The current North American street design is not sustainable, the commute time and fatalities are escalating. But is the solution finally here? In this video we’ll do a deep dive into how the Dutch design their roads and transportation network so effectively to reduced commute times and fatalities.
Bio:
Adam Yates is a real estate developer living in Toronto who works on master planned communities and mixed-use / residential developments. On this channel, Adam explores complex urban design and City building topics with rigor and optimism, helping his audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build.
Attribution:
-Plan Map Scene: travelboast.com
-World Map: Vemaps.com
-Roads and Car Aerial shot by Levinkoshy at Videvo
-Not Just Bikes priority networks
38 Comments
nice video, next video loose the background music
Great video once again! I would say the only thing the Netherlands does wrong about their bike-paths, is their way of making 2-way bike-paths on each side of the roads in the cities; This creates chaos and insecurity on the roads.
A bad example that other countries follow and implement. Lots of the bike-paths aren't protected as well here, which is kinda bad as well🇳🇱🇩🇰
Actually, if I remember from another YouTube video, the first attempt at bicycle-friendly streets ended up causing MORE problems with congestion. It took a total rethink of the street design to get it right.
We still have traffic just not as insane as in the states. And yes we got enough alternatives that make it way easier just not to take the car or not take it all the way. Besides having vistied the states twice this year abd having driven all over the place i have to say America sucks compaired to the Netherlands. I was so happy then in california i could take the train and bus wich while slower then in the netherlands was almost as fast as driving because of traffic. I was just lucky that there was a route that went where wanted to go. And i have to say the quality is not thta great but man its cheap about a quater of what i would pay in the Netherlands.
This is the first video I've watched on your channel and was pleasantly surprised by the production quality, given your channel is still an emerging one. I like that the animations are a little retro. As for content — this was a GREAT primer on road infrastructure, I wish a video like this was around when I got into urbanism, it'd have connected the concepts for me faster. The graphs and such are really helpful in comparing countries.
yayyy dutch
In future, try not to set your music too loud.
I'm sorry but your voice is very unpleasant to listen to. I'm not sure if you were having a cold or if it's that infamous 'vocal fry' but please use your normal voice next time.
Excellent presentation, short but super comprehensive. The vocal-fry is a bit much though.
Don't think we don't have traffic jams here in the Netherlands…we have in fact – A LOT !
Bike path quality varies wildly per city… there are some real "shitholes" in that regard in the Netherlands too. Take the example from 5:05 for example… shitty paved mandatory bike path… it's main purpose is to get cyclists out of the way to enable cars to speed more. More expensive to maintain (compared to asphalt bike path) while providing zero riding comfort = your local government is dumb or hates cyclists.
Also, the ultimate safety stands or falls with enforcement against bad drivers. Our police is now ever more busy with immigrants… so less enforcement against bad drivers … and a subsequent increase in "traffic" deaths. Having Max Verstappen ("Dutch") winning in F1 is also bad for road safety in the Netherlands.
5:35 that is my city! Ommen!
Great video, showing the road types that are used is neat, but showing how they form a network with other road types is so much more useful to get an idea of how they can or should be mixed together. I personally play with designing a grid city in my off time, and seeing how and when to mix things just makes finding potential design considerations so much easier. I hope you can make more technical stuff or just show where you could find more like this for the seemingly vanishingly rare group of urban design nerds.
Don't overrate the street design the last 3 years bigs mistakes have been made in the city of Amstelveen and Aalsmeer both suburbs near Amsterdam. Giving cyclist more space increasing the amount of accidents.
I think, wat helped here in The Netherlands: lack of space, huge population density. flat and water everywhere, and the relatively high tax rate. Maybe I must explain why I mention flat and a lot of water. It costs less to make infrastructure. The amount of water makes it more expensive, I think but is traffic calming also. Maybe I am wrong in this. You donnot see much difference between cities and villages ruled by the different political parties, so no polarisation on this subject. Like managing the water, it costs a lot, but we have to. Maybe there is a connection with willingness to pay for safe infrastructure in general?
At 4:45, bicycles don't really have priority at the intersection shown. Instead, there are separate traffic lights for bikes, taking away the conflict with cars. This approach is standard at intersection with main roads where cars can go fast.
At slightly more minor intersections, there are roundabouts with separate lanes for bicycles. The bikes then will typically have priority for ones inside urban areas.
To me, the North American approach seems like it discriminates against all traffic but cars. In practice, this leads to cities that aren't very liveable.
A year or two ago, the Netherlands was voted to be the nices country to drive in.
The Netherlands is one of the most car-dense places in Europe. Just go slightly out of the main 3 cities and public transport becomes useless. Commute times are not good and trains are packed to the brim. Not sure why YouTubers keep pushing the PR that The Netherlands has this solved.
3:33 calling it Amsterdam while showing a map of the Netherlands was a but of a yikes. Good video still
The true question is: Is it ever gonna change in North America?
I like your ideas for calming traffic and separating cars from bicycles from pedestrians, but I have a couple of quibbles.
First at the start of your video you claim that fatalities are escalating. That's simply not true! Automobile fatalities have continually declined over the years from improved road design and safety features in cars. That's not just me defending car culture — these statistics can be verified in studies and public records. This doesn't mean I oppose your entire video, but that one lie does bring your credibility and motives into question.
That criticism aside, I wish to comment on your diagram at 4:52. That looks like an ideal design, but I wouldn't want to park several blocks from my house and have to make multiple walking trips back and forth to my car to get multiple bags of groceries. If zoning would allow people like me to have the option to buy a house on the boulevard or with the means to park my car a few feet from my back door, that would remove that objection, but you didn't address that issue.
There's a lot to like about Dutch street design and their bicycle and transit infrastructure, and I agree that American stroads are the worst thing ever, but many people enjoy the convenience of owning a personal private vehicle, and our preferences matter, too.
Just stumbled across your channel and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this video. If I could make one suggestion it would be to speak more clearly and louder – getting more air into your lungs will avoid the “vocal fry” sound.
This was a good episode of NotJustBikes.
When you have easy money, a tax haven, it is easy to have good infrastructure. That would normally be money to be invested in the countries of origin.
It still isn't perfect though.
Awesome video
Amazing video! Considerably better than NotJustBikes ones
3:35 “The Amsterdam network” – The Netherlands is more than Amsterdam…
4:01 That clip is not from The Netherlands…
It definitely sounds interesting. But amsterdam is pretty tiny. I can see this working well on a medium to small city. I lived in a small town years ago that actually built up it's mass transit and prioritized that over cars.. kinda. Just a bit more than most us cities. For the vast majority of trips.. if you weren't particular about when you left. It was basically about the same amount of time mass transit or car. With some trips being maybe 5-10min more for mass transit. Hardly worth worrying about. If you absolutely had to go from one end of the city to the other. Car was definitely faster. But it wasn't painful doing it via mass transit.
However… this was only true because of their size. Scalled up. The system didn't work. And it fell apart after the city grew bigger.
I kinda think that might happen here. I mean if you were to implement this in my area…. my area goes on for almost 200 miles. And yes… sometimes you want to go that full distance. I get you still have highway for that. But with more people. You need more space for things. Things are further apart. Even if sidewalks are a primary mode of travel. This requires you to put most everything a person could want in a reasonable area over a city. Jobs. Groceries. Recreational supplies… everthing.. that it would genuinely need. Or else mass transit gets extremely complex and looses benefits for longer distance travel. You need scale factors. Trains that stop at each block. Trains that only stop every mile or several blocks or whatever. Then Trains that only stop every 10 miles or something. And in my area. Maybe even Trains that stop every 100 miles. That's a lot of infrastructure.
Again. I really like the idea. But I do think they are benefiting more because of size. I mean… I do think it is a better idea in general. Theres not that many cities in the use the size this one is. But…. I think it has a limit of usefulness and a point of critical failure smaller than our current methods. I base that off of experience with other alternative traffic models.
Plus also… safe? Really? Make me go over a speed bump and I'm plotting your death. Make me go over 10.. I'll be knocking in your door… So no. Not safer 😂😜
If you are by any chance still in the Netherlands, go to the city Almere close to Amsterdam. The city is much younger and had much less constrictions for planning there infrastructure. I believe not just bikes still hasn't made a video about that city.
Showing how the old cities work is nice to show that even badly designed American cities still can be fixed, but showing Almere really shows how infrastructure of a city can look like.
Great video! Something that often gets overlooked is the material of which the road is made of. In residential neighborhoods in the Netherlands you will almost always find bricks instead of asphalt. Driving on bricks create more noise, which causes you (generally) to drive a bit slower. It's cheaper in maintenance too.
'Amsterdam Network''', proceeds to show a picture of the Netherlands
@3:33 Wait what? Let's look at the (city) Toronto bicycle network (showing map of Canada) vs. bicycle network in Amsterdam? (showing map of the Netherlands (that's a COUNTRY Muricans. You're Canadian so you probably knew that, but Muricans do not know that. And yes, Holland and The Netherlands are the same country (Oh no: INFORMATION OVERLOAD. So I leave it at that). This way the Muricans will never learn: Amsterdam is NOT a country! ( As if they care…lol) Anywhoo, from the Netherlands I wish you Bon Voyage and safe travels. Cheers.
FWIW we still have commution on the highways / main roads in cities during the peak hours (around 09:00 and 17:00 mainly). But yes if you take the public transit and or bicycle, you can avoid these.
Where I am in California bike lanes are in most areas are everywhere. There are very few exceptions. Also such "solutions" would only work in very tightly backed downtown areas … Where I am basically that means maybe 3% of the entire county. Everywhere else is not practical to bike or walk everywhere and be all sweaty when you been biking for 20 minutes or more. If we went "bike centric" here traffic would be 100 times worse. Because not that many bike everywhere because it is complete impractical.
Speak up! I can’t hear you
In the US and Canada the strongest (car) is prioritised above the weaker (pedestrians/cyclist) .
In The Netherlands the weaker party is protected by law and regulations.
The stronger party is always at FAULT in an accident unless you can prove otherwise.