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.
A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
241–250 of 339 posts
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Probably something about the worldwide climate catastrophe caused by humanity continuing to burn fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate.
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?
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#243Isn'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.…
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.
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#244I 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.
I really wish this tired cliché 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 res…
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.
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which in turn means only most aggressive cyclists stay on the road. In London more than half cyclists jump the red light.
This sort of comment always comes up.
Cars break rules too and there is a more of them. What’s the point being made?
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 midd…
> 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.
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#247We 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. Befo…
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.
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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 ridiculou…
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?
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#249Interesting 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.
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.
Re: A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
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.