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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)

#81

Post by LeonidasXIV »

0xbs0d wrote: post #3

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

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.

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

#82

Post by Etheryte »

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…

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.

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

#83

Post by nate321 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #79
eru wrote: post #70

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.

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…

I seriously moved out of the country because the food was making me depressed. The bread is just so bad I couldn’t take it. I loved the infrastructure though.

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

#84

Post by amsterdorn »

eru wrote: post #70

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.

Their savory dishes aren't great (looking at you stamppot) but they do sweets well! Poffertjes, oliebollen, stroopwafels, etc.

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

#85

Post by trompetenaccoun »

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…

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.

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

#86

Post by Scarblac »

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.…

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.

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

#87

Post by fernandotakai »

vanderZwan wrote: post #79
eru wrote: post #70

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.

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 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.

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

#88

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

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.

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

#89

Post by tralarpa »

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.

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

#90

Post by cue_the_strings »

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.

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