Roundabout safety for cyclists and why Cambridge's new 'Dutch' roundabout is not what it should have been

This is not the Cambridge roundabout. It's an example of a different
design, the safe roundabout. This design is much more tolerant of
driver mistakes and results in a far lower rate of cyclist injuries.
Please read my blog post about this design and watch the
accompanying video as both of those describe how this
design keeps cyclists safe.

Cambridge in the UK recently opened a "Dutch style" roundabout on Fendon Road to replace another roundabout which had a poor safety record for cyclists in the city. People keep pointing this out to me. I think it's perhaps time for a response.

The design chosen is that which I have consistently recommended against. Why do I recommend against it ? Because it has a poor safety record here in the Netherlands. It has a safety record which is not very different to an uncontrolled crossing or having no cycling facilities at all on a roundabout, which was the situation in Cambridge before this new design was built. I am not convinced that British drivers are better trained or will behave in a safer way on roundabouts than Dutch drivers and therefore I am also not convinced that it will be safer to use this design in the UK than it is here. Dutch drivers have been trained for decades to expect to give way to cyclists under some circumstances and they have also had decades to get used to this type of roundabout, yet it remains unsafe in the Netherlands. Why should we expect this to be different elsewhere ?

Now you might wonder why all my emphasis so far has been on drivers. There's a simple reason. The danger comes from motor vehicles which are faster and heavier than any cyclist. That's why injury rates for cyclists are higher at roundabouts with more cars. Remember always that there is no design of roundabout which is built for cyclists. If it were not for cars then we would have no roundabouts at all and cycling would be all the safer for it.

Dutch research into roundabout safety

Dijkstra's research into roundabout safety in the Netherlands in 2005 is one of the most referenced articles about this subject. Here's a link. It's written in Dutch and having seen the mess that bad machine translations make of this and similar documents I suggest that if you can't read the Dutch then you're best off going no further than the abstract and my explanation below.

The research drew its conclusions from looking at three different earlier studies each of which looked at large numbers of roundabouts. They're well run studies and the people making them attempted to compare like with like. There was no attempt to study only a subset in order to favour a conclusion already drawn by any of the authors. Dijkstra's article is often used by proponents of priority on roundabouts, though I wonder if they actually read it all the way through. It's very clear about the danger caused by giving cyclists priority on roundabouts.

This graph compares the number of serious cyclist and moped injuries per year (Y) at roundabouts of differing types with differing motor traffic intensity (X). The green line shows the effect of a cycle-lane around the roundabout, which has been known to be dangerous for decades and is recommended by no-one  The black line shows a roundabout with no facilities, cycling taking place on the road amongst cars. The blue line shows the effect of cycle-paths around roundabouts, but this is an average as it is not specified which roundabout design or priority rule it refers to, which is a problem as I'll discuss later.

This graph looks a lot like that above, but it includes all serious injuries in all vehicles, not just those which occur to cyclists. However it is clear from comparing this graph and the one before that roundabouts are, generally speaking, far more dangerous for cyclists than they are for drivers. The relatively small number of motor vehicle occupants who are injured at roundabouts pushes each of the lines upward a little. The effect is especially obvious on the lower, blue line as in this case motor vehicle occupant injuries become dominant as traffic intensity increases. But comparing the two graphs does not make a clear-cut case for all roundabouts with cycle-paths because there is no distinction made between two very different roundabout designs discussed later by Dijkstra.

Three different studies are referenced by Dijkstra, that of Van Minnen/CROW (1998), Weijermars (2001) and Gerts (2002). All three of those studies showed that "with priority" roundabouts are substantially more dangerous for cyclists.

Three studies are summarized by Dijkstra. All studies show worsened safety with cyclist priority ('in voorrang') at roundabouts. Crashes (ongevallen) are between 1.75x and 2.9x more common and injuries resulting in death or hospital treatment (slachtoffers) are found to be between 3x and 6x more common. Gerts' study only reported crashes and not injuries.

Some of the data in the document, such as this example, show all injuries and not just cyclist injuries. Overall, a junction with cyclist priority ('in de voorrang') causes about three times as many injuries.  About as many motor vehicle occupants are injured on the two different types of roundabouts, the difference is made by the radically different results for cyclist safety. See the next table.

The same data from Weijemars is used here, but just the figures for cyclists and mopeds are included.

This table shows the number of roundabouts in total, within urban areas, with cycle-paths, with cyclist priority (470), without cyclist priority (314). These numbers come up repeatedly.

Estimated annual hospitalizations of cyclists and moped riders (on the cycle-path - now largely replaced by e-bikes) in the Netherlands due to crashes with motor vehicles on urban roundabouts. There are about 50% more roundabouts with cyclist priority ('in de voorrang') but they cause ten times as many serious injuries as the safe design of roundabout ('uit de voorrang').

Note that Dijkstra used data from Gerts who referred only to roundabouts which strictly followed the CROW design standards. By doing so both Gerts and Dijkstra tried to exclude potentially worse results which could have come from priority roundabouts which didn't follow the standards. This turned out to be less important than was expected because Gerts found that there was no statistically different result for roundabouts which followed the CROW norms vs. those which did not (bottom of page 13). Also read pages 34 and 35 where this is confirmed. i.e. The difference in safety between differing roundabouts with cycle-paths is almost entirely due to the priority rule. That is confirmed on page 36 where the conclusion is made that there is a significant link between priority and safety.
A note about 'mopeds'. Most of the data lumps cyclists and mopeds together because mopeds are not actually very common. They make up around 1% of the total traffic volume. As a result, I don't expect that their presence here makes much difference to any of the results. Low power mopeds which theoretically are limited to around 25 km/h on the cycle-path are losing ground these days to electrically assisted bikes which travel at a similar speed. Many Dutch people really don't like mopeds, but they do seem to like e-bikes which are now far more numerous. The two modes are quite similar from a safety perspective. There does seem to be an indication that 'with priority' roundabouts are more dangerous for faster cyclists (moped, racing bike, e-bike) who are more likely to surprise drivers because their speed makes them more difficult for drivers to spot, hence the idea that they suddenly appeared "from nowhere" over the driver's shoulder. Faster mopeds (limited to 45 km/h) are banned from urban cycle-paths so are not of interest here.

Comparison with a non-signalled crossing
In order to find a point of comparison for the effectiveness of substituting one type of roundabout or another, comparisons were made of 177 locations where non-signalled crossings ('voor, kruispunt') were converted into roundabouts ('na rotonde').

Note that this is not a comparison with traffic light junctions. That's a completely different story which I have addressed elsewhere: well designed traffic light junctions which separate cyclists in time and space from cars create an almost completely safe space for cyclists and as a result have an excellent safety record in the Netherlands. But they are not discussed by Dijkstra. These comparisons are between roundabouts and the straightforward non-signalled crossings without roundabouts or traffic lights which existed in the same location before they were built.

The comparison over time with non-signalled crossings in the same location across 177 junctions gives us a very good idea of the relative danger creating by giving cyclists priority at a roundabout.

Roundabouts are highly effective at preventing motor vehicle occupant injuries, reduced by 80% on average over the previously existing crossing, however for cyclists they are far less effective. Compared with non-signalled (no traffic lights) road crossings, Dutch roundabouts on average only lead to around a halving of cyclist serious injuries. But this statistic is deceptive because both the 'with priority' and safe roundabout designs have been mixed here to create an average.

In this table they've been separated and we if we consider only the safe roundabouts where cyclists do not have priority ('uit de voorrang') then we see a significant 87% reduction in the number of injuries vs. a non-signalled junction.

By comparison, if we consider only the roundabouts where cyclists do have priority ('in de voorrang'), the improvement in injury rate over a non-signalled crossing is just 11%. i.e. priority for cyclists on roundabouts results in nearly eight times as many cyclist hospitalizations as occur at safe roundabouts when replacing non-signalled junctions. But carry on reading...

The simple conclusion to reach here is that 'with priority' roundabouts achieve about an 11% improvement in safety while safe roundabouts achieve an 87% improvement in safety, making them eight times safer. However it's not actually that simple. Over the same period of time, non-signalled crossings across the country became on average about 10% safer (Dijkstra last paragraph of page 10) so we should perhaps reduce both outcomes by this amount. That would imply that there is actually almost no significant difference in safety between an non-signalled crossing and a 'with priority' roundabout while a safe roundabout achieves about a 77% improvement in safety for cyclists.

How safe are 'with priority' roundabouts in reality ?

This blog post began with one of the first graphs from Dijkstra which showed the relative safety of cyclists using cycle-paths and cycle-lanes around roundabouts with cycling on the roadway on the roundabout itself. Unfortunately, that graph did not distinguish between the different types of Dutch roundabout which include cycle-paths. However later in the same document with the discussion about replacement of non-signalled junctions, Dijkstra calculates the relative safety of roundabouts with and without priority, and we see that the 'with priority' cause nearly eight times as many excess cyclist injuries as the safe roundabout design. I find it unhelpful that both roundabout designs are presented as one item in that graph as they really are not the same.

Below you'll find a modified version of the same graph showing the likely real-world safety of 'with priority' roundabouts vs. the average for all cycle-paths on roundabouts, cycle-lanes and cycling on the road:

The red line shows what the probably injury rate is for roundabouts with priority cycle-paths in the Netherlands. The blue line is an average for all roundabouts with cycle-paths. A line which represented only safe roundabouts would be lower than the blue line, especially in the first half of the graph.

You'll note that up to around 10000 vehicles a day there is no great difference between the black line, showing the rate of injury for cyclists riding on the road, the green line showing a cycle-lane painted around the perimeter and the red line showing the injury rate for cyclists on 'with priority' cycle-paths. Therefore swapping between a roundabout design where cyclists ride on the road to a design where they use a priority cycle-path should not be expected to bring an improvement in safety. The only option which always looks good is the blue line showing as an average for all roundabouts with cycle-paths, which is skewed downward by the greatly improved safety of the safe roundabout design over the 'with priority' design.

Explanation of the red line: Over half of all urban roundabouts in the Netherlands gave cyclists priority when Dijkstra's graph was created. He found that on these roundabouts about eight times as many injuries per year could be expected. i.e. the corrected data for with priority roundabouts should be at about four times the level of that for the safe roundabouts. The red line which I have added to the graph is at approximately three times the height on the Y axis of that for both types of roundabout combined. This places it at approximately at the level we would expect to see if the two different types of roundabouts had been  treated as two different cases.

Explanation of blue line shape and stippled red: The blue line, for all roundabouts with cycle-paths, has a rather unusual shape, with a peak at around 10000 vehicles a day before dipping downward and rising again with motor vehicle intensity. I believe that this is caused by priority roundabouts causing the vast majority of crashes and injuries but being built mostly in places with lower motor vehicle intensity. As a result, the blue line is pushed upward in the first half of the graph by crashes on 'with priority' roundabouts, but I think the second half of the blue line is made up to a higher extent of data for safe roundabouts. I used a stippled red line from ~10000 onward because it's likely that it is no longer reliable past this point for the same reason. Unfortunately the separate data is not available so that I can test this hypothesis.

Politics

Back in 1998, SWOV's own research already demonstrated a worse safety record for 'with priority' roundabouts. Their research indicated that 52-73 extra cyclists would find themselves in hospital with serious injuries each year if that design was used. Despite this concern, a political decision was made to go along with a standard recommendation that cyclists should always have priority on urban roundabouts. This happend after they were given two re-assurances: first that the new standards advised by CROW would be applied everywhere and second that introduction of these standards would result in improved safety for 'with priority' roundabouts.

Unfortunately, the expected safety improvement was not realised. This was not merely because the guidelines still were not followed in all cases, but because it was discovered that the guidelines didn't actually have a measurable effect on safety even where they were followed. In an appendix on pages 29 to 35 of Dijkstra ("Voorrang voor fietsers: effect van vormgeving?") it is shown statistically using data gathered from many real world roundabouts spread across the country over five years that there is no detectable difference in safety between 'with priority' roundabouts which adhere strictly to the CROW guidelines and those which do not. Therefore it would seem that roundabouts with significant differences from the norms (e.g. different radii, crossings too close to the roundabout, inadequate road markings, allowing bidirectional cycling around the roundabout etc.) were not worse from a safety perspective at all. The research suggests very strongly that exactly following CROW's guidelines is not important for safety at all. Just one thing makes roundabouts with cycle-paths dangerous and that is giving cyclists priority.

Since the decision was made to go along with the "with priority" guideline in urban areas, the number of roundabouts in the Netherlands has tripled. For that reason we can now reasonably expect that instead of 52-73 extra cyclists receiving injuries resulting in hospitalization or death each year that there are now between 150 and 210 more than would have been the case if the safe roundabout design (used all over Assen with extremely low injuries as a result) had been standardized upon across the entire country.

The CROW argument that roundabouts with priority are "slight less safe" than the safe design was based upon the 52-73 extra casualties being only between 1.8 and 2.5% of the total. Unfortunately, with their number having tripled, we can now expect that these dangerous roundabouts account for between 5.4% and 7.5% of cyclist casualties per year, which is certainly not insignificant. Given that after a period of decline, Dutch cyclist deaths are now rising once again, this is something we should be looking at more closely. We already know how to reduce injuries on roundabouts by 87%. We just have to switch to building the proven safe roundabout design.

Cambridge

So now back to Cambridge. Why did that city outside the Netherlands adopt a design has been proven to cause excess injuries and deaths in the country where it came from ? Why are they following a decision which was made in the Netherlands for political reasons and not based on safety ? Personally, I think they were extremely badly advised.

Valkenswaard roundabout visited in 2006. Not a safe design.
See statistics. This roundabout does not conform 100% to
CROW standards, but as you can read above, we now
know that it probably wouldn't make a difference if it did.

Now I take a little responsibility for this because I used to live in Cambridge, I was a member of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign who campaigned for Dutch style cycling infrastructure to be built in that city, and I organised study tours in the Netherlands for members of the campaigning group and people working for the council. Indeed, on the first of these study tours, way back in 2006, I was myself enthusiastic about the cyclist priority design of roundabout and I showed it to people from Cambridge.

However my enthusiasm for priority roundabouts didn't last long after I moved to the Netherlands, experienced near misses on these designs, learnt Dutch and read Dijkstra's and other studies of roundabout safety. I change my mind when presented with contrary facts and it's simply not possible to continue to believe that these designs are safe when they clearly are not. That is the reason why I promote the safe design of roundabout, especially in countries outside the Netherlands.

The advantage that the safe roundabout design has is of complete predictability for the cyclist. As a cyclist you can take control of your own safety. While mistakes made by drivers on priority roundabouts where the driver does not cede priority often result in crashes and cyclist injuries, drivers on safe roundabouts who make errors typically just slow or stop when they need not have done. This can actually be slightly annoying for a cyclist who has adjusted their speed to slip across the road before or after any given car, but it's a safe failure mode which doesn't result in injury.

There is also the potential difference between British and Dutch drivers. I've not only cycled but also driven in both countries and I think the ability to drive safely is quite similar between the two countries. However there is a difference in behaviour in that Dutch drivers typically drive more slowly, at least on minor roads and in towns, and that there is less aggression. This is probably also a function of the unravelling of routes which keeps drivers who are minutes late for their destination from making through journeys near cyclists. They are also used to the idea of ceding priority to cyclists on roundabouts and elsewhere, and most people here do cycle. What effect this difference in driver behaviour will have on a roundabout design which requires drivers to cede priority in order to ensure cyclist safety is currently unknown.

Unfortunately the mistake in Cambridge goes far beyond just choosing a poor and dangerous design of roundabout. Their ambition unfortunately went no further than substituting one roundabout design for another and it is now being heralded as a victory for cycling before we even know whether it turns out to be safe in this location. In reality there is no roundabout design which has ever been built for the benefit of cyclists. They're all just ways of trying to address the problems caused by motor vehicles.

Most road junctions in Dutch residential
areas look something like this. Much
more common than any traffic light
or roundabout design, a non-signalled
junction in a residential area, with 30 km/h
speed limit, raised table, small corner
radii, and most importantly it's not a
through route for motor vehicles.

Addressing the problems of motor vehicles could have been done in many other and more effective ways. The roads leading to the location of Cambridge's new roundabout are places where people live. Residential streets which have for years endured high traffic volumes. If they had their usage changed so that they no longer had to support that through motor traffic (already done on a tiny scale in Cambridge) then the roundabout probably wouldn't be required at all. A simple non-signalled junction but with very cars, or if a stream of traffic was required to flow between two arms of the junction perhaps a signalled crossing, would have resulted in a better outcome for cyclists.

You could have asked...

There are few people who have lived, worked and cycled on an everyday basis in Cambridge for more than a decade and who have then done the same in a Dutch city for more than a decade. Fewer still who have written about cycling for decades, about cyclist roundabout safety and made suggestions for how countries outside the Netherlands can best learn from the Dutch experience regarding roundabouts and other infrastructure. Still fewer who have gone to the effort of learning Dutch, reading the research and trying to advise on the basis of that research, and I would guess that also bringing people from the council and the local cycle campaigning group in Cambridge to the Netherlands in order to demonstrate to them the pros and cons of different roundabout designs amongst many other things on top of those other things would make me pretty much unique. I'm also not hard to find.

So do you think anyone from Cambridge ever thought to contact me about their new roundabout ? Of course not. Actually that's a bit unfair. A couple of people on the periphery who were concerned about the direction in which that was going did make contact and I have heard from them how what I'd written was dismissed rather rudely. But why ? Did they have some other local expert who could read the Dutch documents in depth and translate them ? Did they not believe the stats therein ? Did they expect that a design which is relatively dangerous in the Netherlands with Dutch drivers would somehow be less dangerous in the UK ?

I of course don't expect any answers. But it's a shame. I could have helped. I fear that Cambridge will regret what has been done. Not now. Not soon. It'll take a while before you have stats - the Dutch research on which I based my advice was itself based on the stats from many roundabouts over many years. The stats above are based on up to 940 rotonde-jaren, or roundabout years. These results have not been cooked up after just looking at a single location for a few weeks.

Conclusion

I am left with a fear that what Cambridge has done is merely to replace one dangerous roundabout design with another. It's a pity that they have done this because it's been done with such a lot of publicity and this may tarnish the concept and make it more difficult to adopt a better design elsewhere. Britain's cyclists need safe infrastructure. It's high time that they got it instead of ineffective projects like this example. However this is just one junction in one city of a country of many millions of people. It won't in itself make a huge difference one way or the other. No single junction ever could do that.

What is required, in Cambridge and elsewhere, is to start looking at the bigger picture. It is a mistake to think that any real change can result from a piecemeal one junction at a time approach. The UK, and everywhere else, needs a complete grid of effective safe and attractive cycle-paths in order to enable efficient go-everywhere cycling. The Netherlands is fabulous for cycling not merely because some of the roundabouts are safe (as you can see above, some certainly are not). An holistic approach makes the difference. There is nothing new and novel about any of this, it's been known for forty years.

Planning occurs in the Netherlands on a much greater scale than in the UK. There are traffic circulation plans which limit the effect of motor vehicles on residential areas and direct cycle routes. Almost all roundabouts form part of a plan which removes motor traffic, especially through motor traffic, from locations where cyclists need to be to make everyday journeys. This makes even less safe designs safer. But removal of motor traffic can even result in a much bigger prize: the removal of roundabouts and traffic lights altogether from cycling routes. Cyclists don't themselves need either of those types of junctions. They are not actually for us, but exist only to moderate motor traffic. There exist very good traffic light designs which benefit cyclists and roundabouts which do likewise but in both cases these things should only be built where there is no choice. i.e. where it's impossible to get rid of the motor vehicles. Cyclists are always better off without big road junctions. This has happened on a large scale at least around the centre of most Dutch cities, spreading outward from the centre in many cities and into the renovation of old suburbs and the design of new suburbs. The process did not begin by changing the design of a single busy junction which will remain busy, but then making a lot of noise about it as if a great change has been achieved.

The piecemeal approach, resulting in years of little or no real action and the effect of such small forward steps as occur usually being swamped by backward steps elsewhere, is precisely why people in the UK have gone from saying that their country is 20 years behind the Netherlands to 40 or 50 years behind. It's only possible to catch up by doing the hard work required to make things better, consistently over years. This is something which no country can afford not to do: when all things are considered, it's cheaper to build cycling infrastructure than it is not to build it.

Update May 2023
Three years later we now have reported collision data for the Cambridge roundabout. In the three years since the roundabout was rebuilt as "Dutch" style there have been 10 collisions, including three which caused serious injury. In the three years before the change there were just six of which none were serious.

I'd been advising people in Cambridge about roundabout designs for well over a decade before they ignored my advice and chose to build this dangerous design instead. They now have injured cyclists as a result of their choice. I take no pleasure in saying that "I told you so", but I did tell them, repeatedly, and the result that they now have is just what I predicted.

Safe cycle priority road crossings

I've covered several types of road crossing for cyclists in the past. Those with traffic lights, where cyclists have to wait for motorists but can stop in the middle of the road, those where there is equal priority between cyclists and motorists. Sometimes it's possible to give cyclist priority over roads when cycle-paths and roads cross but this can only be safely achieved if certain conditions are met. It is not enough simply to put up a give-way (yield) sign and expect that drivers will obey it.


Driver behaviour is more effectively controlled by road layout than by signs or speed limits. In order for it to be safe to give cyclists priority at a crossing, the speed of cars on the road needs to be controlled and traffic volumes need to be low. The junction needs to be designed such that it gives obvious visual priority to cyclists, and sight lines need to be good enough that drivers and cyclists can see each other and respond accordingly. This is not the same concept as "making eye contact". If people driving and cycling are surprised by the other party because they cannot see them in time then they are less likely to be able to respond safely.

First example in the video. Cycle priority crossing of a minor road. 30 km/h speed limit on the road, raised table starts 20 m and 14 m away from the crossing. Bend in road naturally slows cars. The cycle-path is three metres wide and runs at a distance of six metres from the parallel road.

Second example. This road has a 30 km/h speed limit, but it is a much busier road than the other two, providing a route by car to local shops and other facilities. Raised table starts 5 m and 12.6 m from the cycle crossing. Bend in road naturally slows cars. Cycle-path is 3.5 m wide and runs perpendicular to the road.

Third example. The raised table almost doesn't exist in this case and there is no bend in the road so drivers pass over this crossing at far higher speeds than the other two. Note how drivers may not be able to see cyclists coming from North or South until they are close to the crossing due to being obscured by buildings and vegetation and then there is a chance that a driver will misinterpret the intentions of a cyclist so not slow down for them. Note also how the curves on cycle-paths, especially North of the crossing, are far less helpful for cyclists than the other two examples. Cycle-path is 3 m wide and at the point of the turn it's just 3 m from the parallel road.

While the third example is the one which I believe is least satisfactory (see the video for why), collisions between cars and bikes are only recorded as having happened at the second example. There is a rational explanation for this. The second example is located adjacent to the local facilities of a suburb (shops / doctor / health / church) and this results in considerably more cycle and car traffic than the other two which located within residential streets. Three collisions with cyclists occurred over the 2007-2012 period at the second example, one of which caused an injury.

Curve radii and approach visibility
The recommendation of the CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic for curve radii is particularly relevant to cycle priority crossings. The manual says that on curves with below 5 m radius, "cycling speed drops below 12 km/h and the cyclist has to work hard to remain upright" and suggests appropriate curve radii as follows:

1. cycle connections that form part of the basic network should have a radius of greater than 10 m, geared to a design speed of 20 km/h;
2. cycle routes and main cycle routes should have a radius of greater than 20 m, geared to a design speed of 30 km/h

Note that this refers to cycle-paths having a design speed of 30 km/h. Cycle facilities should not be designed to slow cyclists, but to enable efficient cycling. The first two examples above conform to this recommendation, while the third, especially when approached from the east, does not. This causes a problem for cyclists and motorists.

CROW recommended visibility at crossings by road width (crossing distance) and speed.

The requirement for approach visibility should also be noted. Take into account that these speeds are 85th percentile speeds in actual use, not merely the posted speed limit, and that the required sight lines more than double in length for any crossing of a 50 km/h road vs. a 30 km/h road. Also note that wide roads require more visibility than narrow roads because crossing times are longer.

All the roads shown in the above examples are under 7 m in width and in all those cases there is a 30 km/h speed limit so sight lines of about 50 m in length are required. All three examples include additional measures to control speed. In the first example, the posted speed limit and additional measures are adequate for a 50 m sight line. In the second example they are marginal (though helped enormously by the curve in the cycle-path which places cyclists in a more visible position and the curve in the road which slows drivers). The third example does not meet the requirements because the speed of cars is excessive and the sight-lines are not long enough.

Related: Note that it has been understood for many years in the Netherlands that posting a lower speed limit is not enough to ensure lower speeds.

Difficult to retrofit
It is very difficult to successfully retrofit crossings of this type because existing streets are often too straight, existing paths often not visible enough. While cycle priority crossings are fairly unusual in the Netherlands, retro-fitted cycle priority crossings are even more rare. All the examples of priority junctions in Assen were designed as integral parts of the road design. Those used as examples in the video and images above date from when those parts of Assen were designed and built in the late 1970s through to the 1980s.

Cycle priority is not the same as pedestrian priority
People sometimes ask why cyclists are not given permission to cross with priority on all pedestrian priority (zebra) crossings. There are good reasons why this should not be so. In many locations, it would be difficult for a cyclist to be The risk of a cyclist emerging quickly from behind a building or because there are inadequate sight lines. Cyclists are much faster than pedestrians and they require space in order to make a turn.

This crossing of a busy road gives priority for pedestrians over both cyclists and drivers. but there is no place within this layout to provide a safe priority cycle crossing. In any case, any cycle crossing would be better slightly further North on desire lines.

This location has a parallel cycle and pedestrian crossing. Pedestrians have priority while cyclists do not. This is a relatively busy through route for cars with a 50 km/h speed limit. As a result a cyclist emerging at speed from the side roads may appear in front of a driver before the driver has had an adequate chance to response and therefore there is too high a chance that a driver won't stop in time. But they have much more time to react to a pedestrian due to the slower speed of pedestrians.

In this location cyclists have priority over side road crossings which are parallel with the main road. These roads have 30 km/h speed limits and speeds are further reduced by the junction, the small corner radii and the raised tables. However only pedestrians have been priority over the 50 km/h main road.

At a very large busy junction, this example joining the 70 km/h ring road to a 50 km/h main route out of the city, neither cyclists nor pedestrians are given priority over motor traffic in any direction. On a road like this with many lanes of traffic, higher speeds and much to look out for it would be dangerous to give priority to cyclists or pedestrians. This junction is too large and busy to be a "protected intersection". While it could have seen implementation of a simultaneous green junction, instead there is a more conventional traffic light junction here next to which cycle path green lights are synchronized with motor vehicle red lights where conflicts would otherwise occur. Priority can be given for cyclists and pedestrians by other means. In other locations in Assen this is done by use of tunnels and very quick reacting light controlled crossings. Two cyclists were injured here. One due to a single sided collision with street furniture, the other due to ignoring a red light.

Hook turns
A possible solution which people sometimes think of to the problem of turning across traffic is the hook turn. We have precisely one example of this in Assen. It's a relic from the past which has somehow survived on a quiet residential street and it's shown in the photo below. Note that the hook starts with a cycle-path in the top right hand corner of the image and continues more than 60 metres to the junction which it serves in order that it could provide a gradual enough transition for cyclists. The crossing is then assisted by a large raised table. Despite all of this, it's actually quite awkward to use. It perhaps made a little more sense decades ago when this was a busier route, but it certainly doesn't help in this situation now. I don't recommend this type of infrastructure.

A generously proportioned 60 metre long hook turn assisted by a raised table. But it's still awkward to use.

"Visual priority" The Alternative Department of Transport blog recently coined the phrase "visual priority" to refer to where priority at a crossing is indicated by the design of the street and not merely by signs. The red surfacing continuing through each of the junctions shown in the video at the top of this blog post is a good example. I like this term, it's concise and obvious, so I have used it too. Most examples of crossings in the Netherlands benefit from good visual priority. Of course, good visual priority is only one factor. In itself it is no guarantee of success. As you will see from the video, the third example of a junction with a short raised table which coincides only with the crossing itself is not successful at slowing cars even though the visual priority is good. Junctions must also encourage safe behaviour by other means, such as use of bends on roads and level changes using a raised tables to slow drivers, bends on cycle-paths to improve sight lines, and we must of course realise that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The majority of junctions are not suitable for a cycle priority treatment for reasons of sight-line or traffic speeds and volumes.

Real examples in real-life usage

It's not possible to completely understand infrastructure like this from reading blog posts and watching youtube videos. On our study tours we demonstrate real life examples.

Why tunnels are better than bridges for cycling

A couple of weeks ago a campaigner from Cambridge in the UK asked me a question about bridge parapet heights in the Netherlands especially with regard to clearing railway lines. He'd realised that he'd not had any problems due to climbing bridges in this country and assumed that the Dutch had standards which were more suitable for cyclists than the UK.

However, the answer to this question turned out to be more involved than just heights of bridges. Actually, in the Netherlands there are not many high bridges. Cyclists in the Netherlands use tunnels and underpasses far more often than bridges. There are very good reasons for this which I'll explain below, but first a graphic showing the facilities which exist in both Cambridge and Assen to cross railway tracks and major roads which would otherwise form barriers to cycling:

Crossings marked with an X are cycle and pedestrian exclusive crossings. Note that all but three of the combined crossings for cyclists and motor vehicles in Assen have separate cycling infrastructure. Crossings of the river Cam and canals in Assen are not included though they make much the same point.  There are many canal bridges in Assen - mainly cycling specific flat opening bridges which do not require riding uphill and none have obstacles upon them. Assen's many crossings form important links in the fine grid of high quality cycling facilities required for a high cycling modal share.

The diagram above does not include
bridges over rivers and canals. No
bridges in Assen require dismounting
like this example in Cambridge.

As you can see, in both cities, the railway line cuts the eastern part of the city from the western part while major roads have a similar effect on the western parts of the cities.

The maps show crossings of motorways and ring-roads only, excluding rivers and canals as well as roads closer to the centre.

Comparison of crossings in Assen and Cambridge
It's immediately obvious that there are far more green crossings (tunnels) in Assen than there are red (bridges). The reverse is true in Cambridge. What's more,

The railway has a similar effect on both cities, cutting off people in the east from the centre. More people live east of the railway in Cambridge than is the case in Assen.  Note that in Assen all the most commonly used crossings are either tunnels or level crossings while in Cambridge the majority of crossings are bridges.

It's a similar story with major roads. Both cities have a motorway running north-south west of the city. Cambridge also has a dual carriageway (a road built to motorway standard) running west-east across the north of the city, while Assen has a partial ring-road which runs around the west of the city. These roads are crossed almost entirely by tunnel or level in Assen while they are crossed by bridges in Cambridge.

All crossings in Assen can be used
without slowing down. This is one
of the many cycle and pedestrian
crossings of a major road in Assen.
Four metre wide cycle-path, separate
pedestrian path, gentle inclines, well
lit and we can see right through for
 good social safety. Built in the 1970s
well maintained: last resurfaced 2012

Note also that in Assen the crossings mostly have an X which indicates that they are cycle-specific crossings. There are also crossings shared with cars, but these include separate infrastructure for cycling.

In Assen it is rare for a cyclist to use a bridge, common to use tunnels, and very often we cross on infrastructure which is cyclist specific so that cars are rarely seen. In Cambridge the crossings are mostly bridges, usually along the same routes as used by cars, and in several cases you have to cycle on the road to cross major roads or the railway line.

Dutch standards for Tunnels and Bridges

CROW still recommend maximum
of 5% incline and that's what this
tunnel has. Complaints from some
local cyclists have led to this Assen
underpass being redesigned at 3.5%.

The CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic includes many details of how both bridges and tunnels should be designed to make cycling over and through them safe and convenient. I'm not going to repeat all of their recommendations here but will include some important points.

1. The incline to a bridge or tunnel should be less than 1 in 20 (5%)
2. Upward inclines: "Upward inclines require cyclists to make an extra effort and should be avoided where possible in the design of a bicycle friendly infrastructure."
3. Downward inclines: "On long declines, attention should focus on the speed of the descending cyclist". It is suggested that planners should expect  "35 to 40 km/h" and that there should be "plenty of free deceleration space at the bottom of inclines, with no intersections, sharp bends or other obstacles in the way".
4. Absolute minimum width of cycle-paths should be 3 m. That's permissible only if there's a separate 1 m minimum walking path on both sides of the cycle-path. Without a separate walking path (i.e. where no pedestrians are expected, this isn't shared use) the minimum width becomes 4.15 m, made up of 3.5 m cycle-path plus 0.325 m clearance between each side of the cycle-path and any railings or wall.

All the examples in Assen meet all these requirements except for one tunnel built in the 1960s which is a little too narrow.

Generally speaking, it is better that cyclists do not have to climb to cross roads or railway tracks. It is better to have cyclists continue on flat infrastructure and that powered vehicles should climb.

Only three bridges in Assen have a
significant inclines for cyclists. Most
are completely flat like this example.

Advice for bridges

1. Gradients should not be constant all the way up the incline. Cycling speed diminishes when climbing. For relatively short inclines (height less than 10 m), the highest section should be less steep than the lowest section to enable cyclists to maintain an almost steady speed uphill.
2. If a height over 5 m must be climbed, 'resting places' in the form of a horizontal section about 25 m in length should be provided before cyclists must to climb again.
3. Wind nuisance is greatly increased on an exposed bridge so this should be taken into account. Climbs against the prevailing wind should compensate by being less steep. Wind barriers can be installed on bridges to reduce the nuisance to cyclists.
4. It should be possible to cycle onto and over a bridge. Cyclists should never be required to dismount. Escalators or lifts to access the bridge are OK as a last resort measure.

Problems with bridges
The following are given as specific problems with bridges:

1. There are often longer inclines than with a tunnel (because of greater height difference in order to clear railway lines, for instance - precisely the parapet height question which prompted this blog post)
2. There is a possibility of fear of heights with a high bridge
3. Bridges must be designed to keep height difference to be overcome by cyclists as small as possible
4. Suggestion that with a cycle-bridge across the road: if necessary the road should be lowered to make the cycle-bridge less high.

CROW ideal tunnel impression. Short
open, well lit, separate pedestrian path
also of good width. Splayed out sides

Advice for tunnels

1. Steeper gradients can be used than with a bridge because cyclists going into a tunnel first ride downhill and pick up speed which can be used to climb back out of the tunnel.
2. Tunnels can be made less deep by moving roads and railways above them upwards.
3. Social safety issues should be addressed by making it possible to see out of a tunnel before you enter, and by avoiding long tunnels.
4. A "semi-buried" design can work well, with the road above rising by about two metres, effectively a small bridge. This makes the tunnel into an open structure and reduces the change in height required of cyclists.
5. Tunnels require good drainage (often pumped) and should be designed to be easy to clean.
6. Tunnel height should never be less than 2.5 m and width should be no less than 1.5 x the height in order that the tunnel feels comfortable to use.
7. Lights and light colours are preferable in a tunnel to make it appear as 'open' as possible. The time spent in a tunnel should be minimised and sides should be splayed outwards.

Some of the suggestions refer to social safety issues. In short, infrastructure should not lead to a feeling of unease, especially after dark.

All the tunnels were retrofitted to
Assen. The process continues. This
tunnel dates from 2008. Note that this
is an example of where the road rises
slightly as the cycle-path drops.

Why tunnels are preferred
CROW consider that tunnels are "often more favourable". They make many points including:

1. Tunnels have a smaller height difference than bridges. Only need clearance for the height of a cyclist, not for trucks or trains plus electric lines.
2. Tunnels take up less space than a bridge because inclines are shorter
3. Tunnels are easier to fit into an existing landscape.
4. Tunnels offer protection from wind and rain
5. Tunnels offer faster journeys than bridges due to less climbing
6. In rural areas tunnels can also be useful for wildlife

There are also other advantages which may seem to be quite small such as that tunnels naturally provide shelter when it rains.

Tunnel disadvantages
A possible disadvantage is low social safety. It is important that cyclists can see out of a tunnel before they enter it. There should be no turns within the tunnel, no-where for a potential mugger to hide. Obviously tunnels should also be well lit.

Drainage is very important in tunnels. The Netherlands has many tunnels which are below the water table and require pumps. Nevertheless, it is rare that tunnels become flooded.

The best tunnel in Assen is a bridge

Conceptually, this is an incline-less
tunnel for cyclists, not a bridge for
cars. It provides part of a direct and
uninterrupted route by bike from a new
suburb to the centre of Assen. This
bridge has no benefit at all for drivers,
only for cyclists. Re-opening the canal
for tourism was a side-benefit. This
replaced a large flat road junction.

If possible, it's best that cyclists don't have to change level at all. If motor vehicles can be sent into a tunnel or over a bridge then they no longer hinder cyclists.

In 2007, there was a traffic light junction at this location in Assen. For cyclists to use the road to travel directly into the city they had to stop at a traffic light. By 2008 this bridge had been built. It severs the pre-existing link by motor vehicle into the city, leaving the direct route as a bicycle road which excludes through motor traffic.

This bridge has no utility for drivers. It actually reduces their options as it is now impossible for a car travelling over the bridge to turn left of right as used to be possible.

Instead of building this bridge to carry four lanes of motor vehicles, a much smaller and less expensive bridge could have been built to take cyclists over the road, a small tunnel could have been excavated to take them under the road or a signal controlled crossing could have been installed on the level. However all these other options would have meant a reduction in speed and convenience for cyclists due to inclines for bridge or tunnel and delays at traffic lights for a level crossing. There could also have been social safety issues. The solution, to ensure the best possible service for cyclists was this bridge. Cyclists now have a smooth, level uninterrupted route which is well lit at night and has good sight lines in all directions.

Just as recommended by CROW, motor vehicles have to use inclines in this example rather than cyclists.

Short note about funneling

Illustration of how high cycle counts can indicate
a problem: A lack of bridges or tunnels to cross
railways, roads, rivers or canals can force people
onto the same crowded route. High cycle counts
are not a symbol of success when they result from
detours and traffic-jams for cyclists. A proper
comprehensive grid of infrastructure keeps counts
down. Not so good for photographers who want
to see lots of bikes but good for individual cyclists.

Unless enough pleasant routes are provided, excess numbers of cyclists are likely to be seen on the few remaining routes. It can be especially a problem where there are too few crossings of railway lines, major roads or rivers. Such funneling can make for great promotional headlines ("N bicycles per day pass this point") but actually it's not good news for cyclists at all because this actually means a detour onto overcrowded cycle-paths and conflict.

It is far better for cyclists that there should be more available routes so that more people can make direct journeys and there is less of a need to detour to find a comfortable route. Detours should be minimised by providing extra cycle crossings of large roads, railway lines, rivers and canals. This makes cycling more viable for more people and therefore more attractive. This principle should not only be applied for what are considered to be practical routes - CROW state that "recreational routes can also form reason enough to remove barriers".

Reducing funneling in Groningen
Groningen has many students, making up a relatively transient population who while they are more likely to cycle are also likely not to know the local area well. The city used specific marketing to encourage people to choose a selection of other routes which would serve them better. However, it's important to note that this was only possible because a very comprehensive grid of cycling infrastructure already existed.

It comes down to having a proper grid
I've often railed against hype about exceptional pieces of infrastructure. They're nice to see, but not really very important. The fact is that a few impressive bridges or tunnels are of relatively little use unless they form part of a comprehensive grid of good quality infrastructure. The grid is really the exceptional achievement of the Netherlands. The grid is the thing which should inspire and be copied elsewhere.

Tunnels are less photogenic than bridges, but they are preferable for the reasons explained above. However, whether tunnels or bridges are built it is most important that there are enough of them, that they are of high enough quality and that they link everything else together.

Find out more
Both tunnels and bridges feature on our study tours.

The Cambridge map does not include the Newmarket road roundabout underpasses as they do not cross railway or motorway. Nearly at the geographic centre of the map above, these underpasses are right not well loved. They are bad examples for a number of reasons include low social safety and sharp turns at the bottom of inclines. It also does not include the Northfield avenue underpass for similar reasons. This is flawed mainly due to dangerous railings within it. There are also many bridges in Assen which are not included on the map because they don't cross main roads or the railway, but all those which have a significant incline in Assen are on the map. The point of the maps is not to show all bridges and tunnels but to show red vs. green. i.e. emphasis on bridges in the UK vs. emphasis on tunnels in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands sets the best example, but don't copy anything just because it is "Dutch"

While Germany is a genuine leader in renewable energy, and Danish design is known across the world, it is the Netherlands that should be looked to as the leader in cycling.

There is no "good enough". Everything
could be better.  Works on cycle-paths
are common in the Netherlands because
standards are improving. Dutch cycling
infrastructure is a moving target.

Observers from other countries with a far lower level of cycling often express an interest in Denmark or Germany because they are considered to offer a more "achievable" or "realistic" target to aim for. A cheaper solution is sometimes seen as an easier thing to emulate than the Dutch solution. It's true that those nations spend less, however they also achieve less. While the Netherlands continues to grow cycling from an already higher base (in 2011 the population cycled nearly 10% more than in 2010), Denmark is struggling against a long term decline in cycling and Germany has infrastructure which is unpopular with many of its cyclists. Are those good scenarios to aspire to ?

In the past, Assen had cycle-lanes in the
middle of the road. They're gone now.
Not a good idea. Don't copy this. The
traffic lights that they're waiting for
do not even exist any more. This street
is now much more pleasant.

Let's not even consider the absurdity of looking towards places which have achieved even less than Denmark and Germany, be they vocal cities in the UK or USA or elsewhere. What works for a minority cycling modal share and what works in a limited area with a demographic bubble are not necessarily what works for true majority cycling over an entire nation.

It makes no sense to campaign for something which isn't actually good enough. Campaigners should be inspired by the best of Dutch infrastructure and be wary of distraction by things which don't have a proven record of success.

Don't blindly trust the CROW manual

In reality you will struggle to find any
examples of a roundabout like this in
the Netherlands. Much safer designs exist.

The CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic manual is as good a manual for cycling infrastructure design as exists. However it's not perfect. The manual tells you how to do a great many things, but it does say so much about which solutions are good solutions. For example, it rather glosses over the serious safety problems caused by "mixing lanes", and the section on them doesn't suggest much better solutions for similar junctions. The CROW manual can be used to justify many things which you would not expect a modern Dutch road layout to include.

Just because something is in CROW,
that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Unfortunately there sometimes seems to be a lack of "quality control" when people are inspired by what they see in other places, including what they see in the Netherlands. Not everything "Dutch" is equally good and equally worth emulating. Sometimes there are apparent "solutions" which seem easier to copy and these get too much attention. This isn't helped by the Dutch themselves occasionally forgetting about why they cycle and placing far too much emphasis on things which are less important or by their giving a lot of press to new ideas which are unproven or which in some cases simply don't work.

What's Dutch and should be ignored ?

I'm more impressed by traffic lights like
this one where cyclists never wait more
than 8 seconds for a green light and
where you don't have to stop at all.

Traffic lights which give cyclists priority when it rains have been in the news recently. This sounds lovely of course until you give it a little more thought. The article states that "The rain sensor did not lead to significantly longer waiting times for the non-cycling travellers, nor did it produce jams or stagnation". Now if the change in cycle timing benefits cyclists but does not cause a problem for other road users, then why do we not have that new timing all the time instead of only when it rains ? It's illogical in the extreme to do this, and as it costs an extra €10000 per traffic light, why bother when the same benefit can be found by reprogramming the lights permanently ? This is a gimmick which sounds good in a press-release but is otherwise quite silly.

Does the current situation in winter
look especially problematic ?

Another recent idea was heated cycle-paths. Again this initially sounds like a fine idea, until you realise that it is simply not practical. This idea is estimated to cost between €20K and €40K per km. However, the Netherlands has 35000 km of cycle-paths so it would cost a thousand billion euros to implement everywhere. Clearly this cannot ever happen. At best a very small percentage may be heated, perhaps outside the town hall, and the traditional way of clearing paths (which is already very successful) will have to continue anyway. What's more, the increased cost of maintenance and the energy required to warm the paths has not been accounted for. This is another gimmick which sounds good in a press-release but doesn't really translate into much on the ground.

Simple, old-fashioned and "not invented
here", but what Dutch roads need are
"Cat's Eyes" like British roads have had
for 80 years. Read about the inventor.
Due to being in the centre of roads,
they're not dangerous to cyclists on the
road. Note that smaller versions can
be used on cycle-paths without
causing danger to cyclists. 

A third example in recent months is the idea of roads which glow in the dark. This "designer" nonsense even won "Best Future Concept at the Dutch Design Awards". The resulting press-release was taken up by organisations around the world and it received a considerable amount of coverage. Did no-one think about how impractical this is ? It's really a daft idea. Dutch roads genuinely do have a problem with how visible they are after dark, but spreading a thin layer of rapidly worn away paint across the entire surface is not the way to deal with this. British roads have provided an example of a better solution for nearly 80 years ! Cat's Eyes are retroreflective devices found in vast numbers along Britain's roads and motorways. The very clever design of Cat's Eyes means that they retract to avoid damage so are resistant to being driven over by trucks and even snow-ploughs, and that they use this retraction to clean themselves. What's more, they've a proven history of success. Having driven on both Dutch and British roads and motorways after dark, I can state that it is quite unequivocally easier to do so in the UK because you can see so much better where you're going if the centre-line and sides of the road are fitted with Cats Eyes.

After this is commonplace perhaps it's
 time to ask for big bridges and tunnels

Often there is an over-emphasis on the most recently built exceptional pieces of infrastructure. To claim in a press-release that you will build the "longest", "tallest", "widest" or whatever of anything is of course a real crowd-pleaser. It guarantees free publicity even before the new thing exists. Cities which have built exceptional pieces of infrastructure often use them to hype themselves.

I have received email from Dutch architects and "creative engineers" asking for me to advertise for them by writing posts about their latest projects on this blog and I've been invited to events and other such things. However I am not interested in astro-turfing for such companies and you should be wary of reading articles which are the result of marketing campaigns. Until something has been finished, proven to work and has a long record of being cost-effective, it's not ready to be copied elsewhere.

Campaigners need to be wary of all of this. Publicity is not our aim. Cycling is our aim. Exceptional pieces of infrastructure can only ever make up a small percentage of the total and if given too much emphasis they distract attention from the important point that it is the very high standard of the infrastructure which goes everywhere and which everyone uses every-day for all their journeys which creates a high level of subjective safety and attracts people to cycling. Fancy bridges, tunnels or claims for the "longest" cycle-paths or whatever are nice to see and occasionally convenient to use, but they're icing on the cake, not the cake itself. I've occasionally covered exceptional pieces of infrastructure on this blog, but with warnings.

Students surveying Haren's "Shared
Space" and counting how often car
drivers don't give way to bikes

There is also the perennial favourite of "Shared Space" road layouts. Despite having failed as a concept here in the Netherlands, there being no new large "Shared Space" projects, these ideas keep being pushed with enthusiasm elsewhere, quite often by those who stand to gain from contracts for its implementation. Even here in the Netherlands they sometimes achieve design wins, even though we know that shared space is not really safe. These days, with an increase in interest in Dutch cycling infrastructure elsewhere, "Shared Space" is sometimes pushed on the grounds that it's "Dutch" and therefore must be good. However, in practice this is now barely a Dutch idea at all. While a Dutch invention and while such layouts had brief popularity here in the early 2000s, the problems with this "emperor's new clothes" manner of redesigning streets are now quite clear and few people would ask for this. Far fewer than 1% of the street layouts in the Netherlands are "Shared Space" and as a result they form just a few weak links in an otherwise very good network of infrastructure for cycling. The real way of civilizing city centre streets is to remove most of the cars from them. Compare a video of a street which was once shared space but is more pleasant now that motor vehicles have been removed with another showing how shared space is both dangerous and inconvenient for the vulnerable.

Turbo Roundabout. Can we really
expect children or adults in disability
scooters to cross safely here ?

Turbo Roundabouts are a Dutch innovation to keep motor vehicles moving. They're horrible for cyclists, causing danger and inconvenience and cyclists are never expected to use the road on a turbo-roundaout. Protests about infrastructure are rare in the Netherlands, but there have been protests against Turbo Roundabouts because even crossings at such roundabouts are not necessarily safe.

While Turbo Roundabouts are bad news for cyclists, let's also look closely at the other roundabouts often promoted by advocates of Dutch cycling infrastructure.
Over the last two decades many studies have investigated the safety of different roundabout designs (the link takes you to several of my articles about these studies with the results translated into English). Some of these large scale studies used data from hundreds of "roundabout years" to build up a comprehensive picture of which designs work best, and which cause injuries to Dutch cyclists. As a result of their use of such comprehensive data the results are not easy to dismiss, but unfortunately there's a lot of reading to do to understand them and as a result they have mostly been ignored in the Netherlands. Due to this, most Dutch experts still promote a roundabout design which unnecessarily hospitalizes hundreds of Dutch cyclists each year as being the best, and even "safest" practice. The dangerous design is even being promoted for adoption in other countries where motorists take less care around cyclists than is the case in the Netherlands. We also have roundabout designs which are exceptionally safe for cyclists but these are rarely promoted as examples.

This is the safe roundabout design.
It is much more tolerant of driver
mistakes and results in a far lower
rate of cyclist injuries.
Please read more about this design.

Please choose the safe roundabout design and when copying from it take care to copy the entire thing. I've seen several examples of engineers from other countries trying to pick some aspects of Dutch roundabout design but missing out others of greater importance, resulting in less than safe or convenient results. It's common for people to focus on the geometry. i.e. they see the difference in exit radii and the size of the island in the centre but miss out the cycle-paths. So far as cyclists are concerned, the cycle-paths are the fundamental reason why Dutch roundabout design works well. Miss them out and you do not have a "Dutch" roundabout.

While on the subject of large junctions, traffic light junctions in the Netherlands are not all created equal either. The best design of traffic light junction for cyclists is the simultaneous green design. This is not only extremely convenient but also has proven to be extremely safe and it fits almost any size of junction. Anything else compromises at least one of safety or convenience. Unfortunately, much discussion elsewhere is concentrated on the "Standard Dutch Junction" or the "Protected Intersection", both of which are versions of older and less successful designs.

There are several articles on this blog about those and other good / safe traffic light designs.

What's Dutch and often misunderstood ?

Wide cycle-path next to a 30 km/h road
This is necessary to preserve subjective
safety and direct cycle-routes

Lower speed limits are a good thing. The Dutch think so - and that's why more than a third of the total road network in the Netherlands has a 30 km/h or lower speed limit. However, research published in the Netherlands four years ago showed that merely lowering the speed limit was not nearly enough of an intervention to make roads safe.

Residential areas and villages should have speeds no higher than 30 km/h / 20 mph on their streets. However, even where there is such a low speed limit it is often necessary still to have separate cycling infrastructure, and low speed limits certainly don't remove the need for separate cycling infrastructure in other places.

Achieving safety requires removing cars or building separate infrastructure for bikes and of course junction design is important too.

It is worthwhile to campaign for lower default speed limits but lower speed limits should be viewed as just one of a number of tools to civilize the streets and their contribution should not be over-emphasized. The same goes for Strict Liability, the importance of which is often much over-stated in other countries and which is often misrepresented as meaning that drivers are taken to be responsible for all crashes which occur between bikes and cars. In fact, strict liability was introduced after the Netherlands already had an extensive cycling network and it is this network which makes cycling popular, pleasant and safe. Separating cyclists from motor vehicles as much as possible, building a dense network of cycling routes and making cycling routes shorter and more convenient than driving routes are all more important than either lower speed limits or strict liability. Separating bikes from cars has a much greater effect on subjective and actual safety than does changing the laws which apply to drivers.

A simple bollard prevents this bridge
from being used by drivers. However,
bollards should not be over-used. They
can be dangerous.

Unravelling of routes so that cyclists do not have to travel parallel with motorists can make it possible to segregate modes without specific cycling infrastructure. However, the resultant routes for cyclists should be the direct routes, not indirect routes which go "around the houses" in order that cyclists are merely kept out of the way of motorists.

In the Netherlands it is quite normal that drivers find themselves having to take a detour in order that residential areas can be pleasant places to live. Cycling routes can pass through residential areas, but...

An old street converted into a Woonerf
in Assen. They were also built as new
developments in the 1970s and 1980s.

Woonerven (or "living streets" - similarly, the living-room in a Dutch house is called a woonkamer) are residential streets in which people take precedence over motor vehicles. The concept was especially popular in the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s.

While woonerven provide for access by any means of transport, they should not be through routes by motor vehicle. What's more, they should also not be through routes by bicycle. Woonerven are not cycling facilities, they are intended to be pleasant places to live. This is not enhanced by having nose to tail commuters heading through these streets either in cars or on bikes.

If someone suggests that a woonerf should be a through route for bicycles, look out. Not only have they fundamentally misunderstood the concept of a woonerf, but they're probably proposing to send cyclists "around the houses" rather than provide the direct routes that cyclists need.

Older residential street recently
transformed to better accommodate
resident's cars. Note also the one way
sign, excluding cyclists. This civilizes
residential streets in older areas

From many peoples' interpretations of what the Dutch have done, you could come to the conclusion that many things are "anti-car" in this country, but it's not true. The Netherlands is a rich western nation in which people can easily afford to own cars if they want to, and this country does not make it difficult to own, drive or park the cars that people own.

New-build residential areas provide ample car parking so that ownership of cars doesn't cause problems for other residents. Many shops offer free parking. The city that we live in, Assen, has the cheapest car parking in the Netherlands. What's more, the roads are well maintained and well sign-posted. They're a pleasure to drive on.

That driving can be very convenient for some purposes, and that people like to own cars does not stop those same people from cycling if cycling is an attractive option. But for this effect to become reality, cycling must be a very attractive option people for people from all walks of life. There is nothing unique about the Dutch people which makes them ride bikes - they find it useful to do so because it has been made into an easy choice to make and that comes because the environment encourages cycling. The Dutch have successfully harnessed the enormous pent up enthusiasm for cycling that exists everywhere. The desirability of cycling results in people using their bikes even though commutes by car are subsidized by the Dutch government.

The first pedestrianized street in the world was built in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and there are now many pedestrianized zones across the country. However, unlike pedestrianized zones elsewhere which ban cycling these are usually easy to access by bicycle. However, note that these are generally not main bicycle routes. A main route through a shopping street could cause conflict. Similarly, shared use pedestrian/bicycle paths are not built because they also cause conflict. For the same reason, bus lanes are not combined with bicycle lanes.

Other things to be wary of

On holidays from the UK we went
past wind turbines and formed the
impression that there was a lot of
renewable energy here. Not really. For
that you do need to go to Germany.

Be wary of "holiday opinions". Holidays in other countries are not remotely like living there for a period of years and they often lead to people having a view of their holiday destination which doesn't fit reality. To understand another country you have to live there for years and put some effort into understanding how things are in your new home.

Note that Dutch commentators speaking about the Netherlands are equally unlikely to understand differences between their country and others unless they have lived for many years in other countries and spent the time to study those differences while they were there. The significance of the everyday and mundane things which are taken for granted by cyclists in the Netherlands can easily be forgotten. Dutch commentators are as likely as those from elsewhere to place an over-emphasis on the new and spectacular, particularly if this shows their country in a positive light. Also note that most Dutch people have no real understanding of the problems facing cyclists in other countries because they have not experienced them. After he read comments about "dooring" in youtube comments, I had to explain carefully to one Dutch bicycle blogger what this meant because despite cycling since he was a child he had never experienced it himself. There can also be problems with language, and that's not just restricted to bloggers. Even the Fietsberaad sometimes publishes documents in English which don't mean the same as their Dutch equivalents.

Original London "Superhighway"
illustration with miniature
cyclist. The result of compromise
before negotiation.  Remember
past hype and promises made but
not always kept. Celebrate actual
results, not announcements in
press releases. Cycle lanes
similar to this can be found in
the Netherlands, but they're not
good here either.

Dutch people have told me that the Netherlands suffers from all sorts of problems, such as particularly high unemployment, a high violent crime rate, a terrible problem with litter, mass obesity, particularly terrible economic problems. They also often think that mopeds are a huge problem for cyclists, though they're actually a non-issue in most circumstances. If you're close to even a small problem it can seem like a big problem. I've also been told that cycling is far more pleasant in the UK because of a supposedly more extensive British network of traffic free paths, which of course doesn't actually exist. The hyped initial promises for London's "superhighways" resulted in some Dutch media sources suggesting that the Netherlands could soon fall behind, which of course didn't happen. Why do people believe these things ? Without the perspective of seeing how other people live by living as they live it's difficult to be objective.

Cycle-chic style pictures and videos of peak time cycling (I made them myself way back in the days before youtube had HD) look nice but do not really teach us anything. When emphasis is on the young and pretty then the impression is given that they are the cycling demographic we should aim for. When wider demographics are featured they tell you nothing about why it is that older or younger people cycle or about how often they are seen doing so. Videos of masses of people cycling are of no real use without an explanation of why. The result is often to simply reinforce the irrational beliefs about Dutch cycling that many people already hold, and this can be read in the comments.

Junctions commonly known as the
"Copenhagen left" design were tried in
NL 30 years ago but are no longer built

Not really Dutch at all
Not all things proposed as "Dutch" in other countries are actually Dutch at all. Two stage turns are an example of an inferior junction design of a type no longer built in the Netherlands, linked with fatalities in Copenhagen, yet copied as a "good" example of "Dutch" design in the UK.

These were built up to about 30 years ago in the Netherlands, but I've not seen one of these for more than ten years. A reader sent the location of the junction in the photo on the right. There's a reason why these went out of fashion - it's because they're unsafe and inconvenient.

While junctions like this might have been "Dutch" in the past, it seems a bit unfair to still blame the Dutch for them now when almost all have been replaced.

Solaroad update November 2014

Solar panels on our roof. They get lots
of sunshine and work extremely well
because they are almost never shaded
in this location.

Solar panels are a wonderful technology. They are a reliable source of clean energy which should be adopted more widely. I believe in solar energy enough that I put my money where why mouth is and installed solar panels on our own home. However note what this "belief" is based upon. I didn't do this just because of a fanciful idea that this was "green" but only after I had done all the maths and worked out that panels in this location would generate enough electricity that they would definitely pay back both economically and environmentally.

In the UK we lived in a house where the roof faced the wrong way. I did the maths then and worked out that we couldn't expect a reliably positive return from solar panels on our roof because it faced in the wrong way. As a result, when we went house hunting for our current home we looked only at houses with south facing roofs specifically so that we could install solar panels and have them pay their install cost back. Bad locations make no sense at all with solar panels. Due to the cost (both environmental and monetary) of the panels, it makes absolutely no sense at all to install them in locations where they cannot work. Doing so is not in any way good for the environment, but actually negative because the environmental cost of producing and installing the panels will never be earned back during the life-span of the panels.

A cycle-path with solar panels in it has recently been opened in Krommenie near Amsterdam. This has been receiving a lot of press due to a vast campaign of hype. This is a completely ludicrous idea. Solar panels are a marginal technology. They are only economically and environmentally viable when mounted facing the sun, in a place where there is no shade at all and where they won't be damaged so will have a long life allowing them to continue operating for their payback period. South facing (Northern Hemisphere) roofs are an excellent place for solar panels. A location underneath a road, with extra levels of glass above, not sloped to face the sun, with shade from trees, cyclists, leaves, grime etc. and at risk of damage from weather effects as well as snow-ploughs and other vehicles is anything other than an ideal location. Dust is a problem even for solar panels on a roof.

Minister Kamp opening a cycle-path
with solar panels under it. This is an
absolutely absurd idea. Do not copy it.
"Greenwash" will not rescue the earth,
it only adds to the problem of over-
consumption. Solar power is a very
good idea, but the panels have to
be placed correctly to achieve a
positive outcome from solar power.

It is impossible for solar panels placed under a road to ever pay back their cost of installation. The total environmental cost of building this "solaroad" will be higher than simply using asphalt on the cycle-path. It will certainly be higher than using asphalt on the cycle-path and placing the same solar panels in a more useful location.

Please try to ignore the hype. I'm sure the company who is pushing this idea will try very hard to sell it, but they are trading on people not being able to do the figures themselves and work out why this is a bad idea. The Dutch minister who opened the cycle-path is clearly confused. He has said that his "dream for the far future" is to be able to ride in cars driven by the power provided by the solar panels embedded in the roads along which they are driven. But he clearly does not understand the issues as his dream makes absolutely no sense at all. With any given solar panel technology you can always generate more electricity at a lower cost by putting the panels next to the road than by putting them under it and you're unlikely ever to get a positive return from panels in roads.

Note that no theoretical new technology can help this to make sense. There are limits to the efficiency of solar cells which current technology already approaches. Maximum output from any cell design is related to how much light hits the panels and starting by reducing the amount of light which hits the cells by burying them under a road is simply a ludicrous thing to do. These things could only be made to compete with solar panels placed in more sensible places by making the sun shine brighter, and even if that were possible it would still make more sense to put the panels next to the cycle-path rather than under it.

I started working out the numbers for SolaRoad, but someone else has beaten me to it and done a good job of explaining: click here for a brash, long but also very illuminating video which explains the figures.

Three years later, a video (now deleted) appeared on youtube demonstrating how that first solar cycle-path was already falling apart due to weather effects and wear. It also demonstrated that the output was incredibly low for the large number of panels used and the high cost. My predictions came true, as did those of other sensible people who saw from the outset that the best place to install solar panels is never, under any circumstances, under a road.

What's the harm in doing something else ? What's the harm with making a slow start ?
The problem with following the wrong path is that time is wasted while this happens. The suggestion that campaigners should work towards something other than what the Dutch have has been made since at least the 1970s. Surely forty years of trying things that don't actually work for furthering cycling is enough. It's time to stop falling behind and catch up as quickly as possible.

The Netherlands is ahead in cycling mainly because other countries have never really been in the race. It's much easier to make an excuse about the Dutch being 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 years ahead and therefore difficult to catch up with than it is to make genuine political and financial commitments which will last for decades, but that is what is required in order to make a proper start at catching up. No more broken promises.

Groningen still has some "advanced
stop lines" (bike boxes). It doesn't look
very different from the London photo,
but this isn't the best infrastructure in
Groningen. ASLs are not a good idea
either here or anywhere else. Don't
copy this, there are better examples.

Conclusion: Use good examples to make progress
Not all of the best ideas in all fields come from the Netherlands. Not all Dutch ideas are good. Not all Dutch people know why they cycle. Not all Dutch people how lucky they are to be able to cycle as they do, and of course not all the infrastructure in the Netherlands is perfect, nor was it all built recently to current standards and nor was everything built recently built to good standards. In short, the Netherlands is far from perfect.

However, if you're interested in improving cycling in your own country this is still the most successful nation by a considerable margin and therefore is also the single best place to look for inspiration. The problem is finding the genuinely good examples from which to be inspired rather than picking examples at random. Never aim low because by doing so you guarantee not to achieve a high cycling modal share, but how can you be sure that you're aiming for the best ?

The one and only "Hybrid" cycle-path in
Groningen, not properly separated from
the road. The primitive design survived
for decades in this location and works
because there's a parallel service road
behind the hedge on the right. Cars
don't make right turns in this location
and there's no reason for them to park
here because that happens beyond
the hedge on the right of the picture.
It's not generally applicable, and not
something to ask for elsewhere.

Campaigners with low aspirations for their own countries often seem to cling to inferior infrastructure in the Netherlands because they view it as "more achievable". However you have to see this in context. Examples of low quality infrastructure in the Netherlands are merely weaker points in a comprehensive network which is of high overall quality. The remaining examples of lesser infrastructure have typically survived where they are because in these locations they cause relatively few problems. However, infrastructure is constantly being upgraded (and occasionally downgraded) all across the country. This inferior infrastructure is under threat even where it works. If you refer to such infrastructure to form your standards, you run the risk of setting the standard for your best infrastructure to be equivalent to what has already been removed in the Netherlands. What was shown not to work well enough here will then be installed in places where it won't work well in your own country and having set a low standard you will be doomed always to achieve a lower cycling modal share than the Netherlands until the standard can be changed once again. If it's already taken forty years to set a standard, you need to get it right.

"Armadillos" or similar obstacles to the side of a cycle-lane
are not sufficient segregation. Don't copy this. It's Assen's
oldest cycle-path and will be upgraded.

There is no need to learn from the past mistakes of the Netherlands by repeating them. You can leapfrog over them and copy what really works. Do make use of the best examples. Make sure you ignore the less good examples.

The worst thing for campaigners to do is to hamper their own efforts by not setting a high enough standard for themselves and for the community that they live in. If you were planning a mission to the moon, would you go to NASA for advice, or would you prefer to take notice of what the Ugandan space programme had achieved on the grounds that it looks more affordable than NASA ?

Study Tours

We run regular study tours, both on dates which are open to anyone who wants to book individually as well as special tours for interested groups.

We take just three days to demonstrate and explain how cycling works in the Netherlands. Take advantage of our decades of experience of living, working and cycling in both the UK and the Netherlands.