8 ms·

The big recent exemplar of street layout for a new place is Houten in the netherlands [0] which is basically focussed on a train station and walkable town squar

The big recent exemplar of street layout for a new place is Houten in the netherlands [0] which is basically focussed on a train station and walkable town square at the centre with a ring road at the edge. Roads are a 'soft grid' for pedestrians and cyclists but stopped up for cars making the car network more of a tree with dead ends rather than a grid. And making road speeds slow at the centre and fast at the edges. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/the-dutch-town-of-houten-is-a-case-study-in-bike-friendly-suburban-planning https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/the-dutch...

josh_carterPDX 4y ago
That's amazing. It reminded me of Livermore, CA. They have a bike trail that follows a creek. Wherever it crosses a road (in most parts) the trail dips under the road. A few times every decade the creek floods making the trail there unusable, but I always appreciated being able to avoid the traffic as a kid.
rayiner 4y ago
Look at how human scale everything is, even the pedestrian underpass under the road. By contrast in the US, even public transit has to be built at massive, oppressive scales, with pedestrian walkways soaring multiple stories above the road: https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg. Awful.
- msla 4y ago
  And, judging by the comments I've gotten, it would kill anyone who needed emergency medical care.
- jcoder 4y ago
  Houten has a population of 50,000. Plenty of American cities much larger than that have the sort of human-scale features and transit you’re describing—they’re all over Portland, OR.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The place I linked (McLean/Tyson’s Corner) has about 50,000 people.
    - barney54 4y ago
      The picture you linked to is where they added metro to into the island of a highway. They shouldn’t have built a subway, they should have created express lanes for express buses instead of these monster metro stops.
    - Armisael16 4y ago
      The place you linked is an outer station in the broader Washington DC metro system. Millions of people live here; trying to view McLean or Tyson’s in isolation is insanity. It’s big because lots of people transit through; the bridges are high because they go over interstate 66. It’s big because because one of the main purposes of the station is to serve as a transfer point from cars to light rail. Would you suggest that the bridges over an interstate be 10 feet high? Would you rather the rail system just not service that area?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - rayiner 4y ago
        Houten is just 50 km from Amsterdam, while Tysons is 25 km from DC. Both are distinct urban areas within a larger urban sprawl: 4.5 million people in 1,400 square miles for DC, 7 million people in 2,400 square miles for the Randstad.
        csomar 4y ago
        The comparison is still not fair. You can comparing a road-intersection with a high-intersection. Of course, the highway bridge/tunnel is going to be more massive for pedestrians.
        refurb 4y ago
- andbberger 4y ago
  the silver line is some of the worst urban planning of all time. some of the stations (loudon gateway) are literally only accessible by car
  - chitowneats 4y ago
    Wow. Talk about missing the point entirely.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- aidenn0 4y ago
  Everything bad about that is at least partly the result of MWAA's ownership and operation of the road; it's an airport authority, not a general public transit authority. It's by n mean the only issue though; A study of the silver-line construction could be a masters class in how boondoggles happen.
mattlondon 4y ago
Check out Stevenage in the UK. It ain't no paradise. It has what appears to be identical segregated cycleways and has done for 60+ years now ( https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/stevenagedream3.jpg https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/wp-content/uploads/... ), yet cycle usage is less than 3% despite the town being literally designed around and built with cycleways from day 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage
- cameronh90 4y ago
  I was thinking it looked a bit like Milton Keynes. I guess they're similar enough.
  - mattlondon 4y ago
    Yeah I think they were both "planned towns" more akin to US cities where road layout and zoning appears to have been plotted out early. Both Milton Keynes and Stevenage are notorious in the UK as a result - people (rightly) view them as soulless hellscapes
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  I live in a progressive/liberal town that has good roads and weather for cycling. Very few people seem interested, even young people without kids. I just don't understand why it is so unpopular and undesirable.
  - thinking4real 4y ago
    Let’s see… I can use a form of transit that takes longer. Likely for the majority of people, so much longer that it’s impractical for majority use cases (20 min car ride becomes 40+ min bike ride). I have to physically myself, so I’ll be prepared to be sweaty and live in that all day. If there’s inclement weather I have to wait it out for some unknown length of time or endure the elements (and again be disgusting for whatever I’m off to next). I’m in much greater danger than a car. People will try to steal my bike so I have to worry about that. If I have any amount of baggage with me, I guess good luck. I can’t listen to music vs a premium music experience… I mean I could go on. Don’t get me wrong, Ive done a bike a primary transit for a year or so. But anyone who’s confused why the average American doesn’t want to is probably a little out of touch to say the least.
twobitshifter 4y ago
you know what else is a tree with dead ends? The thousands of suburban cul-de-sacs throughout the US. It makes me wonder if there’s an opportunity to rework them into something other than houses.
- epilys 4y ago
  FYI, plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac. It means bottom-of-the-bag in French, so the plural form would be bottoms-of-the-bag. Like the plural of sibling-in-law is not sibling-in-laws. Worthless fact of the day!
  - argentier 4y ago
    Worthless fact the second: even though cul-de-sac is French, the French do not use cul-de-sac for their cul-de-sacs.
    - ahtihn 4y ago
      "Un cul-de-sac" is simply a road that just stops instead of going somewhere. It usually has a specific road sign to signal it. It's definitely used in (Swiss) French. Does it mean something different in the US? And what would be the French equivalent then?
      - Armisael16 4y ago
        The traditional US cul-de-sac is rounded at the end, and usually has a house at the end (the road was never intended to continue) Here’s a fairly representative picture of the geometry: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8zguy6QSqzZCQjZVdRfiQdo_xVE3nVV1b1w&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8zguy...
        ahtihn 4y ago
        Yeah, that's what I imagined. I'd call that a cul-de-sac in French too, but there may be regional differences so I'm curious what GP means when he says the French don't use that word to describe this.
msla 4y ago
> Roads are a 'soft grid' for pedestrians and cyclists but stopped up for cars How do emergency vehicles get in and out? If a doctor is called in to an emergency, walking or biking is too slow. How do they get to the case?
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  I just went to Houten on google maps. In that area I couldn't come up with a route between two points that took longer than 10 minutes by car. And that was by trying to find the two most inconvenient points in the town. I don't know if Houten has this feature but there are often movable bollards that allow emergency vehicles to take shortcuts. From their centrally located public health center, I couldn't find a location that was more than 6 minutes by car or 10 minutes by bike. A 6 minute response time is better than most people can hope for in many major cities in Europe.
  - msla 4y ago
    > I don't know if Houten has this feature but there are often movable bollards that allow emergency vehicles to take shortcuts. Doctors don't drive emergency vehicles, they drive their own cars.
    - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
      (In my experience) Doctors also don't get called out to a specific accident site; that's what Ambulances (and emergency vehicles) are for.
      - msla 4y ago
        That isn't what I'm talking about. When doctors get called in to hospitals for emergencies, they travel in their own cars. Is that really unknown around here? If it is, none of you are competent to decide who needs a car and how cities should be designed.
        4y ago
yosito 4y ago
More than half of Houten residents use a car to buy groceries? That seems absurd. One of the things I love about living in Europe is that I can walk to small grocery shops within a block of where I live, so I can do many small trips during the week rather than a big weekly trip, and that way I eat fresher food every day.
msla 4y ago
And all of this discussion proves that it isn't livable unless you're young and healthy.

josh_carterPDX 4y ago

That's amazing. It reminded me of Livermore, CA. They have a bike trail that follows a creek. Wherever it crosses a road (in most parts) the trail dips under the road. A few times every decade the creek floods making the trail there unusable, but I always appreciated being able to avoid the traffic as a kid.

rayiner 4y ago

Look at how human scale everything is, even the pedestrian underpass under the road. By contrast in the US, even public transit has to be built at massive, oppressive scales, with pedestrian walkways soaring multiple stories above the road: https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/354851.jpg. Awful.

msla 4y ago
And, judging by the comments I've gotten, it would kill anyone who needed emergency medical care.
jcoder 4y ago
Houten has a population of 50,000. Plenty of American cities much larger than that have the sort of human-scale features and transit you’re describing—they’re all over Portland, OR.
- rayiner 4y ago
  The place I linked (McLean/Tyson’s Corner) has about 50,000 people.
  - barney54 4y ago
    The picture you linked to is where they added metro to into the island of a highway. They shouldn’t have built a subway, they should have created express lanes for express buses instead of these monster metro stops.
  - Armisael16 4y ago
    The place you linked is an outer station in the broader Washington DC metro system. Millions of people live here; trying to view McLean or Tyson’s in isolation is insanity. It’s big because lots of people transit through; the bridges are high because they go over interstate 66. It’s big because because one of the main purposes of the station is to serve as a transfer point from cars to light rail. Would you suggest that the bridges over an interstate be 10 feet high? Would you rather the rail system just not service that area?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Houten is just 50 km from Amsterdam, while Tysons is 25 km from DC. Both are distinct urban areas within a larger urban sprawl: 4.5 million people in 1,400 square miles for DC, 7 million people in 2,400 square miles for the Randstad.
      - csomar 4y ago
        The comparison is still not fair. You can comparing a road-intersection with a high-intersection. Of course, the highway bridge/tunnel is going to be more massive for pedestrians.
      - refurb 4y ago
andbberger 4y ago
the silver line is some of the worst urban planning of all time. some of the stations (loudon gateway) are literally only accessible by car
- chitowneats 4y ago
  Wow. Talk about missing the point entirely.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aidenn0 4y ago
Everything bad about that is at least partly the result of MWAA's ownership and operation of the road; it's an airport authority, not a general public transit authority. It's by n mean the only issue though; A study of the silver-line construction could be a masters class in how boondoggles happen.

mattlondon 4y ago

Check out Stevenage in the UK. It ain't no paradise. It has what appears to be identical segregated cycleways and has done for 60+ years now ( https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/stevenagedream3.jpg https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/wp-content/uploads/... ), yet cycle usage is less than 3% despite the town being literally designed around and built with cycleways from day 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenage

cameronh90 4y ago
I was thinking it looked a bit like Milton Keynes. I guess they're similar enough.
- mattlondon 4y ago
  Yeah I think they were both "planned towns" more akin to US cities where road layout and zoning appears to have been plotted out early. Both Milton Keynes and Stevenage are notorious in the UK as a result - people (rightly) view them as soulless hellscapes
SyzygistSix 4y ago
I live in a progressive/liberal town that has good roads and weather for cycling. Very few people seem interested, even young people without kids. I just don't understand why it is so unpopular and undesirable.
- thinking4real 4y ago
  Let’s see… I can use a form of transit that takes longer. Likely for the majority of people, so much longer that it’s impractical for majority use cases (20 min car ride becomes 40+ min bike ride). I have to physically myself, so I’ll be prepared to be sweaty and live in that all day. If there’s inclement weather I have to wait it out for some unknown length of time or endure the elements (and again be disgusting for whatever I’m off to next). I’m in much greater danger than a car. People will try to steal my bike so I have to worry about that. If I have any amount of baggage with me, I guess good luck. I can’t listen to music vs a premium music experience… I mean I could go on. Don’t get me wrong, Ive done a bike a primary transit for a year or so. But anyone who’s confused why the average American doesn’t want to is probably a little out of touch to say the least.

twobitshifter 4y ago

you know what else is a tree with dead ends? The thousands of suburban cul-de-sacs throughout the US. It makes me wonder if there’s an opportunity to rework them into something other than houses.

epilys 4y ago
FYI, plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac. It means bottom-of-the-bag in French, so the plural form would be bottoms-of-the-bag. Like the plural of sibling-in-law is not sibling-in-laws. Worthless fact of the day!
- argentier 4y ago
  Worthless fact the second: even though cul-de-sac is French, the French do not use cul-de-sac for their cul-de-sacs.
  - ahtihn 4y ago
    "Un cul-de-sac" is simply a road that just stops instead of going somewhere. It usually has a specific road sign to signal it. It's definitely used in (Swiss) French. Does it mean something different in the US? And what would be the French equivalent then?
    - Armisael16 4y ago
      The traditional US cul-de-sac is rounded at the end, and usually has a house at the end (the road was never intended to continue) Here’s a fairly representative picture of the geometry: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8zguy6QSqzZCQjZVdRfiQdo_xVE3nVV1b1w&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8zguy...
      - ahtihn 4y ago
        Yeah, that's what I imagined. I'd call that a cul-de-sac in French too, but there may be regional differences so I'm curious what GP means when he says the French don't use that word to describe this.

msla 4y ago

> Roads are a 'soft grid' for pedestrians and cyclists but stopped up for cars How do emergency vehicles get in and out? If a doctor is called in to an emergency, walking or biking is too slow. How do they get to the case?

dghlsakjg 4y ago
I just went to Houten on google maps. In that area I couldn't come up with a route between two points that took longer than 10 minutes by car. And that was by trying to find the two most inconvenient points in the town. I don't know if Houten has this feature but there are often movable bollards that allow emergency vehicles to take shortcuts. From their centrally located public health center, I couldn't find a location that was more than 6 minutes by car or 10 minutes by bike. A 6 minute response time is better than most people can hope for in many major cities in Europe.
- msla 4y ago
  > I don't know if Houten has this feature but there are often movable bollards that allow emergency vehicles to take shortcuts. Doctors don't drive emergency vehicles, they drive their own cars.
  - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
    (In my experience) Doctors also don't get called out to a specific accident site; that's what Ambulances (and emergency vehicles) are for.
    - msla 4y ago
      That isn't what I'm talking about. When doctors get called in to hospitals for emergencies, they travel in their own cars. Is that really unknown around here? If it is, none of you are competent to decide who needs a car and how cities should be designed.
      - 4y ago

yosito 4y ago

More than half of Houten residents use a car to buy groceries? That seems absurd. One of the things I love about living in Europe is that I can walk to small grocery shops within a block of where I live, so I can do many small trips during the week rather than a big weekly trip, and that way I eat fresher food every day.

msla 4y ago

And all of this discussion proves that it isn't livable unless you're young and healthy.