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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)

#91

Post by contrarian1234 »

I find bikelanes that are integrated with sidewalks incredibly dangerous and give a false sense of safety. Bikes hitting pedestrians (ex: children wandering out on to the bikelane) is a much larger safety concern than bikes being hit by cars. Taipei uses the sidewalk model and I recommend never using them

I find the Chinese model of bike/scooter lanes w/ barriers integrated into the main road a superior model. The other critical point is integrating bus stops into "islands" in the road so the bike lanes go behind the bus stops is critical. (a stopped bus with passengers going on/off essentially closes off the shoulder for an extended amount of time). Granted the main roads in Chinese cities are generally much wider so I'm not sure if it can be miniaturized the same way. The "turning area" is very useful concept for unblocking traffic and helping with visibility, though it does take up a lot of space. However the one in the example only accommodates one turning car at a time

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

#92

Post by hehehheh »

desas wrote: post #40
dmurray wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Build more bike lanes. To an extent, it's a self-solving problem. If you have great non-car transport options and an increase in traffic makes car driving less appealing, then more people will use those non-car transport options rather than joining the queue.

ebikes mean you dont need to be that fit (or sweat) either.

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

#93

Post by Jaxan »

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.

It’s good to realise the Dutch cycling infrastructure did not came out of nowhere. There were huge protests in the 70’s about traffic safety. At that time cars ruled the roads and there a lot of accidents, also involving children. From those protests an culture shift started, towards better cycling infrastructure.

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

#94

Post by hansc »

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.

I live in The Netherlands (actually in the same city as the photo's were taken): There is a very large difference in traffic density and complexity between the larger cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and the rest of the country (including middle sized cities).

When I visit one of those larger cities, I am also constantly looking for bikes everywhere not to be crashing into me.

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

#95

Post by hehehheh »

Scarblac wrote: post #86
dmurray wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ideally more density leads to more public transport.

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

#96

Post by isoprophlex »

It's the urban planning, but I'll point out that it's the requirements and responibilities put on the drivers as well.

Driving lessons for me consisted for 80% of learning how to ALWAYS ALWAYS track all the cyclists and pedestrians in urban environments, how to approach an intersection and have complete visual on whatever the weaker parties might be doing. A very defensive "assume weird shit can happen any time, and don't assume you can just take your right of way" attitude, and I think our cities are better for it.

In America, it seems that a pedestrian is a second rate cititzen. Conversely, here if you hit the "weaker" party as a driver and it's almost always on you in terms of liability.

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

#97

Post by decide1000 »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #35

you need space to do that, not many cities in Europe have the luxury of being built from scratch and having so much space to dedicate to a single intersection. Where i live (in Rome) the streets are like this https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/04/93/42/24/1000_F_493422444_Hw... edit: anyway the simplest solution is to turn every intersection into a roundabout, no traffic lights needed, clear right of way, cars can't go fas…

Here in the Netherlands also in small streets and areas bike lanes are common. They are literally drawn on the street and a car is basically not allowed to ride on them when a bike is passing.

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

#98

Post by jadyoyster »

cue_the_strings wrote: post #90

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…

That's probably an Amsterdam thing, smaller Dutch cities are lovely and awesome to cycle in. Rotterdam was also not enjoyable to cycle due to aggressive drivers when I visited.

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

#99

Post by david-gpu »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #85
david-gpu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree with most of what you've said, and yet as a utility cyclist I can tell you that this is nicer than many of the streets I need to ride when I leave my home.

Let me reiterate that I don't say this to dismiss the importance of improving that street. On the contrary, I am simply lamenting how bad things are here [0].

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/nurAWCzcBW98TxFm8?g_st=ac

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

#100

Post by schrijver »

xiaq wrote: post #58
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #35

you need space to do that, not many cities in Europe have the luxury of being built from scratch and having so much space to dedicate to a single intersection. Where i live (in Rome) the streets are like this https://as1.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/04/93/42/24/1000_F_493422444_Hw... edit: anyway the simplest solution is to turn every intersection into a roundabout, no traffic lights needed, clear right of way, cars can't go fas…

Such old urban places would just be car-free in the Netherlands (sometimes with limited access for delivery and emergency vehicles), a trend fortunately becoming popular in other European cities now. The “urban” in the title is a bit misleading, this intersection is definitely more suburban, or on the boundary of an urban center. (Or rather, the author has a different definition of urban - in my definition cities lik…

In my experience, cars are discouraged from city centres, but not banned. You can drive your car all around Amsterdam, although you’ll have many one way streets and parking is going to very expensive for non-residents… and it’s hard (but not impossible) to find street level parking. Amsterdam has a number of car parks in the outskirts that are cheap if you can show that you used public transport afterwards.

The result is that people use their car (if they have one, still quite common esp. for families) to get out of the city, or big errands, but use bike or public transport for day to day trips.

Actual car free zones exist in cities across Europe but tend to be pretty small and constrained to the hyper centre, like the church square and the major shopping streets. Not that I’m opposed to them being bigger but that seems rare at this point.

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