The statistics mentioned here are absolute bullshit. There has not been a single traffic fatality at the Keizer Karel Plein in recent history. The report referenced talks about 'slachtoffers', but this means both injuries and fatalities. What's more, the report referenced here was retracted by RTL, as it was flawed. A new research was published a few months later which showed 53 crashed in the 2014-2017 period. Out of these 53 crashes, 52 were only fender benders, and there was only a single injury involved in these crashes. Of course, every injury is one too many, but what this video doesn't mention is that the amounts of traffic of course relate to the expected number of crashes. Also, this rotary is actually a very space-efficient way to process traffic from six different roads (technically even seven with the access to the church). In essence it is more like six different t-junctions in a very small area. What this traffic rotary does very well is process this traffic efficiently and in such a way that overall traffic is slowed down enough to make sure that if a crash occurs the danger to the people involved is lowered considerably. Of course the point about not wanting this much traffic around your city center is valid. The city has also taken a lot of efforts to move traffic away from this area. However, as you say, this is not easily done. A lot of the historic structures of the city, as well as the geographical characteristics of the area, make it difficult to move traffic away. It's really a pity that a video that could have been interesting results in a populist sensationalist fake news story. I really hope you'll do something to rectify the mistakes!
Tho this comment is a little harsh, it is right, looking at it you know how to take feedback like a pro though! But it is still a very good video, showing the Netherlands isn’t anywhere near perfect (even if we like to think we are haha). Keep up the hard work!
De meeste ongelukken komen van de duitsers die denken dat dit een rotonde is terwijl het een verkeersplein dus recjts heeft voorrang en niet de "rotonde" ik rij er 2 tot 4 per dag overheen dus zie elke week wel een aanrijding.
When I did my driving exam, a life time ago, we drove for 30mins to get to this monstrosity and when my examiner and driving instructor were having a leisurely chat, I was about to leave this roundabout of death when a scooter came like a devil out of hell from nowhere and wanted to pass in front of the car just when I was speeding up, I broke so hard that the engine died all not to crush the idiot. Not my instructor nor my examiner had seen the scooter coming, so if it hadn't been for me I would have crushed the scooter. So, yeah even though I had made really stupid mistakes during the exam I passed cause I was there and didn't panic when it mattered. So, I passed my exam that day on my first try, which is a rarity in the Netherlands. But I never forgot that damned roundabout, so when I read the title of this video I knew exactly which nightmare we were talking about 😊
@@elenna_alexia yeah they love doing that to first time drivers though, their reasoning if you manage that, you can manage anything. They were right, a few year later I drove over la Place d'etoile in Paris and I survived that 🤣
Bro I have been there It is so counterintuitive that you have to give priority to those who enter the roundabout Because they have green light But there is nothing telling you about it
Drove there a zillion times, without problems. It's fun and not so difficult if you arrive there after returning from a cartrip in Italy, or from rounding Pl. Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France. :)
I think highlighting things that aren't "perfect" in the Netherlands is crucially important cause it shows timelines of change...that those who live in countries can't say "yes but the Netherlands different". Yes it's different, but it started pretty much looking the same as other cities in the 1950's, and here's some proof still that it is a "work in progress"
My biggest gripe with the Keizer Karelplein, is that they use the roundabout signs, even though it is not a roundabout. We have signs that indicate a mandatory driving direction, but for some reason, the municipality (or whomever is in charge of the signs) decided to add to a confusing situation by placing the wrong signs. For those who don't get why this is bad: on a roundabout, traffic wanting to enter the roundabout has to yield to traffic already on the roundabout. Keizer Karelplein, being a rotary system (or "verkeersplein") is managed by traffic lights. The sings and the lights are in conflict. And more confusion is the last thing this plein needs.
Is that true? Long ago, they were called 'verkeersplein' with the same signs i think, and traffic entering the plein had right of way (there was one in the north of Haarlem a fairly long time ago). Then some of them had right of way for traffic on the plein, and others still worked the old way. Since the roundabout way proved to be safer, that became the norm. But i wonder if the sign actually changed. I don't really remember. Too long ago really..
Niet helemaal waar. Het verkeer op een rotonde, elke rotonde, heeft alleen voorrang als dat aangegeven is met haaientanden voor de oprijdende auto's. Als dit niet het geval is, heeft rechts voorrang. Wat jammer is, is dat in Nederland 99,9% van de rotondes het opgaande verkeer haaientanden heeft. Dus als iemand dan een rotonde tegenkomt waar dit niet zo is, krijg je vervelende situaties omdat men de voorrangsregels inmiddels associeert met rotondes, ipv de haaientanden. EDIT: In het geval van verkeerslichten, zijn de tekens niet meer van belang. Die gelden dan alleen als de lichten buiten werking zijn.
I don't think they are in conflict. Suppose you have a priority street but also traffic lights. Are they in conflict? No. Traffic lights takes over the signs, same as when a police agent can takes over a traffic light. So in the case of Keizer Karelplein, if traffic lights fail, then drivers should follow the roundabouts rules.
@@nimmendit is (deels) niet waar, rotondes die aangeven staan met het blauwe bord bet de pijlen in een cirkel zijn ‘voorangsrotondes’, hierbij heeft het verkeer op de rotonde voorrang. Als er alleen pijlen opstaan is het geen voorangsrotonde, dan moet het verkeer op de rotonde tenzij anders staat aangegeven voorrang geven aan rechts. Deze verkeersborden kan je natuurlijk negeren als er werkende verkeerslichten staan of een verkeersregelaar.
@@thomaslijten9852 het cirkelvormige bord met pijlen geeft alleen de verplichte rijrichting aan, plus dat je niet helemaal rechts hoeft te rijden en rechts in mag halen, omdat het een rotonde betreft. De voorrangssituatie staat daar los van. Bij een voorrangsrotonde zijn er dus altijd haaientanden van toepassing.
What a coincidence, I just talked about this today with my aunt. She hates it so much she'll go out of her way to avoid it altogether. I too hate it but once you get it, it's not a big deal. I'm more worried about other road users who might mess up now.
Exactly. It's similar to people (often women, sorry) who can't park their car in reverse and avoid that, or who are afraid of merging on highways and change lanes.
As a British person (home of the signalised roundabout), this looks completely terrifying. Why are there traffic lights for entering traffic but not circulating? Why aren’t there road markings on the roundabout? Why is there a roundabout sign when this clearly isn’t a normal roundabout? Why isn’t there a safe way of crossing to the centre? We have some terrible signalised junctions but this would not pass here.
I can only answer your question about the traffic lights. There is a bike lane on the outside of the roundabout, that is what the traffic lights are for. Red for cars entering and leaving the roundabout (thus crossing the bike lane), green for bikes so they can follow the roundabout as well. Road markings would be nearly impossible as all exits are so close together.
Traffic on the Keizer Karel plein always must give way to traffic joining the 'roundabout' which is a verkeersplein, not a typical roundabout where traffic on it always has right of way. When joining traffic has green, traffic on the plein basically has red. Lanes on the plein are basically 'the further to the center, the longer you plan on going around'. As you go, you slowly go back out to the sides until you reach your exit and leave. As for the center and crossing to it: no one does apart from students wondering what happens there, and there are rumours of shady goings on which I was never able to verify while being a student at the University of Nijmegen. It's not intended to be heavily frequented.
Thinking at least they could signalise the circle part as well, or as a middle ground of blocking off all the feeding roads: do what's been done in London at Old Street roundabout and Elephant and Castle and block a segment of the roundabout and make it a two way U shaped road, so people can actually access the middle
I was about to correct you, but you're right: there's roundabout signs (sign D1)! Which absolutely shouldn't be there! These are supposed to be blue signs with a straight arrow pointing right, showing the mandated direction (sign C4). Skipping past the wrong sign, and understanding that this is not a roundabout but a traffic plaza, answers your other questions though. As everything is controlled by the most basic of general traffic rules: "right has precedence". Meaning that unless overruled by (road-)signage or traffic lights a road user has to give way to anything coming from the right. So if the outside lights turn green and a flow of cars enters the plaza, people on the plaza have to stop to avoid collision. The same goes for traffic within the plaza. If you choose to go to the inside to make, say, the quickest possible 5/6th turn, you'll have to be careful when moving back to the outer "lanes". As whatever is to your right has the right of way. Note here that it's still illegal to overtake on the right, so worse that can happen is someone "sticking" adjacent to you. Also note that above I said "choose". If anyone is scared to go to the inside because of the daunting task of getting back to the outside again, they can just stick to the outside "lanes" and also get there eventually. And for someone really not wanting to navigate this unique piece of infrastructure: there's always a route around it. Even in the (very unfavorable) example given in this video, where one has to cross the Graafseweg, there is an alternate route. Which will take 10 minutes from A to B, rather than the 7 minutes through Keizer Karel.
With the second bridge over the river Waal, a lot of traffic now can avoid the Keizer Karelplein. It has a very noticeable effect on the volume of cars. But still, it is a kind of a spectacle to watch. I recommend a Saturday afternoon, because then you have the largest number of drivers who don't know how to deal with Plein. First there are locals who don't regularly go over the Plein. Second there are visitors who only get there once in a while, and then there are visitors who don't know the Plein and have no idea what they are getting into. On weekdays, especially in the morning and evening rush hours, the Plein is being used by people who drive there every day and know exactly how to negotiate the Plein. Imo the biggest problem with the Plein is its vulnerability. If an accident happens on the Plein or on one of the roads close to it, the entire city can get in a gridlock.
I accidentally went there last year and I hated that roundabout. It’s so bad. But, Nijmegen has one of the best raised cycle paths / bridge I’ve ever seen. And there is a park near the station that is absolutely beautiful.
It’s not a roundabout though, which is one of the problems. A lot of people that aren’t familiar with it have no idea how to use it. Most accidents occur by drivers who think they don’t have to pay attention to cars coming from the right, because on a normal roundabout they don’t need to.
I've had my driving exams in the city. This roundabout required special training. It's actually a breeze to go through if you know what you're doing, and more importantly: if everyone else knows what you're doing. What's important is that you need to yield to traffic that drives onto the roundabout. That also means that when you drive on, you can basically pick wherever you want to drive. There's no lane markings but you don't need them. Drive on the inner side if you want to left-ish, drive on the middle if you want to go straight, drive on the outside if you want to go to the right. As you progress through the roundabout, you go from the inside of the ring to the outside of the ring until it's time to leave. All you need to do then is keep oncoming traffic in mind, and yield to them (which only happens if you need to do more than a half circle). This all works fine and pretty fast, IF everyone knows what they're doing. Which was easily the case 20 years ago. Most people didn't travel far back then, so it was mostly used by locals and feared by everyone else. These days, people just have a gps that just tells you to go there, not knowing what to expect. Yes, then people panic when they see it, and that causes issues.
No special training needed as you dont get a special driverslesson for entering, the Keizer Karelplein. Just use common sense. The Keizer Karelplein was my 2nd driverslesson.
The municipality is working on it. Two of the six roads (the onedirectly leading to the station and the one going into the city centre) have very slow and just a bit of traffic. The narrowed the Annastraat and the Graafseweg to two lanes over quite a distance. What the end goal is, is to sent all the traffic not meant for Nijmegen across the new citybridge. When driving on the Keizer Karel plein it is important to know it is not a roundabout(rotonde) but a traffic square (verkeersplein). Traffic coming from the right goes first. So the traffic on the KKplein has to wait for the sidestreets. Tip: if the bicycle traffic lights turn green and you're driving on the KKplein it is save to pass a sideroad.
What really bugs me is that it has roundabout signs. According to Wikipedia at least a verkeersplein is supposed to have one way street signs (C4) since 1996, not roundabout signs (D1). Even if that was fixed I'd put some shark's teeth on there, put traffic lights in the circle, or just make it a normal roundabout, but the incorrect signage on this already unusual intersection is my main problem.
Die omleiding via de Oversteek zal wel wat schelen, maar ik vrees dat dit niet genoeg is. Te veel grote wegen leiden nog naar het KKP. Het zou mooi zijn als het weer een echt verkeersluwe ronde laan wordt met een maximumsnelheid van 30 km per uur en het park via twee zebrapaden weer normaal bereikbaar wordt. Ik weet niet of er een 'hoofdas' is, maar die zou door een tunnel kunnen kunnen worden geleid, ongeveer zoals Venlo zijn (veel kleinere) rotonde voor het station verkeersluw heeft gemaakt. Zomaar een idee. Maar haalbaar?
@@starventure This "roundabout" predates the invention of the modern "priority" roundabout, so it follows the regular rules of "right goes first". It actually works reasonably well in isolation, but because of the amount of "new style" roundabouts too many people get confused (and don't know how to handle it). Also this setup almost forces driving slowly, but is well known as the place you fail your driving test.
I ended up on the Keizer Karelplein years ago not really knowing where I was. I just took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Nijmegen. Not knowing its actual name, I nicknamed it the Anarchist Roundabout, because it's devoid of any road markings to regulate traffic. And that's how I still think of it.
As a Dutch transit UA-camr I find the Keizer Karelplein very interesting. But as you point out it is very dangerous especially in the Netherlands as we don't really have other junctions like this. But, I guess Nijmegen does build it's roads a bit differently, like the Oranjesingel which connects to the Keizer Karelplein: 2x2 lanes without a barrier in between is something unheard of in the rest of the Netherlands. And there are lot's of examples like that in Nijmegen
Venlo used to have one of these on the old route to the German Autobahn, before they ripped it out and replaced it with a direct connection between the A74 and the German Autobahn 61. Even more stupid was that just before this "verkeersplein" there used to be a priority style roundabout. So this was doubly confusing for both the Dutch people driving towards Germany and the German people driving towards The Netherlands, since Dutch people were used to priority roundabouts and were suddenly confronted by this "verkeersplein" and for the Germans because they were used to the "verkeersplein" and suddenly were confronted with the priority roundabout just beyond the, for them, familiar "verkeersplein". Many traffic accidents used to happen there, so its total removal has made it much safer to go to Germany or come from Germany at Venlo.
* Laughs in Parisian * It's like a small version of the Place de l'Etoile, which oddly enough is apparently less deadly (one death every few years) despite having much more traffic at 110.000 cars a day... As in Nijmegen, the situation is getting better
im a student in groningen originally from the us and it is genuinely so nice to be in a place not dependent on cars and a city that shoves cars to the outskirts (makes taking the train so much nicer with all the construction on the ring roads too)
From someone who's been in Nijmegen and is listening, everyone who's been on the Keizer Karelplein brings it up to compare any other bad traffic situations to. "At least it's not the Keizer Karelplein" is a statement I've often heard (and uttered). Edit: Nijmegen also has the three lane highway that's actually a 50km/hr road. The ONLY place I've ever gotten a speeding ticket.
Funny, just this weekend driving through the KKP, my spouse said: "Well, I don't find it as terrifying as I found it 10 years ago, but now I am used to drive rentals in the middle of cities in eastern Europe, Spain and Italy, so..."
even if "you" know how to drive there, there is hardly any protection against other drivers messing up.. next to that, how to prove guilt even with a dashcam almost impossible.
Oh I cross that intersection almost every day - with both a regular car or with a 12m city bus. I think it's pretty usable, but it takes a bit of getting used too. It seems to have a huge amount of throughput. I do agree there is way too much regional traffic going through the centre of the city.
I had my driving lessons in Nijmegen. One whole lesson was devoted to practicing how to approach and pass the Keizer Karelplein correctly. These days, examiners aren't allowed to send you there anymore.
What a coincidence, I cycled on this rotary intersection for the very first time today and now this popped up on my suggested page. It was definitely a hellscape to navigate as someone who is not from Nijmegen 😅
What a coincidence. My wife and I just drove there on our way home and we discussed how bad it is. I always thought that maybe adding some lines or even raised lane separations may help a bit. Nijmegen is a really nice city, and it deserves better!
I'm fairly confident the lack of roadmarkings is by design. The idea is probably to have people pay more attention. That philosophy might be overtaken with all the smartphone use of today, though...
Keizer Karelplein. I learned to drive there and it's actually not that hard. Just know that you have to give way to traffic from the right and keep looking over your shoulder as you slowly switch lanes to your exit. 🤷
I guess the problem is that not every driver is amazing and everyone else has to share the same city with them. I have driven on roundabouts like this a lot in the UK, and just because it is possible doesn't mean other approaches wouldn't be far better. Particularly for those having to negotiate them via means other than a car.
@@liamness I was a novice driver and not a very good one at that. And I have cycled there very often because I only got my license at age 33. I think the Keizer Karel plein is just like math: it's hard because you think it is and you just need a better teacher.
It’s not a difficult road. Problem is people not getting into the correct lane when arriving at Keizer Karelplein, and trying to get around on the outerlane cutting trough traffic trying to turn right.
"All roads lead to the KKP". Wrong. All roads lead to the bridge across the river Waal, which was the only river crossing in that part of the country for a very long time. The only relief being the Rhein bridge upstream 20 km near Emmerich since 1965 and the Tacitus bridge 15 km down stream since 1976 and since a few years now the second bridge across the Waal towards the western edge of the town. On top of that, Nijmegen has a radial street pattern with the city centre on the edge of town. Apart from the KKP, there are two more rotundas: the Takenhofplein, also fitted with trafficlights to separate entering and exiting cars from other traffic, and the Steve Bikoplein, which does not have trafficlights for other traffic is guided further away with separate crossings.
I just had a look on Google maps. The problem isn't that Nijmegen has a radial street pattern, it's that the city has no clue what it's *circumferential* roads are. Yes, there are obviously many *tangential* roads (anything that's perpendicular to the big radial roads), but those usually connect only 2 or 3 of the radial roads, and then either end in a T-intersection at one of the radials, or curve off in a direction that's useless for the purposes of avoiding Keizer Karelplein, or they just thin out into a local road that's too thin to to be turned into a circumferential arterial. And even the newer(?) roads in the vicinity of the A73 don't seem to know what they are trying to do, except for continuing that radial/tangential pattern. The big problems that I see are also not where the rails are, but rather in the Waterkwatier (and just south of it), and in the Nijmegen-Oost/Ubbergen area, and between Burgermeester Daleslaan and d'Almarasweg, and Rentmeesterlaan/Wetzenlaan. The only exception is the possible connection between Muntweg and Hatertseveldweg, but that's quite optional.
@@Pystro In fact, it does and whats more: there are two, albeit not really discernable on a map but nonetheless bearing the brunt of vehicular traffic in Nijmegen. An inner radial (Groenestraat/Groenewoudseweg) and an outer (partially numbered S100). And Nijmegen is not the only one. Arnhem has its "verkeersplein" too, called Airborneplein or colloqially "Berenkuil" (Bear´s pit). If you would view it in google street view, notice that the souhern portion of the Eusebiusbuitensingel does not feed into the Airborneplein but in one of its joints, the Boulevard Heuvelink, hence it being a side street with traffic leaving onto the Boulevard Heuvelink having right of way.
I use the Keizer Karelplein several times a week. It's my favourite place to drive in Nijmegen. The two mistakes I see drivers make are not giving way to traffic entering the roundabout, which in a way is understandable for those not used to driving here as it goes against the standard rules of roundabouts. The second mistake drivers make is not being in the correct lane before entering the roundabout. If you plan on leaving the roundabout on one the first two exits you should be in the right sided lane before entering it. This way you will be on the outside lane of the roundabout which ensures you can leave the roundabout without any other traffic blocking you. If you need to use one of the other exits it's best to use the left sided lane, drive towards the inside of the roundabout and slowly move to the right until you can leave the roundabout without hindering anyone. Then all you need to do is hope nobody else is one the outside part blocking your exit because they didn't pick te correct lane from the start.
There are probably hundreds of junctions which work similarly in the UK, big "roundabouts" that are actually signalled junctions, in urban areas. (Often they weren't designed to operate that way initially, but traffic levels increased to the point where the roundabout would get snarled up and basically cease to function without signals) Maybe you'd love it here!
Traffic infrastructure shouldn't be made into a test that requires IQ higher than your shoe size, even the stupidest road users should be able to keep fluent and safe at all times.
Hahaha, a notorious roundabout. It's one of a few 'special roundabouts' that was part of my driver's licence course and exam living in a town 30 min away lol. It honestly flows really well once you're used to it but yeah.
Apart from the deaths and accidents off course it is THE MOST FUN place to drive until you encounter magic roundabouts in the UK. Which are completely nuts. You should make a video about them as well!! I lived in Nijmegen during the nineties and still am exited whenever i return to Nijmegen to visit friends. Even though they have a new bridge and I could avoid the Keizer Karel Plein I still drive over it as fast as I can, because that's the way to do it the best and safest way. Fast doesn't mean high speed. It means quick. You have to be totally focused, well prepared (the correct lane!!) and maximize your attention level, which is part of the fun, and watch out for all the traffic/people that don't get it or are even scared of it. People driving with me, and don't know Nijmegen, are usually shocked regardless of the speed I'm driving, which adds to the fun part
Although I'm also a bycicle advocate, I like driving my car and motorcycle. And driving at the Keizer Karelplein is complicated, a little dangerous but in my opinion great fun too. It's our unique French traffic chaos, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. And I enjoy it because it is so un-dutch and demanding! The real problem in Nijmegen is the history as you explained a little, the geography of the city with the river Waal,and the large railroads trough the city. The Waal bridge over the river was build in 1936 and is aftrr 90 years still the most important connection to the north. The road network design from ca. 1900 is almost unchanged and decides everything. Changing that design is almost impossible because there is no room to put the roads anywhere else. De new bidge the Oversteek only took over the growth in traffic, not the excisting trough flow of cars. But it' not that bad. Traffic even in rush hour is not completly jammed and the Keizer Karelplein serves many thousands of cars every day. And Nijmegen is a fine place to live, to bike and to drive. Not according to modern traffic design standards, but this city is 2000 years old, so let us be a little different from these young Dutch cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague ..😂
@@AardvarkDK No, there are often smaller crashes at this square, but people getting wounded or killed here is very very rare. The deadly accidents occur on other places of the city.
"This city is 2000 years old". First the city centre is not located on the original spot of Roman Nijmegen. Second Nijmegen of the middle ages was much smaller than today and Nijmegen only started to grow after the old walls had been torn down after 1874, when Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague were already much bigger. So what ever the reason for Nijmegen's present day traffic situation may be, it is not because it "is 2000 years old."
@@proinsiasbaiceir6580I think the person knows that; and is just having a bit of fun by teasing Amsterdam. It’s a young city, after all. Kampen was a fully grown-up adult port city before Amsterdam even had a dam
Driving there is a nightmare if you have your drivinglicense for about 2 months, drive in a 7 meter long PostNL van and have only 3 windows and 2 mirrors. I've done this a few years ago when I got a temp job as a mailman at PostNL. Learned a lot from this though, and now drive such vans with ease.
The roundabout many people complain about is Nijmegen's Keizer Traianusplein.... When you come from the north over the Waal river bridge you have to remember to keep right if you want go left and keep left if you want to go right....... Locals have no complaints but out-of-towners always screw up at that one.....
Hahaha… I agree! I never had any problems with the KKP, but when I just had my drivers license and I came back from a visit somewhere north of the river Waal, that part was very confusing. It’s not just the fact that you need to turn right if you want to go to the left, but once you did that you have to choose between three lanes. The first one leads you to the right (city center), the second one leads you into the direction of Berg en Dal and the the third one will lead you into the direction of Germany OR it will take you back to the bridge OR it takes you to the three lanes again. 😂 I had to get used to that situation for longer than I wanted.
Yes, it's very counterintuitive. When I come from the north and want to go to Berg en Dalseweg, I still tend to screw up. The words on the road look like they are misleading me for some reason.
On the topic of bad roundabouts in Nijmegen, you should take a look at the Industrieplein on the Energieweg. It's a terribly inefficient roundabout that always causes major backups during rush hour.
As you said, the solution would need some big politcal courage and a good redesign of the whole city's car network, that the residents would feel okay with. I'm afraid the fact that it hasn't happened yet is a sign that it probably won't for a very long time still, which is a shame.
Are there any mitigations that could be done in the meantime, at least? It being so wide and not having any lane markings seems like it would invite speeding, particularly when it is less busy. The wide radius of the entry / exit lanes could be tightened up too.
Haven't had any accidents since I got my license over 10 years ago. I drove here for the first time a few months ago and almost got hit on the side of my car because I didn't know I had to give priority to people from the right. And I'm a traffic engineer myself. It's a retarded situation.
For someone who graduated in Civil Engineering like me, I was thinking of a solution for the Emperor Charlemagne Square would be to construct a tunnel or two under it. Kinda like the two-level tunnel King-Alexander tunnel solution that was used for Maastricht and the A2 Highway. Knowing the highway formerly ran through the city, causing large traffic jams and interrupting local traffic flows.
One can't compare these situations. The highway at Maastricht is far bigger, justifying much higher investment. All traffic on the KKP is just to enter or leave Nijmegen. So better road signs on the highways around Nijmegen to direct to the right entry point of Nijmegen seems a better way to deal with this to me.
I recognized the thumbnail instantly. What a horrible road this is. Pretty much notorious in the whole country. Every time I'm in Nijmegen and realize my navigation guides me through this hellhole my mantra is: "not a roundabout, not a roundabout".
More than 25 years ago I use to live and study outside of the city of Nijmegen, the reason why I did my driving lessons and finally my driving exam in another city. The weekend after I did get my driving license, I went back home (Nijmegen). The first thing my mother did was tossing her car keys towards me with the remark “So we will practice the Keizer Karel plein”. There I drove in my mother’s old Volvo 340 towards the Keizer Karel plein. My mother gave me one piece of advice. Give gas, don’t hesitate, the other road users also have to watch out for you. So the last 25 years I still conquer the Keizer Karel plein with that attitude, I never had issues.
Exactly this was told to me by my driving instructor during the first 5 minutes of my first driving lesson. The trauma was averted and ridiculized. The roundabout actually makes a lot of sense. It has a better flow than allowing the flow on the circle prevailing.
Wonderful video. thanks for sharing it. When I had my first encounter (in 1980 as a new student in Nijmegen) with the KK-plein, I had my mum's car with me and was going for an appointment to see a room. It was early in the evening, but already dark in the winter. All these entries and exits on the KK-plein confused me so much that I didn't find the right exit to go to my appointment. I ended up driving back home and phone the landlord I couldn't find it. Someone else got the room.
5:15, now that you mention Zeeland, I think it could also be an interesting idea to make a video about how Dutch road design/bike networks/public transit is done in a rural and car dependent region like Zeeland. As an inhabitant of Zeeland, I am often left wondering if it would even be possible to create more public transit due to the small population and large distances.
Do one on the Van Heekplein (Den Bosch / 's Hertogenbosch) next. It was torn down relatively recently, but the original design and the current solution are such a breath of fresh air in how to get rid of carbrain in road design. And to boot, the new solution typically works *better* for cars.
As you did point out, there is no easy solution for this. This might be the reason why Nijmegen has not changed it drastically yet. (Nijmegen city is not that car friendy.) As someone else pointed out in the comments already: some arterial roads where narrowed some time ago and cars from outside Nijmegen using them where rerouted. As a pedestrian I always wonder how to get to the park inside the Keizer Karelplein safely. I never deared to go to it. By the way: the first syllable of ‘Karel’ is not pronounced as ‘care’ but as ‘car’. No pun intended. :-)
I once was forced to drive trough Nijmegen as the A73 to the A50 was blocked. The only other option is then to take the N325/A325 to Arnhem which is the other major crossing over the Rhine river. But this leads you trough Nijmegen and over the Keizer Karel Plein. In the end it possibly had been quicker to use the much longer detour via the Willem Alexanderbrug at Tiel over local roads to avoid the blocked A73 as traffic in Nijmegen was a nightmare, it took over one hour to get trough the city alone.
Excellent video - I especially appreciate the historical context! Would love to see more videos looking at the things that can be improved in NL :) Stagnation is a real risk, unfortunately.
You were in Estonia? I live in Tallinn. Glad to see you doing so much for Ukraine, I donated after watching the video! If you're ever in Tallinn again (which is unlikely, let's be honest), I'd be happy to grab a beer.
If you don't know het Keizer Karel plein then it feels complicated, dangerous and chaotic. As a local I think it's big fun, safe and efficiënt. You have to be decisive in choosing your path, drive pretty fast 1/so you won't be bothered by clumsy out of town tourist who panick driving there and 2/ ro be able to drive 3/4 around in one sweep towards your exit road without being forced to stop for cars Engering the roundabout when their traffic lights go green. The only people complaining about it are the people who haven't driven it regularly enough😅
I was born and raised in Nijmegen and I never left because I love my city. I recognised every single image of my hometown in this video. Of course I know about the bad reputation of the Keizer Karel Plein, but I can’t help loving it. I love driving there. But there’s one thing that surprised me a little, because there has been taken action to tackle this problem. As you perfectly demonstrated there are several important roads that lead to the Keizer Karel Plein. I look at it like the center of a spiderweb 🕸️ But like a spiderweb there are multiple roads circling away from the centre. And some of these roads are being made suitable to function as a fast way to go around the city centre. And they helped to decrease the traffic jams that so often occurred. The biggest problem is the fact that Nijmegen, until recently, had only one way to go north by crossing the only bridge there was across the river Waal. Most of the traffic to and from the north and even to and from the west had to go via that one bridge and there weren’t any real alternatives unless you were willing to take long detours. Since 2013 we have a much needed second bridge (De Oversteek - The Crossing). That second bridge helped a little as well, although it’s more beneficial to the gigantic traffic jams in large areas around Nijmegen every time something happened in Nijmegen, especially when the Keizer Karel Plein would be blocked due to an accident, because a lot of people don’t understand the rules and cause accidents to happen. That’s because it looks like a normal Dutch roundabout even though it isn’t. Since this is a fairly new video I can tell you that it used to be much worse. The train station and the roads to the real centre of the city are terrible indeed. And it used to be so extremely beautiful. Unfortunately, in the 2nd WW, 1944, American and English pilots bombed the station and a large part of Nijmegen. It killed 800+ citizens and it destroyed almost half of the city. Especially that part of Nijmegen never recovered from it. There are new plans, but given the current situation there’s not much to be expected. Again, I love my city, but it used to be so much prettier. Probably one of the most beautiful cities of the Netherlands, which it probably still would be if it wasn’t for the bombardement. 😢
This so much reminds me of working on legacy software. At some time, someone build something to match the requirements and conditions back in time. Then people started adding new stuff. And now it may be obvious that something is foul but everything is strongly interconnected and fixing a small part would require reworking the whole system.
Nijmegen is my hometown. I remember driving over the Keizer karelplein during my driving lessons many times. Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually kinda of fun to drive over.
The middle is actually the perfect place to chill on a bench and watch all the near misses (source: having sat there countless times, never having actually seen an accident but having heard a lot of screeching tires)
We thought about making a bypass around the east side of the city, but hey, that would mean invading Germany. Invading is not the problem, conquering is... So we sticked to the Keizer Karelplein. And because of the Keizer Karelplein most visitors prefer to come by train. In the end it is one of our most effective inhibitors of car traffic.
As an ex-Nijmegenaar I don't see the problem. If you get your driver's license in Nijmegen you've learned the logic of this roundabout, and it's, eh, logical. For bikes it's fantastic. You have more or a less a "groene golf" going with the flow, and there is even a bike lane against the flow. I love it. And given how ludicrously incorrect your facts are, you should do more than update the video description: just take it down. It's a blamage (?black eye?) on an otherwise decent channel.
Thanks for making this video, you are expressing my thoughts about it very well. I'm from the Randstad and I travel through Nijmegen almost every weekend. Every single time I'm annoyed by this monstrocity.
I drove on the Karel de Grote plein once in my life when i just got my license. Because we were going for a leisure walk in the area. It was an incredibly stressful experience
Massive kudos for you shoowing footage of the protests in Groningen against the government's gas-mining policies when you first said "the netherlands has problems". 'Tis a good cause to have picked even if it was just for 5 seconds of B-roll.
@3:44 for those of you who, like me, wonder which city this is: this is Groningen. It took me a while to find it, the horse racing track to the left and bottom of center was a big hint, as there's only a couple of horse racing tracks in The Netherlands.
Refreshing video. It looks like that all traffic in and towards the Keizer Karelplein must be moved underground. Like it was done with the A2/N2 in Maastricht. At tremendous cost.
I remember that during the orientation week of uni, more than a 100 people would gather in the park to watch sunrise. It was always really fun, untill we had to go cross the road again after sunrise, because at that point cars would already be deiving nonstop
When I am occasionally in Nijmegen I always like to drive on the Keizer Karel plein because it gives me the feeling to be in France.. It is that the people in Nijmegen are so friendly that there are not more accidents.
Compared to all the converted verkeerspleinen in Utrecht, I'm always amazed by the throughput the KK plein achieves. Just try getting out of Lunetten in the morning. Seeing the reactions here, I wonder what people think of the new fake ovotondes called voorrangsplein. Where only the people on secondary roads have to yield.
Having traveled around Nijmegen a lot for my job the one thing that upsets me the most is that it has no lanes or priority rules. You have to yield to the right which is a totally weird design to unknown people. And I'm pretty sure that it has the capacity of 4 or 5 lanes. So this is a really good "looking over your shoulder" test. The only thing that's organized are the traffic lights organizing the flow between motorcyclists and vulnerable traffic. Once the traffic lights turn off, I imagine a real unsafe situation will occur with lots of jams. You can find that same design on the Takenhofplein. Other odd intersections for a traffic services inspector like me are for example the intersection N325 - Oranjesingel, Industrieplein and Steve Bikoplein in Nijmegen.
When I first drove on that plaza, I just had my driver's licence (in the late 90s), and thought "this must be the stupidest design of a plaza, ever", and I haven't seen anything worse since (though the Utrecht plazas come close). Not mentioned in the video, but imho one thing that aids to the unsafety a lot, is the fact it's a multi-lane plaza, without the lanes being painted on the road, like everywhere else in the Netherlands. The Nijmegen city counsel must be very proud of its century-long stupidity.
I've been to Nijmegen once by car and got the Keizer Karelplein, it was hell. So glad to have someone sitting next to me to point out when to go and when to brake. I live near Alkmaar with the Kooimeer connecting the A9, N9, N242 and traffic to the city center. Sure, it's not the same at all, but why doesn't Keizer Karelplein have these two things that Kooimeer does: 1) traffic lanes to direct the cars to one or the other exit. 2) traffic lights on the roundabout, so cars have to stop and let upcoming traffic through (wich also have traffic lights btw).
Both questions, easy answer: lack of space. About 4 cars fit next to each other on the square and there are 6 roads. Separate lanes will therefore not work. And by placing 6 exit traffic lights on the square, everything will be completely stuck. These installations, including the stop strip, take up too much space
It's interesting to see how hard it is to get this changed. I'm from Nijmegen and the city has already been working on re-routing traffic around the city for decades so as to make it possible to extremely reduce traffic through the center. The problem is that without just closing down routes through the center (and therefore forcing traffic onto other routes) the extra outer ring options created just induce more demand. And while there have been many attempts over the years it's apparently still not politically viable to push reductions/closings on Keizer Karel through, even in one of the most left-wing and progressive cities in the Netherlands. And take this layman's opinion as a side note; I think it doesn't help that much of the public transport in Nijmegen is also mostly a star layout centered onto Central station close-by (as seen in the video). This means there is rarely a faster 'circular' public transport option available, especially between the more eastern neighborhoods (Altrade - Limos - Kwakkenberg) and the more central-south (Grootstal - Brakkenstein - Hatert) and south-west (Dukenburg - Weezenhof) neighborhoods. If these routes were more available (f.i. with some circular lines) they might help reduce the amount of intra-city car journeys having to go through Keizer Karel Plein. But that's just from a citizens perspective without any formal knowledge on public transport and urban design.
Fantastic video! You just keep improving at every step. The part inspiring me the most must be in the end at around 11:15 explaining the transition. How motornormality takes over, giving drivers freedom at the expense at everyone outside. The reason it inspires me: At that moment I felt completely defeated. Ready to give up. Then BLAM, you explain what needs to be done. Cut off through traffic. Simple as can be. How on earth is that motivating? A solution that requires extraordinary leadership and lots of political knowhow and most likely being voted out of office? - You finally explained the missing piece in my puzzle. The engine of the problem. Why it's easy to go in one direction but not the other. It only requires one single individual to purchase a car to make everyone unsafe. But it requires a mutual agreement from an entire city to bring back such a decision. That decision is hard to make, will be painful to transition to. But just like getting back into shape. I never heard anyone want to go back once it's done. I hope that was at least one of the intended concepts you wanted to express using this video. May the war end soon. Wishing you the absolute best.
Lived quite close to the Keizer Karelplein. The ironic cherry on top indeed is the little park. Getting there is a truly hazardous undertaking as there are nu under or overpasses. Not for the fainthearted. Added fun is that the park has to be maintained, adding to the traffic chaos.
I know this horrible roundabout well. It is a nightmare. We used to have more of these kind of horrible roundabouts, most were converted into something more sensible.
Oh my god I was here in February. My friend from Germany came to pick me up from this trainstation and the roundabout is extremely confusing. He ended up at the Bus stop!
If this interests you, maybe the notorious former roundabout at the intersection of highway A7 and A6 near Joure where 110 accidents in a year happened and where traffic jams were the norm may interest you. And how it was eventually fixed of course. Like in every country infrastructure is a work in progress in the Netherlands
Looking at a map of Nijmegen, the thing that jumps out after a bit is the lack of a city ring that would normally take this traffic. The "obvious" place to build it seems to me to be to expand the S100 (Weg door Jonkerbos and further east), tunnel under the railway by Sionsweg and then either connect it to the Sophiaweg and expand that as well to connect to the N325 of bulldoze Heilig Landstichting to build a new 2x2 road and connect that to the N325. Alternately, you could expand the Burgemeester Daleslaan, bulldoze the Haterse Hei neighbourhood and then expand Houtlaan/D'Almarasweg/Sophiaweg/Holleweg and connect to the N325. Either way the N325 would need some expanding too to take the extra traffic. But you could probably simplify the mess that is the N325/Oranjesingel junction. Even though that would eventually greatly increase the average happiness of Nijmegen citizens... good luck getting support from the locals when their local road is becoming the city ring and you're bulldozing a museum/park...
Haha! I am originally from Nijmegen and when I first started drivers aid I asked the instructor to take me back there at some point. Funny thing is that most Dutch people that are not familiar with the Keizer Karelplein also find it disturbing.
I'm from there and you do not need to apologize, that traffic point is horrendous. Fortunately there are a lot of good ways to avoid it without too much of a detour. This does however also mean that most of the people driving there, are people whose GPS sent them there and who do not know the city as well. This also meaning they don't know the KKP as well, and are more likely to end up in an unsafe situation.
Yeah, I encountered the Plein about 20 years ago and wondered why that monstrosity was there. To see it again today in your video is even more surprising. Why is that thing still there? But I see, that's why. Still, I wonder what a city like Utrecht or Amsterdam would have done. I doubt it would still be here today if it were in either of those cities....
i kind of like the anarchy on keizer karel plein, plenty of people are afraid to drive there but the trick is to just keep your eyes peeled around you at all times
Everyone who had driving lessons in the area around Nijmegen feared this thing. The worst that could happen was that the examinator would choose a route along Keizer Karelplein. I was lucky, my examinator led me to A73.
I live in Nijmegen and I had to drive here with my driving lessons. An absolute nightmare. Now I'm an expert and I find it hilarious others struggeling with it. Like I'm a veteran and I see the rookies using it for the first time
For those who have never been on the Keizer Karel: On basically every Dutch roundabout, cars that are on the roundabout have right of way over cars trying to get on the roundabout. This creates an effective first-in-first-out system where traffic on the roundabout is minimized and the chance of a crash is minimal since cars trying to get on the roundabout just have to wait for the roundabout to clear before they can get on, simple as. However, the pseudo-roundabout hellhole that is the Keizer Karel instead has a confusing traffic light system where cars trying to get on the plaza have right of way if the light for those on the plaza is red. This is, as far as I know, the _only_ location in the Netherlands that works this way. As such, not only is it dangerous, but Dutch drivers are often completely unused to this method. Navigating the Keizer Karel therefore requires a whole separate skillset that you never need anywhere else. To make matters worse, most large roundabouts have separate lanes. The inner lane is for longer turns (usually going left) and the outer lane is for shorter turns; the inner lane eventually filters into the outer lane. The Keizer Karel is large too, plenty large for three or more cars to drive side-by-side... But as you can see in the video, there's no lanes or markings of any kind. Now imagine you're a Dutch driver coming onto the Keizer Karel for the first time, having no idea of what you're getting into. It's already confusing and chaotic enough, but now you also need to adjust without any guidance. It's a free-for-all out there and you better pray that the other drivers are alert enough to not crash into you when you inevitably have to make a sudden stop in front of them. Yeah, no wonder this thing causes so many accidents. Woe unto you if you have to take your driver's license test in Nijmegen. I thank my lucky stars every day that I got to take mine in Den Bosch, even if that city is by no means perfect either.
As a former resident of Nijmegen, I have crossed the Keizer-Karelplein (pronounced Keizer-Kah-rel, not Kay-rel) many times by car, by bicycle and on foot without issue. It's like driving in Paris, you have to drive defensively but positively: do not hesistate and make sure other drivers know what your intentions are. As the locals say "kijken, gasgeven en gaan!" (look, hit the throttle and go!). It has become so dangerous because modern day drivers are common to everything in neat order, while the Keizer-Karelplein isn't. My wife, who is not from Nijmegen, is calling it "Keizer-Chaosplein" and always lets me drive when we're visiting Nijmegen 🙃
The statistics mentioned here are absolute bullshit. There has not been a single traffic fatality at the Keizer Karel Plein in recent history. The report referenced talks about 'slachtoffers', but this means both injuries and fatalities. What's more, the report referenced here was retracted by RTL, as it was flawed. A new research was published a few months later which showed 53 crashed in the 2014-2017 period. Out of these 53 crashes, 52 were only fender benders, and there was only a single injury involved in these crashes.
Of course, every injury is one too many, but what this video doesn't mention is that the amounts of traffic of course relate to the expected number of crashes. Also, this rotary is actually a very space-efficient way to process traffic from six different roads (technically even seven with the access to the church). In essence it is more like six different t-junctions in a very small area. What this traffic rotary does very well is process this traffic efficiently and in such a way that overall traffic is slowed down enough to make sure that if a crash occurs the danger to the people involved is lowered considerably.
Of course the point about not wanting this much traffic around your city center is valid. The city has also taken a lot of efforts to move traffic away from this area. However, as you say, this is not easily done. A lot of the historic structures of the city, as well as the geographical characteristics of the area, make it difficult to move traffic away.
It's really a pity that a video that could have been interesting results in a populist sensationalist fake news story. I really hope you'll do something to rectify the mistakes!
Hey there. Thank you for this, if this is correct ill make a post on it.
Hello, I have updated the video description and pinned this comment. Im going to see if I can edit the video within youtube to avoid reuploading.
Tho this comment is a little harsh, it is right, looking at it you know how to take feedback like a pro though! But it is still a very good video, showing the Netherlands isn’t anywhere near perfect (even if we like to think we are haha). Keep up the hard work!
De meeste ongelukken komen van de duitsers die denken dat dit een rotonde is terwijl het een verkeersplein dus recjts heeft voorrang en niet de "rotonde" ik rij er 2 tot 4 per dag overheen dus zie elke week wel een aanrijding.
Het trajanusplein is een groter probleem speciaal als je van de brug komt
When I saw the thumbnail I said to myself, "if this isn't about Keizer Karel, he's wrong." Well I did not end up disappointed
When I did my driving exam, a life time ago, we drove for 30mins to get to this monstrosity and when my examiner and driving instructor were having a leisurely chat, I was about to leave this roundabout of death when a scooter came like a devil out of hell from nowhere and wanted to pass in front of the car just when I was speeding up, I broke so hard that the engine died all not to crush the idiot. Not my instructor nor my examiner had seen the scooter coming, so if it hadn't been for me I would have crushed the scooter. So, yeah even though I had made really stupid mistakes during the exam I passed cause I was there and didn't panic when it mattered. So, I passed my exam that day on my first try, which is a rarity in the Netherlands. But I never forgot that damned roundabout, so when I read the title of this video I knew exactly which nightmare we were talking about 😊
A rarity? In the Netherlands, 44% pass the very first time they have a driver’s exam…
driving into that nightmare on your driving exam, fucked up.
Passing the test on your first try is not a rarity lol. About half of the people pass the test on their first try...
@@pjotrtje0NL perhaps but I don't know anyone who passed on their first try, I am the only one.
@@elenna_alexia yeah they love doing that to first time drivers though, their reasoning if you manage that, you can manage anything. They were right, a few year later I drove over la Place d'etoile in Paris and I survived that 🤣
I live in Nijmegen, so I saw the pictures and thought "this is gonna be about the Keizer Karelplein, isn't it." Good to see I was right.
Bro I have been there
It is so counterintuitive that you have to give priority to those who enter the roundabout
Because they have green light
But there is nothing telling you about it
Kamikaze plein in Nijmegen 😂
Drove there a zillion times, without problems. It's fun and not so difficult if you arrive there after returning from a cartrip in Italy, or from rounding Pl. Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France. :)
I think highlighting things that aren't "perfect" in the Netherlands is crucially important cause it shows timelines of change...that those who live in countries can't say "yes but the Netherlands different". Yes it's different, but it started pretty much looking the same as other cities in the 1950's, and here's some proof still that it is a "work in progress"
My biggest gripe with the Keizer Karelplein, is that they use the roundabout signs, even though it is not a roundabout. We have signs that indicate a mandatory driving direction, but for some reason, the municipality (or whomever is in charge of the signs) decided to add to a confusing situation by placing the wrong signs.
For those who don't get why this is bad: on a roundabout, traffic wanting to enter the roundabout has to yield to traffic already on the roundabout. Keizer Karelplein, being a rotary system (or "verkeersplein") is managed by traffic lights. The sings and the lights are in conflict. And more confusion is the last thing this plein needs.
Is that true? Long ago, they were called 'verkeersplein' with the same signs i think, and traffic entering the plein had right of way (there was one in the north of Haarlem a fairly long time ago). Then some of them had right of way for traffic on the plein, and others still worked the old way. Since the roundabout way proved to be safer, that became the norm. But i wonder if the sign actually changed. I don't really remember. Too long ago really..
Niet helemaal waar. Het verkeer op een rotonde, elke rotonde, heeft alleen voorrang als dat aangegeven is met haaientanden voor de oprijdende auto's. Als dit niet het geval is, heeft rechts voorrang. Wat jammer is, is dat in Nederland 99,9% van de rotondes het opgaande verkeer haaientanden heeft. Dus als iemand dan een rotonde tegenkomt waar dit niet zo is, krijg je vervelende situaties omdat men de voorrangsregels inmiddels associeert met rotondes, ipv de haaientanden.
EDIT: In het geval van verkeerslichten, zijn de tekens niet meer van belang. Die gelden dan alleen als de lichten buiten werking zijn.
I don't think they are in conflict. Suppose you have a priority street but also traffic lights. Are they in conflict? No. Traffic lights takes over the signs, same as when a police agent can takes over a traffic light. So in the case of Keizer Karelplein, if traffic lights fail, then drivers should follow the roundabouts rules.
@@nimmendit is (deels) niet waar, rotondes die aangeven staan met het blauwe bord bet de pijlen in een cirkel zijn ‘voorangsrotondes’, hierbij heeft het verkeer op de rotonde voorrang. Als er alleen pijlen opstaan is het geen voorangsrotonde, dan moet het verkeer op de rotonde tenzij anders staat aangegeven voorrang geven aan rechts. Deze verkeersborden kan je natuurlijk negeren als er werkende verkeerslichten staan of een verkeersregelaar.
@@thomaslijten9852 het cirkelvormige bord met pijlen geeft alleen de verplichte rijrichting aan, plus dat je niet helemaal rechts hoeft te rijden en rechts in mag halen, omdat het een rotonde betreft. De voorrangssituatie staat daar los van. Bij een voorrangsrotonde zijn er dus altijd haaientanden van toepassing.
What a coincidence, I just talked about this today with my aunt. She hates it so much she'll go out of her way to avoid it altogether. I too hate it but once you get it, it's not a big deal. I'm more worried about other road users who might mess up now.
Exactly. It's similar to people (often women, sorry) who can't park their car in reverse and avoid that, or who are afraid of merging on highways and change lanes.
As a British person (home of the signalised roundabout), this looks completely terrifying. Why are there traffic lights for entering traffic but not circulating? Why aren’t there road markings on the roundabout? Why is there a roundabout sign when this clearly isn’t a normal roundabout? Why isn’t there a safe way of crossing to the centre? We have some terrible signalised junctions but this would not pass here.
I can only answer your question about the traffic lights.
There is a bike lane on the outside of the roundabout, that is what the traffic lights are for. Red for cars entering and leaving the roundabout (thus crossing the bike lane), green for bikes so they can follow the roundabout as well.
Road markings would be nearly impossible as all exits are so close together.
Traffic on the Keizer Karel plein always must give way to traffic joining the 'roundabout' which is a verkeersplein, not a typical roundabout where traffic on it always has right of way. When joining traffic has green, traffic on the plein basically has red.
Lanes on the plein are basically 'the further to the center, the longer you plan on going around'. As you go, you slowly go back out to the sides until you reach your exit and leave.
As for the center and crossing to it: no one does apart from students wondering what happens there, and there are rumours of shady goings on which I was never able to verify while being a student at the University of Nijmegen. It's not intended to be heavily frequented.
Thinking at least they could signalise the circle part as well, or as a middle ground of blocking off all the feeding roads: do what's been done in London at Old Street roundabout and Elephant and Castle and block a segment of the roundabout and make it a two way U shaped road, so people can actually access the middle
I was about to correct you, but you're right: there's roundabout signs (sign D1)! Which absolutely shouldn't be there! These are supposed to be blue signs with a straight arrow pointing right, showing the mandated direction (sign C4).
Skipping past the wrong sign, and understanding that this is not a roundabout but a traffic plaza, answers your other questions though. As everything is controlled by the most basic of general traffic rules: "right has precedence". Meaning that unless overruled by (road-)signage or traffic lights a road user has to give way to anything coming from the right.
So if the outside lights turn green and a flow of cars enters the plaza, people on the plaza have to stop to avoid collision.
The same goes for traffic within the plaza. If you choose to go to the inside to make, say, the quickest possible 5/6th turn, you'll have to be careful when moving back to the outer "lanes". As whatever is to your right has the right of way. Note here that it's still illegal to overtake on the right, so worse that can happen is someone "sticking" adjacent to you.
Also note that above I said "choose". If anyone is scared to go to the inside because of the daunting task of getting back to the outside again, they can just stick to the outside "lanes" and also get there eventually.
And for someone really not wanting to navigate this unique piece of infrastructure: there's always a route around it. Even in the (very unfavorable) example given in this video, where one has to cross the Graafseweg, there is an alternate route. Which will take 10 minutes from A to B, rather than the 7 minutes through Keizer Karel.
With the second bridge over the river Waal, a lot of traffic now can avoid the Keizer Karelplein. It has a very noticeable effect on the volume of cars. But still, it is a kind of a spectacle to watch. I recommend a Saturday afternoon, because then you have the largest number of drivers who don't know how to deal with Plein. First there are locals who don't regularly go over the Plein. Second there are visitors who only get there once in a while, and then there are visitors who don't know the Plein and have no idea what they are getting into. On weekdays, especially in the morning and evening rush hours, the Plein is being used by people who drive there every day and know exactly how to negotiate the Plein.
Imo the biggest problem with the Plein is its vulnerability. If an accident happens on the Plein or on one of the roads close to it, the entire city can get in a gridlock.
Hence the much needed second bridge.
So much fun to drive on and race through tho!
I accidentally went there last year and I hated that roundabout. It’s so bad. But, Nijmegen has one of the best raised cycle paths / bridge I’ve ever seen. And there is a park near the station that is absolutely beautiful.
It’s not a roundabout though, which is one of the problems. A lot of people that aren’t familiar with it have no idea how to use it. Most accidents occur by drivers who think they don’t have to pay attention to cars coming from the right, because on a normal roundabout they don’t need to.
I've had my driving exams in the city. This roundabout required special training. It's actually a breeze to go through if you know what you're doing, and more importantly: if everyone else knows what you're doing.
What's important is that you need to yield to traffic that drives onto the roundabout. That also means that when you drive on, you can basically pick wherever you want to drive. There's no lane markings but you don't need them. Drive on the inner side if you want to left-ish, drive on the middle if you want to go straight, drive on the outside if you want to go to the right. As you progress through the roundabout, you go from the inside of the ring to the outside of the ring until it's time to leave. All you need to do then is keep oncoming traffic in mind, and yield to them (which only happens if you need to do more than a half circle).
This all works fine and pretty fast, IF everyone knows what they're doing. Which was easily the case 20 years ago. Most people didn't travel far back then, so it was mostly used by locals and feared by everyone else. These days, people just have a gps that just tells you to go there, not knowing what to expect. Yes, then people panic when they see it, and that causes issues.
You’re almost right. 😅
No special training needed as you dont get a special driverslesson for entering, the Keizer Karelplein. Just use common sense. The Keizer Karelplein was my 2nd driverslesson.
The municipality is working on it. Two of the six roads (the onedirectly leading to the station and the one going into the city centre) have very slow and just a bit of traffic. The narrowed the Annastraat and the Graafseweg to two lanes over quite a distance. What the end goal is, is to sent all the traffic not meant for Nijmegen across the new citybridge.
When driving on the Keizer Karel plein it is important to know it is not a roundabout(rotonde) but a traffic square (verkeersplein). Traffic coming from the right goes first. So the traffic on the KKplein has to wait for the sidestreets. Tip: if the bicycle traffic lights turn green and you're driving on the KKplein it is save to pass a sideroad.
kkrplein
What really bugs me is that it has roundabout signs. According to Wikipedia at least a verkeersplein is supposed to have one way street signs (C4) since 1996, not roundabout signs (D1). Even if that was fixed I'd put some shark's teeth on there, put traffic lights in the circle, or just make it a normal roundabout, but the incorrect signage on this already unusual intersection is my main problem.
If it is not a roundabout, why is it shaped like one? Looks circular to me. And are there stop lights at the crossings or am I missing it?
Die omleiding via de Oversteek zal wel wat schelen, maar ik vrees dat dit niet genoeg is. Te veel grote wegen leiden nog naar het KKP. Het zou mooi zijn als het weer een echt verkeersluwe ronde laan wordt met een maximumsnelheid van 30 km per uur en het park via twee zebrapaden weer normaal bereikbaar wordt. Ik weet niet of er een 'hoofdas' is, maar die zou door een tunnel kunnen kunnen worden geleid, ongeveer zoals Venlo zijn (veel kleinere) rotonde voor het station verkeersluw heeft gemaakt. Zomaar een idee. Maar haalbaar?
@@starventure This "roundabout" predates the invention of the modern "priority" roundabout, so it follows the regular rules of "right goes first". It actually works reasonably well in isolation, but because of the amount of "new style" roundabouts too many people get confused (and don't know how to handle it). Also this setup almost forces driving slowly, but is well known as the place you fail your driving test.
I ended up on the Keizer Karelplein years ago not really knowing where I was. I just took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Nijmegen. Not knowing its actual name, I nicknamed it the Anarchist Roundabout, because it's devoid of any road markings to regulate traffic. And that's how I still think of it.
As a Dutch transit UA-camr I find the Keizer Karelplein very interesting. But as you point out it is very dangerous especially in the Netherlands as we don't really have other junctions like this. But, I guess Nijmegen does build it's roads a bit differently, like the Oranjesingel which connects to the Keizer Karelplein: 2x2 lanes without a barrier in between is something unheard of in the rest of the Netherlands. And there are lot's of examples like that in Nijmegen
Venlo used to have one of these on the old route to the German Autobahn, before they ripped it out and replaced it with a direct connection between the A74 and the German Autobahn 61. Even more stupid was that just before this "verkeersplein" there used to be a priority style roundabout. So this was doubly confusing for both the Dutch people driving towards Germany and the German people driving towards The Netherlands, since Dutch people were used to priority roundabouts and were suddenly confronted by this "verkeersplein" and for the Germans because they were used to the "verkeersplein" and suddenly were confronted with the priority roundabout just beyond the, for them, familiar "verkeersplein".
Many traffic accidents used to happen there, so its total removal has made it much safer to go to Germany or come from Germany at Venlo.
* Laughs in Parisian *
It's like a small version of the Place de l'Etoile, which oddly enough is apparently less deadly (one death every few years) despite having much more traffic at 110.000 cars a day...
As in Nijmegen, the situation is getting better
The architect was indeed inspired by Place de l'Etoile (Charles de Gaulle) .
im a student in groningen originally from the us and it is genuinely so nice to be in a place not dependent on cars and a city that shoves cars to the outskirts (makes taking the train so much nicer with all the construction on the ring roads too)
What drew you to The Netherlands? 😊
From someone who's been in Nijmegen and is listening, everyone who's been on the Keizer Karelplein brings it up to compare any other bad traffic situations to.
"At least it's not the Keizer Karelplein" is a statement I've often heard (and uttered).
Edit: Nijmegen also has the three lane highway that's actually a 50km/hr road. The ONLY place I've ever gotten a speeding ticket.
Funny, just this weekend driving through the KKP, my spouse said: "Well, I don't find it as terrifying as I found it 10 years ago, but now I am used to drive rentals in the middle of cities in eastern Europe, Spain and Italy, so..."
even if "you" know how to drive there, there is hardly any protection against other drivers messing up.. next to that, how to prove guilt even with a dashcam almost impossible.
Oh I cross that intersection almost every day - with both a regular car or with a 12m city bus. I think it's pretty usable, but it takes a bit of getting used too. It seems to have a huge amount of throughput.
I do agree there is way too much regional traffic going through the centre of the city.
I had my driving lessons in Nijmegen. One whole lesson was devoted to practicing how to approach and pass the Keizer Karelplein correctly.
These days, examiners aren't allowed to send you there anymore.
What a coincidence, I cycled on this rotary intersection for the very first time today and now this popped up on my suggested page. It was definitely a hellscape to navigate as someone who is not from Nijmegen 😅
Always found it a very odd and out of place intersection
What a coincidence. My wife and I just drove there on our way home and we discussed how bad it is.
I always thought that maybe adding some lines or even raised lane separations may help a bit.
Nijmegen is a really nice city, and it deserves better!
I'm fairly confident the lack of roadmarkings is by design. The idea is probably to have people pay more attention. That philosophy might be overtaken with all the smartphone use of today, though...
Keizer Karelplein. I learned to drive there and it's actually not that hard. Just know that you have to give way to traffic from the right and keep looking over your shoulder as you slowly switch lanes to your exit. 🤷
I guess the problem is that not every driver is amazing and everyone else has to share the same city with them. I have driven on roundabouts like this a lot in the UK, and just because it is possible doesn't mean other approaches wouldn't be far better. Particularly for those having to negotiate them via means other than a car.
@@liamness I was a novice driver and not a very good one at that. And I have cycled there very often because I only got my license at age 33. I think the Keizer Karel plein is just like math: it's hard because you think it is and you just need a better teacher.
It’s not a difficult road. Problem is people not getting into the correct lane when arriving at Keizer Karelplein, and trying to get around on the outerlane cutting trough traffic trying to turn right.
"All roads lead to the KKP". Wrong. All roads lead to the bridge across the river Waal, which was the only river crossing in that part of the country for a very long time. The only relief being the Rhein bridge upstream 20 km near Emmerich since 1965 and the Tacitus bridge 15 km down stream since 1976 and since a few years now the second bridge across the Waal towards the western edge of the town. On top of that, Nijmegen has a radial street pattern with the city centre on the edge of town.
Apart from the KKP, there are two more rotundas: the Takenhofplein, also fitted with trafficlights to separate entering and exiting cars from other traffic, and the Steve Bikoplein, which does not have trafficlights for other traffic is guided further away with separate crossings.
I just had a look on Google maps.
The problem isn't that Nijmegen has a radial street pattern, it's that the city has no clue what it's *circumferential* roads are. Yes, there are obviously many *tangential* roads (anything that's perpendicular to the big radial roads), but those usually connect only 2 or 3 of the radial roads, and then either end in a T-intersection at one of the radials, or curve off in a direction that's useless for the purposes of avoiding Keizer Karelplein, or they just thin out into a local road that's too thin to to be turned into a circumferential arterial. And even the newer(?) roads in the vicinity of the A73 don't seem to know what they are trying to do, except for continuing that radial/tangential pattern.
The big problems that I see are also not where the rails are, but rather in the Waterkwatier (and just south of it), and in the Nijmegen-Oost/Ubbergen area, and between Burgermeester Daleslaan and d'Almarasweg, and Rentmeesterlaan/Wetzenlaan. The only exception is the possible connection between Muntweg and Hatertseveldweg, but that's quite optional.
@@Pystro I agree, the pattern of highways and main roads around Nijmegen / its centre is very erratic.
@@Pystro In fact, it does and whats more: there are two, albeit not really discernable on a map but nonetheless bearing the brunt of vehicular traffic in Nijmegen. An inner radial (Groenestraat/Groenewoudseweg) and an outer (partially numbered S100). And Nijmegen is not the only one. Arnhem has its "verkeersplein" too, called Airborneplein or colloqially "Berenkuil" (Bear´s pit). If you would view it in google street view, notice that the souhern portion of the Eusebiusbuitensingel does not feed into the Airborneplein but in one of its joints, the Boulevard Heuvelink, hence it being a side street with traffic leaving onto the Boulevard Heuvelink having right of way.
I use the Keizer Karelplein several times a week. It's my favourite place to drive in Nijmegen. The two mistakes I see drivers make are not giving way to traffic entering the roundabout, which in a way is understandable for those not used to driving here as it goes against the standard rules of roundabouts. The second mistake drivers make is not being in the correct lane before entering the roundabout. If you plan on leaving the roundabout on one the first two exits you should be in the right sided lane before entering it. This way you will be on the outside lane of the roundabout which ensures you can leave the roundabout without any other traffic blocking you. If you need to use one of the other exits it's best to use the left sided lane, drive towards the inside of the roundabout and slowly move to the right until you can leave the roundabout without hindering anyone. Then all you need to do is hope nobody else is one the outside part blocking your exit because they didn't pick te correct lane from the start.
There are probably hundreds of junctions which work similarly in the UK, big "roundabouts" that are actually signalled junctions, in urban areas. (Often they weren't designed to operate that way initially, but traffic levels increased to the point where the roundabout would get snarled up and basically cease to function without signals) Maybe you'd love it here!
ben je gek of zo ga lekker op de A325 rijden
There are no lanes. At least not marked on the road. It is very difficult to determine where one should drive as it lacks proper road makings.
@@UlugNaar it lacks common sense
Traffic infrastructure shouldn't be made into a test that requires IQ higher than your shoe size, even the stupidest road users should be able to keep fluent and safe at all times.
That moment when you can instantly guess which intersection is meant from just the title of the video. 😂
And the thumbnail.
Keizer Karel! Nijmeguuuuuhhh (it's terrifying, lol)
Hahaha, a notorious roundabout. It's one of a few 'special roundabouts' that was part of my driver's licence course and exam living in a town 30 min away lol.
It honestly flows really well once you're used to it but yeah.
Apart from the deaths and accidents off course it is THE MOST FUN place to drive until you encounter magic roundabouts in the UK. Which are completely nuts. You should make a video about them as well!!
I lived in Nijmegen during the nineties and still am exited whenever i return to Nijmegen to visit friends. Even though they have a new bridge and I could avoid the Keizer Karel Plein I still drive over it as fast as I can, because that's the way to do it the best and safest way. Fast doesn't mean high speed. It means quick. You have to be totally focused, well prepared (the correct lane!!) and maximize your attention level, which is part of the fun, and watch out for all the traffic/people that don't get it or are even scared of it. People driving with me, and don't know Nijmegen, are usually shocked regardless of the speed I'm driving, which adds to the fun part
Although I'm also a bycicle advocate, I like driving my car and motorcycle. And driving at the Keizer Karelplein is complicated, a little dangerous but in my opinion great fun too. It's our unique French traffic chaos, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. And I enjoy it because it is so un-dutch and demanding! The real problem in Nijmegen is the history as you explained a little, the geography of the city with the river Waal,and the large railroads trough the city. The Waal bridge over the river was build in 1936 and is aftrr 90 years still the most important connection to the north. The road network design from ca. 1900 is almost unchanged and decides everything. Changing that design is almost impossible because there is no room to put the roads anywhere else. De new bidge the Oversteek only took over the growth in traffic, not the excisting trough flow of cars. But it' not that bad. Traffic even in rush hour is not completly jammed and the Keizer Karelplein serves many thousands of cars every day. And Nijmegen is a fine place to live, to bike and to drive. Not according to modern traffic design standards, but this city is 2000 years old, so let us be a little different from these young Dutch cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague ..😂
People getting into crashes and sometimes dying is "great fun"? Erm, ok.
@@AardvarkDK No, there are often smaller crashes at this square, but people getting wounded or killed here is very very rare. The deadly accidents occur on other places of the city.
"This city is 2000 years old". First the city centre is not located on the original spot of Roman Nijmegen. Second Nijmegen of the middle ages was much smaller than today and Nijmegen only started to grow after the old walls had been torn down after 1874, when Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague were already much bigger. So what ever the reason for Nijmegen's present day traffic situation may be, it is not because it "is 2000 years old."
@@proinsiasbaiceir6580I think the person knows that; and is just having a bit of fun by teasing Amsterdam. It’s a young city, after all. Kampen was a fully grown-up adult port city before Amsterdam even had a dam
@@JABN97 It's always fun to troll those people from Holland. They alwyas take the bite.
Driving there is a nightmare if you have your drivinglicense for about 2 months, drive in a 7 meter long PostNL van and have only 3 windows and 2 mirrors.
I've done this a few years ago when I got a temp job as a mailman at PostNL. Learned a lot from this though, and now drive such vans with ease.
The roundabout many people complain about is Nijmegen's Keizer Traianusplein.... When you come from the north over the Waal river bridge you have to remember to keep right if you want go left and keep left if you want to go right....... Locals have no complaints but out-of-towners always screw up at that one.....
Or follow the signs, but yes very surprising. It's safe though with separated lanes and traffic lights.
Hahaha… I agree! I never had any problems with the KKP, but when I just had my drivers license and I came back from a visit somewhere north of the river Waal, that part was very confusing. It’s not just the fact that you need to turn right if you want to go to the left, but once you did that you have to choose between three lanes. The first one leads you to the right (city center), the second one leads you into the direction of Berg en Dal and the the third one will lead you into the direction of Germany OR it will take you back to the bridge OR it takes you to the three lanes again. 😂
I had to get used to that situation for longer than I wanted.
Yes, it's very counterintuitive. When I come from the north and want to go to Berg en Dalseweg, I still tend to screw up. The words on the road look like they are misleading me for some reason.
Aan het begin van de video: "Dit zal wel over hier in Den Haag gaan, zeker."
Aan het einde van de video: "Jezus Christus, Nijmegen..."
On the topic of bad roundabouts in Nijmegen, you should take a look at the Industrieplein on the Energieweg. It's a terribly inefficient roundabout that always causes major backups during rush hour.
That mf is even more confusing
As you said, the solution would need some big politcal courage and a good redesign of the whole city's car network, that the residents would feel okay with. I'm afraid the fact that it hasn't happened yet is a sign that it probably won't for a very long time still, which is a shame.
Are there any mitigations that could be done in the meantime, at least? It being so wide and not having any lane markings seems like it would invite speeding, particularly when it is less busy. The wide radius of the entry / exit lanes could be tightened up too.
@@liamness The least they could do is a speed limit of 30km/hr.
Haven't had any accidents since I got my license over 10 years ago. I drove here for the first time a few months ago and almost got hit on the side of my car because I didn't know I had to give priority to people from the right. And I'm a traffic engineer myself. It's a retarded situation.
For someone who graduated in Civil Engineering like me, I was thinking of a solution for the Emperor Charlemagne Square would be to construct a tunnel or two under it. Kinda like the two-level tunnel King-Alexander tunnel solution that was used for Maastricht and the A2 Highway. Knowing the highway formerly ran through the city, causing large traffic jams and interrupting local traffic flows.
One can't compare these situations. The highway at Maastricht is far bigger, justifying much higher investment. All traffic on the KKP is just to enter or leave Nijmegen. So better road signs on the highways around Nijmegen to direct to the right entry point of Nijmegen seems a better way to deal with this to me.
I recognized the thumbnail instantly. What a horrible road this is. Pretty much notorious in the whole country. Every time I'm in Nijmegen and realize my navigation guides me through this hellhole my mantra is: "not a roundabout, not a roundabout".
the help99 effort is so heartwarming
More than 25 years ago I use to live and study outside of the city of Nijmegen, the reason why I did my driving lessons and finally my driving exam in another city. The weekend after I did get my driving license, I went back home (Nijmegen). The first thing my mother did was tossing her car keys towards me with the remark “So we will practice the Keizer Karel plein”. There I drove in my mother’s old Volvo 340 towards the Keizer Karel plein. My mother gave me one piece of advice. Give gas, don’t hesitate, the other road users also have to watch out for you. So the last 25 years I still conquer the Keizer Karel plein with that attitude, I never had issues.
Exactly this was told to me by my driving instructor during the first 5 minutes of my first driving lesson. The trauma was averted and ridiculized. The roundabout actually makes a lot of sense. It has a better flow than allowing the flow on the circle prevailing.
Great video!! Thank you for making this
Wonderful video. thanks for sharing it.
When I had my first encounter (in 1980 as a new student in Nijmegen) with the KK-plein, I had my mum's car with me and was going for an appointment to see a room. It was early in the evening, but already dark in the winter. All these entries and exits on the KK-plein confused me so much that I didn't find the right exit to go to my appointment.
I ended up driving back home and phone the landlord I couldn't find it.
Someone else got the room.
5:15, now that you mention Zeeland, I think it could also be an interesting idea to make a video about how Dutch road design/bike networks/public transit is done in a rural and car dependent region like Zeeland. As an inhabitant of Zeeland, I am often left wondering if it would even be possible to create more public transit due to the small population and large distances.
83 crashes in a 2 year period doesn't sound that bad for a "worst infrastructure of the entire country" title lol
83 crashes is in 2 years is what mdot would consider “safe”
Do one on the Van Heekplein (Den Bosch / 's Hertogenbosch) next. It was torn down relatively recently, but the original design and the current solution are such a breath of fresh air in how to get rid of carbrain in road design. And to boot, the new solution typically works *better* for cars.
you mean Heetmanplein.
Any chance you could create some possible concepts to fix the Keizer Karelplein, keeping in mind and mentioning the problem areas in them?
He just wants to shut it down for cars. Which is stupid IMO.
As you did point out, there is no easy solution for this. This might be the reason why Nijmegen has not changed it drastically yet. (Nijmegen city is not that car friendy.) As someone else pointed out in the comments already: some arterial roads where narrowed some time ago and cars from outside Nijmegen using them where rerouted. As a pedestrian I always wonder how to get to the park inside the Keizer Karelplein safely. I never deared to go to it. By the way: the first syllable of ‘Karel’ is not pronounced as ‘care’ but as ‘car’. No pun intended. :-)
The traffiic overview comparison really explained the traffic philosophy well. Good job
I once was forced to drive trough Nijmegen as the A73 to the A50 was blocked. The only other option is then to take the N325/A325 to Arnhem which is the other major crossing over the Rhine river.
But this leads you trough Nijmegen and over the Keizer Karel Plein. In the end it possibly had been quicker to use the much longer detour via the Willem Alexanderbrug at Tiel over local roads to avoid the blocked A73 as traffic in Nijmegen was a nightmare, it took over one hour to get trough the city alone.
Excellent video - I especially appreciate the historical context! Would love to see more videos looking at the things that can be improved in NL :) Stagnation is a real risk, unfortunately.
You were in Estonia? I live in Tallinn. Glad to see you doing so much for Ukraine, I donated after watching the video! If you're ever in Tallinn again (which is unlikely, let's be honest), I'd be happy to grab a beer.
Ill be there this summer!
the fact that they built the traffic circle out of klinkers instead of asphalt is hilarious to me.
If you don't know het Keizer Karel plein then it feels complicated, dangerous and chaotic. As a local I think it's big fun, safe and efficiënt. You have to be decisive in choosing your path, drive pretty fast 1/so you won't be bothered by clumsy out of town tourist who panick driving there and 2/ ro be able to drive 3/4 around in one sweep towards your exit road without being forced to stop for cars Engering the roundabout when their traffic lights go green.
The only people complaining about it are the people who haven't driven it regularly enough😅
In your Den Bosch shot, you targeted “Heetman plein”. Second worse although improved in time. The horror 😈
I was born and raised in Nijmegen and I never left because I love my city. I recognised every single image of my hometown in this video. Of course I know about the bad reputation of the Keizer Karel Plein, but I can’t help loving it. I love driving there.
But there’s one thing that surprised me a little, because there has been taken action to tackle this problem. As you perfectly demonstrated there are several important roads that lead to the Keizer Karel Plein. I look at it like the center of a spiderweb 🕸️ But like a spiderweb there are multiple roads circling away from the centre. And some of these roads are being made suitable to function as a fast way to go around the city centre. And they helped to decrease the traffic jams that so often occurred. The biggest problem is the fact that Nijmegen, until recently, had only one way to go north by crossing the only bridge there was across the river Waal. Most of the traffic to and from the north and even to and from the west had to go via that one bridge and there weren’t any real alternatives unless you were willing to take long detours. Since 2013 we have a much needed second bridge (De Oversteek - The Crossing). That second bridge helped a little as well, although it’s more beneficial to the gigantic traffic jams in large areas around Nijmegen every time something happened in Nijmegen, especially when the Keizer Karel Plein would be blocked due to an accident, because a lot of people don’t understand the rules and cause accidents to happen. That’s because it looks like a normal Dutch roundabout even though it isn’t.
Since this is a fairly new video I can tell you that it used to be much worse.
The train station and the roads to the real centre of the city are terrible indeed. And it used to be so extremely beautiful. Unfortunately, in the 2nd WW, 1944, American and English pilots bombed the station and a large part of Nijmegen. It killed 800+ citizens and it destroyed almost half of the city. Especially that part of Nijmegen never recovered from it. There are new plans, but given the current situation there’s not much to be expected. Again, I love my city, but it used to be so much prettier. Probably one of the most beautiful cities of the Netherlands, which it probably still would be if it wasn’t for the bombardement. 😢
I can't focus on this video when there's someone in a wizard hat just before the 2 minute mark. They've got a wizard hat!
This so much reminds me of working on legacy software. At some time, someone build something to match the requirements and conditions back in time. Then people started adding new stuff. And now it may be obvious that something is foul but everything is strongly interconnected and fixing a small part would require reworking the whole system.
Nijmegen is my hometown. I remember driving over the Keizer karelplein during my driving lessons many times. Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually kinda of fun to drive over.
The middle is actually the perfect place to chill on a bench and watch all the near misses (source: having sat there countless times, never having actually seen an accident but having heard a lot of screeching tires)
I feel like the allied bombardment of Nijmegen at least played a part in building this monstrosity and should have been mentioned.
Thank you for your support. NAFO rules! Слава Україні!
We thought about making a bypass around the east side of the city, but hey, that would mean invading Germany. Invading is not the problem, conquering is... So we sticked to the Keizer Karelplein. And because of the Keizer Karelplein most visitors prefer to come by train. In the end it is one of our most effective inhibitors of car traffic.
As an ex-Nijmegenaar I don't see the problem. If you get your driver's license in Nijmegen you've learned the logic of this roundabout, and it's, eh, logical. For bikes it's fantastic. You have more or a less a "groene golf" going with the flow, and there is even a bike lane against the flow. I love it.
And given how ludicrously incorrect your facts are, you should do more than update the video description: just take it down. It's a blamage (?black eye?) on an otherwise decent channel.
as someone living in the US seeing a piece of roadwork being discussed because of 83 crashes over 2 years is making my head spin
I prefer this roundabout over a lot of the other ones. Pay attention while driving and it's the smoothest roundabout ever as there are no lanes.
Thanks for making this video, you are expressing my thoughts about it very well. I'm from the Randstad and I travel through Nijmegen almost every weekend. Every single time I'm annoyed by this monstrocity.
I drove on the Karel de Grote plein once in my life when i just got my license. Because we were going for a leisure walk in the area. It was an incredibly stressful experience
Massive kudos for you shoowing footage of the protests in Groningen against the government's gas-mining policies when you first said "the netherlands has problems". 'Tis a good cause to have picked even if it was just for 5 seconds of B-roll.
@3:44 for those of you who, like me, wonder which city this is: this is Groningen. It took me a while to find it, the horse racing track to the left and bottom of center was a big hint, as there's only a couple of horse racing tracks in The Netherlands.
Refreshing video. It looks like that all traffic in and towards the Keizer Karelplein must be moved underground. Like it was done with the A2/N2 in Maastricht. At tremendous cost.
I remember that during the orientation week of uni, more than a 100 people would gather in the park to watch sunrise. It was always really fun, untill we had to go cross the road again after sunrise, because at that point cars would already be deiving nonstop
Can’t wait to see this channel grow.
When I am occasionally in Nijmegen I always like to drive on the Keizer Karel plein because it gives me the feeling to be in France..
It is that the people in Nijmegen are so friendly that there are not more accidents.
Compared to all the converted verkeerspleinen in Utrecht, I'm always amazed by the throughput the KK plein achieves. Just try getting out of Lunetten in the morning. Seeing the reactions here, I wonder what people think of the new fake ovotondes called voorrangsplein. Where only the people on secondary roads have to yield.
Having traveled around Nijmegen a lot for my job the one thing that upsets me the most is that it has no lanes or priority rules. You have to yield to the right which is a totally weird design to unknown people. And I'm pretty sure that it has the capacity of 4 or 5 lanes. So this is a really good "looking over your shoulder" test. The only thing that's organized are the traffic lights organizing the flow between motorcyclists and vulnerable traffic. Once the traffic lights turn off, I imagine a real unsafe situation will occur with lots of jams. You can find that same design on the Takenhofplein.
Other odd intersections for a traffic services inspector like me are for example the intersection N325 - Oranjesingel, Industrieplein and Steve Bikoplein in Nijmegen.
I would really like to see a proposal from you to solve this, could a part via a tunnel with a T-exit for example be a solution?
When I first drove on that plaza, I just had my driver's licence (in the late 90s), and thought "this must be the stupidest design of a plaza, ever", and I haven't seen anything worse since (though the Utrecht plazas come close). Not mentioned in the video, but imho one thing that aids to the unsafety a lot, is the fact it's a multi-lane plaza, without the lanes being painted on the road, like everywhere else in the Netherlands. The Nijmegen city counsel must be very proud of its century-long stupidity.
I've been to Nijmegen once by car and got the Keizer Karelplein, it was hell. So glad to have someone sitting next to me to point out when to go and when to brake.
I live near Alkmaar with the Kooimeer connecting the A9, N9, N242 and traffic to the city center. Sure, it's not the same at all, but why doesn't Keizer Karelplein have these two things that Kooimeer does: 1) traffic lanes to direct the cars to one or the other exit. 2) traffic lights on the roundabout, so cars have to stop and let upcoming traffic through (wich also have traffic lights btw).
Both questions, easy answer: lack of space. About 4 cars fit next to each other on the square and there are 6 roads. Separate lanes will therefore not work. And by placing 6 exit traffic lights on the square, everything will be completely stuck. These installations, including the stop strip, take up too much space
Been there once in my life 8 years ago and still instantly recognised the thumbnail.
It's interesting to see how hard it is to get this changed. I'm from Nijmegen and the city has already been working on re-routing traffic around the city for decades so as to make it possible to extremely reduce traffic through the center. The problem is that without just closing down routes through the center (and therefore forcing traffic onto other routes) the extra outer ring options created just induce more demand. And while there have been many attempts over the years it's apparently still not politically viable to push reductions/closings on Keizer Karel through, even in one of the most left-wing and progressive cities in the Netherlands.
And take this layman's opinion as a side note; I think it doesn't help that much of the public transport in Nijmegen is also mostly a star layout centered onto Central station close-by (as seen in the video). This means there is rarely a faster 'circular' public transport option available, especially between the more eastern neighborhoods (Altrade - Limos - Kwakkenberg) and the more central-south (Grootstal - Brakkenstein - Hatert) and south-west (Dukenburg - Weezenhof) neighborhoods. If these routes were more available (f.i. with some circular lines) they might help reduce the amount of intra-city car journeys having to go through Keizer Karel Plein. But that's just from a citizens perspective without any formal knowledge on public transport and urban design.
Fantastic video! You just keep improving at every step.
The part inspiring me the most must be in the end at around 11:15 explaining the transition. How motornormality takes over, giving drivers freedom at the expense at everyone outside.
The reason it inspires me: At that moment I felt completely defeated. Ready to give up.
Then BLAM, you explain what needs to be done. Cut off through traffic. Simple as can be.
How on earth is that motivating? A solution that requires extraordinary leadership and lots of political knowhow and most likely being voted out of office? - You finally explained the missing piece in my puzzle. The engine of the problem. Why it's easy to go in one direction but not the other.
It only requires one single individual to purchase a car to make everyone unsafe. But it requires a mutual agreement from an entire city to bring back such a decision.
That decision is hard to make, will be painful to transition to. But just like getting back into shape. I never heard anyone want to go back once it's done.
I hope that was at least one of the intended concepts you wanted to express using this video.
May the war end soon. Wishing you the absolute best.
Lived quite close to the Keizer Karelplein. The ironic cherry on top indeed is the little park. Getting there is a truly hazardous undertaking as there are nu under or overpasses. Not for the fainthearted. Added fun is that the park has to be maintained, adding to the traffic chaos.
I know this horrible roundabout well. It is a nightmare. We used to have more of these kind of horrible roundabouts, most were converted into something more sensible.
Oh my god I was here in February. My friend from Germany came to pick me up from this trainstation and the roundabout is extremely confusing. He ended up at the Bus stop!
If this interests you, maybe the notorious former roundabout at the intersection of highway A7 and A6 near Joure where 110 accidents in a year happened and where traffic jams were the norm may interest you. And how it was eventually fixed of course. Like in every country infrastructure is a work in progress in the Netherlands
Good video! Kinda sad. But well made!
Thank you.
Looking at a map of Nijmegen, the thing that jumps out after a bit is the lack of a city ring that would normally take this traffic. The "obvious" place to build it seems to me to be to expand the S100 (Weg door Jonkerbos and further east), tunnel under the railway by Sionsweg and then either connect it to the Sophiaweg and expand that as well to connect to the N325 of bulldoze Heilig Landstichting to build a new 2x2 road and connect that to the N325.
Alternately, you could expand the Burgemeester Daleslaan, bulldoze the Haterse Hei neighbourhood and then expand Houtlaan/D'Almarasweg/Sophiaweg/Holleweg and connect to the N325.
Either way the N325 would need some expanding too to take the extra traffic. But you could probably simplify the mess that is the N325/Oranjesingel junction.
Even though that would eventually greatly increase the average happiness of Nijmegen citizens... good luck getting support from the locals when their local road is becoming the city ring and you're bulldozing a museum/park...
Haha! I am originally from Nijmegen and when I first started drivers aid I asked the instructor to take me back there at some point. Funny thing is that most Dutch people that are not familiar with the Keizer Karelplein also find it disturbing.
I'm from there and you do not need to apologize, that traffic point is horrendous. Fortunately there are a lot of good ways to avoid it without too much of a detour. This does however also mean that most of the people driving there, are people whose GPS sent them there and who do not know the city as well. This also meaning they don't know the KKP as well, and are more likely to end up in an unsafe situation.
During my driving lessons in Nijmegen I always kept this in mind: if I can learn to navigate the Keizer Karelplein, I can drive anywhere!!
I always called it "the final boss" of the driving exam
Yeah, I encountered the Plein about 20 years ago and wondered why that monstrosity was there. To see it again today in your video is even more surprising. Why is that thing still there? But I see, that's why. Still, I wonder what a city like Utrecht or Amsterdam would have done. I doubt it would still be here today if it were in either of those cities....
i kind of like the anarchy on keizer karel plein, plenty of people are afraid to drive there but the trick is to just keep your eyes peeled around you at all times
Everyone who had driving lessons in the area around Nijmegen feared this thing. The worst that could happen was that the examinator would choose a route along Keizer Karelplein. I was lucky, my examinator led me to A73.
I have to disagree on not everything being perfect. This intersection is a perfect disaster.
I live in Nijmegen and I had to drive here with my driving lessons. An absolute nightmare. Now I'm an expert and I find it hilarious others struggeling with it. Like I'm a veteran and I see the rookies using it for the first time
For those who have never been on the Keizer Karel: On basically every Dutch roundabout, cars that are on the roundabout have right of way over cars trying to get on the roundabout. This creates an effective first-in-first-out system where traffic on the roundabout is minimized and the chance of a crash is minimal since cars trying to get on the roundabout just have to wait for the roundabout to clear before they can get on, simple as. However, the pseudo-roundabout hellhole that is the Keizer Karel instead has a confusing traffic light system where cars trying to get on the plaza have right of way if the light for those on the plaza is red. This is, as far as I know, the _only_ location in the Netherlands that works this way. As such, not only is it dangerous, but Dutch drivers are often completely unused to this method. Navigating the Keizer Karel therefore requires a whole separate skillset that you never need anywhere else.
To make matters worse, most large roundabouts have separate lanes. The inner lane is for longer turns (usually going left) and the outer lane is for shorter turns; the inner lane eventually filters into the outer lane. The Keizer Karel is large too, plenty large for three or more cars to drive side-by-side... But as you can see in the video, there's no lanes or markings of any kind. Now imagine you're a Dutch driver coming onto the Keizer Karel for the first time, having no idea of what you're getting into. It's already confusing and chaotic enough, but now you also need to adjust without any guidance. It's a free-for-all out there and you better pray that the other drivers are alert enough to not crash into you when you inevitably have to make a sudden stop in front of them.
Yeah, no wonder this thing causes so many accidents. Woe unto you if you have to take your driver's license test in Nijmegen. I thank my lucky stars every day that I got to take mine in Den Bosch, even if that city is by no means perfect either.
As a former resident of Nijmegen, I have crossed the Keizer-Karelplein (pronounced Keizer-Kah-rel, not Kay-rel) many times by car, by bicycle and on foot without issue. It's like driving in Paris, you have to drive defensively but positively: do not hesistate and make sure other drivers know what your intentions are. As the locals say "kijken, gasgeven en gaan!" (look, hit the throttle and go!). It has become so dangerous because modern day drivers are common to everything in neat order, while the Keizer-Karelplein isn't. My wife, who is not from Nijmegen, is calling it "Keizer-Chaosplein" and always lets me drive when we're visiting Nijmegen 🙃
It was originally build for slow traffic, but it was build to have a lot of traffic, so it still serves it's original purpose.
I’m Dutch, came across this point in Nijmegen very often, and I’m totally agree. It’s a monster, doesn’t make any sense at all!