Lessons from the Dutch #LFTDbingo

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LFTD Bingo: https://www.rollinginthecity.ca/blog/lessons-from-the-dutch-bingo-with-nic-laporte

Roy has authored three books on bicycle planning and design and regularly blogs about his trips to experience different types of bicycle infrastructure. More information can be found on his website at www.rollinginthecity.ca

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Netherlands by Bike, The Sequel 👉 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49bxTPhfjjkjBpPViPEZa23pOgPIKmiq&si=BiuhxOf4GTxV2C0o

Netherlands by Bike (2024) 👉 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49bxTPhfjjlKx9RQY-HgREh4CE6J8xH2&si=35Wc2zi1lKmKXnZj

0:00 Eindhoven
0:38 Roy Symons, Rolling in the City
1:18 Lessons from the dutch bingo
1:36 Pedestrian space, 18 September Square
2:13 Bicycle Parking
2:42 Amber tight turn arrow
3:55 Lovely neighbourhood streets
4:57 Continuous sidewalks
5:38 Strijp-S
6:33 Dutch bicycle roundabout
7:03 Fietsstraat, bike street
8:27 Complete network
8:50 The Dutch reach
9:44 The Hovenring
10:34 Safety for children, freedom
11:09 Frontage road bike lane
11:37 Dutch Grand Prix
12:50 Woonerf, Living street
13:45 Back to the city center
14:38 Seeing what we saw to see what we did see
14:53 We can do better

This is the Hovven Ring, an iconic piece of cycling infrastructure that I saw in Einhovven, a city in the southern Dutch province of North Brabbent. And with a quarter million residents, it is the Netherlands fifth largest city and the largest outside the Randstead. Driven by industry, the city grew into its own in the 20th century. But today, Einhovven is known as the design capital of the Netherlands and more recently as a hub for high-tech innovation. and it also features many hallmark elements of Dutch design, all working together to create the distinctive street layout seen throughout the country. I was able to get some help pointing them out because here I cross paths with Roy Simons. Roy is a sustainable transportation specialist with ISL, who were kind enough to sponsor this video. ISL is a multiddisciplinary engineering firm in Western Canada and a leader in the planning and design of active transportation infrastructure. Roy is passionate about bringing Dutch design elements to Canada. After success in bringing continuous sidewalks and bike paths to Nimo and seeing the interest from around the country, Roy wondered what else we could learn from the Dutch. He documented his travels around the Netherlands in his book Feats Pad and more recently consolidated those findings in the Lessons from the Dutch booklet. Roy used lessons from the Dutch to create a game of bingo, spotting how many Dutch design features and everyday cycling behaviors we could check off in just one hour. The good, the behaviors, and the bad. We began our mission near Einhovven Central at 18 September Square, named for the liberation of Einhovven in 1944. Here we immediately cross one off the list. Maybe we should speak to this one first. Pedestrian streets or spaces. Well, that’s easy to find. Don’t have many of those in North America. So, yeah, the whole core of this city is basically pedestrianized. The only vehicles you’ll see driving down there are service vehicles. This is not unusual for a Dutch city. In fact, it’s something you will even see in small towns. Vehicle access is allowed, but generally only service vehicles, often controlled with retractable ballards. No through traffic here. Having just one such street in the city can go a long way. here. We also checked one more off the list, bike parkades. Most cities I’ve been in seem to have it, but when you make the entrance as nice as that, like you almost don’t believe it’s bicycle parking. Having a convenient and secure place to leave your wheels is an integral part of the system, especially when you consider not having a safe place to store a bike is one of the most cited reasons why people choose not to cycle. We headed west and came to a protected intersection with bicycle detection and a neat safety feature. So, one of the cool things about Dutch intersections is that you have turn lanes for vehicles in most cases that separate people walking and cycling, but this has a shared through and right lane. So, when this green ball goes on, there’s going to be like an amber right turn arrow. So, basically says you can turn right, but make sure you yield to pedestrians. So, there’s two variations on that. They have the flashing lead up sign, which means pay attention, which is just a good reminder, but this is a different variation on that. We have like the static right turner yield to cyclist sign. So we’ve been looking for alternatives as well and Vancouver have like that sign with like flashing LEDs around it. It’s like that’s pretty close and it’s better than what most places are doing. We spotted another at the next intersection before scratching a few more off our sheet. There’s a few more things here on the list like the parking between street trees just helps keep the street narrow. I guess we’ve got an advisory bike lane as well. That’s another one. Yeah. So, sometimes good, sometimes not. Like these cars are going to squeeze us. We got a raised intersection here. We’re just knocking them right off. We are. I think we even saw a helmeted rider. But here, we passed by Philip Stadium before turning onto a neighborhood street where Roy points out a sign. The one way except for bikes. And if you ever visit the Netherlands, this is one Dutch word you will remember because these signs are everywhere. And if you wonder how it’s pronounced, I’m not going to try. So, here’s the computer lady. But again, just local street traffic calming installed by default, not as a reaction to a problem because nobody should be driving fast here in the first place. Again, just this feels so narrow, right? And granted, it’s one way, but it’s narrow. There’s speed humps. There’s trees between all the parked cars. Nobody’s driving fast here. One of the things I liked about this neighborhood as well is just some of the green space. Like if you’re in Amsterdam or something, I don’t feel like you don’t see a lot of that. Should we have had small cars on the list? Yeah, definitely. Or like a bonus point for an Americaniz pickup truck. I’ve seen a few. They’re definitely getting more common. Yeah, definitely a few Dodge Rams. Yeah. As we came to a major thoroughfare, we spotted a very common but very important piece of infrastructure. Continuous sidewalk right here. There you go. That’s on the list. Oh, it’s continuous sidewalk and bike path. This is how you design for modal hierarchy. Instead of forcing vulnerable road users into car space, drivers enter pedestrian and cyclist space. The raised crossings act like speed bumps, clearly signaling who has priority in placing the responsibility on the driver to proceed safely. Yeah. So, continuous sidewalks and bike paths obviously becoming more common. Kudos to Canmore and Nimo for that. Some of that work in Nimo we’ve been a part of. Here we approach the heart of Stripe S, a neighborhood that was once an industrial park owned by the electronics giant Phillips. It’s where they produced their first radios, televisions, among many other things. But starting in the early 2000s, the old factory buildings were transformed. And today, Stripe S is a vibrant hub for innovation, art, and urban living with its industrious past still on display. I love this. So, this is like a BRT, bus lane, whatever you want to call it, but they’ve kept some of the structure of the factory and woven like trees across it. It’s awesome. So, like through a lot of this neighborhood, there is a lot of this old structures from the factory. It’s not only a great story of revitalization, it has great vibes. Got people riding on the back of a regular bike. I don’t think we’ll see anybody riding with an umbrella today. No umbrellas today, but we did spot a kid in a cargo bike. It’s a super wide bike path here. This is massive. Yeah, this must be like 6 m or something. Dutch roundabout up ahead. We could go and do a loop around that. This one is unidirectional. Yeah, we’ll have priorities. So, let’s do a left or right. Do a whole loop around. Dutch roundabouts are designed for slower speeds and prioritize people who walk, bike, or roll. They’ve been proven to be much safer than traditional signalized intersections, all while keeping traffic flowing smoothly. We passed by a Ballard, which is arguably a moto filter keeping cars out, which led us here. And it looks like a bike path, but you can see there’s driveways off of it. So, this is actually like a feed bike street. And I think there is signs somewhere along it, but it’s designed entirely like a big wide bike path. You see some traffic coming in it. Bike streets might be my favorite piece of Dutch infrastructure. While they don’t have any legal standing, they signal to drivers that they are guests entering a space meant for cyclists. We have something similar, often called neighborhood bikeways, but in my opinion, they don’t do enough to discourage car traffic, which can lead to conflicts with drivers, especially at intersections. And I think if we borrow a few key Dutch design features, we can make real progress because these aren’t the same. Would you rather have your kid ride here or here? This is ridiculous. Come on. This is part of someone’s commute in the morning. I know. How nice would this be? I’m so jealous. There’s the wind. I don’t know if we can take this one off as a Dutch hill. I was going to say, let’s go. We’ll take it. I feel like we’ve had had enough experience with the wind and rain the last few days to check that one off. Is the Dutch Boost on your list? Dutch Boost? Yeah. To get a lift ride off of you, you mean? Is that on your list? That might be on my list. I didn’t actually know it was called that. I don’t know what I called it. I call it the the Dutch boost. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s pretty common. The kids seem to pick it up like almost from birth. We did eventually see it in action. I think like I find it hard to capture on in photos is just the extent of the bike network here. Like we’ve run out of the city center. It’s just incredible. Like it just goes forever and it just keeps going and you don’t stop. I we had a couple lights we had to stop at briefly. Yeah. And apart from that, we’re just rolling. Yeah. Here we came to another advisory bike lane in the door zone. So I asked Roy why these worked better in the Netherlands. In theory, it’s not as dangerous here because everybody cycles pretty much the Dutch reach. They have the Dutch reach. So rather than just grabbing your door and throwing it open with this arm, you would reach over to do it with this arm and that kind of forces you to look behind. Some people just park the other way and they can see you coming as well. We saw another amber right turn signal here, but this time it was accompanied by a caution sign. I guess we didn’t mention near side signals. I don’t know if that’s on the list, but but they’re great. something else that forces cars to wait back behind the stop bar. Whereas again in North America, people creep forward because they’re trying to turn right on red and they can still see the lights. I guess we should mention, yeah, you can’t turn right on a red here by default. Almost a rear end there. Now, this is the headline of the video and one of the most iconic pieces of cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands. This is the Hovven Ring. So, this one definitely checks off the iconic infrastructure. It’s like a monument to urbanist nerds. Totally is. What used to be the site of a giant roundabout now hosts a 72 m circular bridge suspended by 24 cables from a 70 m central pylon. Iconic infrastructure like this is about more than getting from A to B. It’s about shaping a future where cycling is safe, celebrated, and central to urban life. They have weird little lane markers here. I’m never quite sure what the point of that is. Somebody in the comments tell us why that is. After an unknown number of laps, we eventually moved on from the Hovven Ring and came across another bus street and something important for child safety. Yeah. See, this is a school zone, 15 km an hour. Like, how cool is that? Well, I see these like young kids, like not very old, and they’re like riding the school themselves. If you know any kids in North America, they’re most likely getting shuttled around. Yeah. The difference between a school day here in the Netherlands and and then in North America is astounding. Yeah. I feel like they have like a lot more freedom. Parents can just let them go and know they’re going to be safe. [Music] Now, this is where see our bike path just going to go straight into this frontage road. It’s a little less smooth, I have to say, on these little wheels and there’s so little traffic. It’s fine. We have some work in Edmonton like putting bicycle streets on front roads there and you’re like, “Oh, why don’t they just do like bike paths?” But it actually works really well, I think. But again, like front road just transitions into the bike path. You carry on on your way. It’s all good. And we’re back on gray lumpy bike path here. Despite that, we found a few more to check off at this intersection. So, here you see like the laning. You got one lane for left turn, one for through, two for right turns. I’m pretty sure those right turns, especially because it’s a double right turn. Even in North America, we usually wouldn’t have two right turns on anything but a green. Oh, he has the countdown timer there. There you go. Again, it Oh, there’s two actually. There’s one high up for people further back and then there’s one low down. Check out all the kids over there in that cargo bike. I guess the other thing your viewers can comment on, pretty much all intersections, I think, have these yield signs. We just ticked off three more, but I guess playing bingo wasn’t quite enough for Roy. He wanted a little more competition. Why don’t you go one way and I’ll go the other and see who gets through quicker. Sure. Oh, yeah. Good for you. I have to whack it bit longer. I think I won that one. He’s gone. He’s already there. Rick didn’t spill where it was. Made the right choice. Apparently heading back towards the city center. We went by some traffic calming before finding the illusory werf. Oh, I see a sign. And maybe I need to clarify when we say winerfs, it’s like real Dutch werfs, like residential streets, not just curbless commercial streets, which is how we use the term in North America, which is fine, but like that kind of street is common here, and it’s just a pedestrian street. Any city center street kind of thing. It’s not curbless. There’s curbs for like the planting areas, but there is kind of a defined sidewalk, but it’s just very tight and constrained. And again, you’re not going to want to drive through this fast. There’s even a speed hump in this one. Chicanes, speed humps, parked cars, trees, fences. I mean, it’s almost like a roller coaster for a car, right? Like you’re like all over the place. And if you make drivers do that, they’re not going to go fast. This Warnerf brought us to another street hosting smooth red advisory lanes with a brick center line intended to slow down drivers. Or should we go for a little cruise around the center? Yeah, sure. Yeah. This was pretty cool. We were able to see road work in action. Just two guys, a small loader, and a pile of clinkers. Oh, look at that. Well, that’s just a natural ending to this whole thing. Seems like it back pretty much where we started, right? Yeah. There’s the bicycle parking. Well, I think that was reasonably successful. I think we ticked off quite a few things. I don’t think we got the whole bingo thing finished yet. No, but we could we we could sit down and see what we we we saw. See what we saw. Yeah. To see what we did see, if that makes any sense. Might do. Not entirely sure. We may have taken longer than an hour, but in the end, we checked off 25 of 33 of the good, six of 12 of the behaviors, and five of 15 of the bad. But I do think we deserve at least one bonus point. I often have a hard time deciding on how to end one of these videos, but right before we stopped recording, Roy said this. It’s hard to like for somebody that hasn’t been here and here to like appreciate it. Like it’s just everywhere you go, it’s good. And even when it’s bad, it’s it’s not really bad at all. There is so much that we can learn from the Dutch to make our cities happier, healthier, and safer places to be. I thank Roy for doing what he can to bring some of that to our communities here. So, please check out Royy’s website where you can find his book like FeedsPad, it’s my favorite coffee table book, and find lessons from the Dutch bingo to try this in your city. And if you do, it would be awesome if you could tag both Roy and myself. And don’t forget to add the hashtag LFTD bingo. I always struggle with orientation here. Same. No mountains to Yeah. to figure out where’s north. There’s a hovven ring, though.