Comment by anentropic
2 days ago
Yeah it really strikes me when reading the OP article that this is what a country that's "got it's shit together" looks like...
OTOH I did wonder how feasible it is to transfer such a well-designed system to UK towns and cities where it seems like available space would be too cramped to recreate all those nice features though
Have been there, have also been to the Netherlands. There isn't really a big difference in the total space available, in my limited experience. You can find a big difference for a photo op, sure.
Based on where I have been, I guess the big difference is that the Dutch allocate continuous space to bikes and the British have a patchwork of bike space and parked cars.
The Dutch use of space seems more effective, the space they use for bikes is connected, rather than unconnected/ineffective bits.
But note that on the first photo, you see four streets meeting at an intersection, that's eight sides, and there are cars parked on only two of the eight. Look at the the next intersection you pass on the way somewhere and compare the number of sides with parking space with that "two".
The Netherlands really does a great job on infrastructure. It's not like they're even particularly anti-car: driving there is a pretty decent experience too. It's extremely depressing driving onto the ferry in Hook of Holland and then driving off at Harwich.
I’ve always thought of the Netherlands as Infrastructire Country, so much of that territory has been significantly altered over the last four or five thousand years that it’s leaked into their world view.
Problems can be solved with enough time, rough consensus and effort. It seems like such a weirdly outdated modernist view when living in other places.
Its amazing, its almost as if driving is better when a huge amount of trips are instead done with transportation systems that require far less space and are far better for the environment.
Its as if drivers benefit just as much from good driving alternatives as non-drivers. But somehow this is consistently ignored by the 'pro-driving' crowd.
You are literally improving the overall efficiency of the whole system at minimal cost.
The space isn't the problem. It just means you can't use an off-the-shelf design.
Just like the UK, most towns and cities weren't designed for a mix of cars and low-speed traffic. They predate cars by quite a bit, so they are now pretty cramped. The average urban area in The Netherlands back in the 1960s-1970s looked very much like the UK does now.
Infrastructure has to be designed case-by-case, because no two neighborhoods are ever exactly the same. You might start out with a menu of a few dozen common designs, but they are always modified to fit the specific location. Often that means making compromises, but achieving 90% of your goals is already a lot better than 0%.
If it can be done in The Netherlands, there's no reason it can't be done in the UK as well.
The UK isn't alone in having old narrow streets, so it's just a case of re-allocating space. However, it does require a change in mindset so that rather than designers focussing on how to maximise driver speeds, they need to minimise driver speeds at junctions and make it clear that pedestrians have priority.
Keep in mind that this looks like it's using a lot of spaces, but there's only one lane for cars each way. Cyclists and pedestrians use way less space than cars, so if a significant part of the population uses those modes of transportation that would otherwise have been in cars, that's a far more efficient use of space.
The flip side of that is that it's pretty feasible to transform existing car infrastructure into much nicer infrastructure - shave off a single lane, and there's a lot that you can do with that.
The Netherlands is more densely populated than the UK, I think, especially in the Randstad.