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A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

bicycledutch.wordpress.com

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

#271

Post by CrispyKerosene »

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…

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.

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

#272

Post by Tade0 »

panick21_ wrote: post #251
Tade0 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are plenty of places in the Netherlands with much lower density. They have great cycling and urban design even in tiny towns.

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?

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

#273

Post by CrispyKerosene »

jwr wrote: post #45

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.

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.

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

#274

Post by beastman82 »

crote wrote: post #223
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.

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. Bu…

> the reduction in cars due to people switching to cycling makes the infrastructure incredibly cheap

This is a logical leap of enormous magnitude.

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

#275

Post by Vinnl »

anentropic wrote: post #135
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…

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

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.

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

#276

Post by Vinnl »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #189
legacynl wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

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

#277

Post by Vinnl »

ponderings wrote: post #221

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. Befo…

Oh wow, I never even consciously realised the zoning-out benefit - I already just appreciated them for being able to take off more quickly.

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

#278

Post by Vinnl »

panick21_ wrote: post #251
Tade0 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are plenty of places in the Netherlands with much lower density. They have great cycling and urban design even in tiny towns.

I do imagine those places benefited from the cultural mindshift originating in dense areas. Just a guess, of course.

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

#279

Post by emn13 »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #197
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #121

Earlier 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.

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).

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.

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

#280

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

ajmurmann wrote: post #263
potato3732842 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The CA DMV test is 20 minutes. Whatever it was in 2008 I sincerely doubt it was five minutes.
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