imagined ideal when I was a
| kid was some old guy with a flat cap and a walking stick
| wearing tweed as they walk through it, not a cyclist.
|
| Basically the imagery of 1974 J. R. R. Tolkien
| Calendar[0] (how did _that_ ever happen?) crossed with
| Last of the Summer Wine[1].
|
| [0] https://www.abebooks.com/book-
| search/title/1974-calendar/aut...
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-65715855
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Accurate.
|
| This romanticist nonsense also means that adequately lit
| and drained paths - for walking, cycling and wheeling at
| all hours - inevitably attract rural NIMBY ire.
|
| "Preserve the character of our rural village with its
| 5000 SUVs and its manor house built by plantation
| owners".
|
| Presumably someone's done a Tolkien fanfic where it turns
| out the hobbits have a bunch of plantations in Numenor or
| somewhere populated by enslaved Uruks, and the twee-ness
| is a front for general assholeness and moral hypocrisy?
| arethuza wrote:
| I did always wonder about the general standard of living
| in the Shire - always seemed suspiciously high to me.
| partdavid wrote:
| Because it's attempting mythisimilitude, not
| verisimilitude.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Decent amount of manufactured goods, always enough food,
| no sign of a serf labouring class or any manufacturing to
| speak of.
|
| It's 18th(ish) century rural England, without all the
| stuff that made 18th century rural England a relatively
| comfortable place, which is to say colonies, the slave
| trade, the early industrial revolution and so on.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's amusing. Not anywhere near the same but _The Last
| Ringbearer_ has Mordor as an industrializing society
| unfairly maligned.
| scotty79 wrote:
| The first day in Netherlands I learned that when surface
| under my feet changes, when I'm crossing the line between two
| surfaces I need to look back over my shoulder because there
| might be someone coming in fast. I apply this rule since I
| learned it in every country I live and it works great.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I wish everyone who was born here also stuck to this rule.
| em500 wrote:
| Probably any change in country takes some time to adjust to
| traffic. Coming from the Netherlands, I got quite confused
| when driving in San Francisco, by many wide roads without any
| clear road markings. Which parts are meant for overtaking,
| pre-sorting for turns, parking on the side of the road or
| just parallel driving lanes? On several roads that could fit
| 3-6 cars I couldn't tell the direction of traffic on the
| middle lane(s) or the lane separations.
| danans wrote:
| > Probably any change in country takes some time to adjust
| to traffic. Coming from the Netherlands, I got quite
| confused when driving in San Francisco,
|
| To be fair, driving in SF is a challenge even for many
| people coming from other parts of _California_ , due to the
| high density plus the steep and narrow topography of the
| city. Whereas someone coming from Pittsburgh might not find
| it strange due to the similar topography.
|
| Until regenerative braking came around with hybrid and
| electric cars, SF cars needed very frequent brake pad
| changes.
| hansc wrote:
| I live in The Netherlands (actually in the same city as the
| photo's were taken): There is a very large difference in
| traffic density and complexity between the larger cities such
| as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and the rest of
| the country (including middle sized cities).
|
| When I visit one of those larger cities, I am also constantly
| looking for bikes everywhere not to be crashing into me.
| gorbypark wrote:
| My city (Valencia, Spain) generally has good biking
| infrastructure but recently they redid an intersection and
| came up with this monstrosity. Even for locals it's confusing
| / dangerous.
|
| In the direction I travel frequently, I have to stop in the
| middle of the bike lane which is sandwiched between two
| pedestrian crossing to wait for a light. Once the light turns
| I cross over three lanes of vehicle traffic and immediately
| am thrown into a bike lane crossing my path. The cars here
| give you no leeway so if you are slightly late in crossing
| (and there's only about 3 seconds between the "hurry up the
| lights gonna change soon" flashing light to the cars getting
| a green light) then you have no place to stop / slow and look
| if there's any bikes coming.
|
| After that you are directly in a pedestrian crossing zebra
| zone in the island, which then throws you into anther bike
| crossing, another pedestrian zone and then finally crossing
| the other three lanes of traffic. Of course on the other side
| you t-bone directly into another bike lane, and then the lane
| I'm on turns into a "mixed use" lane (just paint on the
| sidewalk).
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4670503,-0.3900646,95m/data=.
| ..
| never_inline wrote:
| Where I live there will be pedestrians on left side of asphalt
| roads and street food stalls on footpaths if the footpaths
| exist at all.
| sandeep1998 wrote:
| India?
| never_inline wrote:
| yep easy to guess
| 0xbs0d wrote:
| It's not that much different from Copenhagen where I live. Bike
| lanes are everywhere.
| maelito wrote:
| Bike lanes are everywhere in most big cities in France too...
| But they're bad, very bad.
|
| We desperately need this principle of elevated bike lanes that
| cars should be worried to cross.
|
| I have code an open-source framework to assess the cyclability
| of territories : https://villes.plus
|
| It only takes into account quality bike lanes, based on OSM
| data, run every trimestre.
|
| For instance, painted bike lanes or shared bus lanes are
| excluded.
|
| Amsterdam's score is around 90 %.
|
| The best French city, Strasbourg, has around 45 %. There is
| some inherent variability as each run takes random points among
| a data set to build the segments to be tested.
| lqet wrote:
| > Bike lanes are everywhere in most big cities in France
| too... But they're bad, very bad.
|
| We once cycled from Germany to Colmar in France. Cycling
| through Colmar is indeed a scary experience, especially if
| you have a trailer with a small child in it:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/wJU4GLWrmqF9EDes8
|
| Of course it isn't much better in Germany.
| maelito wrote:
| Remember that the east of France is considered the top
| place to cycle... Well except Paris and its recent
| revolution.
| lqet wrote:
| I agree, the bike infrastructure in Paris is now quite
| good. If only cyclists in Paris would start to stop at
| red lights, especially at pedestrian crossings (this is a
| problem everywhere, of course, but in Paris it seems to
| be particularly bad).
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> Cycling through Colmar is indeed a scary experience,
| especially if you have a trailer with a small child in it_
|
| I don't mean to detract anything about what you just said.
|
| At the same time, my first thought when I clicked on the
| link was something like: _" Woah, that is pretty nice; a
| painted bike lane and a single narrow main lane each way so
| cars can't go very fast_".
|
| We have a long way to go for most of North America to
| become friendly to cyclists.
| lqet wrote:
| > We have a long way to go for most of North America to
| become friendly to cyclists.
|
| Also for pedestrians, in my experience. When I first
| visited the US 10 years ago, I wanted to leave the hotel
| to get to a nearby public transit stop to go into town.
| On the map, it was a distance of around 500m from hotel
| to transit stop (Market Center in Dallas). But getting
| there was quite an ordeal. This was the pedestrian
| walkway: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gvduBGYMQfxSVxcFA, it
| ended in a dirt path by the side of the road after a few
| meters. There was a better walkway on the other side of
| the road, but it was impossible to safely cross it
| without _walking for nearly 700 meters_ into the other
| direction.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _and a single narrow main lane each way so cars can 't
| go very fast_
|
| You're underestimating French drivers here ;) . Also on
| that picture the main lane is not considered narrow at
| all in France/Europe, it's quite comfortable to speed.
|
| The only way to limit speed is speed cameras and speed
| bumps (both are also becoming ubiquitous in the UK).
|
| China is what I imagine the US with bike lanes would look
| like.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| The way this looks it could be more dangerous than having
| no bike lane at all. Drivers will see this as a sign that
| the big lane belongs to them. Bike riders must expect
| someone in the parked car to unexpectedly open the door
| at any time and hit them. There have been many deadly
| accidents where bike riders got "doored" just like that.
| Also imagine you have two trucks crossing paths and bikes
| on the side. Or a trailer with a child like the user
| said.
|
| That bike lane is a nightmare.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I agree with most of what you've said, and yet as a
| utility cyclist I can tell you that this is nicer than
| many of the streets I need to ride when I leave my home.
|
| Let me reiterate that I don't say this to dismiss the
| importance of improving that street. On the contrary, I
| am simply lamenting how bad things are here [0].
|
| [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/nurAWCzcBW98TxFm8?g_st=ac
| simgt wrote:
| I'm still failing to understand why the urbanism departments
| are so bad in councils of even our big metropolitan areas. We
| could just contract with corps like Copenhaguenize to get to
| the state of the art right away when rebuilding roads, but
| "on a des idees" so why not improvise? Or it's just
| corruption and favoritism...
|
| Nice project though, might ping you for something related :)
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> run every trimestre_
|
| From another non-native speaker, the term you are looking for
| is _" quarter_". As in: a quarter of a year, as 12/4=3
| months.
| maelito wrote:
| Thanks ! I wonder though if native english speakers
| understand it instantly, or no.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Of course they do, unless they've been skipping their
| biology classes. Trimester is a common word for the three
| month periods of a pregnancy:
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trimester
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Is this intentional bait for the somewhat notorious _"
| Copenhagen is Great ... but it's not Amsterdam"_ video by the
| Not Just Bikes channel? ;)
|
| (as a Dutchie living in Malmo: I love Copenhagen, and I'm
| already happy that it's a million times better than 99% of the
| rest of the world. Still, it's also true that the Netherlands
| has a head-start of a few decades on everyone else and that it
| does show if you look closely)
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjzzV2Akyds
| 0xbs0d wrote:
| Hahah, I would never! :D It definitely shows that the
| Netherlands had an early start and still an advantage. Kudos
| on that!
| vanderZwan wrote:
| You have the advantage of being able to learn from the
| mistakes we made along the way and skipping those, so
| should be able to catch up quickly!
| leokennis wrote:
| In general I try to avoid nationalism - a lot of what one
| perceives as "my country ABC is the best at XYZ!" is just "I
| was born in ABC so I am used to XYZ!".
|
| But...for the small niche of cycling infrastructure, the top
| 10 list is The Netherlands in places 1 to 10, then no country
| in places 11 to 50, and then Denmark in place 51.
|
| What is important to consider is that cycling infrastructure
| is all around great in The Netherlands _everywhere_. Not just
| in the center of Amsterdam. Industrial estates, villages in
| the middle of nowhere, roads through forests, popular
| attractions or theme parks, islands: everything is reachable
| by bike, usually with bike lanes that are well maintained and
| physically separated from the main road, and often with
| bicycles having right of way on roundabouts etc.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Haha, same! I think the most nationalistic thing I ever did
| was when I went on a "field trip" to Copenhagen with the
| classmates of my international master studies, and
| constantly complain that the bike infrastructure was so
| disappointing. I have to admit Copenhagen hasn't been
| sitting still and improved in the last decade though!
|
| I try to frame it more like a friendly rivalry with Denmark
| (or more accurately, Copenhagen), since nobody else even
| _tried_ to rival us until very recently. Looking forward to
| everyone else catching up though!
|
| (also, I live in Sweden, making fun of the Danes is a legal
| requirement to be considered integrated into local society)
| fifilura wrote:
| Although, in Sweden i am pretty sure the crossing from
| the example it would have had a pedestrian/cycling tunnel
| beneath it.
|
| Look around, they are everywhere.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/BxEh3gBhooeH9Pfe7?g_st=ac
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| > What is important to consider is that cycling
| infrastructure is all around great in The Netherlands
| everywhere.
|
| Case in point, I've literally cycled across the country
| diagonally basically using the Fietsersbond (national
| cycling association that advocates for this cycling infra)
| route planner and on mostly dedicated cycling paths.
| attendant3446 wrote:
| Berlin is full of bike lanes, but they're built ass-backwards
| and inconvenient for everyone - motorists, pedestrians and
| cyclists alike.
| LeonidasXIV wrote:
| Bike lanes yes. But where are all the safety features you can
| see here? Bike lanes are often separated, but not always. On
| many streets they are just painted on. They are rarely color
| marked, which is fine when you know where the bike lane but in
| new places you sometimes miss that there is a bike lane because
| it is not obvious at the crossing.
|
| Even proper, separated bike lanes often terminate in right turn
| lanes for cars (even in places where there is a lot of bikes
| and in places where there would be a lot of space), leading to
| weird situations where a car is trapped in a wall of cyclists
| from every side.
|
| In practice it mostly works but I'm not surprised car ownership
| in the city is on the rise, because the city still prioritizes
| cars way too much. Copenhagen is mostly a regular city with
| consistent bike lanes.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Isn't it funny how part of the solution is a bit like introducing
| a one-car buffer into the queue, reducing back pressure? Makes me
| wonder how much traffic planning and distributed systems could
| learn from each other (or perhaps already have, I'm not an expert
| in either).
| dmurray wrote:
| The article doesn't deal with what happens when the queue gets
| bigger than one. It looks like a second car would queue on the
| main road, blocking traffic.
|
| To eliminate this you could turn the buffer into a whole extra
| lane with room for say 5 cars to queue, but this would
| compromise on the nice feature where the partially turned car
| gets to completely turn and have great vision of the cycle
| lanes in both directions.
|
| It's an interesting article, but from a systems design
| perspective I'd be much more interested in how they handle a
| change in requirements like "there are now five times more cars
| turning left here than the intersection was designed for".
| lqet wrote:
| At least where I live, such a type of intersection is used
| when a residential street branches off a large main road. You
| do not have a high volume of traffic going into this
| residential street, and "waiting for a crossing cyclist" does
| only take 1-2 seconds. So a buffer size of 1 is usually
| enough.
| desas wrote:
| Build more bike lanes.
|
| To an extent, it's a self-solving problem. If you have great
| non-car transport options and an increase in traffic makes
| car driving less appealing, then more people will use those
| non-car transport options rather than joining the queue.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| And an often forgotten point: this benefits people who
| _have_ to drive cars too, since there are less cars on the
| car road!
| hehehheh wrote:
| ebikes mean you dont need to be that fit (or sweat) either.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Build more bike lanes.
|
| The problem is that you may not have the room for it. The
| US might often have more room to retro-fit bike lanes, due
| to their roads be generally pretty wide. European cities,
| like Copenhagen have a massive issue as more and more
| people get things like cargo bikes and electric bikes. The
| bike lanes needs to be expanded to accommodate them, but
| there's no room. You'd have to remove cars from large parts
| of the city, which sounds great, except you do need to have
| the option to drive, either due to distances, public
| transport or deliveries. You can't do parking and have
| people walk, because there's also no room for parking.
|
| For some cities I also don't see bike lanes as solving to
| much. Some cities, again often in the US have a huge area
| and millions of people. Distances in cities like Houston,
| New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta are just insane, taking up
| enough space to cover half of a small European nation.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The backpressure is a feature and ensures people like me take
| a bike and train to work instead of driving
| Scarblac wrote:
| If that happens rarely, then the cars just have to queue for
| a few seconds, no big deal.
|
| If it becomes structural, say the neighbourhood becomes
| larger and substantially more cars will go there now, then
| the intersection will be redesigned. Money isn't infinite of
| course, but this sort of thing is a big part of planning new
| development.
| hehehheh wrote:
| Ideally more density leads to more public transport.
| Scarblac wrote:
| It leads to more traffic of all types, I guess.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> when the queue gets bigger than one. It looks like a
| second car would queue on the main road, blocking traffic._
|
| Without the buffer, a single car wanting to turn that way
| when there is a cycle in the lane would block traffic, unless
| of course the car takes priority and just expects the cyclist
| to deal with them cutting in front (which is my experience
| too often at junctions with or without cycle lanes...). In
| either case, with or without this design, the car slowing
| down to turn is going to create some back pressure if the
| road is busy, there is no avoiding that and this design might
| even actually slightly reduce that issue.
|
| Looking at the picture I assume that most vehicles are going
| to be going straight on, and when someone is turning the only
| extra delay is when their need to turn coincides with there
| being cyclists or pedestrians in range of crossing, so it is
| likely that none of this back pressure is a problem the vast
| majority of the time.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I agree. The photo description for "Here you can see that a
| car drivers waiting for people cycling are never in the way
| of other people in cars" would not hold true in my area of a
| US. There would quickly be at least two additional cars
| waiting in the main lane.
| hencq wrote:
| Yeah, it's important to note that this design is
| specifically for local side streets that are only expected
| to get destination traffic. If it's a busier street, there
| would typically be a separate turning lane, i.e. a bigger
| buffer.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| As someone living in the netherlands, primary use is for
| decoupling risk. Look at the pedestrian side, they only cross a
| single lane where they have to look in a single direction. This
| makes pedestrian behaviour so obvious that its hard to miss
| someone looking straight at you while you're crossing. Same
| with car behaviour, no matter where the car is, the nose is
| pointing straight at you before crossing the conflict zone. The
| line of communication you have before a potential accident is
| insanely useful. It does not matter wether a stop sign or right
| of way was there if you're dead.
|
| The "buffer" reduces decision complexity even more because
| people treat them like train blocks. The only annoyance I have
| is when people actually break-and-check at these points even
| though its better to roll the car slowly trough to save the
| people right behind from brake checking entire queues.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > Makes me wonder how much traffic planning and distributed
| systems could learn from each other
|
| I don't know any concrete example, but since road engineers
| have been using queueing theory, originally invented for
| telecommunication networks, for more than 70 years, I would be
| surprised if models and tools designed for one use case had not
| been reused for the other.
| jalk wrote:
| Think it was the Tannebaum Networking book which has a
| chapter on queuing theory. Couple of lectures on that, only
| to find the chapter was concluded with something like:
| "Empirical evidence has shown that network traffic doesn't
| follow a possion distribution", so was left with a feeling
| that the chapter was only relevant for exams.
| tralarpa wrote:
| Models based on Poisson distributions are the simplest type
| of queue from a mathematical point of view. Introductory
| courses rarely go beyond that.
| louwrentius wrote:
| Although this was in the '80s I remember that I (Dutch) walked to
| school at the age of 5, in a town (technically a city
| (Enkhuizen)), mostly through a pedestrian area but I had to cross
| one busy street.
|
| My parents told me later that they secretly followed me the first
| few times (I never noticed).
|
| Just try to image that you live in a country that is so safe you
| can let small kids walk to school. Try to imagine what a society
| could look like if it's designed for people first, not traffic.
| lqet wrote:
| > My parents told me later that they secretly followed me the
| first few times (I never noticed).
|
| Ha, not in the Netherlands, but we started doing exactly the
| same with our 5-year old recently. She wanted to walk to a
| friend's house alone a few weeks ago and my wife followed her
| in spy-like fashion to make sure she arrived safely. We also
| started dropping her off a few blocks before kindergarten so
| that she can walk the remaining distance "alone" (again
| secretly followed).
| david-gpu wrote:
| That is how it worked when I was a kid on the 80s in Spain. I
| took the bus to school alone as an 8yo -- and I was
| considered a wimpy kid; my sister walked to school alone at
| 6.
|
| Meanwhile here in Canada they attach colored ribbons on their
| backpacks so they won't be allowed off the bus unless an
| adult is there to escort them home. Watching a 10yo being
| escorted back and forth to the bus stop is so sad.
|
| Personally, I blame the speed and amount of car traffic in
| our streets. Drivers routinely break the speed limits and
| oftentimes by the time they come to a stop they are already
| blocking the crosswalk.
| alkonaut wrote:
| My kids walked to school from about age 7 or so. Same as when I
| was young. When I do drop them off (because we are late or
| there is a blizzard or whatever) I'm a bit ashamed and hope no
| one sees me driving. Now we have 2 pedestrian crossings on the
| way to school. one really busy, but luckily it has lights. The
| one without lights is designed so the road shrinks to single
| file so cars can't meet at the crossing, but have to take turns
| passing.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| it was the 80s, I used to walk to school at 6, passing through
| an hospital, in a town, quite a big one, named Rome.
|
| It's just that parents nowadays forgot that kids are
| functioning humans, can learn stuff and can do stuff on their
| own.
|
| edit: for the downvoters, look at what Japan does or how women
| in Denmark do with their kids, instead of thinking _" this man
| must be crazy, how in the hell I can leave my kids alone in
| this world full of dangers, they will surely die"_ and react
| like i tried to kidnap your kids to boil them and then eat
| them.
| CalRobert wrote:
| You won't kidnap them, you'll drive over them and then blame
| the kid for being in your way
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I usually walk my friend, but nice try to shove your
| American way on me
|
| There's a say in my country "chi male pensa male agisce"
| which roughly translates to "those who think badly act
| badly"
| CalRobert wrote:
| I will say that my daughters are five and seven and I don't let
| them bike or walk to school alone here in Hilversum, which is
| choking on SUV's.
|
| My daughter's commute
| https://youtu.be/UWp7YiM3rzM?si=QoF4BgLEbnltcyg6
| louwrentius wrote:
| Dat is waanzinnig stom, en is zou willen dat er een Europees
| verbod zou komen op SUVs
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Just try to imag[in]e that you live in a country that is so
| safe you can let small kids walk to school.
|
| The USA is already that safe.
|
| > Try to imagine what a society could look like if it's
| designed for people first, not traffic.
|
| The normal approach is to build overpasses or underpasses so
| that pedestrians have no need to go into the road.
|
| https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-of-the-bloomfield-bridge
| DonHopkins wrote:
| If your kids happen to survive walking to school in the US,
| then they get shot instead, thanks to the NRA and the
| Republican party.
| louwrentius wrote:
| The reality is that due to zoning laws children have to
| travel by car or bus, which is inherently less safe. Zoning
| laws have made USA into a terrible environment for everyone.
| People don't even know what it's like to run errands and just
| walk or bike.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There are no zoning laws separating residential areas from
| schools. The civil rights laws are what caused American
| children to need to be driven to school.
| Mattasher wrote:
| 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.
| coolgoose wrote:
| I never understood why people have a tough time understanding
| the lovely shark teeth signs.
|
| It's literally a painted give way sign.
| gpvos wrote:
| 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.
| alexanderchr wrote:
| 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...
| hellweaver666 wrote:
| 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).
| vanderZwan wrote:
| 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....
| itronitron wrote:
| 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._
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| 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.
| palotasb wrote:
| 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.
| itronitron wrote:
| 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.
| miggol wrote:
| 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.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| 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. :)
| itronitron wrote:
| 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?
| Etheryte wrote:
| 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.
| openrisk wrote:
| The article points out very nicely that it is _expensive_ (in
| space terms) to have cars integrate safely with the pedestrian
| and bicycle traffic of dense urban areas. The mismatch in size
| and speed requires buffer zones that must be dedicated to this
| function only.
| vasco wrote:
| Roughly the same size as if the street had 2 car lanes on each
| side. In fact this is what I've seen living here in Amsterdam
| for a few years, every once in a while they remove a lane or
| two from some street and beef up these security features as
| well as add more pedestrian space.
|
| It's cheaper to maintain extra fat sidewalks and stuff than 2
| more lanes of asfalct also.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| Even better, the gemeente is actively converting streets into
| fietsstraat. It is amazing and I love it. It makes my commute
| through the city so much faster and less stressful. When they
| did the knip experiment on that big through-road near
| Waterlooplein and there was no car traffic, it was also
| fantastic. At that time, I was commuting that direction and
| it was wild how quiet that part of the city became. Cars
| really are a terrible nuisance and do not belong in the city.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Also, very often it doesn't reduce flow even for cars. There
| are tons of times when you remove lanes and it improves are
| keeps flow constant.
|
| 4 lane roads are the worst, you can get the same effect with
| a 2 lane with a turn.
|
| It really depends on how many intersection you have, having a
| single lane that only branches to 2 in front of an
| intersection can be more efficient, then constantly 2 lanes.
|
| The US style of many lanes, many intersections, is horrible
| from safety and a flow perspective.
| eterps wrote:
| As a Dutch citizen, I love the expanse in terms of space.
| Lately, they have been allocating a lot more green areas as
| well, making the whole experience very enjoyable.
|
| Example: https://zuidas.nl/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/groenstrook-bee...
| crote wrote:
| On the other hand, the reduction in cars due to people
| switching to cycling makes the infrastructure incredibly
| _cheap_.
|
| Look at the video in [0]: how much space would you need if
| every single cyclist was driving a large SUV? Look how smooth
| the traffic flows through the intersection, how many flyovers
| would you need to achieve this with cars?
|
| Yes, cycle infrastructure does indeed take up a nonzero amount
| of space. But it easily pays for itself by reducing the need
| for far more space-consuming car infrastructure.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQrKP9a0XE
| beastman82 wrote:
| > the reduction in cars due to people switching to cycling
| makes the infrastructure incredibly cheap
|
| This is a logical leap of enormous magnitude.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| A bidirectional bike lane takes about as much space as one lane
| of on-street car parking, which american cities have plenty of.
| Swap half the parking to bike lanes and that gets you most of
| the way there.
| adrianh wrote:
| I moved from the U.S. to the Netherlands nine years ago, and I
| can attest that the bike infrastructure is amazing and has an
| outsized impact on your quality of life and general happiness.
|
| Being able to bike everywhere -- safely, quickly, without any
| cultural baggage of "being one of those bicycle people" -- is a
| total game-changer.
|
| It's one of those things that sounds kooky to people who haven't
| actually experienced it. When American friends and family ask me
| what I love most about living here and I say "the bike
| infrastructure," reactions range from a polite smile to eye-
| rolling.
|
| On paper it doesn't sound particularly sexy, but in reality the
| impact on your day-to-day life is immense. Your health, your
| connection to the immediate environment, your cost savings, your
| time/stress savings, your sense of freedom of movement.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The underground (plus partly underwater) bicycle parking garage
| at Amsterdam Centraal is also pretty amazing to experience. So
| much nicer than the old outdoor one.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 1000% agree. We moved 7 years ago and now have 4 kids. It is so
| valuable that my preteens can bike to tennis, friends, etc
| safely, even at night. Or that you can pop a toddler to
| childcare without a car seat and parking. Last year we finally
| got a car. I hardly ever use it.
|
| And remember, the bike infrastructure was only built in the
| past 30-40 years. Before that, the Netherlands had a super car-
| focused infrastructure. It was only after the "stop murdering
| our children" political campaigns that the car focus shifted.
| https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/02/20/the-origins-of-hollan...
| enaaem wrote:
| I live in Amsterdam. The freedom to do all your errants and
| entertainment by bike or walking is amazing. I can literally
| walk to the zoo, walk to the market, and walk to endless bars
| and restaurant.
|
| The things is this is not some liberal, 15 min city conspiracy.
| This is how life has always been...
| panick21_ wrote:
| If find it hilarious that 'conservatives' made up this '15min
| city conspiracy' when traditional actual conservative cities,
| before the 60s were exactly those kind of 15min cities.
|
| But somehow the bullshit built in the 60s is 'the true
| national expression' or whatever.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _without any cultural baggage of "being one of those bicycle
| people"_
|
| Arguably you technically _do_ have that cultural baggage, it 's
| just that it's a core part of the Dutch national identity so it
| doesn't stand out ;)
| Vinnl wrote:
| I have some American "bicycle people" as colleagues, and most
| Dutch people certainly aren't "bicycle people" like they are,
| even if they cycle every day, just like how people just
| driving a car aren't necessarily "car people".
| jmmcd wrote:
| > "being one of those bicycle people"
|
| What really amazes me is motorists' dislike of cyclists (common
| here in Ireland, also). If that cyclist you see wasn't cycling,
| they'd be in a car in front of you, and your traffic queue
| would be worse. Every cyclist is doing every motorist a favour.
| blueflow wrote:
| Here in town, there is a place where cyclists cross the
| oncoming lane to enter a bike pathway. The cyclists go
| downhill and thus have quite some speed. For the cyclists,
| they are catching a gap between cars. No big deal. From the
| perspective of a car driver, you have oncoming traffic in the
| same lane. Bonus point if the cyclist didn't signal their
| left-turn. I'm sure this location alone is producing a dozen
| of cyclist haters every day. I think the cyclists lack
| awareness that cars are bulky and heavy and thus require some
| free area ahead of them for breaking.
| hylaride wrote:
| > When American friends and family ask me what I love most
| about living here and I say "the bike infrastructure,"
| reactions range from a polite smile to eye-rolling.
|
| I get the same eye rolling when people ask me what I like most
| living in the centre of a major urban metropolis (Toronto) and
| I respond with "not having to own a car". Having everything
| (work, my daughter's school, groceries, cultural amenities,
| etc) within a 15 minute walk is fantastic and there's ample
| car-sharing for occasions where a car is required. People think
| I'm this eccentric hippie or something when I just don't want
| to spend time in a car on a daily basis.
| benterix wrote:
| > Here you can see that a car drivers waiting for people cycling
| are never in the way of other people in cars.
|
| Am I blind or does it only work for just one or maybe two cars?
| gpvos wrote:
| Correct. That is enough 95% of the time. (I made that number
| up, but it's not far from the truth.)
| lenlorijn wrote:
| Bikes are small and fast, and only a small fraction of cars
| will need to turn here as this is a street going in to a
| neighborhood. The chances of multiple cars wanting to take this
| turn and there being a long stream of bikes that holds them up
| is small. So 'never' is not the right word here, but the times
| this happens is negligible.
| palotasb wrote:
| Correct, only one.
|
| This specific turn is onto a street that the article describes
| as "traffic volume here is low, since only residents will use
| this street." They probably expect the 1-car buffer to be
| enough for this intersection. You can see in the video that the
| 1-car buffer is empty most of the time.
|
| For intersections where they expect more turning traffic (where
| the one car buffer wouldn't be enough), they add turning lanes
| that can accomodate more than one car. You can see an example
| of this a few hundred meters northeast when Graafseweg
| intersects the Van Grobbendocklaan:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZmURqawr3oeBX5Sq9
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| you need space to do that, not many cities in Europe have the
| luxury of being built from scratch and having so much space to
| dedicate to a single intersection.
|
| Where i live (in Rome) the streets are like this
|
| https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/04/93/42/24/1000_F_493422444_Hw...
|
| edit: anyway the simplest solution is to turn every intersection
| into a roundabout, no traffic lights needed, clear right of way,
| cars can't go fast and in the end it also makes it easier for
| pedestrians to cross the street.
| leokennis wrote:
| I know few cities beat Rome when it comes to their age, but Den
| Bosch has had city right since 1185 AD...so it is not exactly
| "built from scratch".
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I'm not saying that Amsterdam was built from scratch, nor
| that Rome is somewhat so special that you can't apply
| solutions used elsewhere, but that urban space is an hard
| requirement and the more dedicated infrastructures you build,
| the more the value of the area goes up and so we end up with
| those beautiful walkable, green, neighborhoods in Milan where
| the "Vertical Forest" is that only the very rich can afford.
|
| And in those parts of the city where space is basically free,
| people live too far from where they need to go by bike
| anyway.
|
| It's a cat and mouse game, you need very dense, very small,
| almost flat cities, to get to the point where Amsterdam is,
| which is not that typical especially in Europe.
| xiaq wrote:
| Such old urban places would just be car-free in the Netherlands
| (sometimes with limited access for delivery and emergency
| vehicles), a trend fortunately becoming popular in other
| European cities now.
|
| The "urban" in the title is a bit misleading, this intersection
| is definitely more suburban, or on the boundary of an urban
| center. (Or rather, the author has a different definition of
| urban - in my definition cities like den Bosch are really just
| a small medieval urban core surrounded by continuous medium-
| density suburban neighborhoods.)
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Such old urban places would just be car-free in the
| Netherlands
|
| that's the hardest part that everyone always ignores.
|
| first you have to remove cars from the streets, than it's
| becomes easier to implement biking infrastructures.
|
| I've been a long time petitioner to completely ban car
| traffic from the neighborhood where I live, but it's been a
| lost battle in the past 20 years.
|
| Changing human habits it's harder than it looks.
| schrijver wrote:
| In my experience, cars are discouraged from city centres, but
| not banned. You can drive your car all around Amsterdam,
| although you'll have many one way streets and parking is
| going to very expensive for non-residents... and it's hard
| (but not impossible) to find street level parking. Amsterdam
| has a number of car parks in the outskirts that are cheap if
| you can show that you used public transport afterwards.
|
| The result is that people use their car (if they have one,
| still quite common esp. for families) to get out of the city,
| or big errands, but use bike or public transport for day to
| day trips.
|
| Actual car free zones exist in cities across Europe but tend
| to be pretty small and constrained to the hyper centre, like
| the church square and the major shopping streets. Not that
| I'm opposed to them being bigger but that seems rare at this
| point.
| decide1000 wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands also in small streets and areas bike
| lanes are common. They are literally drawn on the street and a
| car is basically not allowed to ride on them when a bike is
| passing.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| cars are not allowed to hit pedestrian or bikes on any
| street, but they do all the time.
|
| disallowing something doesn't make it non existent.
|
| In the neighborhood where that picture was taken live
| approximately 15 thousand people and many more come every
| night to hang out.
|
| I know it's bad, I do not approve people going everywhere
| with their cars even when it's obviously wrong, but it is
| what it is, and it doesn't make the problem go away.
|
| Street space is premium space in cities.
|
| I wish we could simply stop this car madness by wishful
| thinking, but we can't.
| Macha wrote:
| A street like your picture would make it incredibly difficult
| for a car to obtain a dangerous speed, so would by itself
| largely eliminate the need for dedicated cycling space.
| jwr wrote:
| I wish urban designers in Poland learned from this. Our bike
| lanes are terribly designed, cars turn right into them with very
| poor visibility. The "solution" is that lawmakers introduce
| additional restrictions for bikers, which are unclear to
| everyone, so right now nobody really knows if bikes have priority
| on bike lane crossings or not.
| Jaxan wrote:
| It's good to realise the Dutch cycling infrastructure did not
| came out of nowhere. There were huge protests in the 70's about
| traffic safety. At that time cars ruled the roads and there a
| lot of accidents, also involving children. From those protests
| an culture shift started, towards better cycling
| infrastructure.
| Tade0 wrote:
| There are many reasons why this is unlikely to happen in
| Poland, but from the top of my head:
|
| -Traffic fatalities have been falling for years now anyway -
| the 2022 figure per capita is around 20% higher than in the
| Netherlands, but used to be much, much worse.
|
| -Polish cities are sparsely populated due to adminstrative
| changes and little of the old architecture surviving the war.
| Official numbers say that Warsaw has a density of 3.6k/km2,
| while the runner up is much smaller Bialystok with ~2.9k/km2.
| Most hover in the region of 2.0-2.5k/km2. Real numbers might
| be different, but it's sparse compared with say Amsterdam's
| ~5k/km2.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There are plenty of places in the Netherlands with much
| lower density. They have great cycling and urban design
| even in tiny towns.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Those are just two out of many points. I stand corrected
| on the second, but the first holds - road safety has been
| improving for 20 years now, why bother?
| Vinnl wrote:
| I do imagine those places benefited from the cultural
| mindshift originating in dense areas. Just a guess, of
| course.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| There's an excellent documentary about "Stop De Kindermoord"
| (Stop Killing Our Children)
|
| https://vimeo.com/361286029
| CrispyKerosene wrote:
| In defense of urban planners, we get good design and want to
| see more of it, but are usually beholden to the elected
| officials in the municipality who we require to vote in and
| ratify new design standards, or funding for projects.
| timonoko wrote:
| This is 1950's Swedish solution, imho. Modern fad is that there
| shall be no separate bicycle crossings in intersection areas.
| Bicycles are equal to other vehicles so it makes sense to
| concentrate the intersecting traffic to one flow, so it is easier
| to observe.
| stringsandchars wrote:
| > Bicycles are equal to other vehicles so it makes sense to
| concentrate the intersecting traffic to one flow, so it is
| easier to observe
|
| Swedish bike lanes are the absolute worst I've cycled on - and
| I've cycled in England, Denmark, Spain and (briefly) the
| Netherlands.
|
| Disregarding the pitiful maintenance of a lot of the bike lanes
| in Stockholm (which is another discussion), the current model
| where a bike-lane has been carved from the pedestrian pavement,
| but which then throws the cyclist out to the road immediately
| before a junction is a deadly design which I've found to be
| nerve-wracking both when I'm cycling or driving. The cyclist is
| hidden behind parked cars, and is in the blindspot of turning
| trucks, until the very last seconds before suddenly emerging
| into the flow of traffic when crossing the side-street. I see
| near-misses almost every day.
|
| It amazes me that anyone ever thought this was a good idea -
| but even more egregious to me is that Swedes seem to think
| their own invention is somehow so good they want to export it.
| eru wrote:
| I love the Netherlands, and not just for their livable street
| design, I just wish they food weren't so bland. They make even
| German cuisine look adventurous in comparison.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I had some decent ramen in Utrecht recently!
| telesilla wrote:
| Surinamese is what you are looking for.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| As a Dutch person... this is sadly not just 100% accurate, it's
| almost part of our culture by now, hahaha. For example, in
| Gerard Reve's "De Avonden" ("The Evenings", a literary classic
| in the Netherlands from 1947) the daily bland dinners are
| described like a recurring cynical joke.
|
| Apparently World War 2 is to blame for the shift in food
| culture. Somehow we never recovered from that.
|
| I think we just internalized that Dutch cuisine sucks and focus
| on getting good food from other cultures (don't complain about
| our pannenkoeken or stroopwafels though, unless you're looking
| for a fight).
| fernandotakai wrote:
| when i moved here, people told me the greatest issue with the
| country was not the weather, it was the food. and i remember
| saying "there's no way it's that bad".
|
| after being here for 2y, holy shit it's true. one dutch
| coworker said "we just eat for fuel, not for taste".
|
| thankfully it's quite easy to buy amazing ingredients and
| just do really tasty home meals.
|
| > (don't complain about our pannenkoeken or stroopwafels
| though, unless you're looking for a fight).
|
| i would also say dutch bar/finger food is delicious. it's
| impossible not to have bitterballen while having a beer.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Right, I guess the distinction is between "Dutch cooking"
| and "Dutch snacks". We're not too terrible in the latter
| department.
|
| (although technically bitterballen and kroketten are local
| variations of the croquette, which originated from
| France[0], so even there we can't quite claim originality,
| haha)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquette
| amsterdorn wrote:
| Their savory dishes aren't great (looking at you stamppot) but
| they do sweets well! Poffertjes, oliebollen, stroopwafels, etc.
| misja111 wrote:
| This is true. I can recommend the Indonesian and Surinam
| restaurants, both are former colonies so many people from there
| moved to NL. Their food is much better, the Dutch like it so
| much that you could almost call them part of Dutch culture.
| switch007 wrote:
| I admire it to an extent in that it is a part of their healthy
| culture. I think they take it a bit far though
|
| But being more like the Italians or French in terms of food
| would mean being more like the Italians or French...
| yread wrote:
| They should also improve the landscape. It's too flat. What
| happened to the proposal to build a mountain in the North Sea?
| osener wrote:
| I really wish this tired cliche would disappear, and I say this
| as someone who has emigrated from a country renowned for its
| cuisine.
|
| Dutch supermarkets offer an impressive variety of products, and
| there's no shortage of specialty or "ethnic" shops where you
| can find virtually any ingredient for any type of cooking.
| Major cities are brimming with restaurants serving world
| cuisines, and people with diverse dietary restrictions are well
| catered to, with a plethora of options available. Plus,
| Indonesian and Surinamese food can be considered "local" by
| this point (if you ignore the historical complexity of the
| topic) and are simply delicious.
|
| While it's true that the availability of cheap street food
| might not be as prominent, to say the food here is "bland"
| couldn't be further from the truth.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Food in general in the Netherlands is fine. If we're talking
| about _Dutch_ cuisine, even us Dutch people complain about
| how terrible it is.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| you are talking about two different things here: availability
| vs cuisine.
|
| it's super easy to go to albert heijn and get really tasty
| ingredients and cook amazing food. it's also super easy to
| find great restaurants that are not dutch, and get incredible
| food (shout out to tacolindo, in amsterdam west).
|
| but dutch food is incredibly bland, focuses way too much in
| things like mashed vegetables with sausage. you can only eat
| so many stamppot until you are done with it.
|
| even dutch people say that while yes, you can cook literally
| anything you want (my wife and i cook brazilian food
| literally every day), natives in general do not do that.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| This design highlights a major failing with UK cycle
| "infrastructure". Here, we often have shared use pavements with
| sometimes a bit of white paint to designate the pedestrian and
| cycle lanes, but they cede priority at every single side road.
| The problem is that it makes cycling using them really awkward as
| it takes significant energy for cyclists to slow down and then
| speed up multiple times. The irony is that if you just use the
| main road instead, then you have priority over all the side
| roads, so the bike "lane" is pretty much useless.
|
| Of course, we also suffer from just having fragments of cycle
| infrastructure that don't join up and most of the time, the
| infrastructure consists of "magic" paint that is somehow going to
| prevent motorists from parking and blocking the lane (it doesn't
| and they do).
|
| Edit: Thought I'd share the sheer incompetence that we're faced
| with. Here's a "cycle lane" in the centre of Bristol that doesn't
| even use a different colour, so pedestrians aren't particularly
| aware of it which just leads to unnecessary confrontation - peds
| and cyclists fighting over the scraps left over from designing
| for motorists.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/JjfG1YJBwaqyov5H8
| zelos wrote:
| It's even worse in my UK village. they don't even paint white
| lines, just the white outline of a bike every few hundred
| meters on the road.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Here's a premium shared use pavement in Bristol (allegedly a
| "cycling city") that shows what you're missing
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/Gw3SBWT9WdYLDTN3A
| reddalo wrote:
| lol are you serious? A "bike path" with f*cking trees and
| lightposts right in the middle? It looks like one of those
| EU-funding scams.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That path has been there a long time and is actually
| quite popular with cyclists as it goes alongside a very
| busy road that has an almost permanent queue on one side
| and lots of big lorries/coaches coming along the other
| side, so it's quite challenging to filter past the
| stationery vehicles without getting in the way of
| oncoming traffic.
|
| For some more giggles, here's one of my favourite bits of
| "infrastructure" that's further along that same road
| (Coronation Rd, A370) on the other side. 5m of faded
| paint.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/znjzJ7bphdqhH5Sk7
| reddalo wrote:
| lol that's a place where a modal filter would be perfect;
| they could make a "hole" in the curb to only let bikes go
| straight through. Instead, they decided to put 5 metres
| of white paint in a random way. Great!
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I'm picturing a wrecked bike and a broken body every few
| hundred meters, painted in reflective white paint
| rsynnott wrote:
| In Ireland, Dublin City Council has mostly gone with lanes
| which are either on the side of the road (with or without
| bollards), or entirely separate, whereas South Dublin County
| Council prefers shared use pavements. The two local authorities
| are contiguous, so it's all a bit jarring when you go between
| them.
|
| Separately, a national project, Busconnects, is putting in its
| own bike lanes. Some of these are... interesting:
| https://irishcycle.com/2023/03/23/busconnects-approach-to-cy...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It's astounding that we can't seem to just copy successful
| ideas from other countries and then ensure that all the
| councils etc. adhere to the standards.
|
| Of course, it doesn't help that the UK seems to keep
| producing highly aggressive drivers that want to punish
| cyclists that dare to use the public roads.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| ideas are only one part of a successfully functioning
| sociotechnical system. The bike intersections won't work if
| users behave differently (just like how automobile traffic
| is terrible if you get different driving styles mixing).
| emn13 wrote:
| You might interpret that clearly true statement in two
| different ways:
|
| - That it's not feasible to incorporate this style of
| traffic design elsewhere since cultures differ
|
| - That we need to consider how traffic engineering
| (eventually) shapes user behavior.
|
| I'm convinced the second one is the one that quite
| quickly is much more predictive of outcomes. These Dutch-
| style intersections make the safe behavior natural and
| intuitive, and habits will adapt quickly where they're
| used _consistently._
|
| To be explicit: the whole point of road design like this
| is that it does _not_ rely a lot on training users on
| details of the rules of the road. In fact, precisely
| those remaining quirks (e.g. scenarios when traffic
| approaching on-road white yield triangles nevertheless
| has the right of way in the Netherlands) are the
| exceptional vestigial weakness that proves just how
| obvious the rest is.
|
| Of course, if every town picks it's own patterns to
| follow, that's going to be less predictable for road
| users, and thus frustrating and ultimately dangerous.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| One of my favorite moves is when the Dutch simply don't
| provide any guidance whatsoever in certain intersections.
| No signs. Brick or stone paving.
|
| It really works! "When you don't exactly know who has
| right of way, you tend to seek eye contact with other
| road users. You automatically reduce your speed, you have
| contact with other people and you take greater care."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space
| Citizen_Lame wrote:
| Which in turn means only most aggressive cyclists stay on
| the road. In London more than half cyclists jump the red
| light.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This sort of comment always comes up. Cars break rules
| too and there is a more of them. What's the point being
| made?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| One point is that traffic lights are designed for the
| benefit of drivers. Most of the time, cyclists can easily
| and safely navigate through a red light as they take up
| so much less space than cars. e.g. turning left at a
| junction (assuming UK driving on the left) can be done
| without causing any inconvenience for drivers and will
| often be safer for a cyclist than having to wait at a red
| light and then deal with drivers who've only just looked
| up from their phone and might not have seen you.
|
| It's notable how RLJing differs between cyclists and
| drivers. RLJing drivers will see a light turn to amber
| and then speed up so that they can get through the
| junction before the other directions can start moving.
| Obviously, speeding up to RLJ is very dangerous to
| pedestrians who might be crossing.
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| Car drivers potentially face consequences in terms of
| loss of license, and should be carrying insurance if
| something happens. No equivalence for cyclists and
| honestly the Netherlands is the least safe I've felt as a
| pedestrian in regards to hostile cyclists.
| itronitron wrote:
| Here is a related article from a UK perspective:
|
| https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/blog/2013/07/03/how-does-...
| anentropic wrote:
| Yeah it really strikes me when reading the OP article that this
| is what a country that's "got it's shit together" looks like...
|
| OTOH I did wonder how feasible it is to transfer such a well-
| designed system to UK towns and cities where it seems like
| available space would be too cramped to recreate all those nice
| features though
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The UK isn't alone in having old narrow streets, so it's just
| a case of re-allocating space. However, it does require a
| change in mindset so that rather than designers focussing on
| how to maximise driver speeds, they need to minimise driver
| speeds at junctions and make it clear that pedestrians have
| priority.
| zelos wrote:
| The Netherlands really does a great job on infrastructure.
| It's not like they're even particularly anti-car: driving
| there is a pretty decent experience too. It's extremely
| depressing driving onto the ferry in Hook of Holland and then
| driving off at Harwich.
| com wrote:
| I've always thought of the Netherlands as Infrastructire
| Country, so much of that territory has been significantly
| altered over the last four or five thousand years that it's
| leaked into their world view.
|
| Problems can be solved with enough time, rough consensus
| and effort. It seems like such a weirdly outdated modernist
| view when living in other places.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Its amazing, its almost as if driving is better when a huge
| amount of trips are instead done with transportation
| systems that require far less space and are far better for
| the environment.
|
| Its as if drivers benefit just as much from good driving
| alternatives as non-drivers. But somehow this is
| consistently ignored by the 'pro-driving' crowd.
|
| You are literally improving the overall efficiency of the
| whole system at minimal cost.
| Arnt wrote:
| Have been there, have also been to the Netherlands. There
| isn't really a big difference in the total space available,
| in my limited experience. You can find a big difference for a
| photo op, sure.
|
| Based on where I have been, I guess the big difference is
| that the Dutch allocate continuous space to bikes and the
| British have a patchwork of bike space and parked cars.
|
| The Dutch use of space seems more effective, the space they
| use for bikes is connected, rather than
| unconnected/ineffective bits.
|
| But note that on the first photo, you see four streets
| meeting at an intersection, that's eight sides, and there are
| cars parked on only two of the eight. Look at the the next
| intersection you pass on the way somewhere and compare the
| number of sides with parking space with that "two".
| crote wrote:
| The space isn't the problem. It just means you can't use an
| off-the-shelf design.
|
| Just like the UK, most towns and cities weren't designed for
| a mix of cars and low-speed traffic. They predate cars by
| quite a bit, so they are now pretty cramped. The average
| urban area in The Netherlands back in the 1960s-1970s looked
| very much like the UK does now.
|
| Infrastructure has to be designed case-by-case, because no
| two neighborhoods are ever exactly the same. You might start
| out with a menu of a few dozen common designs, but they are
| always modified to fit the specific location. Often that
| means making compromises, but achieving 90% of your goals is
| already a lot better than 0%.
|
| If it can be done in The Netherlands, there's no reason it
| can't be done in the UK as well.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Keep in mind that this looks like it's using a lot of spaces,
| but there's only one lane for cars each way. Cyclists and
| pedestrians use way less space than cars, so if a significant
| part of the population uses those modes of transportation
| that would otherwise have been in cars, that's a far more
| efficient use of space.
|
| The flip side of that is that it's pretty feasible to
| transform existing car infrastructure into much nicer
| infrastructure - shave off a single lane, and there's _a lot_
| that you can do with that.
|
| The Netherlands is more densely populated than the UK, I
| think, especially in the Randstad.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The problem in the UK is a deep cultural one.
|
| First we have to understand that, all things being equal, cars
| "win" by default on the roads. They are bigger, heavier, faster
| and more powerful (thanks to burning fossil fuels), and the
| operators are more reckless and inconsiderate due to being
| shielded from the outside world. That means their presence on
| the roads automatically makes it more dangerous and unpleasant
| for everyone else.
|
| Second notice that primary routes are always designed for cars
| first. Every two places has a primary route connecting it.
| Depending on the importance of the route that route will have
| some level of protection against things like flooding,
| subsidence etc. and also be generally higher quality. That
| primary route is always for cars. Due to the above, that
| generally makes it undesirable or often practically unavailable
| for non-motorised traffic. See, for example, dual carriageways.
| Technically everyone has a right to use them by any means (they
| have paid for it, after all), but you'd be crazy to walk/cycle
| down one.
|
| Third notice that cars are basically untouchable. It's
| considered a perfectly acceptable and normal part of driving to
| put people's lives in danger by driving too close and too fast
| etc. But nobody dares touch a car. They have the capability of
| killing or seriously injuring people, but people don't have the
| capability of killing them (the cars). The police will laugh at
| you if you report a car driving too closely. But scratching a
| car or something? Police will be on your case. Basically, we
| value metal boxes on wheels more than people's bodies.
|
| Fourth notice that every part of the road network is designed
| to make it easier for cars at the detriment of pedestrians and
| cyclists. Why does a pedestrian need to press a button to cross
| the road? Why, upon pressing the button, must the pedestrian
| _wait_ to cross? Why doesn 't the light cycle start
| immediately? There is absolutely no sense at all in making the
| pedestrian wait. But everyone is used to it and doesn't
| question it; it's just the way it is. But what it does is makes
| being a pedestrian a third class status. It's these little
| things, like having to sit at the back of the bus, that chip
| away at people's ability to feel like an equal member of
| society. If you walk or cycle you are under no illusion that
| you come second to cars. It's little wonder people choose the
| car if they can.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > See, for example, dual carriageways. Technically everyone
| has a right to use them by any means (they have paid for it,
| after all), but you'd be crazy to walk/cycle down one.
|
| I regularly cycle along the dual carriageway part of the
| A370. Whilst I get that it can be unnerving for most
| cyclists, dual carriageways are well designed for cycling
| along as they typically have great visibility (drivers can
| see you from a distance) and there's a whole lane for drivers
| to overtake safely.
|
| > Fourth notice that every part of the road network is
| designed to make it easier for cars at the detriment of
| pedestrians and cyclists. Why does a pedestrian need to press
| a button to cross the road? Why, upon pressing the button,
| must the pedestrian wait to cross? Why doesn't the light
| cycle start immediately? There is absolutely no sense at all
| in making the pedestrian wait. But everyone is used to it and
| doesn't question it; it's just the way it is. But what it
| does is makes being a pedestrian a third class status. It's
| these little things, like having to sit at the back of the
| bus, that chip away at people's ability to feel like an equal
| member of society. If you walk or cycle you are under no
| illusion that you come second to cars. It's little wonder
| people choose the car if they can.
|
| I think a big part of the problem is that politicians are
| heavily influenced by car/oil lobbyists. What we need are
| brave politicians that are forward looking and have a vision.
|
| By the way, I like to refer to the pedestrian crossing
| buttons as "beg buttons".
| globular-toast wrote:
| > and there's a whole lane for drivers to overtake safely.
|
| But do they actually use it? Last time I biked on a dual
| carriageway I had cars and lorries passing at 60+mph with a
| centimetre gap. I've given up cycling for the most part as
| I disliked basically every ride feeling like it was almost
| my last.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Some of them do - it varies.
|
| I run forwards and rear cameras so that I can report
| dangerous/close passes. Strangely enough, I've had more
| issues with driver aggression (e.g. horn sounding) along
| the A370 than I've had with close passes. Of course, I've
| reported a fair few close passes in other areas (Avon &
| Somerset Police seem to be one of the few pro-active
| forces when it comes to dealing with video submissions).
| Paianni wrote:
| Dual carriageways are ok for cycling when the AADT for a
| particular road is below about 30k. Above that, cyclists
| would be an impediment to traffic flow as a following
| motorist would be waiting a long time for a safe gap in the
| second lane to overtake, especially when the speed
| difference is above 100%.
| mattlondon wrote:
| The roads are paid for in a large part by road taxes and fuel
| taxes. Cyclists pay zero towards it in direct taxation, apart
| from general taxation that everyone pays anyway. Why should
| cyclists be able to free load off of infrastructure paid for
| by tax-paying vehicles, and dictate that they are built to
| favour cyclists when they are not contributing a single
| penny?
|
| Also your point about being "near" is kinda ridiculous. The
| police _would_ take an interest if someone cut your skin
| deliberately, but would equally not take any interest if you
| just walked near a car. You 're comparing apples to oranges.
|
| I agree on your point about waiting to cross as a pedestrian
| though. It is often quite unreasonable for multiple people to
| be standing there - often in rain or other inclement weather
| - waiting for a single person in their nice dry car to drive
| past.
|
| Life is too short to care about these trifling matters really
| though isn't it? Sure, die on this hill if you want but for
| most people it is easier to just buy an electric car, pay the
| taxes, and move on with the important things in life. Life
| isn't fair - if you want to dedicate your ire to something
| unjust then there are IMO better causes to champion than the
| first world problem of not having nice cycle lanes in an
| otherwise safe and secure developed first world democratic
| country with low infant mortality, high quality water,
| universal free healthcare, and high adult literacy levels.
| You have already won the life lottery, but many tens/hundreds
| of millions around the world are not so lucky. Or you can
| just moan about the white lines on your cycle lane being a
| bit crappy. Up to you.
| ldite wrote:
| I am a (UK) cyclist, and I pay both road taxes and fuel
| taxes.
|
| (For the car that I also own, to be clear)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Here in the UK, roads are paid for by general taxation. The
| fuel duty has been frozen for a long time (15 years?) so
| the general public are in fact subsidising motorists. "Road
| Tax" was abolished in 1937 due to the ridiculous attitude
| that some motorists get about "owning" the roads - this
| seems to be exactly your kind of attitude.
|
| I wonder if you've thought about the logical conclusion of
| your "ideas" when applied to electric vehicles? They don't
| pay VED (emmissions tax, which is often referred to as
| "road tax" by idiots) and they don't pay fuel tax, so what
| are they doing on "your" public roads?
| analog31 wrote:
| In my locale, in the US, local roads are paid for by
| property taxes. The higher traffic state and Federal roads
| are paid for through a combination of fuel and income
| taxes. Cyclists tend to avoid those roads due to safety and
| distance. Cycles are prohibited on our equivalent of the
| motorways.
|
| Most cyclists in the US also have cars, and are paying for
| license, registration, and insurance. Higher insurance
| rates are necessary because cars get in more crashes.
|
| Meanwhile, bikes take up less space and do negligible
| damage to roads, and to other things like vehicles and
| stationary objects.
|
| A more useful model is that we all pay to subsidize heavy
| trucking.
|
| But also, each person paying for goodies that they don't
| use but someone else does, is kind of how a modern society
| works. It would be vastly more expensive to administer a
| society in which each person is charged a fee in precise
| proportion to the facilities and services that they use.
| Maybe in the future with AI.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > The roads are paid for in a large part by road taxes and
| fuel taxes. Cyclists pay zero towards it in direct
| taxation, apart from general taxation that everyone pays
| anyway. Why should cyclists be able to free load off of
| infrastructure paid for by tax-paying vehicles, and dictate
| that they are built to favour cyclists when they are not
| contributing a single penny?
|
| The bulk of road funding is from general taxation in most
| places (including the UK, I think?). To put a bit of a spin
| on your argument, most tax is paid by urban areas, with
| rural areas generally being a funds sink. So, should rural
| areas really get roads at all?
|
| See how silly that is?
| bedobi wrote:
| this argument against common sense bike infrastructure is
| one of the most common, most wrong, and most dumb
|
| bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users in fact subsidize
| motorists, in all countries, everywhere. this isn't up for
| debate. so under your own logic, motorists should have no
| right to the roads, because they're "freeloading" and "not
| paying their fair share". sigh.
|
| ironically, even the most ardent bike infra advocates don't
| actually think that. they just think the money they're
| paying shouldn't be expropriated exclusively for motorists,
| while they themselves get close to nothing, especially when
| bika infra is so comparatively cheap and efficient (it
| actually SAVES the government and the public money)
|
| the benefits of bike infra are obvious and self evident.
| less pollution, less noise, more mobility for children and
| the disabled. it benefits motorists too, because it takes
| traffic off the roads, and saves parents time and money
| having to ferry their kids around all the time etc etc.
|
| tbh people like you seem just like hateful selfish
| misanthropes.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| I always find this argument really funny because I
| wholeheartedly agree that taxes should be relative to the
| usage/damage of roads. But when you actually look at the
| numbers pretty much anywhere in the world it's always the
| cars and trucks being subsidised by the rest of the
| population.
|
| YES, PLEASE let me pay for only bicycle infrastructure, I
| hate having to pay for your car.
| panick21_ wrote:
| You can really tell when somebody just repeats motorist
| propaganda and has never actually looked at the finical
| structure behind infrastructure.
|
| Your attitude is also deeply sad and cyclical. People
| wanting to improve the communities they live in is a bad
| thing. How about the 1000s of people dying every year is
| not an important topic.
|
| Imagine if there were 1 major commuter trains going into
| london crashing and killing everybody in the train, and
| this happened multiple times a year? Would you consider
| that an important problem?
|
| > there are IMO better causes to champion
|
| Like what?
|
| Transportation, and cycling as part of that has a major
| influence on climate change, energy consumption, public
| health, accessibility, retail shopping, community building
| and much more.
|
| Have ever engaged with that research?
| mattlondon wrote:
| Just to reply to myself instead of each post calling me
| dumb individually:
|
| I said we all pay via general taxation, so yes you me
| everyone pays for roads if we use them or not. Vehicle
| users _also_ pay in addition to general taxes the direct
| taxes for their usage in terms of road tax and fuel duties
| (N.b. that road usage fees per mile are on the cards for
| EVs). Cyclists pay none of these (unless they also own a
| car)
|
| If there is a huge government subsidy for something, you'd
| be a fool to ignore it
| brailsafe wrote:
| In what way do cyclists require unique and expensive
| infrastructure that both isn't the consequence of
| interactions with cars and that wouldn't be covered by
| general taxation unless general taxation literally didn't
| pay for any infrastructure?
|
| Maybe isolated recreational paved bike paths, needlessly
| expensive public lockup places, and smaller scale urban
| infrastructure to avoid accomodate only pedestrians and
| bikes in forward thinking places? If cars weren't so
| common, would cyclists require 8+ lane highways, or even
| relatively wide roads? Seems like we pay into a pool of
| infrastructure funding that is often already very
| expensive and that has little to do with cars, if they
| didn't exist we'd broadly be saving public money, both on
| direct and indirect costs such as pollution, deaths,
| traffic control devices, public policy, or accommodating
| the demands of everything but personal cars as necessary.
| They should be treated as an expensive luxury, which they
| should be, but in some cases they're a necessary burden
| that the poor should be releaved of.
|
| If cars weren't default, EV or not, we'd all be like
| "who's going to pay for that!?"
|
| Likewise with trains, we all pay for them with taxes, but
| the people who use them often pay directly for the
| continued operation in terms of what is not their
| personal obligation (maintenance, construction,
| staffing), usually a relatively marginal source of
| revenue, but it keeps it going. You pay for trains
| through general taxation, and you pay somehow for the
| continued operation of your personal vehicle, and so do
| bikes, but cars demand much more from external sources
| like trains do, and like trains, there's no free ride,
| unless you bike, which has relatively minimal external
| demands. You pay for the continuance of the operation of
| a uniquely burdensome private luxury, and it's not
| subsidizing anything.
|
| Roads also open up some amount of significant economic
| commercial and personal opportunity, which should also be
| factored in, but also paid for like others. If it's a
| problematic amount, then you make different choices, and
| if that didn't balance out at a system level, we'd make
| different infrastructure choices.
| Mawr wrote:
| I couldn't agree more, we should make sure cyclists and
| motorists pay their fair share.
|
| 1. The damage caused to a road surface is governed by the
| fourth power law [1]:
|
| "This means that after 160,000 crossings, the bicycle
| causes as much damage as the car does when driving on the
| road only once. From this it can be deduced that a large
| part of the damage in the streets is caused by heavy
| motor vehicles compared to the damage caused by lighter
| vehicles."
|
| 2. Dedicated cycling infrastructure has the lowest cost
| of all vehicle infrastructure [2]:
|
| "The annual infrastructure costs per traveller kilometre
| are 0.03 euros for bicycles, 0.10 euros for cars, 0.14
| euros for buses, and 0.18 euros for trains."
|
| 3. The implication that whatever extra taxes motorists
| pay cover all externalities of driving, like death and
| injuries (40 000 deaths per year in the US alone) and
| health complications from brake dust and tire rubber
| seems laughably naive to me but perhaps there are some
| hard numbers that say otherwise?
|
| I too yearn for the day motorists pay for the damage they
| cause.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
|
| [2]: https://www.government.nl/binaries/government/docume
| nten/rep...
| Neonlicht wrote:
| What makes the Netherlands special is not the bike paths. Its
| the law.
|
| When there is an accident between a car and a bike it is
| always the fault of the car. Its the driver who gets the
| insurance claim no questions asked.
|
| Cyclists get special protection. This is not something other
| countries can adapt because it requires a deep moral shift.
| holoduke wrote:
| Thats absoluyely not true. There is the so called principle
| of dual causality. If you hit a car you might have to pay
| 50% depending on situation. If its clearly the biker its
| still 0% for the car.
| danieldk wrote:
| _If its clearly the biker its still 0% for the car._
|
| It's a bit more complicated than that. The car is only 0%
| responsible in the case of 'force majeur'. Which means
| that it was impossible for the driver of the motorized
| vehicle to avoid the accident.
|
| https://letselschade.com/kennisbank/wat-is-overmacht-
| zoals-b...
|
| Note that (translated): "an appeal to force majeur will
| rarely by successful in practice, because it's rarely the
| case that the driver cannot be reproached.
|
| IANAL, but e.g. when a cyclist crosses a red light and
| gets hit by a car. Even though the cyclist is
| responsible, in most cases the car driver could have
| avoided the accident by looking carefully and not
| accelerating too quickly near bike/pedestrian crossings.
| This has always been my understanding of Dutch law and is
| also how all Dutch drivers I know drive - acutely aware
| and careful near bikes and pedestrians.
|
| And this is how it should be, because to pedestrians and
| bikes, cars are like a continuous stream of bullets.
|
| Someone recently had a nice description of the law:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41625337
|
| Quoting it here:
|
| _I briefly studied law in the Netherlands and it was
| used as an example. Our lecturer told us that if "A
| person on a bike would jump out of an airplane on a bike,
| land with a parachute on a highway and get hit by a car,
| just maybe would the car have a case." The reasons for
| this are varied. Cars are insured, bikes are not. But
| most importantly, in basically all traffic situations
| with cars and bikes the car introduces the danger and
| should thus bear the responsibility of any accidents._
| lawaaiig wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that even.
|
| While not going into details: 1. This only concerns
| liability for damages. 2. It is not necessarily the case
| that the cyclist is exempt from (fully) compensating the
| motorized driver for their damages, even if the cyclist
| is reimbursed for (a portion of) their own damages.
|
| Also note that most cyclists are insured!
| mp05 wrote:
| > They are bigger, heavier, faster and more powerful (thanks
| to burning fossil fuels)
|
| Or perhaps thanks to a DC motor and a battery? Not sure
| exactly why you're singling out ICEs in this point you're
| making. Would be curious to know if there is some particular
| reason? I'd argue EVs are more powerful on average, if not
| the staggering majority of cases.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Probably something about the worldwide climate catastrophe
| caused by humanity continuing to burn fossil fuels at an
| ever increasing rate.
| mp05 wrote:
| I understand that and I don't reject this sentiment
| outright, but one makes enemies when engaged in a good
| faith argument but feels the need to shoehorn their moral
| stance when nobody asked about it. It is, in fact, not at
| all relevant to the conversation.
|
| The easiest thing is to stay on topic, wouldn't you
| agree?
| r00fus wrote:
| EVs are much safer - they both accelerate and decelerate
| faster and most EVs have regen braking by default - this
| means a) they get up to speed quickly b) drivers aren't
| worried about slowing because they can get back up to speed
| much faster c) as soon as the foot comes off the pedal the
| car start decelerating immediately.
|
| This makes for a more chill ride - I'm much more aware in
| EVs than I am in my remaining ICE vehicle (a minivan).
|
| That said, poorly laid out bike lanes are systemically
| dangerous.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The electricity mostly comes from fossil fuels too.
|
| The reason I mention it is because it's unfair from the
| start. That we ever allowed such unsustainable transport to
| become the norm is a huge part of the problem.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I think the problem is numerical. There are way more voters
| riding bikes in the Netherlands than in the UK.
| greener_grass wrote:
| But once upon a time the UK had higher cycling rates than
| the Netherlands.
|
| How did the Netherlands manage to overcome this back in the
| 70s and the UK has not?
| reddalo wrote:
| Italy has exactly the same problem. Not only we have a horrible
| infrastructure (the quality of our asphalt is abysmal), but
| cycle paths are pretty much always shared with pedestrians, and
| they're filled with obstacles (manholes, poles, chicanes...).
|
| Moreover, bike paths are usually built on only one side of the
| road as a two-way path. It's dangerous for everybody involved,
| especially when a car has to stop and give way to both sides
| (spoiler: cars don't do it).
|
| Everything makes biking on a bike path a slower and horrible
| experience, so nobody uses bike paths and then a vicious circle
| ensues.
|
| We should all learn from the Ducth and the Danes.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Italy is often associated with cycle sport and I believe
| there are some excellent rides over there, but certainly the
| cities that I've been to (only Rome and Naples) don't look at
| all encouraging to cycle around.
|
| Naples is almost a perfect example of how to cram in cars
| into the smallest possible streets and a lot of the streets
| have to have metal bollards to provide some kind of
| protection for the pedestrians from the cars and mopeds.
| reddalo wrote:
| Yes, both Rome and Naples are in the "South" of Italy, and
| the situation is worse there than in the North.
|
| Milan, Ferrara, Bolzano, Modena, Bologna are just some
| Northern cities where cycling is encouraged and I can see
| them trying to get a better infrastructure; but
| unfortunately there's still a long way to go.
| Hates_ wrote:
| I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the major London
| cycle lanes that goes from Tower Bridge to Greenwich gives
| priority to cyclists crossing side roads
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/b3SweRqzvNehTcE38
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| These are death trap bike lanes. Not actually suitable for
| cycling by an adult operating their vehicle beyond a walking
| pace.
| pkulak wrote:
| It is so adorable when Europeans complain about bike/transit
| infrastructure. Here's my bike lane. It's that white strip of
| paint on the right there:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/HHcHi3u5xbAM4jxY7?g_st=ic
| asveikau wrote:
| And yet when we have "bike lanes" like this, people complain
| that it's too much, too intrusive, ruins local business, or
| should be a parking spot or lane for deliveries.
| CrispyKerosene wrote:
| Its interesting how my brain immediately sees the ambiguous
| bike lane mixed in with pedestrians spaces, and thinks 'That's
| dangerous', but i am not conditioned to think the same way
| about bicycles being forced to mix with car traffic, or
| pedestrians forced onto very narrow sidewalks in the clearzone
| of roads.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| The image is not very common, most of the time they have elevated
| the space before and after the bikepath, forcing cars to slow
| down before going on it.
|
| However one of the downsides is that often the front space is a
| too bit small in cities, so not always easy to fully go on it
| without blocking the bike path. And in busy bike paths at times
| cars will get impatient.
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| Despite the cycling infrastructure being second to none, I hated
| my time cycling in Amsterdam earlier this year. The drivers
| (taxis in particular) are just terrible, very violent, at least
| in the city center. Having a lot of cycling paths that don't
| intersect or run along motorways (the ones through parks are
| especially nice) improves the situation and I did enjoy that
| part, but I can't shake the first impression of crazy aggressive
| drivers.
|
| Ljubljana, Slovenia, where I live, has decent cycling infra
| (cycling paths in almost every street, not as good as Amsterdam),
| but the drivers are way more considerate, so it's overall much
| nicer to cycle around, at least to me.
| jadyoyster wrote:
| That's probably an Amsterdam thing, smaller Dutch cities are
| lovely and awesome to cycle in. Rotterdam was also not
| enjoyable to cycle due to aggressive drivers when I visited.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Hilversum is pretty bad
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly
| dangerous and give a false sense of safety. Bikes hitting
| pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a
| much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars. Taipei
| uses the sidewalk model and I recommend never using them
|
| I find the Chinese model of bike/scooter lanes w/ barriers
| integrated into the main road a superior model. The other
| critical point is integrating bus stops into "islands" in the
| road so the bike lanes go behind the bus stops is critical. (a
| stopped bus with passengers going on/off essentially closes off
| the shoulder for an extended amount of time). Granted the main
| roads in Chinese cities are generally much wider so I'm not sure
| if it can be miniaturized the same way. The "turning area" is
| very useful concept for unblocking traffic and helping with
| visibility, though it does take up a lot of space. However the
| one in the example only accommodates one turning car at a time
| throw310822 wrote:
| Not sure if you mean the Dutch style cycle lanes: in that case,
| it's just tourists that risk impact with bikes, simply because
| they're conditioned to ignore them (i.e. the brain is trained
| to consider dangerous only what's beyond the curb).
|
| After a few weeks people just learn to be mindful of bicycles
| and bicycle lanes as they are normally mindful of roads. In
| particular, one learns to never change direction suddenly
| (crossing a bike lane, but also on a shared road) but to stop
| first and check behind their back for potential cyclists.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I guess this conditioning just doesn't happen in Taipei .. I
| guess then I don't really understand why the sidewalk and
| bikelane are on the same level at all. Why not have an actual
| barrier or curb and places to get on/off?
|
| it's effectively another road - with the same dangers as a
| car-road. But it's just some painted asphalt
| throw310822 wrote:
| A curb is just a sign, at least for pedestrians. If a curb
| can help you not to cross into a bicycle lane, so can a
| clearly painted lane.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| > Why not have an actual barrier or curb and places to get
| on/off?
|
| There actually commonly is a barrier; a gentle curve
| between the foot path and bike path, with the bike path
| being lower. The bike path is also red asphalt making it
| visually distinct.
| ultra2d wrote:
| Being used to Dutch bike infrastructure, the bike lanes in
| Taipei made no sense to me. The ones I've seen mostly are
| barely distinguishable from the actual sidewalk and at
| large intersections the "bike lanes" seem to overlap with
| the logical/natural spot for pedestrians to wait for a
| green light.
| jadyoyster wrote:
| I think if you tried them out you'll find these bike paths are
| not unsafe (and I bet the accident numbers back that up),
| because it's a whole system. Design like this will have
| features to force drivers to take slow turns when crossing the
| bike paths, and they are raised so that it's clear to drivers
| they don't have right of way.
|
| NL always goes for the transit stops that poke out like you
| mention as well when possible.
| pimterry wrote:
| I broadly agree that I'd like standalone separated bike lanes,
| but I think this is dubious:
|
| > Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to
| the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being
| hit by cars
|
| As far as I'm aware, more or less everywhere, both the
| frequency & severity of bicycle vs pedestrian crashes is much
| lower than bicycle vs car crashes. Do you have any statistics
| that say otherwise?
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I only have my personal experience. Biking on the sidewalk
| lanes in Taipei creates a lot of scary close calls esp with
| children and dogs. On the road I only rarely have some issues
| with buses. Everyone is moving in the same direction so it's
| generally less scary.
|
| I think in terms of deaths, the most dangerous issue is
| getting t-boned at an intersection by a car going fast
| through the intersection. I'm not sure how either setup
| really addresses that. You need to decrease overall traffic
| speed somehow. Chinese do this with speed cameras everywhere
| and electric scooters being much slower than gas powered ones
| (which are illegal most places now)
| Macha wrote:
| And also car vs pedestrian is much larger than bike vs
| pedestrian, and in most places, higher than car vs bike also.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Bikes hitting pedestrians is a much larger safety concern
| than bikes being hit by cars.
|
| Do you have any empirical evidence for this? Because every
| single study I have seen suggest that speed and weight of the
| participants matters most. And a bike and a person are simply,
| much less likely to cause serious harm.
|
| A car can kill a biker easy, for a bike to kill anybody, you
| need to really be incredibly unlucky.
|
| The Dutch are doing a lot of empirical work, and they have not
| adopted anything like you describe.
| lqet wrote:
| > I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks
| incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety.
|
| As a cyclist, I also hate them. In my experience, what is even
| more dangerous than small children is dogs. Even if they are on
| a leash, there is nothing stopping them from just suddenly
| jumping a meter to the left, right in front of your bike.
| alephxyz wrote:
| The dreaded multi-use path where pedestrians, joggers, dog
| walkers, parents with strollers, bike commuters, e-scooters,
| roadies, kids with training wheels and older folks on 4 wheel
| scooters are forced to share the same 2.5m strip of asphalt,
| while cars get 2 lanes to drive and 2 for storage
| kristo wrote:
| "Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to
| the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being
| hit by cars."
|
| what? there are many orders of magnitude more injuries and
| deaths from bikes being hit by cars than there are from
| pedestrians being hit by bikes. Even when a pedestrian is hit
| (which is rare- both are highly nimble), it is very rare that
| it is problematic because a bike carries so little momentum
| GuB-42 wrote:
| When we visited Amsterdam as pedestrians, we absolutely hated
| these bike lane / sidewalk combinations. The problem are the
| often narrow, obstructed sidewalks forcing you to step into the
| bike lane. I wouldn't call that "incredibly dangerous" though,
| after all, we didn't witness any accident, but certainly
| annoying, especially considering that the most common
| obstruction is parked bikes.
|
| I guess it takes some getting used to, or maybe the Dutch
| simply avoid walking and take the bike instead.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to
| the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being
| hit by cars.
|
| That's blatantly not true. Have you seen any KSI statistics?
|
| Pedestrians are more likely to be killed by a driver mounting
| the pavement and hitting them than they are by a cyclist. The
| facts suggest that in a cyclist/pedestrian collision, it's
| often the cyclist that gets more injured.
| sigh_again wrote:
| >Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to
| the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being
| hit by cars.
|
| Source ? Here's mine: https://www.cbs.nl/en-
| gb/news/2024/15/684-road-traffic-death...
|
| 1199 cyclists killed in 4 years, 658 of these being from
| collisions with various motor vehicles. 262 pedestrians killed
| in 4 years, 11 of these being from collisions with bicycles.
| Before any "oh but there's few deaths but more accidents it's
| still unsafe": no, it is not.
|
| I know your username sets high expectations, but stop
| bullshitting and look at facts.
| bar000n wrote:
| If a bicycle hits a pedestrian and the pedestrian was on
| cycling path in The Netherlands, who's fault is it? If the
| pedestrian gets a broken arm who pays for medical services?
| kuschku wrote:
| > If the pedestrian gets a broken arm who pays for medical
| services?
|
| Well, most European countries have a relatively simple
| solution for that ;)
| sigh_again wrote:
| If NL laws are anywhere close to the rest of European
| countries: the bike is responsible. The pedestrian is never
| responsible, unless they do something absurd like jumping
| in front of the bike without leaving any way to react to
| the bike.
|
| >If the pedestrian gets a broken arm who pays for medical
| services?
|
| The... Insurance of whoever is responsible? I know this
| concept is weird to the US, but personal insurances in
| Europe are about covering the damage you inflict on others
| first, then eventually you. They're also mandatory. In
| addition, well, a broken arm is not a financial catastrophe
| in Europe. Should it prevent you from doing your job, the
| insurance also covers that.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| It's the urban planning, but I'll point out that it's the
| requirements and responibilities put on the drivers as well.
|
| Driving lessons for me consisted for 80% of learning how to
| ALWAYS ALWAYS track all the cyclists and pedestrians in urban
| environments, how to approach an intersection and have complete
| visual on whatever the weaker parties might be doing. A very
| defensive "assume weird shit can happen any time, and don't
| assume you can just take your right of way" attitude, and I think
| our cities are better for it.
|
| In America, it seems that a pedestrian is a second rate cititzen.
| Conversely, here if you hit the "weaker" party as a driver and
| it's almost always on you in terms of liability.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| It also helps that _" the car driver is to blame until proven
| otherwise"_ is the actual law in the Netherlands, which is
| motivated precisely because of that power dynamic. Essentially,
| the responsibility defaults the more dangerous vehicle.
|
| (for some reason this always is controversial with a lot of
| Americans whenever it is brought up in on-line discussions)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Having recently read "Amerikanen Lopen Niet" (Americans Don't
| Walk), the power dynamic you describe seems to be entirely
| real.
|
| Because a car is essential for economic survival in the USA,
| it's probably difficult for some to accept alternate
| realities from the status quo.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| Americans will never walk.
|
| Where I live, today's high temperature is lower than the
| low temperature in Amsterdam.
|
| In August the average low temperature is higher than the
| average high temperature in Amsterdam.
|
| Nobody, not even the hardiest Dutchman is going to walk or
| cycle when it is 27C at midnight in the summer and 0C at
| the warmest in the winter with four months of "Amsterdam
| weather" sprinkled between summer and winter.
|
| Plus there's geography. My house is 21m above sea level, 3m
| higher than the highest point in Amsterdam, and I live 500m
| from the sea at the very beginning of the rollercoaster of
| hills and valleys the glaciers carved into the landscape
| here.
|
| To walk or cycle to a store would require several Col du
| Tourmalet-class hill climbs (that's only a slight
| exaggeration) along the route.
|
| Everywhere south of me is hotter, everywhere north of me is
| hillier.
|
| https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-8pl51/Amsterdam/
|
| Compare Amsterdam to DC a well-known "swamp" in the US that
| most people would consider one of its flatter cities.
|
| https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/map-kfds8/Washington/
|
| Don't be thrown off by the scale: yellow in Amsterdam (of
| which there is none) is 25m and yellow in DC (of which
| there is much) is 78m.
| exceptione wrote:
| 27C at night is uncommon, but I can tell you there is no
| weather that stops Dutch people from walking or biking.
| It is mind ingrained.
| lenlorijn wrote:
| Electric bicycles basically solve the hill issue. Dutch
| people bike in any weather. We have a ton of terrible
| weather, both hot and cold but mostly wet. Our summer
| heat might not be very hot, but the summer heat is very
| humid, it feels hotter than it is.
|
| Also the Netherlands is not the only region where people
| bike a lot. There are places in Finland for example, with
| more hills and more extreme weather that have loads of
| people biking.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
| bb86754 wrote:
| DC might not be the best comparison here as far as
| American cities go. I - and most people I know - walk
| around the city year round and I live on the top of a
| pretty steep hill.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| DC isn't even close to the top of the list of cities
| where commuters walk.
|
| https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2019.B08006?t=Commut
| ing...
|
| In the summer most people do not want to show up to work
| reeking like the Anacostia. I get it. In the evenings you
| walk from your apartment to Madam's Organ to pay $20 for
| a beer.
| stetrain wrote:
| Walking doesn't mean never driving.
|
| Every trip to a grocery store, restaurant, bar, friend's
| house, transit station, etc. that can be done by walking
| or cycling is one car trip off of the roads. That has
| benefits.
|
| Of course some places are not suited to this. But there
| are places that could be, and those places combined have
| a lot of people living in them.
|
| Dismissing the idea in all of America as an absolute is
| missing a lot of potential, and a lot of what is already
| happening.
|
| And from my experience looking at real estate prices,
| houses in areas with good scores for walkability,
| cycling, and transit are very much in demand and priced
| higher than those without. There is at least some segment
| of the market that very much wants these qualities.
| deivid wrote:
| In Amsterdam, you usually don't cycle more than ~3km for
| a "normal destination" (groceries, a generic bar or cafe,
| stores) and in general, ~7km is the limit for "specific
| destinations" (going to bar X, ), above that, usually
| people take transport, though there are some that often
| cycle >50km
|
| At 3km, anything but the most extreme weather/elevation
| can be tolerated, I've seen people cycling in what is
| effectively tornado weather (orange alerts -> 100+ km/h
| gusts of wind). As distances get larger, the tolerance
| for these factors diminishes significantly, are you sure
| it's not the distances that are the problem?
| vanderZwan wrote:
| A lot of Americans I know in real life (rightfully)
| complain that non-Americans treat their culture as if
| it's a homogeneous monolith, despite its enormous
| geographical and cultural diversity. So you have to
| excuse me for chuckling at blanket statements like
| "Americans will never walk"
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| 55% of NYC residents do not own a car. But of course
| everybody knows NYC is not America :)
|
| https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/u-s-cities-
| with-th...
| snakeyjake wrote:
| New York City and its surrounding combined statistical
| metropolitan area (which includes semi-rural commuter
| suburbs where people do not walk) makes up approximately
| 6% of "America" and was accounted for in the average
| "royal we" American who does not, statistically, walk.
| yohannparis wrote:
| I biked year round for 4 years in Washington DC. Biking
| by 40oC and in the snow in the winter wasn't difficult.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| Congratulations for being in the microscopically-
| miniscule statistically-irrelevant minority of people.
| yohannparis wrote:
| You are the one saying no-one would do it. I was
| explaining that wasn't a fact. I live now in Toronto and
| people are fine cycling in the summer (40o) and winter
| (-5o) all year long because of better infrastructure.
| Which is the point of the article.
| conor- wrote:
| Some additional anecdata (and actual data) is that
| Chicago has the highest cyclist increase out of any city
| in the US as a result of better infrastructure being
| installed [0]
|
| The anecedata is I see far more people biking year round
| in Chicago (even in the pretty brutal subzero
| January/February temps) than I ever can recall.
|
| Granted it's a very flat city without much elevation
| changes, but there's definitely the spectrum of extreme
| heat in the summer and extreme cold in winter that
| doesn't seem to stop anybody
|
| [0] https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/05/28/cdot-built-it-
| they-ca...
| wonder_er wrote:
| er, every car driver is a carless driver before they
| enter and after they exit, their vehicle.
|
| everyone in America walks. They simply happen to do most
| of their walking in parking lots.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| The reason: lobbying from auto manufacturers!
|
| https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
| com wrote:
| Except for trams. They never seem to get the blame, however
| with their braking distance, I suppose it makes sense.
| brnt wrote:
| I live in NL close to a border. Guess where tourists tend to
| stop their car, when coming in from the left in situation of
| the fine article?
|
| People have little situational awareness anyway, but perhaps a
| bit moreso when they are Dutch.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Driving lessons in NL also teach you to open your door with
| your _right_ hand (left is right side drive), that way you turn
| your shoulder a bit and get in perfect position for controlling
| blind spot and mirror for eventual bike incoming (or whatever
| vehicle you missed).
| legacynl wrote:
| Ive heard this repeated on the BBC before, but it isn't true,
| at least not for my driving lessons 2 decades ago. I just got
| told everytime to look over my shoulder for cyclists before
| opening the door. But never have I heard of anyone being
| taught to specifically open their door with their right hand
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| To be fair, the BBC is institutionally anti-cyclist, so
| they may have mis-represented the "Dutch Reach".
|
| I can't see why it's not taught and used everywhere as it
| encourages and facilitates the checking behind you when
| opening a car door. Rather than focussing on "left" or
| "right" hand, I find it more useful to just always use the
| furthest hand from the door so the same idea applies if
| you're driving or a passenger.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I think it depends on the teacher, but mine didn't teach
| it either. However, I have been taught from a young age
| to watch out before I open the door, which is still very
| relevant even if you're not in the driver's seat.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Driver's ed in the US in any state with much urbanization to
| speak of is like that too (there's 50 states with 50 different
| curriculums with differing levels of specificity so
| generalizing is ill advised unless you're looking to
| intentionally mislead) unless perhaps one took it long ago or
| in somewhere so rural that other traffic wasn't relevant.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I took my driving test in Palo Alto in 2008. It was a total
| joke. We drove around the block; drove onto the freeway; took
| the first exit and immediately back to the DMV and that was
| it. Took ~5 minutes. My driving test in Germany was 45
| minutes. We drove all over town through all kind of street
| types. I had to perform several different parking maneuvers,
| stop and start on a steep hill.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| The CA DMV test is 20 minutes. Whatever it was in 2008 I
| sincerely doubt it was five minutes.
| hencq wrote:
| As a Dutch person living in the US, a big difference is also
| that almost every driver in the Netherlands is also a cyclist
| themselves. In the US there is this almost cultural divide
| between drivers and cyclists where it becomes part of people's
| identity. In the Netherlands most people will just choose their
| mode of transportation depending on the specifics of the trip.
|
| In practice this means drivers tend to do a much better job
| anticipating cyclists, e.g. by checking for cyclists before
| making a turn.
| wonder_er wrote:
| In the greater united states, the first people to get cars were
| also those who had various forms of power. Those people
| (moneyed european americans who believed in the myth of
| industrialization, supremacists) used power to shape the legal
| regime of cities to claim more space for themselves.
|
| "Jaywalking" is a pejorative slur popularized by _some_ people
| in the USA to justify their road supremacy.
|
| I've lost friendships with my american friends (and a canadian,
| living in america) because of how evident their dangerous
| driving is, with regard to non-drivers is.
|
| I can stomach approximately one mean thing to be said about
| someone walking on a street before I am unable to be in
| friendship with the person who says that mean thing.
|
| Pedestrians in america are not "second rate citizens", they are
| seen as _not having dignity or humanity_. the kinds of people
| in america likely to be walking around certain roads have
| generally been of the groups of people some Americans have
| pointed ethnic cleansing energies at, which obviously requires
| lots of dehumanization already.
|
| I have such beef with the various powers and authorities that
| influence american mobility networks.
|
| American traffic planners are functional flat-earthers. not
| great.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I also recommend this article, on why in the US, innovation in
| this area isn't pushed:
|
| America Has No Transportation Engineers
|
| https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/america-has-no-transporta...
| switch007 wrote:
| Driving in towns and cities in the Netherlands is frightening as
| a foreigner not used to it as you're constantly afraid about
| hitting a cyclist. I drive like a grandma there.
|
| And that's how it should be.
|
| I always regret not taking the very advice I gave yesterday about
| European cities and parking on the outskirts!
| rroose wrote:
| Cool to see my hometown ('s-Hertogenbosch) appear on the front
| page of HN. I use this intersection almost every week: AMA ;)
| dddw wrote:
| How far is it from the intersection to the nearest place you
| can get a Bosche Bol? :)
| rroose wrote:
| Most people get their Bossche Bol at Jan de Groot, which is
| like a 15 minute walk or 5 minutes by bike from the
| intersection. Beware that there always is a big queue at Jan
| de Groot because it's very popular. You can also go to a
| Jumbo supermarket in 's-Hertogenbosch or Rosmalen as they
| usually sell the exact same Bossche Bol from this bakery.
| miniBill wrote:
| How funny it is to hear foreigners try to pronounce it?
| rroose wrote:
| Not as funny as you would think :) They usually pronounce it
| pretty well: shertokenboss
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| It also includes a car driving on the cycleway and turning over
| the full white line at 1:35 and use of the phone while cycling at
| 1:44
| gryzzly wrote:
| It is completely beyond me why other EU countries simply don't
| copy the dutch. It's clearly way better designed, it's a pleasure
| for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians and way safer.
| dddw wrote:
| Yeah almost everybody copied our airport signage system. Why
| not the road system... NL is very flat though
| brnt wrote:
| Meanwhile, in France: https://tinyurl.com/yjvsm9x9
| m4rc3lv wrote:
| The problem in the Netherlands nowadays is not the interaction
| between motorists verus cyclists, but ebikes versus normal bikes.
| Lot of accidents happen on the bycicle roads
| lenlorijn wrote:
| By far the largest amount of cyclist deaths and injury are
| still caused by cars. The ebikes just get more news coverage
| because they're novel. But cars are heavier and go faster so
| will almost always be more dangerous to other cyclists and
| pedestrians.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| When I rode an ebike in the Netherlands I still frequently got
| overtaken by people on omafietsen. It was the mopeds using the
| bike paths that were causing problems.
| AnonHP wrote:
| Needs (2018) in the submission title.
| m4rc3lv wrote:
| The problem nowadays is not the interaction between cyclists and
| motorists but more between ebikes and normal bikes (on the same
| pathway)
| mattlondon wrote:
| There are lots of dedicated cycle lanes in London now which is
| good. I feel much safer cycling in those.
|
| But as a pedestrian and as a car driver too, there are still a
| hard-core of dangerous cyclists who refuse to use them and will
| instead be willfully breaking the law (going through red lights,
| wrong way/wrong side of the street etc). And just to add insult
| to injury, they literally add insults! Aggressive shouting,
| gesticulating etc if your dare to e.g. use a pedestrian crossing
| or drive on a green light but you are in _their_ way.
|
| Tl;Dr you can build all this stuff but it seems like the
| aggressive pricks won't use it and will just carry on with no
| accountability or consequences and we all suffer from it.
| jrslv wrote:
| Very interesting article. After 12 years of almost daily cycling
| in the Netherlands, I recently started driving a car as well. I
| always appreciated the Dutch civil infrastructure, and this new
| experience only adds to my admiration.
|
| Compared to other European countries, driving in NL definitely
| requires extra attention. There are many small & vulnerable
| participants sharing the space, moving in different directions
| with much less inertia than cars. On the other hand there are
| plenty of buffer zones, the lanes are cleverly organised and
| clearly marked, and there's 30 kmh (18 mph) limit in most streets
| in the city. A smaller car with great visibility is really useful
| here.
| pyrale wrote:
| The one thing lacking is marking for pedestrian crossings on the
| bike lanes. It feels fine in this low-traffic intersection, but
| in my area (not netherlands), it has become a bit hard to cross
| bike lanes with high trafic from both pedestrians and cyclists.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| The notch for the cycle path is actually really interesting to me
| in that it allows a single car to wait without blocking the flow
| of the road they are departing. I imagine a lot of RL taillights
| get clipped but that's fine at the end of the day.
| crote wrote:
| That pretty much never happens. The vast majority of cars just
| aren't big enough to stick out, and people generally have
| enough self-preservation to not drive at full speed into a
| full-sized box truck.
| raldi wrote:
| These are the things you can do when you don't give away both
| sides of every street to fully-subsidized car storage.
| ponderings wrote:
| We have lots of smooth infrastructure that I never noticed until
| various foreign experts on the internet expressed how wonderful
| it is.
|
| There is an actual traffic light design I really like. It has a
| circle of small white leds that switch off one by one as a count
| down to green
|
| https://www.maxvandaag.nl/sessies/themas/reizen-verkeer/hoe-...
|
| These are absolutely wonderful on busy roads with tons of (car)
| traffic. Before they had the count down one would just stand
| there waiting for what seems forever. It can go green any moment,
| you have to pay attention. The entire state of mind is different.
| You can just zone out. I even pull out my phone knowing I have
| time to answer a message or look up at what time a store closes.
|
| I just learn I've only seen the highly predictable ones,
| apparently in other locations they also have heat sensors to
| detect how many cyclists are standing there. It may speed up if
| there are enough. If 1% of the cyclists know what is really going
| on it would be a lot. Until now I was just happy it turns green
| when I'm the only traffic for as far as the eye can see.
| AriedK wrote:
| Yeah these 'predictors' only make sense if they can give a
| countdown at a constant rate. The idea is nice but often they
| countdown at say 1dot/sonly to have the last 5 dots disappear
| in the last second so they miss their purpose. on the other
| hand, a consequence on predictable ones is that people will
| start cycling on the last 2 dots or so instead of waiting for
| the green light.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Oh wow, I never even consciously realised the zoning-out
| benefit - I already just appreciated them for being able to
| take off more quickly.
| BoggleFiend wrote:
| Interesting that very few (any?) people in the pictures are
| wearing helmets. In the US, I think it's a lot more common for
| cyclers to wear helmets. Maybe that comes with a fear of getting
| clobbered by a car.
| forkerenok wrote:
| From what I can remember, the overseeing bodies (whatever they
| are) are not convinced that requiring helmets would reduce
| serious incident rates, and in fact convinced that this would
| decrease overall bike ridership.
|
| I'd speculate that the metric of "injuries per kilometer
| cycled" wouldn't budge because of a helmets requirement.
|
| Can't find a good summary of this now, but some bits of this
| are googleable.
| INTPenis wrote:
| My hometown of Malmo is very bike friendly but let me be frank,
| no it does not flow smoothly. Cars are required to stop for
| cyclists and pedestrians on most crosswalks.
|
| And no they do not like it, we have consciously prioritized
| pedestrians and cyclists at the expense of car drivers patience,
| fuel, and even congestion when the cars behind them all have to
| stop for a cyclist to cross.
|
| Drivers get mad, regularly complain, cyclists abuse their
| privilege by rolling into intersections without even turning
| their heads towards traffic.
|
| And you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. I think a
| healthy society should prioritize healthy alternatives to cars.
| brnt wrote:
| Only daft tourists and provincials use a car in a city like
| Amsterdam. You are right, car traffic doesn't flow, but that is
| kinda the point. Bikes and pedestrians first, cars second.
| Vinnl wrote:
| The question is: is the flow worse for people in general, or
| only the ones in cars. If those cyclists and pedestrians
| would've been in cars (i.e. if there wasn't good bicycle and
| pedestrian infrastructure), would the flow for the average
| person be better? Would it even be better just looking at
| people in cars?
| wonder_er wrote:
| I appreciate and approve of this detail applied to many
| interesting design features of an otherwise banal collection of
| junctions.
|
| I live in Denver, and daily appreciate how much self-harming
| behavior is built into American road network design standards.
| It's truly stunning.
|
| Consider reading the book "Killed by a Traffic Engineer:
| Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation
| System"[0]
|
| I wish he'd titled it as "the transportation system of the
| Greater United States". I emphatically disagree with the use of
| "our".
|
| Anyway, american road networks were designed, funded, built by
| people who wanted to accomplish ethnic cleansing, and I think
| it's plainly obvious that this is the case, so it feels strange
| to even talk about it sometimes.
|
| to my knowledge, no one in the netherlands road design system has
| been recently thing to accomplish ethnic cleansing, so their road
| networks can develop towards/with mutuality.
|
| in the USA, at _minimum_ the founders /originators of these
| systems were openly supremacist and spoke openly about what and
| how they were doing. I.E:
|
| > If we [road funding authorities, municipal authorities, and
| their political supporters] could build a highway through their
| neighborhood, we could get rid of some of them, and make it
| harder for the rest of them to exist, and we'd see less of them
| either way.
|
| the "they" was always an ethnic group. The playbook of these
| supremacists was to squish all people within that group into a
| tiny compression of humanity, then attack it directly, using the
| normal tools of colonial empires.
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