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A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

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Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#111

Post by jalk »

tralarpa wrote: post #89
vanderZwan wrote: post #11

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).

> 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.

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.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#112

Post by [deleted] »

david-gpu wrote: post #42
lqet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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 Americ…

[deleted]

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#113

Post by Earw0rm »

ben_w wrote: post #54
Woeps wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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…

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?

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#114

Post by maelito »

david-gpu wrote: post #30
maelito wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

> 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.

Thanks ! I wonder though if native english speakers understand it instantly, or no.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#115

Post by itronitron »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #76

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 yo…

Here is a related article from a UK perspective:

https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/blog/2013/07/03/how-does-...

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#116

Post by panick21_ »

vasco wrote: post #26
openrisk wrote: post #19

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.

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.

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.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#117

Post by vanderZwan »

fernandotakai wrote: post #87
vanderZwan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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 t…

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

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#119

Post by dspillett »

dmurray wrote: post #29
vanderZwan wrote: post #11

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).

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.…

> 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.

Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

#120

Post by jmmcd »

adrianh wrote: post #20

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…

> "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.

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