Poor cycling infrastructure designs struggle when it comes to allowing cyclists to make turns across traffic (a left turn in continental Europe / USA) in a manner which is both convenient and safe. In some cases, designers simply don't really try and this results in such abominations as centre cycle lanes leading into advanced stop lines (bike boxes) on the ground. There are also examples of designs which are promoted quite hard but which don't really help people to cycle because they make turns inconvenient, dangerous or in some cases both inconvenient and deadly dangerous.
The new junction on the day it opened. The cycle-path widens
to nearly 4 metres in width to accommodate cyclists going
straight on as well as those turning left. Note traffic lights
for cyclists. The green for straight on is almost always lit.
This only goes red to allow cyclists to emerge from the right.
On the other hand, there are also good examples, though these are not necessarily so easy to find. Some designs improve both safety and convenience for cyclists. One solution for traffic lights which I'm particularly enthusiastic about because it has a very good track record is the simultaneous green junction, however there is no one design of junction which fits all locations and other good designs are possible.
This new junction demonstrates a very good way to design for asymmetric cycle traffic. In this case, almost all cycle traffic heads head straight on across the junction and they have a nearly full time green light. Only the relatively small number of cyclists who turn left are stopped by the traffic light in the video and this introduces only a short delay until it can stop all conflicting motor traffic and remove all danger from the left turn.
Crossing in the opposite direction is also convenient. Note that
right turning motor traffic is stopped when cyclists have a
green light and all straight on motor traffic is to the left of the
thick white line. There is no conflict in this direction either.
The old junction in this location featured on my blog in 2012. This already worked well, but it stopped cyclists heading straight on relatively frequently and did not allow for a left turn to be made by bicycle. The old junction was built on land and did not incorporate a bridge. The new bridge had to be built to enable re-opening a canal which was filled in decades ago and the new junction is on top of that bridge.
The Weiersbrug is one of six new bridges in Assen which began construction at the end of 2014. Five of those bridges are now complete and one remains to be built. I've been critical in the past of some aspects of the huge FlorijnAs project in Assen, but it has also brought improvements for cyclists in some locations, such as here.
Another view from another angle
This junction really does work very well for cyclists. The delays for a green light are minimal, and this partly is the result of the lights defaulting to red for everyone (cars, bikes, pedestrians) when there is little traffic and responding almost immediately to whoever comes along first. This video shows what it's like to go through this junction twice on a Sunday morning when there are few people about:
An older implementation of the same idea, with inadequate
lane sizes and not enough space to make the turn. This was recently removed from the area around Assen railway station.
Not a new idea, but a top class implementation
The idea of cyclists waiting to turn left at a traffic light in this way is not in itself new. However, this new junction brings a level of refinement which makes it comfortable to use. This new junction works far better for left turning cyclists than did the an older implementation of the same idea which was recently removed from the railway station area of Assen.
The junction shown in the video with a blue arrow showing the route taken by left turning cyclists in the video. While cyclists make this maneouvre or any other across the junction which could result in conflict with motor vehicles, red traffic lights hold motorists to remove the conflict.
Come and see
This new junction opened in May on the second day of a follow-up study tour. There is new cycling infrastructure to see every year in Assen and the programme changes each year to allow for what has changed. Future study tours, such as the tenth anniversary tour in September, will feature this junction amongst other pieces of new infrastructure.
Readers will have noticed that my blogging slowed down somewhat in 2015 and has not really picked up again this year so far. There are a number of reasons why, but the main reason for blogging less is that there is less good news for cyclists in Assen and across the Netherlands in general now than was the case eight years ago when this blog started. The good ideas have mostly been documented on this blog - see past posts (in the section on the right). This blog post describes a large scheme in Assen which is damaging the city, but please do read to the bottom as there's a long way still to fall.
Traffic in Assen in May 1979. Many readers will see similarities between this film and the appearance of their own city. I certainly see similarities between the film and British cities. Before and after images of some of the same locations can be found here and here.
As the danger of cycling increased, people cycled less. 1978
was the year when things finally turned around, infrastructure
started to improve safety and people started cycling more.
There is no support for the fictional "safety in numbers" idea
in this data. The much lower cycling modal share of the more
recent period compared with the 1950s and 60s and the
continued decline in injuries against relatively little
cycling growth during the 80s and onwards is the direct result
of infrastructure separating cyclists from motor vehicles
In most countries, bicycles reached their peak in the first half of the 20th century before being pushed aside in the second half of the 20th century. The year in which the Dutch cycled the least was one year before the film above was shot:1978. Why had cycling become less attractive ? Because policies which favoured cars had resulted in Dutch roads being clogged with motor vehicles. I think the film illustrates the answer very well. Cycling conditions were unpleasant because cyclists were only rarely separated from motor traffic.
The resulting conditions not only made cycling unpleasant due to low subjective safety scaring people away from cycling, but also led to the highest number of deaths per km travelled by bike that was ever recorded in the Netherlands.
It was only by implementing policies which prioritized cycling and deliberately improved the safety of cyclists that conditions in Dutch cities were changed from the unpleasant scenes seen in the film above. There are twice as many cars in the Netherlands now as there were when the film above was made, but cycling is far more pleasant and far safer these days than it was then.
However this doesn't mean the battle was won and that everything is going well. In fact, some of the lessons of the 1970s and 1980s are now being ignored in the Netherlands. New infrastructure which makes cycling less convenient and less safe is now being built.
Local paper: Parking garages are now
full due to the change in policy.
But who benefits from this ?
The FlorijnAs project in Assen is changing a lot of the infrastructure in the city in an adverse way. It's difficult to find anything positive at all about this project.
But the income from the
parking has fallen because
many drivers only use the
free supermarket parking
tickets (short term)
Last year's change in car parking policy has also led to problems for cyclists (I predicted this last year). Removing the out-of-town-center free parking and replacing it with half price (€6 for the whole day) inner city parking has, you won't be surprised to read, led to far more cars being along the inner ring road and into the inner city.
The increased parking in the centre has not benefitted the council because while the car parks and roads leading to them are now busier than they were, the total income from car parking has actually dropped by €100K per year as a result of the new policy. It also doesn't benefit shop-keepers because now that drivers use only the free tickets from the supermarkets to quickly do their shopping, they don't wander around to other shops and spend money there as well. The out of centre free parking used to enable this. Of course this policy which brings more cars to the city centre certainly doesn't help cyclists.
To add to the woes of the businesses in the centre of Assen, the council is supporting the building of an outlet centre on the outskirts of the city which of course will offer free parking and will help to ensure that out-of-towners use Assen's shops even less than now.
Below you'll find examples of how access to the city centre has been compromised from several directions:
From the North
The Molenbrug provides part of a main route to the city centre for people from the North-East. The narrowing of the bridge had already taken place when I wrote about this bridge last year, but at that time we still had a traffic light to stop cars. Now that the traffic light has gone as well, cyclists have less priority and worse safety than in the past. The removal of separate pedestrian facilities here also means that at busy times this bridge demonstrates all the problems which come from shared pedestrian and bicycle facilities.
Assen's roundabouts are all of a particularly safe design except for the two new roundabouts which resulted from the FlorijnAs project. These use an inferior design without a central waiting area which makes them dangerous for cyclists to cross. How did Assen lose the ability to construct safe roundabouts ? In this case, the new roundabout has replaced what was a direct priority non-stop through route for cyclists so this also causes an extra delay on a busy cycling route.
This road is being doubled in width. For motorists there will be two lanes in each direction plus a wide verge in the centre with attractive trees and a new row of car parking spaces which can be seen on the left of this picture. For cyclists, the new scheme brings the cycle-path on the left which is being built a fraction under the supposed minimum width of 3 m (which is actually too narrow for convenience).
Cycling infrastructure should support side-by-side cycling because this makes cycling more sociable and more attractive. This path is on one of the busiest routes in Assen but at under three metres wide this has been built too narrow for side-by-side cyclists going in both directions, too narrow for safe overtaking. and the lamp-posts are ludicrously close to the path itself. To the right, six lanes for drivers (one parking + two driving lanes + a verge + two driving lanes), all of which are wider than the cycle-path.
Jan Fabriciusstraat provides access from the East to the city centre. This very wide and busy road has space for multiple vehicle lanes, a grass verge in the centre for much of its length and pavements (sidewalks) of up to 10 m in width, yet cyclists have nothing but a 1.3 m wide on-road cycle-lane which is magnetically attractive for parking trucks. This is an example of wide pavement syndrome.
Also Jan Fabriciusstraat. Cyclists turning left have
to make a 130 degree turn on a very narrow path.
Where parking is provided, it is parallel to and right next to the cycle-lane, placing cyclists in danger from drivers who are concentrating on parking. The cyclists in the second photo who are heading in the wrong direction are children on the way to school. They are riding in this way because the planner of this street somehow couldn't find any way to enable a safe and convenient journey to be made by bike from the road next to the tall building on the left to the position where I am standing. Note that where the woman in red is standing there was once a wide good quality cycle-path which was removed when this street was redeveloped.
From the East
Assen's railway station, built in 1989, is currently being demolished to make room for a new building. Most cyclists and most drivers in the station area do not have the railway station as their destination but are passing through, so direct through routes are important for both cyclists and drivers.
This video shows the direct routes South to North and East to West which existed across the station area at the beginning of 2015. They're old-fashioned, but efficient. The East-West route dumped cyclists into Stationstraat, a road which was also used by busses, but it was a wide road and unpleasant overtaking events were rare.
The new station plans include a tunnel so that drivers will benefit from an improved direct through route past the station. Cyclists making through journeys have their route made less direct and have to "share" a pedestrian area. Those heading East to West will then have to "share" a newly narrowed road with busses. Also note that for cyclists the infrastructure of the future is built of bumpy tiles, not of smooth asphalt.
The architect's impression of the new station. This is a road which will be used by taxis and busses en-masse. Anyone dropping off a train or bus passenger by car will do that right here in the middle of the picture in this shared space. Cyclists will have to make their way through this.
According to the architect, people will bring cats to the station. I suspect this will never actually happen in practice.
Update February 2019: The railway station has some of the problems described above. There is some conflict with people using the underground cycle-parking and those travelling through the tunnel by bike. However overall I think this has actually worked out quite well. Read a new blog post about the railway station.
South East
South East: Zuidersingel (which leads into Oostersingel) was narrowed and resurfaced in 2013 as part of the works which gave us the unpleasant Kerkplein shared space. The result of this work is that cyclists now find themselves used as mobile traffic calming devices. As I type this, the Zuidersingel layout is already being copied around the corner in Stationstraat as part of the new station development. As a result, the problems for cyclists which already exist in Zuidersingel/Oostersingel will also be seen in Stationstraat which is part of the main route to the city centre for most people who live in the East of Assen. It seems to be taking an awfully long tome for people to realise that "sharing" really doesn't work on busy through routes.
South
The Kerkplein Shared Space already serves as a barrier for people from the South who wish to enter the centre of Assen. With the new parking regime, the amount of traffic here has grown and with the extra traffic the unpleasantness of trying to negotiate this junction has also grown. Read more about the Kerkplein.
West
Luckily, redevelopment of some routes directly from the west into the centre of Assen occurred slightly before the FlorijnAs project started and therefore these routes were not in line to be redeveloped. However, they do lead into the areas of De Nieuwe Kolk and the Kerkplein, both of which cause issues for cyclists. Also there is one route from slightly North of West - which as it happens is our most direct route to the city centre, which is being disrupted. The existing primary cycle-route alongside the northern bank of Het Kanaal has been downgraded to a shared use secondary route and the well used footpath alongside has been made unusable to many people by the addition of steps
Constant conflict with pedestrians because while there is a separate pedestrian path, that path is so badly designed (it's down some steps by the water) that almost no pedestrians use it.
Because the corner radii are far too small, people have made their own path which after a few months already looked nearly as permanent as the real path. This is an indicator of badly designed / not fit for purpose infrastructure.
The replacement primary route is on the other side of the canal. Yes, it initially looks OK. However, the details are all wrong. Why have cyclists been short-changed in width once again on a primary cycling route when there is so much space available ? Why has the cycle-path been positioned so close to the road and so close to lamp posts ? Why is there a loading bay on the wrong side of the cycle-path when the empty shop which it is next to has its loading bay in a car park on the other side ? There is no reason to expect large numbers of pedestrians here so the pavement is overly generous.
Further along the same path cyclists have to give way twice to car park entrances. No priority on a primary cycling route. The old primary route on the other side of the canal worked better than this. Watch a video which shows what remains of the old route, which has been given a rougher surface than in the past.
What future for Assen ?
I am quite aware that some readers will look at the photos and videos above and wish that they had the same problems as Assen does. Clearly none of the problems shown above quite take us back to how the Netherlands looked in the 1970s. However, they all illustrate new problems which are being created for cyclists in this city due to cycling just not mattering very much to planners and motoring being given a higher priority. If this process continues then it could easily lead to a slow slide downwards in the cycling modal share. People don't have to experience much unpleasantness when cycling to make them give up.
Infrastructure which was built 5-10 years ago was of a higher quality than what is being built now. There is no good reason for this. Certainly not a financial reason as FlorijnAs is an astonishingly well funded project which has a total of €1.5 Billion to spend. The high level of funding combined with any downward change in quality is a serious concern as the extensive works of FlorijnAs will affect all cyclists in Assen and they already put the city back a small step so far as cycling is concerned.
I'm not very concerned as FlorijnAs isn't all of Assen and this still remains a city which overall is lucky enough to have amongst the very best infrastructure in the world. A few small steps backwards won't make a huge difference so long as the ambition to improve is found again.
As I understand it, Assen's previously stated ambition to grow cycling still stands. If this is more than mere words then the city needs to do better than what is shown above to retain present and encourage future cyclists.
What future for other cities ?
One of the problems with writing about the less good developments in this city is that some readers gain an impression that it is only Assen which is making mistakes. That is of course not true - it's just that I'm an trying to give an honest appraisal of the place where I live and there are not so many people doing this. Positive stories abound, including about things which are really not very good at all.
It's really not just Assen. This publicity shot from Groningen,
headed "further improvements in cycle facilties" not only
lavishes praise on horribly outdated advanced stop lines (bike
boxes) but also uses a photo of the most dangerous single street in the city as an aspirational image. I nearly fell from
my chair when I read this... Not what you want to emulate.
There is nothing uniquely Assen about any of the problems illustrated above. The architects and planners who designed the infrastructure illustrated above also work elsewhere and they are doing pretty much exactly the same thing in several other cities while other planners and architects are making other mistakes here and elsewhere. It's quite normal that ideas wax and wane in popularity. In the Netherlands at the moment, cycling is not the big thing which politicians are trying to improve. For that reason we should not be surprised that this period of time doesn't bring the best improvements for cyclists.
However it is important that the attitudes change before too much harm is done. Keep going backwards at this rate and in forty years time the Netherlands will once again look as it did in the 1970s.
Study Tours
Yes, there are study tours again this year. While this blog post points out problems within Assen, this is still a city choc full of good examples. We also visit Groningen, which like any city is also a mix of good and bad and has plenty of its own problems. The majority of both cities work well and this is reflected in the high cycling modal shares. In any case, looking at problem areas gives us an opportunity to demonstrate how what might be seen as rather small issues ("wish I had that problem") actually really are important if a truly high cycling modal share is your aim.
There are still some places available on the April tour, but you will have to be quick to book. Similarly, there are also still places available on the May follow-up tour (contact us for details) on which we demonstrate what changed since your previous study tour.
Our service is to demonstrate what is good and also show what works less well so that participants know what should not be emulated. It's important to bear in mind that not everything Dutch is good. From every period there are both very good examples and also some poor examples. We have nothing to gain from implying that any infrastructure which is less than excellent works well enough and you can rest assured that we do not gloss over problems. I hope that the above blog post makes that clear.
The enormous and extremely expensive Florijn As project is changing Assen. While there are many benefits for drivers due to the Florijn As project, there are few changes which are good for cycling. There is plenty of glossy publicity material available on the website of the project but actual detailed plans have not been easy to access. In this case, I had a chance to view the plan on the right only on two half morning open days late last year.
I was surprised to find that the works being presented as part of the Blauwe As segment of the project extended beyond Het Kanaal and also involved changes to nearby Jan Fabriciusstraat. It was also a surprise to find out how hostile to cycling the plans for "improvements" to this street are.
Jan Fabriciusstraat 2010 vs. 2014. Rather than
continue the cycle-path to provide a safe route
for cycling, as was obviously once intended, the
entire area ahead was turned into pavement.
It is now planned to remove the res of this
cycle-path and for cyclists to ride in a far
more dangerous position left of the bus-stop.
Jan Fabriciustraat is extremely wide. There is no problem at all with providing well for cyclists in this location, as is demonstrated by the current arrangement in the northern part of the street. Next to the road there is currently a 4.5 m verge, a 3.6 m cycle-path and a 4.5 m pavement. The area is wide enough that a bus-stop built as part of the verge has ample space for bus passengers to stand as well as for the cycle-path and a generously wide pavement. This cycle-path has existed in a half finished state for several years, having been built to serve relatively new buildings on the Northern part of the street. It was clearly the intention of planners at that time that the cycle-path would be extended to the south when the next "block" was re-built.
Unfortunately, when the new Citadel development was built, the architects choose to ignore the good design of the existing infrastructure and instead send cyclists onto this busy through road. Rather than bikes crossing a side-road 5 metres from the road at 90 degrees and with maximum visibility of cyclists by drivers and visa-versa, a dangerous junction was created where drivers are required to turn their heads 180 degrees and look through their cars to see cyclists and where cyclists find it hard to judge what drivers will do next.
The photos above show a view pointing towards the south of the cycle-path shown on the left here. If there is space for trees with the redevelopment, surely there is also space for cyclists. Moving cyclists from a safe wide (3.6 m) cycle-path onto a narrow (1.3 m wide) on-road lane on a road which policy has recently made even more busy will not improve cycling safety.
On-road cycle-lanes do not work well. The problems that they cause are well known and can be observed across the world and all across the Netherlands. But we don't need to go far to see the problems because they can already be seen on the short section of Jan Fabriciusstraat already transformed, as demonstrated in my video above, and in a very similarly designed street a short distance away within Assen.
That this is an inadequate design has already been demonstrated quite comprehensively so why is the same mistake being repeated ?
What are standards for ?
The designer of these lanes in this location hasn't even tried to make the best possible job of them.
Good practice calls for bus-stops to be bypassed so that conflict between buses and cyclists is reduced but that has also not been done in this instance. Indeed, it is proposed to remove a bus-stop bypass and push cyclists in the cycle-lane into conflict with buses.
The problems which result from drivers turning across cyclists in on-road lanes at side-road junctions are well known but have been ignored even though there are good examples right here in Assen of how these junctions should be designed.
As a result of the hostile conditions for cycling, most people who cycle here already use the pavement and not the on-road lanes. Where the cycle-path should have been continued there is now a ten metre wide pavement. Cyclists have been provided with a narrow 1.3 m wide on-road cycle-lane. The architects may have thought that this empty pavement outside their new building (Citadel) would look nice, but it's of no practical purpose whatsoever. On-road cycle-lanes in the Netherlands are supposed to be an absolute minimum of 1.7 m wide if space is tight. On this road, just 1.3 metres has been allocated for cyclists. Poor design which didn't take account of how real people behave has created a de-facto shared use path with the inevitable accompanying conflict between cyclists and pedestrians. A great example of Wide Pavement Syndrome - the tendency for modern architects to create enormously wide pavements (sidewalks) in places where few people walk.
Textured paving for blind people
It's also of note that there is very little textured paving to help blind people in this new development. Combined with the huge areas without any kerbs, especially between where pedestrians walk and where trucks park, as well as where various items of street furniture are placed, it would appear that the walking environment for people with blindness are not good. That's a contrast with the older very successful treatment of city centre streets where there is extensive textured pavement.
Citadel / Cite. Misleading impressions.
The developers "impression" of what the Southern end of Jan
Fabriciusstraat would look like. No cars, no bikes, no trucks
making deliveries, but lots of confident pedestrians walking
care-free across what is in reality a busy road. See photos and
videos above for what this really looks like.
I wrote about the problems with the Citadel centre shortly after it opened because somehow the developers had not only rebuilt this road with the narrow on-road lanes shown above but also forgotten to include proper cycle parking for this new shopping centre in a city where most shopping is by bicycle. It was an absurd thing to have happened and at the time I assumed that the problems would somehow be resolved. That has not happened. Cyclists still have to use a temporary indoor cycle-park in the car garage.
We're now facing the situation where rather than the problems caused by this new development being tackled, they are to be spread further along the same street.
Another impression, of the situation shown at the start of this
blog post. Note that no cars are shown, no bicycles either. Lots
of pedestrians standing around doing nothing at all. This is
not at all how it looks in reality.
It's important to learn from history in order not to repeat it.
But in this case we need look no further than the misleading architect's impressions from the existing development. These images never did represent reality. Why are we continuing to develop the city based on images like this which are designed to mislead ?
What the street really looks like. It's no accident that deliveries happen here as that's what the architect designed. It's also no accident that people cycle on the pavement here because the cycle-lanes on the road are inadequate and unsafe. The difference between the architects imagination and real life is due to the designer not having taken into account actual usage.
On the other side of the road, a dangerous bus-stop has already been built. Children use this route to get to and from school. Have the designers of the Florijnas project forgotten about stop de kindermoord ?
This design doesn't work anywhere
There are complaints about similar road designs across the world. e.g. Perth in Australia
Why is Assen following a trend which has proven to be a mistake elsewhere ?
Other recent mistakes in Assen, and across the country
Other examples of where Assen has made recent planning mistakes include the unpopular and dangerous Shared Space at Kerkplein, the construction of inadequate new bicycle bridges across Het Kanaal and the area outside the new cultural centre. In each of these cases, just like Jan Fabriciusstraat, architects produced imaginary impressions of what the areas would look like in the future which were not grounded in reality and which absolutely do not represent the reality of what happened after their designs were built.
A fifteen year old photo of good cycling
infrastructure. We became interested in
the Netherlands because of good
designs like this, which are now taken
for granted. No-one can make a career
of proposing slight improvements of
what already exists so we are seeing
change for the sake of change rather
than real improvements.
The Netherlands led the world in cycling between the mid 1970s and just a few years ago because the people involved quietly got on with engineering excellent solutions to the problems which cyclists faced. The result was more, safer, cycling. It was engineering, not architecture or marketing, which grew cycling in the Netherlands. The same problems remain now and the same solutions are required but we're not seeing the same solutions. Unfortunately, the people who did the very good groundwork decades ago have now mostly retired and their contribution is being forgotten by the new generation of planners, who are far more interested in promotion of their ideas than in taking on the problems that they are causing. "Innovations" should not be praised until the results have been evaluated.
In Groningen, the latest innovation is a
logo for traffic lights. The city stopped investing properly in cycling ten years
ago. This is most certainly not a return
to real progress.
It's important to note that this problem is not localised to Assen. This is a national problem. The Netherlands is unfortunately repeating the same mistakes as caused a decline in cycling 50 years ago and the likely outcome is that cycling will again start to decline again.
We first became interested in moving to the Netherlands around 20 years ago. What impressed me then was that this nation was very quietly getting on with building ever better cycling infrastructure and the results were plain to see everywhere: Cycling was growing, cycling was becoming safer. The Dutch saying "Meten is weten" (Measuring is knowing) was very much in vogue. The country wasn't making much noise about what was happening, they were getting on with engineering a better world for Dutch people and this most certainly involved improvements for cyclists.
Groningen 2015: An old cycle-path is
wider than the new cycle-lane which
leads to it. Cyclists squeezed while
Motoring lanes and unused pavement
in the middle of the road are wide.
This has changed. It seems now that marketing is being substituted for engineering. Rather than genuinely but quietly making things better, the country has started to boast about achievements with a view to exporting the services of Dutch companies. Unfortunately, what they've been offering is not nearly so high in quality as what was being built here, and now we're seeing the same low quality design taking over in the Netherlands as well.
The view from overseas
We have hosted hundreds of visitors from outside the Netherlands on cycling infrastructure study tours here in Assen. Given the content of my last few blog posts, readers may wonder whether there is anything worth seeing. First of all, as I emphasized at the end of the last section, it's important to note that the problems which I write about are not confined to this one city. Other cities in the Netherlands are making the same mistakes as Assen, but it seems that almost no-one is writing about these mistakes.
There is nothing at all for us to gain from presenting a fairy-tale view of a perfect cycling environment. We are not employed to represent the city, and we certainly do not engage in city marketing. We present the reality, "warts and all".
This year is our tenth of running study tours. We again offer an honest and independent appraisal of what works and what does not work in the Netherlands, with no commercial reason to push one solution over another.
Update May 2015
The works in Jan Fabriciusstraat continue. The cycle-path in the northern part of the street has now been completely removed so that when the works are complete cyclists will have to ride the entire length of the street in a dangerously narrow cycle-lane on the road:
The new development in this street is one of the most disappointing things I have seen happen since I moved to the Netherlands. There is nothing better for cyclists about the new arrangement.
Update March 2016
The FlorijnAs juggernaut keeps on going. Jan Fabriciusstraat has been altered further, bringing these problems:
Cyclists are squeezed into a 1.3 m wide on road lane for the full length of the street. The road, extra wide pavements with space for cars to park and a grass verge in the centre all have more space than cyclists. In this photo you'll see how many people cycle against the flow because there is no convenient place to cross the road to continue in this direction. The cycle-path which used to exist in Jan Fabriciusstraat should have been kept and extended up to this junction.
Cyclists have just 1.3 m of space, but the problem of trucks using even this narrow cycle-lane for unloading has not been resolved. That this continues to happen is an indication that the provided parking bay is not convenient for the truck drivers. For whom precisely does this design work ?
Update December 2016
Having created a dangerous situation in the Cite / Citadel development and along Jan Fabriciusstraat, the architects unintentionally but inevitably actively encouraged cyclists to ride on the pavement in the enormously wide and inviting space reserved for pedestrians. So what's happened now ? The council has now started to fine cyclists who use the pavement, making an already awful situation even worse.
It's not the cyclists who should be fined. They are merely reacting to the difficult and dangerous conditions created for them. It's the architect who created this problem. I'd like to see a €55 fine claimed from the architect each time that someone cycles on the pedestrian zone in this development.
Cyclists in the pedestrian zone. Note how wide it is, and how little conflict with pedestrians this creates. This should be an area where you can cycle. Faces fuzzed out to protect the innocent. Fine the developer and architect who created this ridiculous design rather than those who are struggling to make use of it.
Cycling continues along here because that is the only way to reach the cycle-parking. Do these shops want customers or not ? If they do then it's time to get behind their customers, most of whom arrive by bike, rather than fining them.
More concrete desert above the shops. Cyclists have to climb stairs and then push their bikes over all of this space to reach the cycle-parking by their homes.
More concrete desert alongside Jan Fabriciusstraat. It's forbidden to cycle here. You are allowed to cycle only in the illegally narrow 1.3 m wide on-road cycle-lanes which are regularly blocked for deliveries or to empty those bins.
Update March 2019
Cite / Citadel is again in the news locally. The reason why is that they now want to close the indoor cycle-parking. This indoor cycle-parking was never part of the original design but required removing some car parking spaces. Because it's in the car park, the air stinks and cars drive around the cycle-park. This causes conflicts and is now thought not to be safe.
It has been pointed out that the result of the closure of the indoor cycle-park closure will be that shoppers will be forced to use cars to access the shops because they won't have anywhere to park a bicycle inside, there will be few places outside, and they won't be allowed to push a shopping trolley from the inside to the outside where their bike is parked.
At the same time, residents of the apartments are complaining about the steep ramp which I wrote about in 2016 which they need to use to get their bikes near their homes. Also that the bike storage in homes on this development is inadequate. Only one or two bikes can be parked safely per home. Because of the poor design of the cycle parking in the homes, residents have also been using the indoor cycle parking which was intended for shoppers, so they will lose out as well when it is closed later this month.
Before this development was built I predicted it would be a disaster and frankly it is just as bad as I predicted. The air stinks not only in the car park and indoor cycle park but also in the shops because they're linked to the underground car park. There is no convenient way to shop by bike (that's getting worse) and residents also can't use bikes in any convenient fashion. It would be best to raise the whole lot to the ground and build something new which is actually designed around the needs of its residents and shoppers. It would also be a good idea to avoid the architects behind this design.
This blog post was written after some of the new infrastructure had been built but before a public meeting which presented some details which were previously unavailable. See the note at the bottom of the blog post.
Locations of the six new bridges
In the past, Het Kanaal ("the canal") was an important trade route for barges which went close to the centre of Assen. It was cut off last century during the period when emphasis was on motor vehicles and much commercial shipping moved from the canals onto roads. The Blauwe As (Blue Axis) project in Assen seeks to re-open Het Kanaal for recreational use. Six new bridges are being built. Three bridges are for bicycles and pedestrians only, the other three also accommodate cars. Each of the bicycle bridges has replaced a previously existing bicycle bridge while the bicycle and car bridges will replace junctions where the canal had been entirely filled in. It's a very well funded project, a €50M part of the Florijn As project which in total will cost €1.5 billion.
When I first heard of this project I hoped that by this date I would be writing about impressive new cycling facilities which resulted from the new investment. Unfortunately, the planning process has been rather opaque so far as the public is concerned. We've seen flashy videos but not a lot of detail. thus far it has been could have written about six new wonderful bridges. It would have been dishonest to write about the new proposals based on nothing but the flashy plans presented and very little information was made available before building. At best, this could have been a chance to improve conditions for cyclists. It could also have been a sideways move for cyclists. However while these works bring obvious benefits for drivers, the outcome appears to be to make conditions slightly worse for both cyclists and pedestrians in Assen. The three bicycle bridges were completed first, at the end of 2014, and I won't gloss over the problems that they cause.
Bike Bridge 1
The old bridge has been relocated to a
quiet location in a suburb where its
5.3 m width and separate provision
for cyclists and pedestrians is far
more than adequate.
The bridge shown at (1: Vaart / Het Kanaal) on the map above featured on my blog four years ago. It had previously been moved as a part of a large and successful project from another position nearby to this location in order to complete a high quality direct route for cyclists. The bridge combined a 3.5 metre wide cycle-path with a 1.8 metre wide pedestrian path, allowing both cyclists and pedestrians to access the city centre without conflict. While this bridge was 5.3 m wide in total, that still made this the narrowest part of a very high quality route from a new suburb to the city centre. At the time when the route was re-constructed, it was considered to be important that cycle journey times should so short as possible in order to make cycling into the most attractive mode of transport from the new suburb to the city.
The 4 m wide replacement will
inevitably cause conflict between
cyclists and pedestrians.
Unfortunately, some of that good work from seven years ago has been un-done. The replacement bridge is much narrower at just four metres wide in total. There is no separate surface for pedestrians. Conflict occurs between pedestrians and cyclists required to "share" because pedestrians are much slower than cyclists and they meander while cyclists travel somewhat faster and need to maintain their momentum.
Conflict is particularly a problem where paths are busy (the three locations highlighted in this blog post can be very busy) and at narrow points such as bridges . Everywhere in the world where shared use paths have been built this same problem occurs. That shared use paths didn't work well was understood in the Netherlands at least a decade ago and planners in this country were once careful to avoid creating these problems. Lessons from the past appear to have been forgotten. The new bridge is to be "shared" by cyclists and pedestrians together, meaning that people who attempt to use the cycling route as it was intended to be used - i.e. as an efficient route to the city centre - will now be delayed whenever pedestrians are crossing the bridge and those pedestrians will experience the same discomfort due to cyclists being "too fast" as is experienced in other countries.
Bike Bridge 2
The old bridge was obviously ready
for replacement in 2008. I expected the
new one to be an improvement
The second bicycle bridge is number three on the plans above. The Venebrug, This is the only one of the three which is a small improvement over the old. The original bridge at this location was already much too narrow, just 3.5 m wide. It never had a separate path for pedestrians and this bridge was therefore one of very few places near the centre of Assen which demonstrated the problems caused by shared use. Luckily the problems were only on the bridge itself and the bridge is quite short. At either side of the bridge there was separate infrastructure for walking so the problem was at least on a very small scale.
Very slightly wider than the obviously
inadequate bridge which came before.
The replacement bridge in this second location is fractionally wider at 3.8 m, so can be seen as a slight improvement over the old, but this is so only because the original was so inadequate. A mere 30 cm improvement in width when the older bridge was so obviously inadequate and should always have provided separately for pedestrians isn't something to get excited about. A chance to upgrade the experience for both cyclists and pedestrians has been missed.
Update 2016: A new central reservation for people crossing the road is absurdly narrow. At just 1.8 m in width it is narrower than most bicycles are long. The situation here is not improved over that shown in the video above, but has become worse due to the wide driving lanes encouraging higher speeds and the change in parking regulations encouraging more people to drive to the adjacent car park than did so two years ago.
The new cycle-path in this location has a drainage problem and is almost flooded right at the point where a cyclist needs to put their foot down to give way to a car-park entrance. This is supposedly part of a primary cycle route but it is not nearly high enough in quality.
Bike Bridge 3
There is a very obvious difference in width between the old bridge and the new bridge in this location. The separate pedestrian crossing which was designed for the older bridge now lines up with nothing at all. This video demonstrates how minor conflicts arise even at quiet times.
The old bridge was 5.5 - 6 m wide
A separate path for pedestrians
prevented conflict.
The third cycling bridge is shown as bridge 4 on the plans above. The Molenbrug is on a main cycling route which has always been far busier than the Venebrug. That is probably why this bridge always was considerably wider. This bridge had a separate path for pedestrians. I never measured this bridge. Estimating from Google Earth it appears that it was around 5.5 m wide.
Architectural drawings made the new
bridge look wide, showing just two
people at a time crossing.
The replacement for this bridge is the biggest disappointment of the three. At just 3.8 metres wide, this is the biggest percentage reduction in width. Even on a relatively quiet winter afternoon, as shown in the video above, you can see the problems caused by the new bridge. It is very obvious that pedestrians need a separate path. Again, how did Assen make such a mistake as to build this inadequate infrastructure to replace an existing and successful bridge ?
A local campaigner asked a councillor why the bridge had been built more narrow. The reason given was one of "bezuinigingen" - budget cuts. In this project which is being funded with a total of €1.5 billion and which will lead to much more convenience for drivers elsewhere in the city, we are being asked to believe that a slightly too narrow bridge for cyclists is the item on which savings must be made.
A view of the new bridge with the original crossing shows how the pedestrian crossing built to line up with the old bridge now leads into the water because the new bridge isn't nearly so wide as the old. Note the pedestrian in front of a cyclist approaching a bollard, which creates a dangerous pinch point for the cyclist and leads to close passing which makes the pedestrian feel uneasy. This photo was taken just a day after the new bridge opened. The conflict was visible immediately. It's just as you'd expect in any place where cyclists and pedestrians are supposed to "share".
2016 Update: the new junction is nearly finished. There is no longer a traffic light here to control motor vehicles and the width of the cycle-path at this side of the canal has been reduced to a dangerous 2.8 m - well below the allowed minimum of 3 m for a bidirectional cycle-path. Cyclists bunch up here on the road waiting for space to pull onto the cyclepath. They do this in front of motor traffic. In the past, this crossing had a perfect safety record. It has now been transformed into a bad example of an uncontrolled crossing - the type of crossing which is most dangerous in Assen. Watch a new video about the problems caused by this junction.
When crossing the road at this point, cyclists must now stop in the middle of two streams of traffic which no longer has to give way to cyclists. The central reservation is too narrow for this to be safe for anyone with a longer than average bicycle (e.g. a tandem) or anyone who is pulling a trailer, for instance, a child trailer.
Path alongside Het Kanaal
Not all pedestrians will be able to use
their new path because there are steps.
The Venebrug is linked by a path to the Venestraat. In 2008, this link consisted of a 3 m wide cycle path and a separate parallel 2 m wide pedestrian path. The old cycle-path was of smooth asphalt and no conflict occurred here because of the separate paths.
The replacement path does not have a parallel pedestrian path so there is now conflict between cyclists and pedestrians. The new path has the same inadequate three metre width as the old cycle-only path, but it is surfaced with bricks which give a less smooth ride to cyclists than the old asphalt.
Note that this video was made part way through the reconstruction of Het Kanaal. However, most of the objections raised here apply to the end result. The new cycle-path is not as convenient as the old as there will be far too many places where cyclists must give-way to motor vehicles. Also the new cycle-path is too narrow.
It is planned that a separate path for pedestrians will be built, but rather than taking the same line as the old pedestrian path, this will take a less convenient route alongside the water. There are several reasons why pedestrians won't want to use this new path: It's a board-walk so will be rough to walk on, it doubles as mooring space for boats, and it also requires use of steps, so will not be accessible to all pedestrians. Pedestrians will continue to use the cycle-path because they are not being provided with a usable alternative.
Update 2016: As predicted, the design of the cycle and pedestrian paths alongside Het Kanaal have led to regular conflict. Pedestrians almost never use the pedestrian path by the water with the steps because it is in an unwelcoming place and of some people can't use steps. For cyclists it's inconvenient because the path is not really wide enough even just for cycling in both directions and when pedestrians are walking in both directions at once it's often necessary to come to a complete halt. This infrastructure doesn't well for either cyclists or pedestrians.
Car bridges
The three other bridges are for driving cars over as well as for cycling. In each case there is no bridge in the current situation as the canal was filled in some years ago. Details of the car bridges are not public. The only information easily available is in the form of pictures from the architects which feature no cyclists at all.
The bridge at location (6) is to look like this. It appears to be neutral so far as its effect on cyclists is concerned but we don't have much to go on. There is already a signalized crossing in this location for bikes. The cycle-path shown along the side of the canal doesn't exist at present so this could be one small gain.
(5) Many of those cyclists will turn
left. In future they'll have to cross
straight over and then wait again to
make a left turn.
Note that bridge 5 is to be better than it originally looked. See the update below.
The bridge which I'm most concerned about is that on Groningerstraat, shown at (5) above. This is currently a very efficient Simultaneous Green traffic light junction. I use it often to head home from the centre of the city, turning left diagonally across the junction in order to make a quick journey.
The only publicly available picture
of the new bridge at (5). We can't see
what is happening here.
From what we've been able to make out, this junction will no longer have simultaneous green traffic lights. A representative of the company behind these works talked about getting rid of the diagonal crossing. The impression I was given at the meeting is that cyclists will in future be required to stop twice in order to make a left turn: If so, then this is another step backwards from good design.
Existing arrangement at Nobellaan (2)
Note that bridge 2 will actually work better than described in the following paragraphs. See the update below.
The last bridge for cars is that on Nobellaan, shown at (2) above. This is part of our most direct route from home into the city centre so we use it often. Behind the viewpoint of the camera in this photo there are rather good cycle-paths. It is from this point onwards that the quality of our current route to the city centre drops. It was my assumption when I wrote about this location at the start of 2012 that the old low quality infrastructure would be improved upon by lengthening the cycle-paths which lead to this location until they eventually took cyclists safely to the city centre. That has not happened and it appears that nothing will improve with the new bridge. What's on offer here is low quality provision for cyclists: on-road cycle-lanes with all their attendant problems. A few hundred metres onwards from this location we reach the bad example cycling infrastructure design in a new development which I covered in my last blog post.
You'll note from the map at the blog post that there is supposed to be a walking and cycling route between (1) and (3) which crosses the road at this point. Unfortunately, there is no good way of crossing the road at this point now and this will actually get slightly worse in the future if the available pictures which represent the route are accurate. The existing partial central reservation in this location offers a modicum of safety for cyclists and pedestrians when crossing because it separates the two opposing flows of motor traffic, but this does not exist with the new situation.
Crossing the road safely here will become more difficult because there will be two lanes of cycle traffic and three lanes of motorized traffic to cross in one go without anywhere to stop in the centre. A few years ago, Assen was demonstrating very well how building central reservations could make crossing easier in far less busy locations than this, but the ambition to make crossing easier and safer appears to have been forgotten about.
Update February 18
Our local newspaper carried this article today:
Building of the new bridge at location 2 on the map at the top of this page is starting in two days. The short meeting to which people are invited to see the plans doesn't take place until an afternoon 13 days from now. Therefore there is no chance for anyone to say "no" because building will start before those who might object to the plans have seen what is on offer. So much for democracy.
This bridge will break the existing primary cycle route along the North side of Het Kanaal. However, a new and improved link will be created on the South side of Het Kanaal.
The existing space in the middle of the road is long enough that one can wait with a bicycle in the middle and therefore it is not necessary to cross all three lanes of motorized traffic at once.
Children use this on their way to and from school. How will it be possible for them to cross safely when the new bridge is built ? Have the designers of the Florijnas project forgotten about Stop De Kindermoord ?
Further along the road
Ahead of the bridge are these on-road cycle-lanes, Newly built in 2012, they force cyclists to ride next to buses and trucks (which do not keep to the 30 km/h speed limit). There is no reason for this low quality infrastructure. There is no lack of space here. The pavements have been built extremely wide and space has been found for plants in the middle of the street. Almost all cyclists make a left turn across the road next to the tall building. It's been known to be dangerous since at least 2005 but this street redesign did nothing to improve the situation.
A short history: The last ten years in Assen
"Assen Cycles". In 2005, there was
a real ambition to increase cycling
in Assen.
By 2005, well over 30% of all trips within Assen were by bicycle yet the ambitious "Fietsverkeer nota" document from that year was modest and talked only about how Assen had "the potential to become a real cycling city". At that time, just €4.5 Million could be allocated for the work on cycling infrastructure but this was spent wisely, an enormous number of improvements were made and the cycling modal share increased as a result.
When we first arrived in Assen, many
cycle-paths were surfaced with tiles.
Almost all were upgraded to asphalt
by 2010. With the new projects we
now see asphalt replaced by bricks.
The 2005 document discussed such things as how important it was to improve links to areas for shopping, employment, schools, entertainment and the railway station. It was recognized that cyclists needed smooth asphalt or concrete surfaces in place of tiles or bricks, that a fine grid of high quality facilities were required to make cycling attractive to all destinations, that cycle-paths needed to be wide in order to reduce conflict, that cycle-routes should be direct, that cyclists should have the shortest possible waiting times at traffic lights, or none at all, and that the Simultaneous Green traffic light design with two greens for cyclists in each cycle of the traffic lights was desirable. There were many other recommendations in this excellent document.
We moved to Assen in 2007 because we were impressed both with the existing infrastructure and also the ambition for more cycling. In 2011 I wrote about how things would continue to get better. An official document said that "By 2015, so many journeys as possible must be by bike. Bikes must more frequently take priority over cars". Sadly, I don't see much of that ambition in the new plans. Assen now has an enormous amount of money to spend on infrastructure, but the new proposals include few improvements for cyclists and several off them are actively hostile to cycling. Funding is being found for expensive projects which look great in architectural drawings but which are not thought through from the point of view of a cyclist. Much is being spent to create huge areas of concrete which no-one will use, simply to satisfy an architectural trend. By blindly following this trend, the city risks undoing much of the good that was achieved in the past.
What you read about above is not something unique to these bridges (there are other plans which I may well write about later) or even just to Assen. Across the Netherlands there is now far too much emphasis being placed on appearance of projects and not enough on their functionality.
Most of my readers are from outside the Netherlands, and having read many positive stories from Assen in the past I suspect some will be surprised at my sentiment in this blog post. No place is perfect. I try not to present an unrealistic picture of the Netherlands and that is why I have written about problems in Assen and elsewhere in the Netherlands many times before. I don't write blog posts about the newest infrastructure or regurgitate press releases which claim improvements in safety which are not confirmed by actual data. It's why I caution about assuming that everything Dutch is worth emulating. It is only worth copying from the best examples in the Netherlands. Increasingly, the best examples are not necessarily the newest, and they are usually not the most well publicized either.
Some of these bad examples have been part of our study tours for the last few years. We will be running study tours again this year and again they will offer an honest and independent appraisal of what works and what does not work in the Netherlands, with no commercial reason to push one solution over another.
March 2015 update
There was a public meeting today in which parts of the plans could be seen which were not available before. People who lived along the route were invited to see plans at an earlier stage, but not those who live elsewhere in the city and use these routes. Better communication could have helped avoid concerns about the quality of the work being carried out.
My concerns have not been completely addressed. I still have concerns about the widths of the new cycle-paths (three metres seems to be as much as we'll get, but it's not enough) and the widths of cycle bridges noted above are still not adequate. I also still also most certainly have concerns about Jan Fabriciusstraat. However the situation at two of the bridges for which little information was available when I wrote the blog post above is definitely going to be better for cyclists than I was led to believe previously:
Bridge 2:
It has always been difficult and dangerous for cyclists heading south to make a left turn to continue east north of the canal, on what is currently a primary cycle route. Crossing the road in this location was assisted slightly by a gap between traffic lanes which will be taken away by the new design and this caused concern.
In the future, a traffic light controlled junction will make it easy and safe for both left turns and crossings to be made on the south side of the canal, linking with a new cycle-path which doesn't exist at present:
Bridge 5:
At this bridge there is currently a simultaneous green traffic light junction. Motor vehicles can use the road North of the canal in both directions and south of the canal in order to head North. With the new situation, motor vehicle access is restricted to southwards only for vehicles north of the canal and there is no exit for motor vehicles from the city centre south of the canal at this location.
In the past it was possible to make a left turn onto the far side of the canal in order to head west. We now have the option of making a left turn immediately onto the cycle-path on the south side of the canal, without having to wait for traffic lights.
