I've only spent a few days of my life in the Netherlands, but my impression was that the secret ingredient that the Netherlands has and other places don't is no

I've only spent a few days of my life in the Netherlands, but my impression was that the secret ingredient that the Netherlands has and other places don't is nothing visible like infrastructure. It's that everyone generally understands how the system is supposed to work. I don't know if that's because of culture or formal education, but, in any case, it was really noteworthy. The etiquette was so clearly and consistently being followed by everyone that, even as a visitor, I was able to understand it well enough to not be in anyone's way (I think) within just an hour or two. I mentioned way up above that I tend to avoid protected bike lanes in my city because pedestrians just walk into them without notice. The lanes in question do have a height difference. But, as far as I can tell, pedestrians aren't seeing the curb that separates the sidewalk from the bike lane and thinking, "Oh, the sidewalk ends here." They're looking a little bit further over, to the curb that separates the part of the street that's for cars from the part of the street that's for bikes, and thinking, "Oh, the street begins over there."