The rule of thumb: If two modes of transportation share the same space, the slower sets the speed. In reality there are exceptions for places where pedestrians are extremely rare.
You are incorrect. Traffic lights set thejourney speed ! You can share a country road and a car will travel at 60kmh and the bike at 20kmh. Bring in traffic lights (in an urban setting) and no matter a car drives 60-80kmh, higher speed will get undone by waiting at the traffic light junction. And indeed in London the average speed of a vehicle is 17kmh ! Not due to 'bikes', but because of traffic lights and congestion. (This counts also for bike traffic. There should be as little traffic light junctions as possible . For example in my 200k Dutch town, I can travel north to south 8km and aproach like 6 traffic lights and a movable canal bridge (esp. in summer!). And if I push it by taking a street parallel I can even limit it to 1 traffic light and the bridge !)
Also traffic lights determine the flow of traffic. You may have urban roads with 2 or 3 lanes per direction (cap up to 1000 car per lane per hour = 3000). But this becomes useless when you approach a traffic light junction. (capacity of just 150 vehicles per lane, per hour ) . 2x2 or 2x3 urban streets don't make sense and are only dangerous and discouraging for pedestrians and cyclists ! therefore in Netherlands roads/streets in built up areas are usually limited (and even brought back to) to 1x1. With traffic lights 1x1 is enough.
3:41 I was just on the bus in Calgary, Canada and it was stopped at a red light, on a transit way, with no cross traffic, and with the parallel road on a green light. It’s shocking how even when millions are spent on a transit way, the busses still don’t get signal priority. The Dutch do a great job at creating effective movement of people, rather than building for cars and tacking on other things, “just in case someone doesn’t drive…”
Yeah we have a similar situation in Toronto, they have a N-S dedicated streetcar lane which is great but then it has to stop at every major E-W cross-street street to ensure that “cars maintain an acceptable level of service” according to city staff… absolutely brutal haha
I've lived in both cities, and man sometimes I could walk faster than jumping on a streetcar in Toronto. Definitely biked faster. In Calgary, hoenstly I barely ever take transit. It's either bike or drive (unfortunately) for me. @@AdambYates
Traffic lights are more intelligent in the Netherlands, if there is no traffic, the light for the bus stay green and all tragic lights that hinders the bus will go red. It depends how tragic is, but in general public transportation has priority above cars.
Maybe true but there are certain areas that are more ahead than others. I believe cities need to start making higher standards than what the provinces put out because some know better.
Over time (at the replacement/repair rate every 30 yrs) they can correct car-only structure. The southern town in the US where I live in South Carolina has given a very nice nod with protected bike lanes. They have been in place for a year and because they are not “penciled-in” suggestions they help. What is lacking is everywhere else in town given completely over to heavy extreme speed car and semi truck traffic. So many wrecks. Solid summer season of orange alerts for terrible air quality and no not due to wildfires. The beg buttons are the only way for those on foot or bike to cross and wanna guess how long we wait at those? Insane how long. If you don’t hit the beg button it will not give a turn at all. And that means extremely low priority causing mistakes and possibly creating accidents. Hullo.
When people were always told they are the best, they are less in for changes by influences from other parts of the world. In contrast, the Dutch are always in for views and ideas of others. They are eager to try something new but also want science based proof the idea is actually better. Even Dutch speedbumps have a scientific developed shape and dimension. So the main thing to change is the will to change and a community type thinking, without the individualistic me first approach.
3:35 uh... that is not the "Amsterdam network", that is the Dutch network Those two are not the same. That said, the Amsterdam Biking network would basically look comparable to the national network in density. There are very few places in a city where bikes are not allowed. Defacto every street is part of the network.
Wait until you try to explain that Amsterdam is the capital city of the country but not the province it is located in and that the government is seated in another province altogether.
"The Amsterdam network" All of the Netherlands. But that's part of the beauty of it. It's all connected, and that's a large part of why it works so well.
They're fighting those stupid painted bicycle gutters that make no sense and are dangerous. What NONE are suggesting is a separated / safe bicycle network.
At 4:45, bicycles don't really have priority at the intersection shown. Instead, there are separate traffic lights for bikes, taking away the conflict with cars. This approach is standard at intersection with main roads where cars can go fast. At slightly more minor intersections, there are roundabouts with separate lanes for bicycles. The bikes then will typically have priority for ones inside urban areas.
1:44 These ideas didn't come from discovery, people first protested in the streets about the high number of deaths caused by cars, especially among children. And then over time more and more solutions were created and probably still learning, tweaking
Well, as a Dutch person I would say: just start with creating a separate, red coloured lane at the side, reserved for bicyclists. That's not that much of an anchievement (and not that costly), but it is at least half of the job, looking at safety matters. Bu that, the bicyclists will feel respected ánd they are sooner noticed by cars, which rapidly reduces the number of accidents.
I think you underestimate how costly it will be. It only works really well if you connect the entire city, not just a neighborhood or two. Creating dedicated bikelanes throughout whole the city is an expensive and time consuming task. If it was easy, don't you think more NA cities would have done it?
May I ask what the limit is in distance that a Dutch person expects to cycle for daily transit? Most people I worked with- retired now- drove 10-20 or more miles a day for work. It wouldn't matter how many bike lanes there were, they were not going to cycle to work, even if traffic jams kept the time used the same.
Dude!!!! I did my research paper on “EV are not the future for America” and talked a lot about walkable cities and reliable transportation and I love you went into detail how they use their streets. got yourself a subscriber
Actually Self driving cars are the future. You clearly needed to do a lot more research. All areas are walkable if they have sidewalks which most places do. Seems some people when they say walkable they mean cars are more restricted.
I thought so too but after further research it won’t solve our over reliance on vehicles. States like Texas are destroying neighborhoods to construct more roads. Here is an article you might find interesting according to the guardian “worst of all is cobalt, which mostly comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the Washington Post 15% of that country’s mining operations are in the “informal” (unregulated) sector, which employs upwards of 200,000 people (including thousands of children, some as young as six) working in unregistered and badly ventilated mines.” Green cars aren’t green. If you’d like to read my paper I can email it to you.
@@ronpetersen2317Cars are not the future. There is no way to create an efficient transport network that involves individual people in metal boxes that weigh several tonnes and are parked on average for 20-22 hours per day. They are too big and take up too much space and are too inefficient. Just taking a car and putting an electric engine in it and having a robot drive it, doesnt solve the problem. The problem is that its still a car.
@@TheSuperappelflap Cars are pretty efficient. Even here in the Netherlands with good public transport, in most places I've lived and jobs I held, the car was almost always vastly superior to public transport for my daily commute. Even taking traffic into account, it's a huge time saver. It seems they take up a lot of space... but consider that if only 25% of car users here would switch to public transport, they'd completely overwhelm the system. And there are already few opportunities left to add more trains on busy routes. They do have their problems, but some of those can be solved by autonomous cars. One is getting rid of parked cars in dense city centers or even residential streets. Another - and this is a huge deal - is that it makes ad-hoc car rental convenient. If you only really need a car for the occasional trip to the DIY store or to visit relatives or a holiday, and the train is not an option, you might rent a robo-car, have it rock up at your house 30 minutes later, and it'll bugger off by itself once you are done with it. Same as a taxi? Yes... with the notable difference that the robot makes it far cheaper, to the point where you might not want to own a car at all if you're not using one daily. It's already happening to a degree with ride-sharing cars, basically rentals that are parked in the neighborhood and can be unlocked with an app. We have a few of those around here. Self-driving cars would give drivers more options, and spur wide spread adoption. Which is great, because cars still have their uses. Self driving cars will eventually be a hell of a lot safer than having meatbags behind the wheel.
@@TheSuperappelflap They are the present past and future. Have you only lived in a major city? It wouldn't work even in suburbia. In a small town forget it.
Did a cycling trip across the Netherlands recently, I was blown away by the infrastructure, not only in the cities but also in the rural areas. Literal separate cycle highways between small towns and cities.
@@joeycee5680 It did indeed! got really lucky with streak of sunny days in April with only light showers overnight. Only complaint would be the headwinds.
@@maggiv5401 Not very far at all, maybe 10km was the longest stretch of uninterrupted path before you hit another little town. It's an amazingly connected country.
@@2penry2 those towns were there before the connection. The point is that the area is condensed unlike in the United States once you get past the Mississippi you can go very long distances between towns. Very few people are going to choose to ride bikes for distances like that. When I visited Ireland, I was told that at one point before the car, every town was no more than 6 miles from a railway station. I’m pretty sure most of those towns existed before there was a railroad.
Great video! Something that often gets overlooked is the material of which the road is made of. In residential neighborhoods in the Netherlands you will almost always find bricks instead of asphalt. Driving on bricks create more noise, which causes you (generally) to drive a bit slower. It's cheaper in maintenance too.
The bricks are also more permeable, which is also very important in the Netherlands, and it's more pleasing to the eye. It also makes access easier to get to cables or plumbing underneath and quickly reassemble when the job is done.
This is the first video I've watched on your channel and was pleasantly surprised by the production quality, given your channel is still an emerging one. I like that the animations are a little retro. As for content -- this was a GREAT primer on road infrastructure, I wish a video like this was around when I got into urbanism, it'd have connected the concepts for me faster. The graphs and such are really helpful in comparing countries.
As a Dutch traffic engineer I would say that there's lots of improvement still to do in the Netherlands. Fatalities are going up, especially in the group of elderly people with a n e-bike. We are not yet there....
the road system is 1 thing, behavior is another... You can't make things idiotproof without dropping any and all pragmatism. E-bikes and smart phones are driving up the fatalities and just to be complete: the increase in single households increases the amount of journeys on the roads. Have you factored in these 3 things? How will you compensate these things by adapting road design? Whenever accidents happen that are because of poor road design, the dated situation gets on some priority list and gets updated quite soon. Our way of making roads is not prone to needing lots of improvements except for the dated situations that are still dangerous, which as i mentioned over time will be amended. Now to adress your single point: elderly people on e-bikes... Maybe just needing a license is enough and prevent the incapable of using them?
Maybe we arent there yet no. But we are great at creating good safe infrastructure. And im sure we will find solutions to the e-bike problem too. To be honest i dont really understand why there just isnt a helmet law for it. I mean driving a motorized vehicle going over 25 should normally have that obligation, no? And like the person before me said, maybe a license yes.
I live in the Netherlands to but about the elderly on a e bike. These should be forbidden at a certain age and a training should be required to use these bikes. Know everbody gets the blaim of more accidents and thats complete not correct.
Great video, showing the road types that are used is neat, but showing how they form a network with other road types is so much more useful to get an idea of how they can or should be mixed together. I personally play with designing a grid city in my off time, and seeing how and when to mix things just makes finding potential design considerations so much easier. I hope you can make more technical stuff or just show where you could find more like this for the seemingly vanishingly rare group of urban design nerds.
Plenty of Dutch urban planning innovations can be implemented in North America. However, there is still a problem of zoning. Many North American homes are far from their daily destinations and thus require motorized transport of some form. Outside North America, most people generally live within walking distance to most of their daily destinations. Walking is an option for groceries, restaurants, shops, offices, schools, and transit stations. In that situation, having a car is more of a luxury than a necessity. For those where a car is a necessity (elderly/disabled) or extremely convenient (families), there will be more space to move around and less traffic if there are less cars on the road. Its not just about the transportation network, its also about the distances and accessibility between the daily destinations.
I live in the Netherlands and it's like choreographed traffic. You always know what everyone - cars, buses, bikes, trams, peds, mopeds, mobility scooter, literally everyone - is going to do in traffic. There are accidents, but they are much fewer and less severe than in the US. Also getting your driver's license is a long and expensive process so people know the rules and follow them. Srsly it's like €2000+ to get your license!
There are several other factors to consider such as mixed neighbourhoods where people can live, work and shop close enough that they can easily walk or cycle to services. Every little neighbourhood has shops and restaurants. Then there is public transport infrastructure, most European cities have access to public transport within a 3 minute walk from home or work with greater frequency. In Europe you can get from point A to point B without having to go through a central downtown hub, public transport in Europe have ring networks moving people around the circumference of the cities. Airports and train stations are all served by public transport. European cities also have a better system of parking, taking cars off the streets in underground garages and large, multi-story park houses next to shopping and business areas. If you properly design the greater societal infrastructure instead of bits and pieces, it is proven that cars, bikes and pedestrians can function together.
Videos like this seem happy to suggest that just providing the alternative (traffic, public transport) will magically induce a tectonic shift in public mind. Maybe, but that is not how it happened in the NL; there, beside the carrot (providing alternatives that work), there is also the stick (increasing the price of using automobiles both ownership and fuel taxes). The stick is more about making sure the tradeoff is actually considered rather than just to go with the status quo, and then specially for the 2nd (and more) car. Also military personel, and scholarship students (most) got a public transport pass rather than a transportation deduction. In the NL all these changes over decades partially absorbed the growth in cars per household beyond one (the primary car is much harder to eliminate beyond rarified places like major city inner cities). I don't think a change like this is possible without the stick part, and videos like this that suggest it is purely traffic engineering are somewhat deluded.
one mayor problem that isnt adressed here why this might not work in the US is that they do zoning wrong. In the Netherlands you can have shop on street level with housing above the shops. You can have commercial buildings be in residential zones like supermarkets and other type stores. In the US you have to drive to do whatever. You need to drive out of your suburbs to a commercial zoned slab of land where all the stores are. Where in the Netherlands you can walk or cycle to the closest supermarket, in the US u sometimes need to drive severmal miles to get to the closest supermarket. The US is designed to be car centric and the zoning works against redesigning traffic in this way. The way the US builds their cities now and the way they zone them makes owning a car mandatory or get shafted in unreliable almost non existing public transit.
@@ronniebots9225Note that while true the Dutch system also only covers the daily trips (grocery and work and children's schools commute). Maybe some other stores in the city centre are also reachable by bike for a larger share of the population, but it is not as universal. Same for larger shops in the city outskirts. So it is pretty much only a first magnitude car free solution. (and then specially, as said in the first post, to reduce cars per household rather than do away with it completely. That is mostly only for a minority living in the city centres). In addition to the first post: parking in the densest (city centre) neighbourhoods also plays a role as "stick"
The carrot isnt just less traffic accidents and functional public transport. The carrot is that its generally faster and easier to bike, walk, or take public transport than driving. For example when I visit my parents town, I can walk in 10 minutes from the train station to their house, on safe streets, crossing only 2 streets that have "fast" (50km/h or 30mph) traffic. I can bike from their house to the city center in 5 minutes along those same safe streets. If I drove instead, I would have to drive for just as long taking a detour along the roads for cars instead of the direct route I can take on my bike, and then find a place to park, and then walk to the store I want to go to. It would take longer to drive than to bike to the shop and park my bike in front.
It's also about changing attitude : If your Mother / daughter / child is on a bike, you will look out for bikers / fietsers ... the fiets always wins in NL .
Brilliant piece Adam, it would be amazing if we could start doing this in North America. As the model of upgrade and replace as you go makes so much sense.
Actually, if I remember from another UA-cam video, the first attempt at bicycle-friendly streets ended up causing *MORE* problems with congestion. It took a total rethink of the street design to get it right.
To play music with my friends I have to drive to the another city. It’s a ride of 10 miles with some 12 traffic lights. I live east of a city of 160.000 inhabitants . the other city is on the west side of my hometown. So I have to cross my home town. Still I only need 25 minutes to reach my destination. Good road design and transport management in my home country The Netherlands makes that possible.
3:20 there's a lot of subtlety here in the Dutch law. One of which is that pedestrians are considered a lane of traffic. That means that the van turning right up the ramp is crossing a lane to turn and must give way to it. That is, they are obligated to wait for the pedestrian to cross. Second is that down-ramps like the one shown here act as yields.
@4:43 the bicyclist had three yields the first one for crossing bike traffic the second and third for cars. The triangles that are pointing towards you means you have to yield. The triangles are referred to a shark teeth.
I also think that the Dutch mentality plays a large role, we grow up with bicycles, and when we learn to drive in a car also learn how to deal with pedestrians/bicyclists
Makes me proud to see, also the effects of this. Rather than huge suburbs you have to drive out, integrated suburbs with small cafes, restaurants, small supermarkets within every kilometer, eh mile, makes my life walkable, cyclible and much more relaxed. Added physical movement is healthy, as is being able to buy daily fresh produce within 5 minutes walking.
Important factor is also the law. Even if a car has priorty and hits a cyclist who is technically in the wrong, the car driver still considered "guilty" in a way, because he should always consider the vulnerability of the cyclist and the fact that he himself decides to navigate tons of steel at high speeds. This makes sense in that if you choose to ride a way more dangerous vehicle, you simply have way more responsabilities. It is almost impossible to fatally injure somebody as a cyclist so its in the end only logical that different rules apply when something goes wrong.
Just stumbled across your channel and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this video. If I could make one suggestion it would be to speak more clearly and louder - getting more air into your lungs will avoid the “vocal fry” sound.
I am from Amsterdam and this does make me proud to be Dutch citizen. Although not all shown in this video is fully accurate, the majority is correct and efficacious in safety. Main reason though is that biking in the Netherlands is a deeply CULTURAL thing. Everyone has a bike or multiple bikes. We all learn how to ride a bike at age asap. And not as a game but as a way of transportation.
You might look at the Crow manual. Basically it is the design guide what roads go where and how engineers need to build. It is from the Netherlands. Oh, and I think there is a English translation too. Not cheap though...
You might also look for the ‘Handboek Rood’ (the red manual) from the city of Amsterdam, that is the specific design guide for Amsterdam streets and roads. Very detailed.
You may have noticed this, but in lower speed streets - we often used tiled roads instead of asphalt. The reason for this, is that it is much more noisy for drivers and you notice your speed much more.
We, the Dutch still have traffic jams every day , despite our world class infrastructure, but that is because people became wealthier and wealthier and buy more and more cars (even people who enjoy using bikes and public transit often have a car or more than 1 car . Oh, and also because the population just keeps growing because everybody and their mother think that here is paradise , based on all the youtubers who proclaim that the netherlands is the best place in the world
Did anyone notice how many of the buildings were multistory? this may seem like a side issue, but I live in a growing city and there is so much resistance to accepting that single family housing cannot accommodate public transit. But there is a transition issue in that more dense housing doesn't have parking but the transit systems are not adequate to get people around efficiently. There is the added problem that people are used to having to commute long distances and there is definitely not the public transit to accommodate that. I doubt those bike riders are going more than a few miles at most before either their destination or transferring to public transit.
We even have roads that litterally say: Cycling road , Cars are guests, so basicly Bikes etc have full priority and are litterally king of the road in those streets.
Drones are not allowed above people in the Netherlands. Furthermore, landing aircraft sometimes fly over the Amsterdam center. You could get close to these aircraft with your drone.
One thing the US needs to do as a first step, and that is to allow mixed zoning. That reduces the need to travel (groceries and clothing around the corner in small shops) in the first place. So the bike or walking will be a viable option.
The Dutch reported on 2024 that there has been a decrease in cycling from 2012 to 2023 , with a 20% increase in fatalities. Electric motorized bikes use has increased from 5% to 37% in the 10 year period
Yes most people use electric bikes right now but we also have people that still should chose cycling because they use the car for only 5 minutes to get to their work
Shared streets are really easy to mess up. If you just put them all together you'll end up with a big mess. It only works if you have first diverted almost all car traffic to elsewhere and made sure that driver prefer to drive in the other place. The few people who then still need to be in the shared space will have to use it as an end destination, not for shortcuts or through traffic. Shared space can only be installed correctly in very specific situations or they will just be very dangerous places for the more vulnerable road users.
As a dutchie visiting LA I’m always so shocked how everything is car based and a simple 5 km on a freeway can take so long. But with no alternative what can you do but get in the car? But things will only change if the great big car lobby will ease but that is not gonna happen any time soon.
FWIW we still have commution on the highways / main roads in cities during the peak hours (around 09:00 and 17:00 mainly). But yes if you take the public transit and or bicycle, you can avoid these.
The difference I have heard from people that have lived in both places is that rush hour in the Netherlands is like 1-2hrs in the morning / evening vs. In a number of North American cities it’s 4hrs in the morning and 5hrs in the evening as people get home from work and try to get to their sports, social events, etc.
Super video. I thought the video examples with drawn annotations were just excellent. In case it's helpful: I had to sit in a quiet room with headphones to understand the narration. Vocal quality was a bit raspy (e.g. vocal fry), and this combined with loud music in the mix made it difficult to understand.
Did u visit any infrastructure besides Amsterdam? I know Amsterdam is the 'posterchild' of the Netherlands but the same infrastructure principles are implemented everywhere to mostly the same extent. And I say mostly because a small city with 30k inhabitants normally doesn't have a tram/metro or subway but likely stil has a bus route running through it. I also highly recommend Jason Slaughters 'Not Just Bikes' great channel
I visited the suburbs of Amsterdam as well as Utrecht. Totally agree, from what I could see the same principles apply except with buses :) Definitely want to go back at some point to explore further! Also, Love the NotJustBikes channel!! Sounds like you live in the Netherlands? Whereabouts?
@@AdambYates Indeed I do live in the Netherlands, currently I live in Nijmegen (a municipal city of about 170k in the southeast close to the border with Germany). I take it you are either American or Canadian, given your knowledge (or at least opinion) regarding transportation?
I live in Amsterdam and the historical centre puts limits on road design. I would say there are many places outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands where the principals are implemented better. They didn’t get it right straight away though. It is and has been an ongoing project for decades and will need to evolve to cater for changes in needs in the future. Being very densely populated does help as well I think
Of all the cities in the Netherlands I have been to, Amsterdam by far ahs the worst street design. There are cars everywhere, people crossing roads randomly, its complete chaos. Most other cities have completely removed cars from the city center and have seperated bike lanes everywhere. Amsterdam looks like its stuck in 1950.
Great video, Amsterdam is not representative for the rest of the Netherlands but because its the biggest and most known city of our country its fair enough to use this as an example. our fatality rate is about 650 a year last few years it is slightly raising but our traffic is getting more crowded as well. we have peak traffic at 7 till 9 am and 16 til 19 pm on the highways. Especially when its bad weather congestion can rise till a 1000 km. lots of campaigns to let people carpooling or promoting public transportation where effortless because the congestion didn't decrease. so not everything is great about our traffic. But for a country as big as the state of Maryland with a population of almost 18 million we at least try to advance our movements.
[] ... campaigns to let people carpooling or promoting public transportation where effortless because the congestion didn't decrease ... Where is your source supporting this statement and conclusion?
@@wimahlers files nemen niet af en in de auto's zitten doorgaans maar 1 persoon. In de jaren 90 was dat een doorn in het oog van het kabinet Lubbers en het opvolgende paarse kabinet. Ik zat toen op de basisschool en we kregen zelfs lesmateriaal ter promotie van openbaar vervoer en de geflopte carpoolstrook.
Great video. One piece of advice (or suggestion actually, do what you want ofc), it's less comfortable to listen to the low, cracking voice. Your video's are already up there of great quality, and I think this could improve it even more. Forgive me for the unsolicited advice, but I do strongly believe this could be helpful. Keep them up, great stuff!
I felt the same. I'm not sure he can change his voice, but one thing that might help is to raise the voiceover volume relative to the background music, which was quite loud and made it difficult to hear what he was saying.
@@AdambYates I wanted to give this same feedback. Especially at 1:20 I noticed that your voice is getting overshadowed. Your words matter more than the tunes or sound effects :)
If you are by any chance still in the Netherlands, go to the city Almere close to Amsterdam. The city is much younger and had much less constrictions for planning there infrastructure. I believe not just bikes still hasn't made a video about that city. Showing how the old cities work is nice to show that even badly designed American cities still can be fixed, but showing Almere really shows how infrastructure of a city can look like.
If your country is as small as the Netherlands and as densely populated you have to stretch the available space to its limits. Willing to change and creativity is important. It took our country over 50 years and alot of money to achieve this
You'd think that, but it only took 50 years because it didn't take a lot of money. Design standards were changed and were only implemented when the roads reached the end of their lifecycle. It literally cost nothing more than just your average road reconstruction.
You are correct that the government is trying to “nudge” car users into public transportation by lowering allowed speeds and increase parking prices in large cities. Couple of things, there is a lot of difference between the major cities and smaller cities. Public transportation in Amsterdam is great, but less dense cities not so much. Specifically trains are unreliable and *very* expensive in the Netherlands as compared to other European countries. Still a great country to live in though!
Living in the dead center of Amsterdam, I'd say this video is pretty accurate and representative of general Dutch urban design. And so the internet is floating with videos like this. Here's the kicker though to all this Dutch design hype. There's no guarantee whatsoever that this would ever work in your average North American city. As designing streets like this would not only require a massive cultural and political change, there is a basic but huge geographical difference to overcome as well: North America is huge, the Netherlands is tiny. Good luck designing everything for public transport when that same public transport is horrible at getting you anywhere outside the city.
I’ve been to Amsterdam a few times - bicycles are everywhere, and there’s something to note about this - The Netherlands is extremely flat. You don’t have to contend with hills on a bike or foot.
The thing is, because its so flat its also extremely windy. Hills break wind. So biking around the flat countryside costs about as much effort as biking in a hilly region. Also, the east and south of the country has hills, its just the north and west that are flat.
@4:00 as a Dutchman I can 100% tell that that clip not shot in the Netherlands. The signs, the pavement/sidewalk, the asphalt/brick combination in this particular street, the houses. It's amazing how all these details instantly subconsciously tell me what and what isn't the Netherlands. Edit: my best guess this clip is from Germany
And the paint color of both houses near each other is very German, in the Netherlands you wouldn’t see that! I live only 1 km of the German border in The Netherlands!
I am stuck in traffic jams every day, what you filmed are people with a low income, tourists, housewives, foreigners, people who have a regular job were already stuck in traffic jams this morning.
Such a flat land. That must be contributing a lot to the adoption of these designs. Free place-to-place bicycle was tried in my city, but it is hilly, its hard drive uphill. Plus weather helps? Would you want to be sweaty when you reach office?
You might think that, but the fact it's flat means it's extremely bad for cyclists. Why is that you ask? Because flat land causes wind. Lots of it. It's known as the Dutch hills. Most people would rather ride uphill than ride with headwind.
Some things that work on a small scale often do not work when scaled up. The population of the entire country of the Netherlands is smaller than the NYC metro area. Yes, it may seem great just to slow everyone to the same speed but when people are traveling greater distances. Additionally, the population density of the Netherlands is about 1/6 the population density of the NYC metro area. The additional population density creates issues implementing these concepts to larger more densely populated cities. The genuine answer is to apply some of these ideas to specific areas of the larger cities while improving public transportation in larger more densely populated areas. Forcing everyone (bikes, cars, pedestrians) to go the same speeds everywhere will only cause a backlash against these ideas.
It still baffles me to see that such a small and dense populated country, where every inch has to be used, can make it happen but a country with so much more space simply can not.
The Netherlands is, by it's nature, a historically highly planned country (as early as the 11th century) . Most other countries start planning only when people move into an area, but the Dutch usually planned first and populated after. After all, reclaiming land and planning it's use goes hand in hand.
I think having a lot of space is a hindrance. Look at how spread out US towns and suburbs are. It makes public transport unprofitable and walking and cycling unappealing. Then logically people will want to drive in(to) cities as well. On top of that there's also the silly strict zoning, the "American freedom" ideology which car companies have carefully baked car centrism into, conservative politicians that resist change, and those that are sponsored by big oil, car companies etc. I takes a lot of time and effort to go against all of that.
We have to make transport efficient precisely because we dont have space. There is no other option, so we have to spend the time and money to maximize throughput and minimize disruptions. Americans can just...build another lane. We cant. We dont have the space for more lanes.
Part of the problem in North America is that governments are addicted to gasoline tax revenues (and sales tax revenues attached to maintaining, repairing and insuring cars). They are also dependent on the taxes generated by sales of cars, as well as the income taxes generated by auto industry jobs. These jobs are also used for political purposes - as in garnering votes when a new auto industry-related plant is promised to be built or, "vote for me and I will attract more auto industry jobs and this will generate spin-off employment, or use taxpayer subsidies to make sure existing car plants don't leave and take all the jobs with them." In fairness, one reason why things work as well as they do in the Netherlands is that the cities there are much smaller than Canadian cities and hence it takes less time to get around. The Netherlands also doesn't have the huge geographic distances between cities that are common in Canada. I think it's too late to revamp our existing cities so they function much like Dutch cities do. If we plan to start rationalizing our urban design so it more closely matches Dutch urban design principles, we are probably going to have to build new cities from the ground up that optimize and make pedestrian walkways, bicycle lanes and trams priorities over cars.
the average road tax in the Netherlands is USD 600 a year, while in the USA it is maybe USD 60 to 100 a year. If US car owners want to get an increase of 600%, the infrastructure might be a bit better. But there are also differences, like bicycle density in USA or the Netherlands. Its not a one on one comparison. But what to do with just one sixth of the tax revenue generated from annual renewal fees!!
That $600 barely pays for road maintenance in the Netherlands. It's all down to design using traffic standards to evolve design. US infrastructture hasn't been properly maintained in decades, simply because there's no money for it.
@@therealdutchidiot actually the road infrastructure in the Netherlands cost around USD 1.5 billion and the annual roadtax proceeds are around USD 6 billion. Its a milkcow where most is used for the general budget. But anyway, I have been the last years in the USA and I see big improvements in various states, specific the mid to mid east area states. In Nashville they started with a similar infrastructure as the Netherlands with segregated bicycle lanes between the pedestrian lane and car/motorbike user lanes. On the otherhand it is difficult to compare just a very dense country like the Netherlands with a less dense country as the USA. No one bikes there really. A better comparison is the entire of Europe with the USA. Guess Spain isnt similar as the Netherlands too. Interesting enough the richest states like California have the worst roads (well at least LA, it might be better in smaller places and areas).
@@atedejong5620 DId you know that like in the the US road tax is just put on a giant pile with all other taxes and they don't specifically pay for roads? On another note: just the yearly maintenance is highter than $4 billion, so I'm not too sure where you're getting your numbers from.
I think the Dutch have a better learning system with how ride in traffic. From a young age we are learned how to bicycle with all the traffic signs and such. So later on as an adult you will have the benefit about how traffic moves. Even our driving exams are different. And yes, we do have a better system.
Adam, you talk about The Netherlands, but only show Amsterdam. That said, the conclusions would be the same if you'd shown other Dutch cities or towns.
3:36 that's the national cycling network, not just that of Amsterdam. The weird part is that you could have just used a map of the Amsterdam and it would have gotten the point across just as well if not better. 4:01 that's not even the Netherlands that's Sweden (I think). And again the weird part is that it would be so easy to find an example from the Netherlands and then your argument would be 10x better. 4:19 there you go that's the map, why not just use that map and compare it with Toronto. sincerely a detail oriented dutch person
The rule of thumb: If two modes of transportation share the same space, the slower sets the speed. In reality there are exceptions for places where pedestrians are extremely rare.
The Dutch book on urban planning actually explains that this is one of the positive aspects of non-separated bicycles lanes
Thanks for sharing. Good rule of thumb 👍
You are incorrect. Traffic lights set thejourney speed ! You can share a country road and a car will travel at 60kmh and the bike at 20kmh. Bring in traffic lights (in an urban setting) and no matter a car drives 60-80kmh, higher speed will get undone by waiting at the traffic light junction. And indeed in London the average speed of a vehicle is 17kmh ! Not due to 'bikes', but because of traffic lights and congestion.
(This counts also for bike traffic. There should be as little traffic light junctions as possible . For example in my 200k Dutch town, I can travel north to south 8km and aproach like 6 traffic lights and a movable canal bridge (esp. in summer!). And if I push it by taking a street parallel I can even limit it to 1 traffic light and the bridge !)
Also traffic lights determine the flow of traffic. You may have urban roads with 2 or 3 lanes per direction (cap up to 1000 car per lane per hour = 3000). But this becomes useless when you approach a traffic light junction. (capacity of just 150 vehicles per lane, per hour ) . 2x2 or 2x3 urban streets don't make sense and are only dangerous and discouraging for pedestrians and cyclists !
therefore in Netherlands roads/streets in built up areas are usually limited (and even brought back to) to 1x1. With traffic lights 1x1 is enough.
I have seen pedestrians reach high speeds...
... as soon if they are on my hood or front bumper.
3:41 I was just on the bus in Calgary, Canada and it was stopped at a red light, on a transit way, with no cross traffic, and with the parallel road on a green light. It’s shocking how even when millions are spent on a transit way, the busses still don’t get signal priority.
The Dutch do a great job at creating effective movement of people, rather than building for cars and tacking on other things, “just in case someone doesn’t drive…”
Yeah we have a similar situation in Toronto, they have a N-S dedicated streetcar lane which is great but then it has to stop at every major E-W cross-street street to ensure that “cars maintain an acceptable level of service” according to city staff… absolutely brutal haha
I've lived in both cities, and man sometimes I could walk faster than jumping on a streetcar in Toronto. Definitely biked faster. In Calgary, hoenstly I barely ever take transit. It's either bike or drive (unfortunately) for me. @@AdambYates
Traffic lights are more intelligent in the Netherlands, if there is no traffic, the light for the bus stay green and all tragic lights that hinders the bus will go red. It depends how tragic is, but in general public transportation has priority above cars.
@@MartinWebNatures I think you mean traffic and not tragic 😅
@@EyesOfGehenna 🤭 yep, typos but you get it. Don't correct it, sometimes UA-cam don't like correcting and posting is lost
USA and Canada are 50 years behind in road and street design.
Definitely agree!
Maybe true but there are certain areas that are more ahead than others. I believe cities need to start making higher standards than what the provinces put out because some know better.
More then 50 bro
Over time (at the replacement/repair rate every 30 yrs) they can correct car-only structure. The southern town in the US where I live in South Carolina has given a very nice nod with protected bike lanes. They have been in place for a year and because they are not “penciled-in” suggestions they help. What is lacking is everywhere else in town given completely over to heavy extreme speed car and semi truck traffic. So many wrecks. Solid summer season of orange alerts for terrible air quality and no not due to wildfires.
The beg buttons are the only way for those on foot or bike to cross and wanna guess how long we wait at those? Insane how long. If you don’t hit the beg button it will not give a turn at all. And that means extremely low priority causing mistakes and possibly creating accidents. Hullo.
When people were always told they are the best, they are less in for changes by influences from other parts of the world. In contrast, the Dutch are always in for views and ideas of others. They are eager to try something new but also want science based proof the idea is actually better. Even Dutch speedbumps have a scientific developed shape and dimension. So the main thing to change is the will to change and a community type thinking, without the individualistic me first approach.
3:35 uh... that is not the "Amsterdam network", that is the Dutch network Those two are not the same. That said, the Amsterdam Biking network would basically look comparable to the national network in density. There are very few places in a city where bikes are not allowed. Defacto every street is part of the network.
Was looking for this comment haha. Amsterdam and The Netherlands are not the same.
And @ ua-cam.com/video/L7_O1GSPIWo/v-deo.html it shows a German street, captioned 'Netherlands'.......
@@TaniDraws That is not what 90% of Americans think it is (of the small 5% that actually know it).
Wait until you try to explain that Amsterdam is the capital city of the country but not the province it is located in and that the government is seated in another province altogether.
Guess @AdambYates couldn't believe that map wasn't a biking network of a major city, but of the whole country, includinging its rural areas.
"The Amsterdam network" All of the Netherlands.
But that's part of the beauty of it. It's all connected, and that's a large part of why it works so well.
How many square miles are we talking about?
Amsterdam Metropolitan region
2,580.26 km2 (996.24 sq mi)
Toronto Metro
5,905.71 km2 (2,280.21 sq mi)
Netherlands sans water
34,329 km2 (13,254 sq mi)
Great concept! Crazy how people are fighting this type of design in Toronto when it clearly works!
They're fighting those stupid painted bicycle gutters that make no sense and are dangerous. What NONE are suggesting is a separated / safe bicycle network.
At 4:45, bicycles don't really have priority at the intersection shown. Instead, there are separate traffic lights for bikes, taking away the conflict with cars. This approach is standard at intersection with main roads where cars can go fast.
At slightly more minor intersections, there are roundabouts with separate lanes for bicycles. The bikes then will typically have priority for ones inside urban areas.
1:44 These ideas didn't come from discovery, people first protested in the streets about the high number of deaths caused by cars, especially among children. And then over time more and more solutions were created and probably still learning, tweaking
it's best to separate instead of prioritize modes of transport.
Great video, Adam. Keep it up. I'm really glad to see the increase in urbanist content on UA-cam.
Thanks, appreciate the note!
Well, as a Dutch person I would say: just start with creating a separate, red coloured lane at the side, reserved for bicyclists. That's not that much of an anchievement (and not that costly), but it is at least half of the job, looking at safety matters. Bu that, the bicyclists will feel respected ánd they are sooner noticed by cars, which rapidly reduces the number of accidents.
I think you underestimate how costly it will be. It only works really well if you connect the entire city, not just a neighborhood or two. Creating dedicated bikelanes throughout whole the city is an expensive and time consuming task. If it was easy, don't you think more NA cities would have done it?
May I ask what the limit is in distance that a Dutch person expects to cycle for daily transit? Most people I worked with- retired now- drove 10-20 or more miles a day for work. It wouldn't matter how many bike lanes there were, they were not going to cycle to work, even if traffic jams kept the time used the same.
Dude!!!! I did my research paper on “EV are not the future for America” and talked a lot about walkable cities and reliable transportation and I love you went into detail how they use their streets. got yourself a subscriber
Actually Self driving cars are the future. You clearly needed to do a lot more research. All areas are walkable if they have sidewalks which most places do. Seems some people when they say walkable they mean cars are more restricted.
I thought so too but after further research it won’t solve our over reliance on vehicles. States like Texas are destroying neighborhoods to construct more roads. Here is an article you might find interesting according to the guardian “worst of all is cobalt, which mostly comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the Washington Post 15% of that country’s mining operations are in the “informal” (unregulated) sector, which employs upwards of 200,000 people (including thousands of children, some as young as six) working in unregistered and badly ventilated mines.” Green cars aren’t green. If you’d like to read my paper I can email it to you.
@@ronpetersen2317Cars are not the future. There is no way to create an efficient transport network that involves individual people in metal boxes that weigh several tonnes and are parked on average for 20-22 hours per day. They are too big and take up too much space and are too inefficient.
Just taking a car and putting an electric engine in it and having a robot drive it, doesnt solve the problem. The problem is that its still a car.
@@TheSuperappelflap Cars are pretty efficient. Even here in the Netherlands with good public transport, in most places I've lived and jobs I held, the car was almost always vastly superior to public transport for my daily commute. Even taking traffic into account, it's a huge time saver. It seems they take up a lot of space... but consider that if only 25% of car users here would switch to public transport, they'd completely overwhelm the system. And there are already few opportunities left to add more trains on busy routes.
They do have their problems, but some of those can be solved by autonomous cars. One is getting rid of parked cars in dense city centers or even residential streets. Another - and this is a huge deal - is that it makes ad-hoc car rental convenient. If you only really need a car for the occasional trip to the DIY store or to visit relatives or a holiday, and the train is not an option, you might rent a robo-car, have it rock up at your house 30 minutes later, and it'll bugger off by itself once you are done with it. Same as a taxi? Yes... with the notable difference that the robot makes it far cheaper, to the point where you might not want to own a car at all if you're not using one daily. It's already happening to a degree with ride-sharing cars, basically rentals that are parked in the neighborhood and can be unlocked with an app. We have a few of those around here. Self-driving cars would give drivers more options, and spur wide spread adoption. Which is great, because cars still have their uses.
Self driving cars will eventually be a hell of a lot safer than having meatbags behind the wheel.
@@TheSuperappelflap They are the present past and future. Have you only lived in a major city? It wouldn't work even in suburbia. In a small town forget it.
Did a cycling trip across the Netherlands recently, I was blown away by the infrastructure, not only in the cities but also in the rural areas. Literal separate cycle highways between small towns and cities.
I hope the weather cooperated. 🌞
@@joeycee5680 It did indeed! got really lucky with streak of sunny days in April with only light showers overnight. Only complaint would be the headwinds.
How far apart were those cities and towns?
@@maggiv5401 Not very far at all, maybe 10km was the longest stretch of uninterrupted path before you hit another little town. It's an amazingly connected country.
@@2penry2 those towns were there before the connection. The point is that the area is condensed unlike in the United States once you get past the Mississippi you can go very long distances between towns. Very few people are going to choose to ride bikes for distances like that. When I visited Ireland, I was told that at one point before the car, every town was no more than 6 miles from a railway station. I’m pretty sure most of those towns existed before there was a railroad.
Great video! Something that often gets overlooked is the material of which the road is made of. In residential neighborhoods in the Netherlands you will almost always find bricks instead of asphalt. Driving on bricks create more noise, which causes you (generally) to drive a bit slower. It's cheaper in maintenance too.
Great point!
The bricks are also more permeable, which is also very important in the Netherlands, and it's more pleasing to the eye. It also makes access easier to get to cables or plumbing underneath and quickly reassemble when the job is done.
It's great
This is the first video I've watched on your channel and was pleasantly surprised by the production quality, given your channel is still an emerging one. I like that the animations are a little retro. As for content -- this was a GREAT primer on road infrastructure, I wish a video like this was around when I got into urbanism, it'd have connected the concepts for me faster. The graphs and such are really helpful in comparing countries.
As a Dutch traffic engineer I would say that there's lots of improvement still to do in the Netherlands. Fatalities are going up, especially in the group of elderly people with a n e-bike. We are not yet there....
Darwin will take care of that.
the road system is 1 thing, behavior is another... You can't make things idiotproof without dropping any and all pragmatism. E-bikes and smart phones are driving up the fatalities and just to be complete: the increase in single households increases the amount of journeys on the roads. Have you factored in these 3 things? How will you compensate these things by adapting road design? Whenever accidents happen that are because of poor road design, the dated situation gets on some priority list and gets updated quite soon. Our way of making roads is not prone to needing lots of improvements except for the dated situations that are still dangerous, which as i mentioned over time will be amended.
Now to adress your single point: elderly people on e-bikes... Maybe just needing a license is enough and prevent the incapable of using them?
Maybe we arent there yet no. But we are great at creating good safe infrastructure. And im sure we will find solutions to the e-bike problem too. To be honest i dont really understand why there just isnt a helmet law for it. I mean driving a motorized vehicle going over 25 should normally have that obligation, no? And like the person before me said, maybe a license yes.
I live in the Netherlands to but about the elderly on a e bike. These should be forbidden at a certain age and a training should be required to use these bikes. Know everbody gets the blaim of more accidents and thats complete not correct.
That is also at fault of the elderly people themselfes 😂 they ride crazy on these faster bikes often without helmet
Great video, showing the road types that are used is neat, but showing how they form a network with other road types is so much more useful to get an idea of how they can or should be mixed together. I personally play with designing a grid city in my off time, and seeing how and when to mix things just makes finding potential design considerations so much easier. I hope you can make more technical stuff or just show where you could find more like this for the seemingly vanishingly rare group of urban design nerds.
Very good video. I am also a filmmaker myself and am impressed with how you made this. Very clear, compact and to the point.
Plenty of Dutch urban planning innovations can be implemented in North America. However, there is still a problem of zoning. Many North American homes are far from their daily destinations and thus require motorized transport of some form.
Outside North America, most people generally live within walking distance to most of their daily destinations. Walking is an option for groceries, restaurants, shops, offices, schools, and transit stations. In that situation, having a car is more of a luxury than a necessity. For those where a car is a necessity (elderly/disabled) or extremely convenient (families), there will be more space to move around and less traffic if there are less cars on the road.
Its not just about the transportation network, its also about the distances and accessibility between the daily destinations.
Wow! Great succinct explanations. This should be the go-to video for anyone first getting exposed to these ideas.
Thanks! Appreciate the comment!
the footage at 4:15 is from my hometown Braunschweig, Lower Saxony in Germany, very random surprise hahaha
I live in the Netherlands and it's like choreographed traffic. You always know what everyone - cars, buses, bikes, trams, peds, mopeds, mobility scooter, literally everyone - is going to do in traffic. There are accidents, but they are much fewer and less severe than in the US. Also getting your driver's license is a long and expensive process so people know the rules and follow them. Srsly it's like €2000+ to get your license!
There are several other factors to consider such as mixed neighbourhoods where people can live, work and shop close enough that they can easily walk or cycle to services. Every little neighbourhood has shops and restaurants.
Then there is public transport infrastructure, most European cities have access to public transport within a 3 minute walk from home or work with greater frequency. In Europe you can get from point A to point B without having to go through a central downtown hub, public transport in Europe have ring networks moving people around the circumference of the cities. Airports and train stations are all served by public transport.
European cities also have a better system of parking, taking cars off the streets in underground garages and large, multi-story park houses next to shopping and business areas.
If you properly design the greater societal infrastructure instead of bits and pieces, it is proven that cars, bikes and pedestrians can function together.
The US can do this, its not something only Europe can do
@@andrewcharlton4053 One of the problems is that US zoning and nimby laws restrict to what extend this can actually be implemented.
@@_DRMR_ Of course. But that can be changed. That's the whole point
Videos like this seem happy to suggest that just providing the alternative (traffic, public transport) will magically induce a tectonic shift in public mind. Maybe, but that is not how it happened in the NL; there, beside the carrot (providing alternatives that work), there is also the stick (increasing the price of using automobiles both ownership and fuel taxes). The stick is more about making sure the tradeoff is actually considered rather than just to go with the status quo, and then specially for the 2nd (and more) car. Also military personel, and scholarship students (most) got a public transport pass rather than a transportation deduction. In the NL all these changes over decades partially absorbed the growth in cars per household beyond one (the primary car is much harder to eliminate beyond rarified places like major city inner cities). I don't think a change like this is possible without the stick part, and videos like this that suggest it is purely traffic engineering are somewhat deluded.
Stevenage in the UK is a prime example of how not disincentivizing car use while building perfectly fine infrastructure has no effect at all.
one mayor problem that isnt adressed here why this might not work in the US is that they do zoning wrong. In the Netherlands you can have shop on street level with housing above the shops. You can have commercial buildings be in residential zones like supermarkets and other type stores.
In the US you have to drive to do whatever. You need to drive out of your suburbs to a commercial zoned slab of land where all the stores are. Where in the Netherlands you can walk or cycle to the closest supermarket, in the US u sometimes need to drive severmal miles to get to the closest supermarket.
The US is designed to be car centric and the zoning works against redesigning traffic in this way. The way the US builds their cities now and the way they zone them makes owning a car mandatory or get shafted in unreliable almost non existing public transit.
@@ronniebots9225Note that while true the Dutch system also only covers the daily trips (grocery and work and children's schools commute). Maybe some other stores in the city centre are also reachable by bike for a larger share of the population, but it is not as universal. Same for larger shops in the city outskirts. So it is pretty much only a first magnitude car free solution. (and then specially, as said in the first post, to reduce cars per household rather than do away with it completely. That is mostly only for a minority living in the city centres). In addition to the first post: parking in the densest (city centre) neighbourhoods also plays a role as "stick"
The carrot isnt just less traffic accidents and functional public transport. The carrot is that its generally faster and easier to bike, walk, or take public transport than driving. For example when I visit my parents town, I can walk in 10 minutes from the train station to their house, on safe streets, crossing only 2 streets that have "fast" (50km/h or 30mph) traffic.
I can bike from their house to the city center in 5 minutes along those same safe streets. If I drove instead, I would have to drive for just as long taking a detour along the roads for cars instead of the direct route I can take on my bike, and then find a place to park, and then walk to the store I want to go to. It would take longer to drive than to bike to the shop and park my bike in front.
It's also about changing attitude : If your Mother / daughter / child is on a bike, you will look out for bikers / fietsers ... the fiets always wins in NL .
Brilliant piece Adam, it would be amazing if we could start doing this in North America. As the model of upgrade and replace as you go makes so much sense.
Totally agree! Thanks for the comment, appreciate it!
US: more cars! We want more ca-a-a-a-a-rs!!!
@@garryferrington811 and BIGGER ONES! why use a car when you can waste 2 parking spots and the climate with an oversized RAM VAN?
Actually, if I remember from another UA-cam video, the first attempt at bicycle-friendly streets ended up causing *MORE* problems with congestion. It took a total rethink of the street design to get it right.
Was it a video from Bicycle Dutch?
That is true but that bike road design was just not good at it is normal not to get it right first try
Notjustbikes is your channel.
To play music with my friends I have to drive to the another city. It’s a ride of 10 miles with some 12 traffic lights. I live east of a city of 160.000 inhabitants . the other city is on the west side of my hometown. So I have to cross my home town. Still I only need 25 minutes to reach my destination. Good road design and transport management in my home country The Netherlands makes that possible.
3:20 there's a lot of subtlety here in the Dutch law. One of which is that pedestrians are considered a lane of traffic. That means that the van turning right up the ramp is crossing a lane to turn and must give way to it. That is, they are obligated to wait for the pedestrian to cross. Second is that down-ramps like the one shown here act as yields.
@4:43 the bicyclist had three yields the first one for crossing bike traffic the second and third for cars.
The triangles that are pointing towards you means you have to yield. The triangles are referred to a shark teeth.
This was a good episode of NotJustBikes.
Thanks Garry, I am a big fan of NotJustBikes. Looks like you are too!
This is a great video. I love the Vox vibes it gives off while still being your own style.
I also think that the Dutch mentality plays a large role, we grow up with bicycles, and when we learn to drive in a car also learn how to deal with pedestrians/bicyclists
Excellent presentation, short but super comprehensive. The vocal-fry is a bit much though.
Thanks. Will definitely try to fix the vocal fry for the next video. Appreciate the feedback!
Yes, I noticed that this frog voice is a typical American disease. I guess they think that this makes their message more important😂
@@AdambYates Don't worry about the vocal fry as much as your mixing. Your voice was pretty quiet compared to the music.
Makes me proud to see, also the effects of this. Rather than huge suburbs you have to drive out, integrated suburbs with small cafes, restaurants, small supermarkets within every kilometer, eh mile, makes my life walkable, cyclible and much more relaxed. Added physical movement is healthy, as is being able to buy daily fresh produce within 5 minutes walking.
Important factor is also the law. Even if a car has priorty and hits a cyclist who is technically in the wrong, the car driver still considered "guilty" in a way, because he should always consider the vulnerability of the cyclist and the fact that he himself decides to navigate tons of steel at high speeds. This makes sense in that if you choose to ride a way more dangerous vehicle, you simply have way more responsabilities. It is almost impossible to fatally injure somebody as a cyclist so its in the end only logical that different rules apply when something goes wrong.
Could you list in the description the papers you mentioned toward the beginning?
Just stumbled across your channel and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this video. If I could make one suggestion it would be to speak more clearly and louder - getting more air into your lungs will avoid the “vocal fry” sound.
Thanks for the feedback! I will definitely try to fix the narration audio for the next video!
I am from Amsterdam and this does make me proud to be Dutch citizen. Although not all shown in this video is fully accurate, the majority is correct and efficacious in safety. Main reason though is that biking in the Netherlands is a deeply CULTURAL thing. Everyone has a bike or multiple bikes. We all learn how to ride a bike at age asap. And not as a game but as a way of transportation.
Adam is there any books that urban planners champion on the topic of laneways and pedestrian passageways ?
You might look at the Crow manual. Basically it is the design guide what roads go where and how engineers need to build. It is from the Netherlands. Oh, and I think there is a English translation too. Not cheap though...
I have not personally read it but I follow this guys work: www.linkedin.com/posts/brommelstroet_movement-activity-6927254389220900864-NfZx?
You might also look for the ‘Handboek Rood’ (the red manual) from the city of Amsterdam, that is the specific design guide for Amsterdam streets and roads. Very detailed.
You may have noticed this, but in lower speed streets - we often used tiled roads instead of asphalt. The reason for this, is that it is much more noisy for drivers and you notice your speed much more.
We, the Dutch still have traffic jams every day , despite our world class infrastructure, but that is because people became wealthier and wealthier and buy more and more cars (even people who enjoy using bikes and public transit often have a car or more than 1 car . Oh, and also because the population just keeps growing because everybody and their mother think that here is paradise , based on all the youtubers who proclaim that the netherlands is the best place in the world
but not more then a hour
Impressive and professional video. Excellent work
Thanks Travis!
Did anyone notice how many of the buildings were multistory? this may seem like a side issue, but I live in a growing city and there is so much resistance to accepting that single family housing cannot accommodate public transit. But there is a transition issue in that more dense housing doesn't have parking but the transit systems are not adequate to get people around efficiently. There is the added problem that people are used to having to commute long distances and there is definitely not the public transit to accommodate that. I doubt those bike riders are going more than a few miles at most before either their destination or transferring to public transit.
We even have roads that litterally say: Cycling road , Cars are guests, so basicly Bikes etc have full priority and are litterally king of the road in those streets.
It's not allways first Slowakije traffic. When you have the triangles on the floor before you, you have to wait. That can be slow or fast traffic.
Excellent vid by the legendary Adam "Amsterdam" Yates
Haha thanks Ron, appreciate the comment!!
Drones are not allowed above people in the Netherlands. Furthermore, landing aircraft sometimes fly over the Amsterdam center. You could get close to these aircraft with your drone.
One thing the US needs to do as a first step, and that is to allow mixed zoning. That reduces the need to travel (groceries and clothing around the corner in small shops) in the first place. So the bike or walking will be a viable option.
Less cars = also less polution and less overweight = more healthy people = less money spend on sick people
Amazing video!
Do you know any book/website I can read to understand the whole Dutch street design? Thanks beforehand!
The Dutch reported on 2024 that there has been a decrease in cycling from 2012 to 2023 , with a 20% increase in fatalities. Electric motorized bikes use has increased from 5% to 37% in the 10 year period
Yes most people use electric bikes right now but we also have people that still should chose cycling because they use the car for only 5 minutes to get to their work
Shared streets are really easy to mess up. If you just put them all together you'll end up with a big mess. It only works if you have first diverted almost all car traffic to elsewhere and made sure that driver prefer to drive in the other place. The few people who then still need to be in the shared space will have to use it as an end destination, not for shortcuts or through traffic. Shared space can only be installed correctly in very specific situations or they will just be very dangerous places for the more vulnerable road users.
holy! that video is precise af. well done
2:57 unless you're a taxi driver in which case just fuck everyone else. Biking in the amsterdam central canals kinda sucks honestly
Does anyone have any links or information on how these challenges extend to non urban areas? Or, perhaps more interestingly, mixed urban/rural areas?
As a dutchie visiting LA I’m always so shocked how everything is car based and a simple 5 km on a freeway can take so long. But with no alternative what can you do but get in the car? But things will only change if the great big car lobby will ease but that is not gonna happen any time soon.
You should go to the Dutch city Zwolle. It prefers the bicycle above cars..
FWIW we still have commution on the highways / main roads in cities during the peak hours (around 09:00 and 17:00 mainly). But yes if you take the public transit and or bicycle, you can avoid these.
The difference I have heard from people that have lived in both places is that rush hour in the Netherlands is like 1-2hrs in the morning / evening vs. In a number of North American cities it’s 4hrs in the morning and 5hrs in the evening as people get home from work and try to get to their sports, social events, etc.
Super video. I thought the video examples with drawn annotations were just excellent. In case it's helpful: I had to sit in a quiet room with headphones to understand the narration. Vocal quality was a bit raspy (e.g. vocal fry), and this combined with loud music in the mix made it difficult to understand.
Did u visit any infrastructure besides Amsterdam?
I know Amsterdam is the 'posterchild' of the Netherlands but the same infrastructure principles are implemented everywhere to mostly the same extent. And I say mostly because a small city with 30k inhabitants normally doesn't have a tram/metro or subway but likely stil has a bus route running through it.
I also highly recommend Jason Slaughters 'Not Just Bikes' great channel
I visited the suburbs of Amsterdam as well as Utrecht. Totally agree, from what I could see the same principles apply except with buses :)
Definitely want to go back at some point to explore further! Also, Love the NotJustBikes channel!!
Sounds like you live in the Netherlands? Whereabouts?
@@AdambYates Indeed I do live in the Netherlands, currently I live in Nijmegen (a municipal city of about 170k in the southeast close to the border with Germany).
I take it you are either American or Canadian, given your knowledge (or at least opinion) regarding transportation?
I live in Amsterdam and the historical centre puts limits on road design. I would say there are many places outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands where the principals are implemented better. They didn’t get it right straight away though. It is and has been an ongoing project for decades and will need to evolve to cater for changes in needs in the future. Being very densely populated does help as well I think
Of all the cities in the Netherlands I have been to, Amsterdam by far ahs the worst street design. There are cars everywhere, people crossing roads randomly, its complete chaos. Most other cities have completely removed cars from the city center and have seperated bike lanes everywhere. Amsterdam looks like its stuck in 1950.
Amsterdam is not a posterchild for NL, it’s more like disneyland. 😂
Great video!
Do you have links to the simulations run on the models of Dutch vs. North American roads?
it’s called real life data from years of this working out perfectly
Great video, Amsterdam is not representative for the rest of the Netherlands but because its the biggest and most known city of our country its fair enough to use this as an example. our fatality rate is about 650 a year last few years it is slightly raising but our traffic is getting more crowded as well. we have peak traffic at 7 till 9 am and 16 til 19 pm on the highways. Especially when its bad weather congestion can rise till a 1000 km. lots of campaigns to let people carpooling or promoting public transportation where effortless because the congestion didn't decrease. so not everything is great about our traffic. But for a country as big as the state of Maryland with a population of almost 18 million we at least try to advance our movements.
[] ... campaigns to let people carpooling or promoting public transportation where effortless because the congestion didn't decrease ...
Where is your source supporting this statement and conclusion?
@@wimahlers files nemen niet af en in de auto's zitten doorgaans maar 1 persoon. In de jaren 90 was dat een doorn in het oog van het kabinet Lubbers en het opvolgende paarse kabinet. Ik zat toen op de basisschool en we kregen zelfs lesmateriaal ter promotie van openbaar vervoer en de geflopte carpoolstrook.
Great video! Yep, love living in Amsterdam!
Thanks!!
@@AdambYatesyou should move here hahaha 😜
Great video. One piece of advice (or suggestion actually, do what you want ofc), it's less comfortable to listen to the low, cracking voice. Your video's are already up there of great quality, and I think this could improve it even more. Forgive me for the unsolicited advice, but I do strongly believe this could be helpful. Keep them up, great stuff!
I felt the same. I'm not sure he can change his voice, but one thing that might help is to raise the voiceover volume relative to the background music, which was quite loud and made it difficult to hear what he was saying.
Thanks for the feedback,I appreciate it! I’ll try to do it next time with more volume and I’ll turn down the background music.
@@AdambYates You got this!
@@AdambYates I wanted to give this same feedback. Especially at 1:20 I noticed that your voice is getting overshadowed. Your words matter more than the tunes or sound effects :)
I thought it was the male version of vocal fry.
If you are by any chance still in the Netherlands, go to the city Almere close to Amsterdam. The city is much younger and had much less constrictions for planning there infrastructure. I believe not just bikes still hasn't made a video about that city.
Showing how the old cities work is nice to show that even badly designed American cities still can be fixed, but showing Almere really shows how infrastructure of a city can look like.
Great video!
If your country is as small as the Netherlands and as densely populated you have to stretch the available space to its limits. Willing to change and creativity is important. It took our country over 50 years and alot of money to achieve this
You'd think that, but it only took 50 years because it didn't take a lot of money. Design standards were changed and were only implemented when the roads reached the end of their lifecycle. It literally cost nothing more than just your average road reconstruction.
You are correct that the government is trying to “nudge” car users into public transportation by lowering allowed speeds and increase parking prices in large cities. Couple of things, there is a lot of difference between the major cities and smaller cities. Public transportation in Amsterdam is great, but less dense cities not so much. Specifically trains are unreliable and *very* expensive in the Netherlands as compared to other European countries.
Still a great country to live in though!
Living in the dead center of Amsterdam, I'd say this video is pretty accurate and representative of general Dutch urban design. And so the internet is floating with videos like this. Here's the kicker though to all this Dutch design hype. There's no guarantee whatsoever that this would ever work in your average North American city. As designing streets like this would not only require a massive cultural and political change, there is a basic but huge geographical difference to overcome as well: North America is huge, the Netherlands is tiny. Good luck designing everything for public transport when that same public transport is horrible at getting you anywhere outside the city.
In the Netherlands, we welcome cars as guests. We give them nice roads, clear rules, safety, but they are still just guests.
@04:00 that's a danish road sign I think..
Everybody wants to do it like the Dutch.Makes me proud as a Duchie...
Haha
Awesome video
Thanks!
But cars are status symbols. How does that factor in?
Why do these types of channels only ever visit Amsterdam?
It is like only visiting New York as a representation of the whole USA.
I saw channels where they were showing very friendly bicycle cities like Utrecht and Groningen
They do not just visit Amsterdam
I think the music was too loud and drowned out your narration a bit. At least, for your personal style of narration. I hope that helps.
I’ve been to Amsterdam a few times - bicycles are everywhere, and there’s something to note about this - The Netherlands is extremely flat. You don’t have to contend with hills on a bike or foot.
The thing is, because its so flat its also extremely windy. Hills break wind. So biking around the flat countryside costs about as much effort as biking in a hilly region.
Also, the east and south of the country has hills, its just the north and west that are flat.
there are E bikes nowadays, so this remark is over.
@4:00 as a Dutchman I can 100% tell that that clip not shot in the Netherlands. The signs, the pavement/sidewalk, the asphalt/brick combination in this particular street, the houses. It's amazing how all these details instantly subconsciously tell me what and what isn't the Netherlands.
Edit: my best guess this clip is from Germany
And the downwardslope of the road. It indeed seems very German, including the white numberplate
And the paint color of both houses near each other is very German, in the Netherlands you wouldn’t see that! I live only 1 km of the German border in The Netherlands!
The sign says "Gjaldskylda", Google seems to think it's Iceland. Certainly not the Netherlands.
It is from Iceland on the blue parking sign is written: GJALDSKYLDA that is icelandic for owed (verschuldigd)
Als Nederlander ben ik voor 100% zeker dat deze clip WEL in Nederland is opgenomen, nml. in Amsterdam.
Amazing video! Considerably better than NotJustBikes ones
Thanks! Appreciate the comment!
I am stuck in traffic jams every day, what you filmed are people with a low income, tourists, housewives, foreigners, people who have a regular job were already stuck in traffic jams this morning.
Why did you steal Huge if True's design without first changing the colour a bit? Anyways the video is great.
3:36 that is not Amsterdam. That is the hole fricking country. Showed the wrong map or said Amsterdam instead of the Netherlands
Good catch! I said Amsterdam instead of the Netherlands! The Netherlands is a little larger than the great Toronto area.
Such a flat land. That must be contributing a lot to the adoption of these designs. Free place-to-place bicycle was tried in my city, but it is hilly, its hard drive uphill. Plus weather helps? Would you want to be sweaty when you reach office?
You might think that, but the fact it's flat means it's extremely bad for cyclists. Why is that you ask? Because flat land causes wind. Lots of it. It's known as the Dutch hills. Most people would rather ride uphill than ride with headwind.
Some things that work on a small scale often do not work when scaled up. The population of the entire country of the Netherlands is smaller than the NYC metro area. Yes, it may seem great just to slow everyone to the same speed but when people are traveling greater distances. Additionally, the population density of the Netherlands is about 1/6 the population density of the NYC metro area. The additional population density creates issues implementing these concepts to larger more densely populated cities. The genuine answer is to apply some of these ideas to specific areas of the larger cities while improving public transportation in larger more densely populated areas. Forcing everyone (bikes, cars, pedestrians) to go the same speeds everywhere will only cause a backlash against these ideas.
It still baffles me to see that such a small and dense populated country, where every inch has to be used, can make it happen but a country with so much more space simply can not.
Interesting point! And I agree.
The Netherlands is, by it's nature, a historically highly planned country (as early as the 11th century) . Most other countries start planning only when people move into an area, but the Dutch usually planned first and populated after. After all, reclaiming land and planning it's use goes hand in hand.
I think having a lot of space is a hindrance. Look at how spread out US towns and suburbs are. It makes public transport unprofitable and walking and cycling unappealing. Then logically people will want to drive in(to) cities as well. On top of that there's also the silly strict zoning, the "American freedom" ideology which car companies have carefully baked car centrism into, conservative politicians that resist change, and those that are sponsored by big oil, car companies etc. I takes a lot of time and effort to go against all of that.
We have to make transport efficient precisely because we dont have space. There is no other option, so we have to spend the time and money to maximize throughput and minimize disruptions. Americans can just...build another lane. We cant. We dont have the space for more lanes.
Why de noise in the background
Your voice's so deep 🥲🥲
Part of the problem in North America is that governments are addicted to gasoline tax revenues (and sales tax revenues attached to maintaining, repairing and insuring cars). They are also dependent on the taxes generated by sales of cars, as well as the income taxes generated by auto industry jobs. These jobs are also used for political purposes - as in garnering votes when a new auto industry-related plant is promised to be built or, "vote for me and I will attract more auto industry jobs and this will generate spin-off employment, or use taxpayer subsidies to make sure existing car plants don't leave and take all the jobs with them."
In fairness, one reason why things work as well as they do in the Netherlands is that the cities there are much smaller than Canadian cities and hence it takes less time to get around. The Netherlands also doesn't have the huge geographic distances between cities that are common in Canada.
I think it's too late to revamp our existing cities so they function much like Dutch cities do. If we plan to start rationalizing our urban design so it more closely matches Dutch urban design principles, we are probably going to have to build new cities from the ground up that optimize and make pedestrian walkways, bicycle lanes and trams priorities over cars.
Yes thank you
Thanks for the comment
As a dutch I learned something new too.
But here is it perhaps a lot better then many other coutries even in the EU. It is not perfect !!
the average road tax in the Netherlands is USD 600 a year, while in the USA it is maybe USD 60 to 100 a year. If US car owners want to get an increase of 600%, the infrastructure might be a bit better. But there are also differences, like bicycle density in USA or the Netherlands. Its not a one on one comparison. But what to do with just one sixth of the tax revenue generated from annual renewal fees!!
That $600 barely pays for road maintenance in the Netherlands. It's all down to design using traffic standards to evolve design. US infrastructture hasn't been properly maintained in decades, simply because there's no money for it.
@@therealdutchidiot actually the road infrastructure in the Netherlands cost around USD 1.5 billion and the annual roadtax proceeds are around USD 6 billion. Its a milkcow where most is used for the general budget. But anyway, I have been the last years in the USA and I see big improvements in various states, specific the mid to mid east area states. In Nashville they started with a similar infrastructure as the Netherlands with segregated bicycle lanes between the pedestrian lane and car/motorbike user lanes. On the otherhand it is difficult to compare just a very dense country like the Netherlands with a less dense country as the USA. No one bikes there really. A better comparison is the entire of Europe with the USA. Guess Spain isnt similar as the Netherlands too. Interesting enough the richest states like California have the worst roads (well at least LA, it might be better in smaller places and areas).
@@atedejong5620 DId you know that like in the the US road tax is just put on a giant pile with all other taxes and they don't specifically pay for roads?
On another note: just the yearly maintenance is highter than $4 billion, so I'm not too sure where you're getting your numbers from.
I think the Dutch have a better learning system with how ride in traffic. From a young age we are learned how to bicycle with all the traffic signs and such. So later on as an adult you will have the benefit about how traffic moves. Even our driving exams are different. And yes, we do have a better system.
Thank's
Nederland streets are very beautiful
4:00 that is not the netherlands
Adam, you talk about The Netherlands, but only show Amsterdam. That said, the conclusions would be the same if you'd shown other Dutch cities or towns.
Very good video buy imagine ONLY looking at AMSTERDAM.... the capitial is the 1%
3:36 that's the national cycling network, not just that of Amsterdam. The weird part is that you could have just used a map of the Amsterdam and it would have gotten the point across just as well if not better.
4:01 that's not even the Netherlands that's Sweden (I think). And again the weird part is that it would be so easy to find an example from the Netherlands and then your argument would be 10x better.
4:19 there you go that's the map, why not just use that map and compare it with Toronto.
sincerely a detail oriented dutch person
Mistakes happen
3:35 “The Amsterdam network” - The Netherlands is more than Amsterdam…
4:01 That clip is not from The Netherlands…