This Video Shows How The Netherlands’ Amazing Bike-Friendly Roads Work

[kensei]

@f148vr 155525 wrote:

https://www.fastcoexist.com/3068318/this-video-shows-how-the-netherlands-amazing-bike-friendly-roads-work

Great video.
Anyone else instinctively freak out every time the bicyclists breezed right thru busy intersections and roundabouts? I kept assuming the huge trucks would not notice / yield at the bike crossings. Guess I’m conditioned to a very different kind of road culture.

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[DrP]

Freaking out? Yes, a bit. While I would love to get such road designs here, getting the drivers to go along with it will be difficult and time consuming. Just watching the number of drivers who ignore the no turn on red sign that appears at the IOD (yes, I am talking to you, Mr. Red Top Cab who was the 2nd car going through the light this morning and should have known better by being an Arlington cab and being where you should have seen the sign light up) and seeing the complete rage on the video discussed here http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?11627-Article-Ride-Angry&p=155575#post155575, which, while in England, appears to be just like our drivers, all makes me think it will be MANY, MANY YEARS before something like this will happen. Unless we make every single driver in this country re-take their driving test and include a bicycling portion of the test. On congested roads. With aggressive cars and trucks.

(I am keeping track of these road design articles, however. My cousin will be staying with me this summer while doing an internship at the Federal Highway Administration (civil engineering student). I plan to provide lots of information on cycling and pedestrian friendly designs (and prove how such a friendly place can be a great place to live). Just to encourage the next generation of engineers to include such concepts)

[KLizotte]

@DrP 155611 wrote:

Freaking out? Yes, a bit. While I would love to get such road designs here, getting the drivers to go along with it will be difficult and time consuming. Just watching the number of drivers who ignore the no turn on red sign that appears at the IOD (yes, I am talking to you, Mr. Red Top Cab who was the 2nd car going through the light this morning and should have known better by being an Arlington cab and being where you should have seen the sign light up) and seeing the complete rage on the video discussed here http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?11627-Article-Ride-Angry&p=155575#post155575, which, while in England, appears to be just like our drivers, all makes me think it will be MANY, MANY YEARS before something like this will happen. Unless we make every single driver in this country re-take their driving test and include a bicycling portion of the test. On congested roads. With aggressive cars and trucks.

(I am keeping track of these road design articles, however. My cousin will be staying with me this summer while doing an internship at the Federal Highway Administration (civil engineering student). I plan to provide lots of information on cycling and pedestrian friendly designs (and prove how such a friendly place can be a great place to live). Just to encourage the next generation of engineers to include such concepts)

Your cousin should research how the Netherlands infrastructure back in the 50s-60s was just like here but a sustained outcry from the public over cyclist deaths caused the political tide to turn. The infrastructure you see now has been hard won over the decades. There are some documentaries on this issue. The moral of the story is that the public had to demand the changes to be made; now the emphasis is on people first, cars second.

That said, no reason why civil engineers and ASHTO still can’t dramatically change how they design intersections and roads to make them safer for peds and cyclists. While most drivers hate cyclists it’s hard for me to imagine they can argue against ped safety since all drivers are peds too.

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