CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
"What I learnt from a month cycling in the Netherlands"
(4 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
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Posted 9 years ago #
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Based on my recent visit to the place can I strongly emphasise how little like the video Amsterdam now is. We stayed not so far from this area.
Take a look at 0:41-1:09 - just 30 seconds showing what look like typical UK streets. And listen to the noise. Now look at Govert Flinkstraat and surrounds as they are now... https://goo.gl/maps/HeTfy3zzyQu Streetview lets you wander around. It's a shame that Streetview doesn't include sound.... but I can tell you that Amsterdam (with some specific exceptions where an unusual busy road passed through an area) was SO quiet compared to UK cities... I know that the sun is out on the Streetview images, and the video is in black and white, but for once this really conveys something truthful.
Look at the subtleties of the changes in street design. It's not that they have become one way, or that cars have vanished. It's more subtle and more complete than that. Car numbers are much lower, but fundamentally these are now residential streets - places where people LIVE first, and occasionally access by car (but mostly on foot and by bike).
Look in particular at just a few of the key access points to the area:
https://goo.gl/maps/6UMsBMJ6kpt
https://goo.gl/maps/LAd6zwXJj5x
https://goo.gl/maps/s1bC4dagzKM2
https://goo.gl/maps/XipafafvziL2
https://goo.gl/maps/EpE85raShQK2
... I could list lots and lots more of these - but you get the point. It's clear that everything about these streets - over a large area, not just a couple of dead end roads - is built to prevent them being permeable to through traffic.And this is just normal Amsterdam.
My eldest child (young teenage) is now learning dutch, entirely self-motivated, and plans to move to Amsterdam when he 'grows up'... based entirely on his experiences over two days on bike there.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I read "Who builds a bicycle road on a 32km-long sea dyke?" and thought, that's the kind of thing Sustrans would pull but then I realised the author meant they actually built a tarmac'd path rather than designating the pre-existing single-track as part of the National Cycle Network.
Posted 9 years ago #
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