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How Utrecht Became a Paradise for Cyclists
- ncmncm 7y agoAt first I thought this was about the much-admired discount art supply store chain. But there is a city with that name, that clearly must court cyclists more ardently than the most devoted retailer of paints and brushes.
- l4u532 7y agoHaving lived in Copenhagen I can only attest the surge in living quality when a city adopts a no-compromise bicycle strategy. Back in car-loving Munich I feel set back a century. With city council members putting forward arguments like that bike lanes will “destroy retail businesses”. It’s frustrating. Ps: here’s the short film the article talks about. Shows the fantastic transformation of Utrecht. https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E
- ranko 7y agoThere's a lot of wrong-headed antipathy towards improving cycling infrastructure, which is really frustrating, given that it's a low-cost way of making a big difference to quality of life. I recently read a nice article laying out some of the misconceptions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/03/ten-common-myths-about-bike-lanes-and-why-theyre-wrong https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/jul/0...
- IshKebab 7y agoYeah the business destruction argument is the most perplexing. It's like shop owners thing that people prefer shopping on noisy dirty streets to quiet pedestrian areas. I don't know how you can come to that conclusion.
- dfgdghdf 7y agoI think the argument is that shops won't be able to get stock in without lots of road access for delivery trucks etc.
- dep_b 7y agoLiving dead center in Utrecht it's actually quite easy to do so. In the mornings you can simply drive through the pedestrian zone at a walking pace as long as you have business there like unloading or going to your house. Outside of the pedestrian zone of the centre you can still drive your car, but it's just not something a lot of people do. Given the medieval street pattern it's still pretty convenient. The real hard thing is that Google & Co don't mark every street as reachable by car or truck and you also need to drive over a bus / taxi lane to get there. So people that are used to just set up Google Maps and drive will never get there as the roads are not accessible according to the map they use. Which is a huge pain in the ass anything larger than a parcel needs to be delivered to my house.
- Sharlin 7y agoUnfortunately, usually it’s more about the (unfounded) assumption that car users are proper money-spending shoppers and cyclists and pedestrians are unemployed hippie communists.
- Sharlin 7y agoYou hear this argument all the time so I’m not sure whence the downvotes. Whatever the exact phrasing, the gist of the argument is that car users are assumed to have more purchasing power and should thus be given priority.
- Tijdreiziger 7y agoBesides, on a bicycle it's easier to stop and park your bike if you see an interesting shop. When driving there is much more friction as you need to find a parking spot and park there first.
- Mirioron 7y agoIs it though? Bikes are stolen far more often than cars and you can't carry as much on a bicycle either. Furthermore, you can't really go shopping with the family as a group unless you have specific gear to allow you to do that, because kids aren't going to travel these distances. I like bicycles, but actually going to a store with a bike is an annoying experience. One that I wish could be improved.
- abdullahkhalids 7y agoI don't know where you live, but a lot of time this argument is given by people who live in car-centric cities or neighbourhoods. If you live in a walking/biking friendly neighbourhood (like I did for a few years), then the grocery store/community center/other family centric shops are within a 15 minute walk for everyone living in the neighbourhood, a distance pretty much any healthy person age 6-60 can cover via walking/biking. Whether you are walking or biking you can take a rolling cart with you, which is easy to push (walking or in front/behind your bike) and which will hold as much grocery as you need for a family. Like you have to understand that a city designed from scratch for cars and one designed for walking/biking look very very different. Biking in one is hard and driving in the other is just as hard.
- Mirioron 7y agoBut sometimes you want to go shopping with the family to shops that you normally don't/can't visit. Everything that's within 15 minutes walking distance isn't going to be those shops. Regardless how you design a city, most shops even in a small city are going to be outside of that 15 minute walking distance too. The main problem I think is that there isn't always somewhere to put your bike safely when you go into the shops.
- skrebbel 7y agoI don't know if it's generic, but in my town (Eindhoven, also NL), the argument is that a less car friendly city centre makes the shops harder to reach, encouraging people from neighbouring towns to go elsewhere where it's faster to get to and cheaper to park. It's a reasonable argument that the city is now trying to address by making free parking on the city border plus a free bus into town.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoI love Utrecht. It's a college town with the cultural and intellectual vibe that always engenders. It's a very modern town but you can turn a corner and walk half a block and suddenly it feels as though you just took a time machine to the 16th century. Best of all worlds.
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- stunt 7y agoDesigning cities for car is a huge mistake!
- LeonM 7y agoUtrecht officially became a city in the year 1122, the oldest known records about Utrecht is that it was a roman outpost since 50ad. So I don't think it was designed for cars ;-)
- davedx 7y agoYep! U-traject, the “bridge over the river U”. Utrecht is great
- exceptione 7y agoNo, the river is the Rhine. Traiectum is the noun for transire (verb), going through. It was a place where you could cross the river, hence a strategic place to build a castellum, as the Rhine was used as a natural border (limes) for the Roman Empire. The u stands for uut (old Dutch), meaning downstream. Although I am not 100% sure if U doesn't simply stand for uit, which means 'from'.
- chrisseaton 7y agoAlmost no cities are designed for cars, as almost all cities are far older than cars.
- DonHopkins 7y agoAmerica has had airports since 1776!
- eMSF 7y agoBut why would you design cities for bicycles either? They're not people, right?
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- A_No_Name_Mouse 7y agoI live in Utrecht. During peak hours there are so many bikes on the street that small traffic jams form near traffic lights. I cannot imagine the disaster if all these people would have taken their car instead. It simply wouldn't fit. I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car. But most people don't, as taking the bike is the faster and more convenient option.
- llamathrowaway 7y ago> that small traffic jams form near traffic lights The fact that a traffic jam of bicycles is perceived as exceptional really tells how we have moved past the acceptance phase of the cancer that is automobile congestion. > I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car. This is an excellent rebuttal to the opinion 'but what happens when I need to move furnitures/go camping/<do some other activities that really requires a car>': these activities are not a part of people’s daily routine. If people stop unnecessary driving such as sending their children to schools ten minutes of walk away in an SUV, then it actually makes it easier for everyone else who does need to drive.
- KeAShizuku 7y agoDutch cities were not made for cars. Cars are the guests. Thats the difference between the US and the Netherlands: by the time Dutch people started to buy cars in the 1960s cycling had been a popular means of transportation for half a century.
- philmander 7y agoThis isn't accurate. They were not made for bikes. Is was only in the 70s and 80s when there was a revolution in the introduction of cycling infrastructure. https://www.google.com/amp/s/bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-got-their-cycling-infrastructure/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011...
- speleding 7y agoThe parent post was claiming the cities were not made for cars, and that is accurate. Dutch cities grew organically over the centuries, if there was any design it would have been for pedestrians, horse drawn boats and carriages.
- kbouck 7y agoI've commuted by bike in both San Francisco and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam it's a lovely (and safe) experience, whereas in San Fransisco it was positively hazardous. The key difference being the thoughtful lane designs in The Netherlands where you have dedicated bike lanes physically separated from the car traffic. In San Francisco you are often mixed with or adjacent to car traffic or parked cars - leaving you susceptible to parked car doors suddenly opening, or being caught in a moving car's blind spot.
- thanatos519 7y agoCycling is safe in The Netherlands because practically everyone is a cyclist so it isn't a stretch of anyone's empathy to look out for them. Also ... cyclists are everywhere so you had better be watching for them. There is also a behavioural solution which should be exported everywhere: https://www.dutchreach.org/ https://www.dutchreach.org/
- skrebbel 7y agoFWIW, I'm Dutch and nobody I know does the Dutch reach.
- ojilles 7y agoI’m also Dutch, and the only place I see the Dutch Reach being mentioned is on Hacker News every few years in articles like this one. Never ever has come up in my daily life here in NL.
- DonHopkins 7y agoThe Dutch Rudder is much more commonplace.
- speleding 7y agoI'm Dutch as well, and it was taught to me as part of driver's education. I still open my car door that way, also because it has the added advantage that you're better positioned to hold the door if there's a gust of wind.
- dep_b 7y agoIt can be a bit overwhelming during rush hour though, two way bicycle traffic of multiple cycles next to each other going at different speeds. Makes crossing Vredenburg almost like a real life game of Frogger on foot.
- estsauver 7y agoI think the other thing that's not mentioned much is that most Dutch cities are commuting at quite low speeds. I'm lucky to average 10mi/hr. There's a huge change in the energy of a crash as you start going faster. A 15 mi/hr biker has 2.25x the energy of a 10mi/hr biker and so if you crash it's so much worse. At 9mi/hr, you're pretty much always walking away from the crash.
- jacquesm 7y agoThe bigger factors here beyond raw speed are age and weight of the rider. Kids can have the most crazy falls at any speed and bounce right up whereas an elderly or overweight person falling from a stand-still position can get severely injured. Hip and shoulder fractures are (unfortunately) quite common in octogenarians that still cycle.
- consp 7y agoI'm quite big and somewhat overweight but taking Judo lessons as a kid saved my ass many times falling (off my bike). I would recommend it to everyone to learn to fall. The electric bike craze for elderly people isn't helping as they now travel about twice as fast as they used to.
- jacquesm 7y agoJudo is a really good tip for cyclists. Falling and cycling go hand in hand to the point that everybody that cycles will fall at least once in their life in an uncontrolled manner, and during the training phase likely much more often than that. Agreed on the electric bike craze, I get passed on my trusty old twelve speed with some regularity by 70 year olds doing 30+ kph (which suggests at least some of these have their limiters removed). Falling at that speed at that age is certain to end bad.
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoI cycle commuted in London in the late 90s and 2000's and we pushed then for two items - to be seen by other road users as real road users (ie not something just to be brushed aside) and for dedicated cycle lanes that would improve safety. I started cycle commuting again about a year ago (Boris Bikes) and guess what we have dedicated "cycle superhighways" And the problem it turns out is us cyclists There is always a traffic jam on the dedicated pathway - the blue cycle lane. And so some (usually but not always male) cyclists jump on and off the lane and engage in dangerous overtaking manoeuvres. Worst, is that the blue lane runs along normal roads and so has traffic lights at the same positions - and that I guess 25% of cyclists ignore completely a red light and plough through - and twice I have seen these idiots hit pedestrians and two weeks ago came across the fire brigade washing the blood away We campaigned and rode to be taken as real roads users - and when we got real roads with real traffic light we ignore the real rules of the road Cyclists need to have number plates and fines for breaching traffic laws. sorry.
- estsauver 7y agoI wonder why that is, I see very, very little of that mentality in the Netherlands. There's also a very interesting phenomena where right now in London the people who bike are "Cyclists" where they're much more likely to be enthusiasts, people who want to really go fast, people who have Bicycling as part of their identity. In the Netherlands, it's just a way of getting around and not an ideology. The other contributing factor could be size. London is so much bigger than most Dutch cities. If you're commuting across London, speed probably matters much more to you.
- thekid314 7y agoYeah, many of the cyclists in London wear fancy clothes and ride fast bikes. It's an identity thing. There is an sad/interesting gender gap too because many of the cycle commuters are male. There should be a real push by companies to make cycling more female friendly. That means having easy changing rooms/showers at work and giving women a little more time to get ready in the morning. I love biking in London, going fast to the Aldi and carrying my groceries back on the special bike lanes, but there are still issues to resolve.
- klaaz0r 7y agoLiving in Utrecht I can say: it's amazing, going to work? 10 minutes, going to the station? 10 minutes. Basically anything is within maximum 20 minutes cycling distance. In the rare occasion I do take the car, the city is still surprisingly accessible. The only thing I hope they will change in the future is removing motorised vehicles from the bicycle lanes, scooters/e-bikes are just too fast and break the whole flow of traffic. Seeing that scooters are already banned from the cycling lanes in Amsterdam I think it will happen soon in Utrecht.
- philmander 7y agoThis has been such a positive change in Amsterdam
- avar 7y agoThe Netherlands is free to set any laws it wants about where scooters are allowed, but if you're talking about the 25 km/h limited pedelec E-Bikes they're allowed on the bicycle lanes by an EU-wide legislation that The Netherlands is subject to.
- microcolonel 7y agoThis is for a different kind of accessibility; the one for the people you're not thinking of with your bike lanes. As somebody who likes walkable, bikeable areas; I find that a lot of "cities for people" folks are, ideologically, a couple hops away from culling the disabled to make way for their utopia. I'm only half-joking.
- contravariant 7y agoAnd frankly, assisted or not a bike-like vehicle going 25 km/h shouldn't normally be a problem on a cycling lane. They do have to be bike-like though, if you take a scooter slap some pedals on it and fill it to the brim with batteries and try to use that on a bike line then there are likely going to be problems, luckily this doesn't seem to have happened yet.
- joostdevries 7y agoAs another Utrechter I'm really impressed with the large bicycle garages on either side of the new railway station. It really makes cycling from and to the station a great experience. There are quite a few grand new railway stations that have been built in the NL: Rotterdam central station, Utrecht central station, Arnhem station. Recently I was moved when I realised that they're the cathedrals of our time. Shared architectural spaces that are big communal efforts and will be of great value for all for decades to come.
- thomasfl 7y agoThis documentary about Utrecth is p0rn for bike lovers https://vimeo.com/344373585 https://vimeo.com/344373585
- ralfd 7y agoThis is literally the video the article is about.
- mmcnl 7y agoThough this article is true, there's nothing exceptional about the Utrecht bicycle infrastructure. The great thing is that the bicycle infrastructure throughout the entirety of The Netherlands is of extremely high quality. In the suburbs the bicycle experience is actually much more pleasant than in cities: the lanes are wide, there hardly is any congestion and you can really go anywhere on bicycle lanes without being forced to do some weird manouvering (which is very common outside of The Netherlands). Utrecht is just a good example of the incredible bicycle infrastructure in The Netherlands as a whole.
- pinkfoot 7y agoI wonder what the carbon footprint of all the concrete they put down to achive this is?
- shusson 7y ago> have brought on much-larger windfall of social benefit One of the things I love about Amsterdam is how the city changes in the evening. It gets quieter because there are less cars. People can go to pubs without driving (cycling under the influence is illegal but tolerated). And almost the entire city is accessible within 20 minutes.
- fuball63 7y agoI love cycling, but I live in a very hilly environment, which is why I don't think it will really take off here, unfortunately. I always try and think about designs for a "ski lift" for bikes, just as a thought exercise. Is anything like that being actually made?
- monort 7y agoIt exists - https://youtu.be/zipZ5kwhFfs?t=37 https://youtu.be/zipZ5kwhFfs?t=37 Nowadays it's easier to just mount an electric motor on your bike.
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