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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)

#21

Post by alkonaut »

louwrentius wrote: post #12

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…

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.

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

#23

Post by lqet »

maelito wrote: post #13
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.

Remember that the east of France is considered the top place to cycle... Well except Paris and its recent revolution.

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).

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

#24

Post by scotty79 »

mikrl wrote: post #5
voidUpdate wrote: post #2

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

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.

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.

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

#25

Post by coolgoose »

Mattasher wrote: post #16

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 t…

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

It's literally a painted give way sign.

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

#26

Post by vasco »

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.

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

#27

Post by sokoloff »

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…

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.

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

#29

Post by dmurray »

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.

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".

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

#30

Post by david-gpu »

maelito wrote: post #4
0xbs0d wrote: post #3

It's not that much different from Copenhagen where I live. Bike lanes are everywhere.

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.

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