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Rural bike lanes in The Netherlands amaze me. This video is basically me just getting really excited about bike lanes. That is all.
What’s this channel all about?
Do you want to reduce your dependence on cars, get outside and enjoy life? We want to help you make an educated decision with your next move, or to uncover safe and scenic cycling options in your backyard.
↓ Resources I love to use ↓
🚲 Multi Use Bike Paths → https://www.traillink.com/
💯 Walking and Biking Ratings → https://www.walkscore.com/
🏔Bike Packing Routes → http://bikepacking.com/
⛺️ Bike Touring Routes → https://www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/adventure-cycling-route-network/interactive-network-map/
🚵♀️ Mountain Bike Trails → https://www.mtbproject.com/
🥾 Hiking and Biking Trails → https://www.alltrails.com/
🏡 Local Housing → https://www.apartments.com/
Did I make a mistake in this video? Let me know in the comments below! ↓
41 Comments
So the thumbnail shows the Amersfoortseweg near Apeldoorn, but the video doesn’t?
Blow your helmet off." Very few Dutch people wear a helmet. Nor in Denmark or casual cyclists in Switzerland, italy etc
Nice to see your amazement. Few comments: You ae NOT allowed to cycle on the sideways unless indicated. In the rural areas, you have show routes we never prefer for recreational cycling. There are many rural routes, and very small bike only paths that are not shows by Google. We also have a long distance network of cycle routes, mainly using rural routes but also passing big cities and the bicycle node network, which consists of thousands of nodes where you can find you way just by following the signs to adjacent nodes, though you need a (digital) map.
You missed the sand roads with a separate cycling path. Believe me, they exist and most of them are old. The cycling path usually is in better condition than the road, but they are very narrow, 30 cm.
Dude, if you want to show stuff, let people actually watch it! Stop zooming all over the place like a CGI movie
Check also the east side of the netherlands.
The fast cycle lanes are great! I live naarby the F73. Named to the auto highway A73.
Pls stop advertising how great it is in the Netherlands. We have enough expats ruining the housing market and polluting the language and making the roads a dangerous place because they don't know that over here it is not 'keep your lane' system. The list goes on but you get the picture here. If we have bike-lanes it is because our mentality has changed since the 1970's. You come here and you take the advantages and you cannot even be bothered to learn the language. Fix your own country.
Why on earth do foreigners ALWAYS go to Amsterdam and (video)blog about it ?
Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands are two completely different things.
7:18 is a dedicated bike lane; Notice the double lines. Cars can't use it. If a car breaks down, they're supposed to go over the bike lane and park on the shoulder, NOT on the red part.
8:42 is a non-dedicated bike lane; The dotted line indicating that cars CAN use it when required. For example to pass oncoming traffic. But still if a car breaks down in that area, you're not supposed to park on it. (Unless there just isn't a shoulder, obviously)
Dutchy here. I'm going to make it easy for you. You can literally cycle throughout the whole of the Netherlands on bicycle paths. So, done haha Have a nice day buddy. It might be interesting to say that we also have bike paths where you can drive your car as a guest. As a motorist, you are a guest on a bicycle path. You have to slow down or stop if you meet someone on a bicycle. Cyclists always have priority there.
"Blow your helmet off". Helmets are for sissies. We don't wear them in the Netherlands.
we seperated the bikes from normal traffic, but we also made streets more complex and narrow.
by adding turns and narrowing streets and having obstacles to navigate, you slow down car traffic automaticly without even needing to put up a sign.
all of it combined makes it actually safer and more enjoyable to drive or bike around, if don't feel like you want to drive or bike you can also take public transport
to within 5 minutes walking distance of were you want to go witch is super reliable and you are able to get on every 5 minutes or up to 10 minutes like clockwork.
you will not see many people in the netherlands bike around wearing a helmet tho, here nobody wears a helmet on a bicycle unless it's a motorbike.
Yes''The Netherlands are flat its in the name. You should take a look at the east of the country butyfull and vlue for your mony.
" It will Blow you helmet off" 😀 Can I cite that?
The N833 has a dedicated yet not seperated but still mandatory bikelane in your video. Indicated by the continous white line and a painted bicycle on the lane at every crossing. Cars are not allowed to cross the white lines unless at crossings or driveways where the line is intermittend. This design has been abandoned and is very rare now. There even used to be a variant with a continous line on the cycle-side and intermittend on the car side: it allowed cars to pass but still made it mandatory for cyclist.
There is another type of bikelane with only intermittend striping. That is not dedicated but still mandatory for cylists, indicated by signs and now mainly used in urban areas. Cars are allowed to cross the line.
And yet another type has intermittend lines (or only red ) but no signs at all, called a 'cycle-suggestion' lane. Not mandatory, but yet kind of is because you have to drive on the right side of the road. Used on low-traffic rural roads with max speed of 60.
The reason why the infrastructure in the Netherlands is so exceptional is because it is designed for humans.
Great video👍🏻
Most of the bike lanes aren't even on google maps.
2:26 you can bike there, if you want to pay a fine.
You did pick about the worse bike paths there are in the Netherlands 🤣🤣
The most hilly area in the Netherlands is around the South of Limburg, but even there they have quite good biking infrastructure.
this are the bike lanes. But you can bike on every other road :). Its legal as long if it is not a highway or national road (A and N road)
I love in Czech Republic, we have lots of bikers but cities are not inviting for us and drivers are very aggressive. I dont get it, Netherlands could be so inspiring for us.
A lot of the "rural " bike lanes are farmer roads that are used by hikers bikers etc . These tiny street are all over europe . i live in germany and it's the exact same set up . so they aren't dedicated bikes as such but are perfect for safe biking
@4:54 You’re on to something here. If you want to make the streets safer, you have to force the more protected road users (cars etc) to be more cautious by designing the infrastructure so that they have to do that. So no wide open 6 lane stroads as you have in the US. 😉
But actually, Amsterdam doesn’t have the best bicycle infrastructure in The Netherlands. Foreigners tend to think it does, but that’s only because when they think of The Netherlands, they think of Amsterdam. But Groningen and Utrecht are actually better I think. Maybe check out which cities have been awarded “cycling city” in The Netherlands (yes that’s a thing).
Holland and Denmark made the conscious decision to incorporate the bicycle into the planning of the road infrastructure in the '70's whereas the rest of the western world embraced the ICE vehicle and planned the integration of it into society accordingly, no consideration for the cyclist to share these roads was given
The Netherlands = Amsterdam Pepega
Europeans Will soon teach us how to properly pee and poop 💩 on the side of the road without giving away our bum secrets 🫣🤭🫢🫤
Great video, but i am frustrated by the general (not uniquely your video) focus on Amsterdam as a biking city, instead of the Netherlands as a biking country. It undermines the effort of other cities who do much more for cyclists compared to amsterdam. It also underappreciates the scale of cyling infra which runs totally everywhere in the county and connects all the cities. Amsterdam is not a dominant city like Copenhagen in Denmark or London in England, so a focus on just Amsterdam makes Amsterdam seem more unique than it actually is: (barely) the most populous city in the Netherlands with decent bike infra.
Most of the a roads are highways and strictly forbidden for cyclists therefore no bikelane on the a2 in this video
I am like number 522
Another thing to consider is that in NL, Google's distinction about which streets are "bicycle-friendly" and which ones aren't is often very arbitrary, and sometimes even plain wrong. Pretty much all residential streets and smaller rural roads are bikeable by default even though there's no dotted green line on the (obviously US-made) map. Contrarily, Google sometimes shows green lines on footpaths in parks, inner-city pedestrian areas or on motorways, all of which in fact explicitly ban bicycles.
There are quite some dedicated bike lanes (alongside general roads) and dedicated bike roads (not associated with a general road) in this part of Europe, including Britain. Those bike roads may be created on former railway lines. Liège (B) features some great bike roads diving under bridges across the river, but otherwise (like if you missed an entry to these) cycling there is no fun.
The Netherlands do feature some steep hills in the very South, like south of Sittard. During weekends with "good" weather, packs of bike racers can be quite a nuisance there (and in adjacent Belgium). And steep gradients can be found in Germany, from the very border on. Like on the German side of national park "de Meinweg" the "Overschlagbahn". From memory: that's an asphalt bike road that turns into an unpaved forest road.
There is a subtle yet important difference between cycling in the Netherlands and Belgium on the one hand and in Germany on the other: in the former, cyclists are considered "slow traffic", in Germany "fast pedestrians". In Germany, cyclists may be directed to the sidewalks. In Amsterdam, I know a place (south side of lake Sloterplas) where cyclists would "all" use the sidewalk (the inside track) and "all" pedestrians (notably joggers) would use the bike lane.
Some narrow roads may really be dangerous. Like the Poppendammergouw in the rural North of Amsterdam. The asphalt is just wide enough for the milk trucks (it's cattle country) or the tractors with their mowing add-on or hay trailer. The drivers all seem to suffer from cramp in their right foot, so you better step aside. (Here on YouTube, I'm subscribed to the channels of some people in the excavating business in the USA. My, how they drive their "low boy" or similar truck through the area! That's what I mean.)
If you go cycling and need navigation: cycling here hasn't made it to Apple Maps yet. One time, it had reset my vehicle to "car", and had me try to enter a motorway to cross a major river. The second time, I insisted on being a pedestrian. It led me to a path into a former shooting range with live munition lying around. Do use Google Maps.
To get a little sense of the scale
The somewhat zoomed-out map with the 4 cities is called the 'Randstad' or Delta metropolis of 738 km2 with 8.4 million inhabitants
For comparison, New York City is 778 km², so slightly larger and with 8.8 million inhabitants, a bit more densely populated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad
@Active Towns – Profiles by John Simmerman Jason Slaughter has never ONCE given any practical advice about what to do about PRE-EXISTING towns, structures, such as massive stroads and suburban sprawl.
I have lived my ENTIRE LIFE (nearly 60 years) in the ease and comfort of suburban sprawl and always have had a car.
I knew intuitively my entire life that somehow our property taxes, as INSANELY high as they are (NJ), are not nearly enough to cover the massive expense of maintenance of sewer lines, water lines, roads for such a spread-out lifestyle. I have always known it to be unsustainable.
Where I lived as a kid, I did walk to school, nearly up to 2 miles to our high school. Walking was perfectly fine
in the suburbs, thanks to sidewalks, albeit, yes, quite long. I also biked a lot.
But, yes, sometimes our parents picked us up at school, by car, but not usually.
Where I live now, also suburbs, also single family home, is in a gated community. Same situation. But, due to ever accruing disabilities (multiple artificial joints due to severe rheumatoid arthritis), I cannot walk more than a block before needing to return home. And, I can not ride a bicycle any more. I tried in 2017.
So, I truly need a car.
For many years I tended to, let's say, praise Jeremy Rifkin's idea of decentralization.
Can't say I lived by it, but it sounded good.
Well, suburban sprawl is the GREATEST example of decentralization possible: be as spread out as possible.
So, perhaps IDEOLOGIES/PHILOSOPHIES don't work. MATHEMATICS/LOGISTICS/PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS / REDUCTIONISM is what matters.
So, for example: the philosophy/ideology of "don't destroy what has been built already: modify it or fix it etc"
So, my question stands: what do we do with all the unsustainable pre-existing suburban sprawl, sewer systems,
water pipes, roads, if one's philosophy/ideology is "don't destroy them: do something else with them"?
Are you aware of the separate road signs for cyclists bij the ANWB. At 12:28 you can actually see them. A famous thing are the so called mushroom direction signs. Search for "paddestoel ANWB"
Funny that I do the same thing, I keep looking at the street view and imagining how wonderful it would be to live in the Netherlands, imagining my Curitiba being like that.
Unfortunately I can only dream, but I'm glad I'm not the only crazy person thinking and imagining this.
Hahaha
If I knew how to edit video I would make videos like yours to demonstrate what.
"Rijks" means Realm's. It's kind of like how the US calls a lot of things "Federal"
So a "Rijksweg" would be a federal road.
8:00
Actually no, that's not a bike path. The "A" roads are highways where bikes are not allowed.
That area is for stopping if you need to for whatever reason. The US also has buffer regions.
10:00
Those things are dune areas. They are caused by the reclaiming of the sea. Normally the salt of the sea keeps dunes barren. But if you push the sea back then dunes start to become fertile. However without human intervention it still takes over a century for a dune to become a inland forest.
So dune areas are kind of a transition. From a barren sand dune to a regular forest. The salt concentration in the soil is still high and the nutrient concentration is still low which keeps most plants away, however certain plants can handle it. These plants overtime cause the dunes to flatten out because they stop the formation of sand hills. Meaning the wind makes the hills go away but the plants prevent new hills from forming.
There were calls several times to speed up the process but many people ended up quite liking the dune areas. They add topographic diversity from the forests and wetlands.
They are not unique to the Netherlands. Denmark has them as well.
I checked my Canadian city and it was decently green, much better than your American examples, but not quite as good as Amsterdam. It has some bike lanes that go past the city borders one reaches a nearby town, one almost does, and the nearby towns are thick with green bike paths
While there might be short gaps and it's not always the shortest route, you can find ongoing bike lanes from the Swedish city of Malmö (Sweden usually only has bike lanes within the cities) through Denmark, Northern Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium into the French city of Lille (where it drops to only slightly better than American standard). Also the quality may vary – Denmark loves these edge lanes and smaller towns in Germany and Belgium may force you on crappy sidewalks.