Exploring the Best Cycling City in the World | Utrecht Bike Ride w/ Commentary

https://www.strava.com/activities/11689593663
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/47191590
https://www.utrecht.nl/city-of-utrecht/mobility/cycling/our-policy-on-cycling/#:~:text=Utrecht%20was%20named%20’best%20cycling,population%20of%20360.000%20in%202022.

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hello everyone and welcome to bests side cycling I’m here in alge Netherlands and behind me is one of the are the busiest bike path here in all of the Netherlands transporting over 33,000 cyclist a day this definitely is a interesting place so right now it’s about 3:12 so it’s not really rush hour yet but there’s still this many people so I’m going to ride around and show you all uh what it’s just like to cycle in one of the world’s most bikable cities so let’s go and ride so here is the redenburg and it’s just people everywhere as this is the main East West route through the city and there’s a huge wave of cyclists every intersection it’s about as I said 3:30 p.m. so it’s not technically rush hour yet but even still there’s this many people and uh I was given this route by a friend who is from here so I’m excited to use it it’s just a loop around the city hopefully exploring a lot of the uh infrastructure here so yeah it’s just a big wave I’m just going to sort of see what happens ride with the flow as I like to say as the next wave of cyclists are coming in coming uh sort of I think that’s Eastbound and we’re heading west and and uh yeah it’s a lot of people especially this coming intersection right here it’s it makes you feel like your car cuz it’s so wide and um this is a big throwaway for bikes as uh we’re all still going through pretty much just a big pack a big event ride uh amount of people still trying to explore our way find our way and then I think coming up to the left here was where I entered in to go uh to the main bike station parking or for the Central Station Parking bike parking I’ll do another video on that um or I’ll have another video on that but it’s right here so there a lot of people going there towards the station and yeah a lot of group in front of me is just school kids and I think what you’ll see on this ride is just a huge diversity of people that bike here so it’s been 5 days of me riding here in the Netherlands so I’ve gotten a lot more used to the laws and just the habits of uh how people ride and so um how the infrastructure is laid out but it really varies from City to city in terms of the level of implementation and so and sort of like how basically how nice it is and I think I have a good feeling here here it’s really going to be A Step Above the Rest so we’ll go and do that and then for those of you that are wondering why I have a bike computer is because if you’re new to this channel I ride all sorts of bikes from ebikes bromton to road bikes and um yeah so so I sort of take the best from all and uh and today I am on a bromton rental and today is the last day so that’s why I’m not riding this at Peak rush hour cuz I need to head back to Amsterdam right after this but even still this should be a very very good ride to experience the rush of riding here so we’re making it right here so signaling out and uh that was the busiest bike path but everywhere is busy here even not at the main station parking of uh 12,000 spots we can see there’s outdoor parking here of still easily hundreds of bikes and every intersection there’s going to be whole swaps of people waiting and the amazing thing about riding here really is that everything is basically connected like everywhere there’s like similar patterns of intersections and pretty much if you know which road you’re which heading you’re going you basically can find a bike route right next to it so yeah that’s a bit crazy way to start our ride but here let’s just take our time and uh show you some of the uh of the loop that uh C introduced me so here we are out tge and uh there’s going to be cyclists every which way that we go but I’m most Amazed by just the amount of like families that ride little kids on their bikes and uh little kids in cargo bikes that’s a really good sign cuz even in Amsterdam I didn’t see that as much um just like little kids riding on their own there there’s they were more like pre-teen sort of things like that but here is a little different cuz you’ll you’ll really see it now cuz the cycle ways here are huge like I just check this out like I don’t this is so different and even the ones in [Music] Amsterdam sometimes I don’t really understand fully the light system here some of them people wait for some of them people don’t I almost tripped there but uh a lot of times and they see that there’s no cars uh they just go anyway and then here is yeah a lot of an a setup I’ve seen all throughout Europe but never seen it where the cycle way is this wide and it’s only a designated oneway I think because there’s no striping in the middle but this is like in America would definitely be a two-way cycle track I’m I’m pretty certain that the Waterfront Seattle waterfront one that we’re building just now is way more narrow than this one and this one is just going in One Direction but even still in this configuration you still there’s still G to be side traffic coming in from the left and right and they have the shark teeth on the ground to designate for them to yield their bikes and yeah my experience here so far of course is that uh drivers do yield pretty well but very very interesting as we approach another intersection here you always have to look out for some of the traffic right and left technically I have right a away there cuz I’m coming from the right in that case but it really depends I feel like it’s just one of those things where you I don’t know you can play it I like to play it safe just cuz you never know what someone might do but if it’s like clear that I have a lot of right away then I just sort of go it’s sort of like that I don’t know how to explain it it’s definitely by feel but I haven’t had any close calls at all yet here in the New Orleans still running helmetless the whole time without any issue so yeah we can see in the presumably all this stuff to the sides it looks like residences up top and then maybe businesses on the bottom this is a really nice setup and then there’s a moped behind me so I’m not pass yet and then now I can go so yeah definitely audio awareness spatial awareness is really important to ride around here it’s not immune uh to just randomly riding but here we see our first detour and I’ve learned now the yellow and basically all the countries I’ve been in mean Mean detour so we can follow it and see what happens and presumably it’ll be pretty easy to follow um cuz we’re just supposed to head straight so it might just take us around the construction so now this brings us into a residential block and yeah this is uh I mean this is comfortable this is sort of what we’re used to when we even can see a lot in the states except here they use this sort of like it’s it’s sort of like brick like type of Road uh I wouldn’t say it’s cobbled or anything but definitely with near school zone so things will be extra calm and quiet here which is nice I like the the little yellow red post is really cute as well as their garbage cans they’re awkwardly short and but then I just learned that they actually have a big underground hole where they actually suck everything up so it’s very different here cuz from my understanding some of the uh garbage here is like more communal versus like in America you sort of fend off for your own garbage bins cuz everyone pays for their own garbage uh disposal and and pickup at least in the suburbs uhuh if you’re not in an apartment but anyway back to cycling we’re following this detour and uh oh there’s a sign so yeah it’s just going to bring us right back around that shouldn’t be an issue and yeah I’m uh I think the thing I do get is that basically yeah the infrastructure in any City can really vary from part to part me coming as a newcomer but the amount of consistency there are in some of these top cities is uh short of remarkable I would say in terms of what I would think was could be could be done so yeah we’re back here back on the the nice Red Road and the interesting thing about this Al is that these are not these are like big roads I mean like there’s like two lanes there two lanes there there’s a lot of space it feel it’s definitely like a suburb type of zoning even though there’s like high not high rises but like there’s effectively like uh these type of like more duplex looking buildings or apartment like buildings and uh but even still they made a very very bikable City and I think we’ll see why with all this different infrastructure that we’re riding on so this is another interesting one this is just like it’s not marked as a share road but I presume this this is like a bike and car street but probably maybe local access for cars and then bikes they still come the other way so there’s all sorts of these different setups here but honestly they all feel extremely safe compared to what I’m used to I’ll say it again most scooters are the main thing to worry about when riding here so other than that you are good to go so yeah after just a little bit of riding it feels feels completely different gas prices here I actually don’t know if that’s cheap or not €74 per per liter uh that that’s not ridiculous actually if I if I if it that’s per liter but uh but yeah but here we have an interesting big road where both sides I’m looking over there as well both sides have two-way uh cycle track that easily can fit two bikes each so I don’t know how they pick the roads that such that they have both two-ways because most of the time I’ve just learned the habit of getting on the right side of the road because usually you have a path that go straight uh but sometimes they bless you like this [Music] but okay and we’ll just keep going here I tried to give that uh Fat Bike some room cuz I knew she was going to blow past me but it seems like she was struggling with her bike it’s interesting though on the topic of bikes here I’ve noticed that that’s definitely the demographic of people that ride them are like very young like I don’t know if like 10 to 10 to 15 years old but yeah it’s a very different type of uh I mean it’s it’s nice that they can get around but yeah I don’t know how how safe it is overall but it’s an interesting thing but I mean here again like look at how wide this is this is just this is just sort of Bonkers and there’s like one on the other side of the road too so it’s more than it’s like as if every single bike lane we had is in Belle was turned into a trail just cuz it could that’s but but I mean it’s coming at the cost of you can see like there’s a lot of things in the middle the slow traffic down there’s like a lot of trees planted uh other things so they are using a lot of real estate to commit to uh uh to not as fast moving car traffic as well as to here to the right just missed it but there’s a bunch of bike lockers there that I found pretty cool ones I haven’t seen before and then yeah we see here as we enter this residential block this turns into what should be a one-way cycling type of uh Corridor but um honestly from my time riding here everyone just sort of goes what’s convenient for them I’m a I’m a bit of a a role follower so I like it to when there’s a clear path here but yeah so so sometimes you go in the wrong direction it’s pretty obvious cuz you don’t get any signals or anything every else you always get signals telling you what to do here is also pretty interesting cuz there’s a sign instead of a do not right turn right do not no turns on right flashing in America here you have a sign saying the opposite that’s like if you’re making a right turn be careful it’s a let up it’s like be careful do not run into into bikes going across the uh cross street so it’s literally cuz I think no turn on red is a standard here so I guess when there’s potential for conflict they have a special sign just to raise that right yeah and then there’s from what I learned there’s two types of scooters yellow plates and blue plates and then yellow plates are the ones that go fast on the road and then blue plates can’t hang out here but I’ve seen yellow plates hang out here as well but anyway we’re now on this street I am really bad and remembering the telling the names of streets because they put them on buildings and it’s not always clear and obvious what where to see them that’s one thing I missed about North America actually having Street posts just in the middle but this setup is nice you’ll see it um all over uh there was even a nice Street I think in Amsterdam that was like near vonder Park called overt has a similar setup um and yeah it’s really easy to bike really wide again uh you go on and on and you have like instant access to all these shops a little different than Second Avenue or Fourth Avenue that we have in Seattle it’s not as not as easy just because maybe it’s not as wide and the curb is sort of higher here the curb’s low and you can just sort of keep going so yeah I mean I’m basically just GNA be singing praises for this whole ride it’s a sixmile ride so there’s a lot to see um and we’ll just keep going but even even still definitely watching off for pedestrians on both sides here also these driveways uh people coming in and out so it is it is a lot of similar things except I guess here there’s just more space right so there’s more sort of Vantage angles where everyone to see each other and go on there is notably a lot of yellow sun sign so I mean like any City near City Center there’s a lot of construction going on bike shop over here I did notice just riding around earlier the amount of bike shops in this particular city is a lot higher though I’m sure most of the bikes are uh geared towards like commuting and just uh sort of stable reliable bikes but um I was introduced to mantle uh so I went and checked that out and here’s like a quick photo of it it’s like basically like a super store of bikes and I’ve never seen a bike store that big for one floor so that was pretty neat to see as well but yeah overall this setup is quite nice and there’s like literally no lights here so we’ll just keep rolling on oh I’ll have more video on it later but probably the most impressive thing about riding here is once you I mean the cities are laid out very different um but once you get out of the cities to try connect to other places uh those are connections are the the very surprising ones the ones that you might have to ride a highway on in America here they have uh sort of dedicated uh cycle ways and that’s probably the best part but we’ll just keep going along here we’re running into a bit more people now but we’re just doing sort of a figure eight around the city center and yeah just taking my friends recommendation I’m sure we’ll see a lot of cool things here and then let’s keep going straight yeah the amount of shops we passed it’s pretty cool but it doesn’t seem like like just there the car didn’t exactly wa for B it’s not really clear to me at which type of Crossings is uh supposed to be weighted or sorry that they yield is there some that actually they expect PS and bikes to yield to cars um that I’ve seen uh which is also pretty interesting but it’s not always most of the times yeah I don’t know there like maybe it’s some of these major thorough fares where they expect uh car traffic to go but it’s interesting so here we are basically going straight and we’re getting close to the Centrum again one half of the loop so there’s going to be a lot more people one cool thing I see here is the The Walking sign is actually like a family there’s like two people there instead of one that’s a little different and yeah we’ll hang out here for a [Music] bit going up to the right [Music] up and then the only place you expect to find gradient here is basically at any type of bridge or something else so I guess those are moments that I Savor the most and yeah nice so here we’re going to be approaching back to uh ven red reenberg uh that’s super busy bike path and we’re going to make a left here [Music] [Music] oh wait I went the wrong way never mind I wasn’t one they left here I just follow all the people I went to go straight we correct that and go back this way and I’m sing right now cuz basically it’s like basically almost overcrowding this [Music] infrastructure all right so we’re back on the right way now and then this is again Crossing back over the bus’s intersection but the cool thing that they do is that they definitely just like what you would do with cars they they time the lights so they usually don’t make it as efficient as possible so that there was like a double crossing but that intersection there was definitely super duper busy so we’re going straight here and then now we’re going to I think explore the east side of the city a little bit and it’s all going to be a little different uh so there luckily the car is really patient waiting for all the traffic uh cycling tra to go through before turning right and yeah it’s all a little different cuz now we look ahead we see like a different pattern on the road which is more like I don’t know it just it just looks like two roads honestly like a big cycling Road and a big car road so we can see what it looks like but there is like a very slightly raised curb here to the left and then there is car traffic that wants to get through but we’ll still go straight on here and then here there’s no light so I’m just looking make sure there’s nobody cars and buses I guess still can be Invasion here with that big Punk and then look at this setup so we got one big Middle Lane without any striping in the middle and these two really wide marked bike Lanes but it is a two-way thoroughfare so I guess cars can just encroach in the in the bike lane space if they need it it looks like yeah so this will be this is an interesting setup so it’s uh I guess even for like the most bable cities it doesn’t always mean that you’re going to have a huge separated off street bike path everywhere which to me makes I mean that’s it makes sense but it’s interesting uh just all the differences that they have for each different placement as well as there’s some speed bumps here so that will help and I got to apologize for all the sniffles by away mid ride I think once I just start get going uh June is sort of my allergy season so whatever it is I’ll try to resist but it’s finally a nice day here in the Netherlands U my first 3 days of riding we’re all in pure pouring rain so it’s sort of nice to see something like this and then I’ll be heading to South Europe next so my videos are all out of order but um I’m heading to Italy but it’s going to be Mega hot so that’ll be an interesting transition for me as well as transition to this nice off street bike lane again so back to this type of familiar setup here where yeah literally I don’t know maybe two and a half bike widths maybe even three bike widths of Lane and uh it’s comfortable people on both sides either of Direction and we’re just going on through and yeah this is uh this is sort of the peak I think for a sort of not City centered area and just going through even with all these things but it’s sort of deceiving to be honest though cuz Europe is so the whatever is dense is dense and then whatever is uh sparse is sparse so like it feels like you’re going a lot further cuz I think I rode out to the countryside the other day and it only took like maybe like five 10 miles but then in in Seattle like I don’t know it just feels sort of similar like you’re you’re still more or less the same until you get maybe into that like 30 mile range then you’re but that’s really far in terms of Europe miles so yeah it’s uh very interesting how how they do that and I think making the denser cities denser is a good thing but it looks like we have another detour to deal with I’ve learned now that the red circle was the white means no or don’t do so there’s no biking so it looks like our detour is probably here out here to the right um they have bike signals for explicit right turns here so I guess I’ll just wait there h there it goes green so the detour is here to the left so again a really nice sign this time has a number I don’t know what the number means um and I know given my last video that you guys will definitely tell me what that numbers means so I’m going to Signal here I’m we going try and make this turn but there’s there’s traffic all over so I’m going to zoom by here and then Zoom again and we made it to the other side yeah so I have to assume the five means some type of routing like those um sort of cycle ways or highways that they have and then keep going here okay so now we’re next to a canal and back to one of these streets that used see in Amsterdam but these ones are this one is just way way wider and way more comfortable to ride some of the ones that are similar in amdam where they run next to Canal if you run to an intersection it can get sort of hairy if it’s busy and then still bikes parked all along the sides and yeah back to this type of brick road thing as we’re doing this other detour so I mean no City I guess is immune from construction doesn’t matter of how much they make the effort to mitigate but here like since there’s bike routs like literally every every which way is not a problem like like why is there there’s like another bike signal here that’s pretty pretty rare to see but there was a thought way was blocked so here is safe to go and uh now we keep un rolling let’s see we’re going to go this way where it is me one way again and this is as narrow as it gets I think I’ve seen so far and this is already not narrow at all so another construction detour so it looks like here they have a signal for bikes to go straight as well as I have people to follow Thea re Bond so I present that means the road so I guess this detour means that we just enter this 30 km Zone which is something we don’t see listed as much in the states is that we had that signal sign there with the little kid um usually school zones are 20 mph which is about that speed but very rarely but that’s only like a particular time of day and very scoped down okay this is never mind this is the most narrow bike infrastructure we’ve ritten today as they with due to the construction they’re splitting this one cycle track into two and even still more than enough room so yeah but on the normal there’s two of these and this one is a different configuration than the one we saw earlier it’s only one car width in the middle so yeah I’m just basically commentating on everything not really keeping any specific Insight but just to add more clarity to what what you see here on camera cuz it’s not always really easy to see as as someone’s just riding along but hopefully this just gives you a more of a deeper look and appreciation and you enjoying this video remember roll over like button and subscribe those two kids are doing amazing she the back the back person was pushing her wheel forward to get up that hill okay that that that that that’s props right there okay we have some car traffic here and then we’ll just keep rolling straight hopefully we not get run over something they do in Europe is park on the sidewalk sometimes and uh or not maybe not sometimes but to me it’s a very strange concept but I feel like if we did that in the us we’d run in really big trouble and uh but it’s a very common thing here cuz they build their sidewalk so big and uh the curbs are really quite low compared to what we have in the states especially in the suburb area of the states these curbs can get way higher like this is a curb that I probably be fine rolling over with my Bronson but uh not in the states so let’s just keep going straight here and uh yeah I guess we follow this type of loop until we get back to the city center and this nice I mean the main thing is that there isn’t too much car traffic so that makes it a little easier to ride and everything else so we just keep following this this road for a while the M ban okay so we’re making a left turn coming up so when I’m in the US my instinct to make a left here would just be to follow this car road but sometimes it’s not always the case like sometimes there’s almost always like a bike signal or intersection for you to make turns on so whenever I see a turn or directed on by some navigation I’m always looking ahead for some type of signal or Crossing instead of uh what we do on the in the what I’m normally used to doing which is just taking the taking the lane and and taking the left car turn like a car which is arguably much safer a lot of the time but this is nice we’ve been surrounded by all this green space here to the left for majority of the time riding this Loop and it doesn’t stop I mean the number of cyclists isn’t as crazy as it was in the middle but it’s been non-stop we see people riding around here and uh it’s pretty pretty nice all right that is a very long word university squir tier that is an unbelievably long word all right so left turn here so there’s a bike box but then okay I think I see [Music] it I see where I’m supposed to go I’m trying to make oh no I’m just going straight okay I see [Music] so there’s a way to go left to go in the middle but we’re just heading straight right now and back to a lot of people straight here we want to make a left looks like some cars some bikes are just going to go this way this way and we follow them there’s some really interesting traffic signals there for the buses there’s like a two the two little dots flashing then now turn yellow and all right and off we go again following this nice long road ex now there’s a big car parking the bike lane car behind me as well so nowhere is immune from from block bike bike paths especially if they’re just painted all right all right so stopping here cuz we’re making a a right left turn there yeah I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do there cuz we were making a left turn but there wasn’t like an explicit spot to to wait so I did the weird pedestrian loop around and now we are pretty close to uh where we started again so that’s why we see so many cyclists and then this is sort of the I think one of the last different pieces of infrastructure we s of see which is basically just sharro like we had that sign there with the bike in front of the car and yeah it’s just a lot but we can see the traffic here it’s like pretty much all bikes there’s like no cars around to really speak up so that definitely works too but they do Mark the road red so maybe that does mean that it’s like more of a designated bike route than it is a car route I have no idea but you can just see the number of people and how it feels to ride here with um this street being probably the most bike parking we’ve seen the whole day just on the side here very interesting site uh there’s our first car and um it’s the bikes that are are held up basically grocery store here to the right Albert uh ah I like to call it cuz you see it everywhere oh Korean food Korean I don’t know why they use a bee maybe it’s like I don’t know those Korean sandwiches and we’re just about back to where we started as we turn right here we’re going to turn back onto the ring ringberg again but we can ride all the way back to the station as that’s where I’m headed back to uh Amsterdam and then the amount of buses on this main uh main way as well is pretty amazing so now now it’s 4:06 and we are approaching sort of uh traffic probably approaching rush hour at this point [Music] as we come back here and we can definitely see a line of cars has uh or a line of bikes have increased that is amazing all right [Music] so let’s not stop here cuz there’s definitely too many bikes around me we’ll find a good space to stop maybe right near the uh station parking lot again or bike parking we’ll go that way and yeah this got to be my favorite crossing here cuz it’s just you’re always surrounded by bikes but some people sometimes taking out their bikes luckily people I think are trained not to go out of their line cuz if that person did that that would have been a crash on my part and uh yeah people bikes everywhere biking every day oh and the wind very this is the peak Peak Dutch experience right now probably and just one more Crossing and we’ll get to where we’ll end this ride right at the station all [Music] right oh that was close I don’t know what that was all right so we are approaching our left here so I’m going to the left side of the road starting to signal with my hand so people know what to expect and we’ll get there and that’s the station parking that everyone’s going into but I’m going to go out here and end our video all right so that’s my ride uh I guess in the next video I’ll also show the uh sort of the station parking here it’s really really cool but yeah let me know what you think of that ride um any thoughts and I’ll see you all in the next video