I've written three times before (1, 2, 3) about how the roundabouts in Zwolle cause danger for cyclists. Each time, I've pointed out that the use of the "priority" roundabout design in that city results in those roundabouts always featuring as the most dangerous sites for cyclists in the entire city.
The top ten list of most dangerous locations for cyclists in
Zwolle according to the Gemeente. Three are roundabouts.
This has now been confirmed by the local government (Gemeente Zwolle) itself, which admits that the most dangerous place for cyclists in the city is the roundabout pictured above at the junction of the Burgemeester Roeienweg and Pannekoekendijk.
Zwolle's local newspaper has covered this issue several times in the last year and this helped to prompt the local government to produce a top ten list of the most dangerous places in the city for cyclists.
Gemeente Zwolle's top ten list shows that they consider three of the ten most dangerous places in the city for cyclists to be roundabouts. The top location is precisely the same roundabout as I identified as being the most dangerous in the city when I first wrote about the problem of adopting unsafe roundabout designs back in 2014.
The top ten list of most dangerous places for cyclists in
Zwolle according to newspaper readers: Five roundabouts.
The newspaper also surveyed local cyclists who gave a subjective response about how unsafe various places in the city feel. They placed the most dangerous roundabout in fourth place and pointed out several other problematic roundabouts as causing a problem. The worst place according to local cyclists is the "Fietsrotonde".
The fietsrotonde opened in 2013 to claims of safety and much press coverage. Many people praised the new design but I did not because it was unproven. Instead, I pointed out in 2014 that the claims of safety for the fietsrotonde were premature, that I thought the design was confusing and that it gave little chance for recovery from error.
A little later in 2014 I unfortunately had to update my blog post to point out that it had already claimed victims.
Zwolle's Fietsrotonde. It requires perfect behaviour from all
users and much head swivelling from both cyclists and drivers
to predict what each other will do. That is why it's unsafe.
Update: Another crash.
The subjective view of local cyclists that this junction is difficult to navigate safely is accurate and it results from the same problems as occur with the roundabouts in Zwolle: Cyclists must their "priority" by riding out in front of motor vehicles while relying upon drivers to maintain the safety of cyclists. This never feels safe and it never truly is safe. Drivers are frequently distracted, they often don't see cyclists until it is too late, and of course a fair number are simply not very skilled at driving so cyclists should never be expected to place their safety in the hands of drivers.
Crossing the road
When I wrote about Zwolle's roundabouts a second time (in 2015) it was as part of a blog post about the nature of the most dangerous locations for cyclists in several different Dutch cities. Amongst the most dangerous things that a cyclist or pedestrian can do in a modern city is crossing the road. At uncontrolled crossings our safety is very much in the hands of drivers and this is why uncontrolled crossings and junctions expose cyclists to great danger. While the safe roundabout design which I have been promoting for the last four years almost completely eliminates this danger to cyclists using the roundabout, the unsafe roundabout design as used in Zwolle offers only a very small improvement over an uncontrolled junction (research found just an 11% difference). It should be no surprise therefore that when I went looking for the most dangerous locations in various cities, I found that cities which had adopted the safe roundabout design (like Assen) did not have roundabouts amongst their most dangerous locations for cyclists, while those cities which used the less safe design frequently had roundabouts as amongst their most dangerous locations.
You'll note that Zwolle's local government listed many crossings (kruising) as well as roundabouts (rotonde) in their top ten list. If they had adopted the the safe design of roundabout then their list would probably not have included any roundabouts at all but instead would be made up almost entirely of crossings. Zwolle would have been safer for cyclists than it is.
It may seem quite a big request to make that a city should change its roundabout designs. In Zwolle's case they have actually made this investment. Unfortunately, though, rather than adopting the safer design they spent their money and time converting their roundabouts from one unsafe design to another and as a result they have not improved the safety of cyclists...
After being improved, the most dangerous roundabout remains the most dangerous
When I wrote about Zwolle's roundabouts in 2014, many people were quick to point out that the design of the roundabout was less than optimal. There was little distance between the cycle-path and the road. Claims were made that had this been otherwise, the roundabout would have been safe. We now know that this is not so. This particular roundabout has been changed in design quite radically yet it remains the most dangerous location in Zwolle for cyclists.
Both photos show the same roundabout and this is the same location as at the top of the page. Safe roundabouts don't look like either of these two examples. Neither the "before" photo nor the "after" photo are safe. I pointed out that the first was the most dangerous roundabout in Zwolle in 2014 and Gemeente Zwolle themselves have now pointed out that the "improved" version of the roundabout remains the most dangerous location in the whole city for cyclists in 2018.
Zwolle is now considering changing this design once more to try to make it safe. We should not keep making the same mistakes. There is a better alternative.
The truly safe design
This design is truly safe. Cyclists and drivers meet each other at 90 degrees so that sight lines are maximised. Speeds are reduced by camber on the road and the curves on the cycle-path so that both parties have as much time as possible to make decisions. Priority at the crossings is given to motorists because they have the greatest power to cause harm and the least "skin in the game". Cyclists are prioritized by having bidirectional cycle-paths so that they cross less often and because they can always turn right without considering motor vehicles at all. Please read the entire blog post from 2014 about why this particular design is special and watch a video which explains further.
We've run cycling infrastructure study tours in this area for well over a decade. The tours are based in Assen where we live with (for three day tours) a day in Groningen which is just 30 km to the North. People always want to see Groningen because Groningen famously has the higher cycling modal share of any city in the world. It's certainly worth seeing, but Groningen's high modal share is largely due to demographic factors (a huge student population). The cycling infrastructure in Groningen simply is not as developed as in Assen and on the study tours we've always used Groningen to illustrate problems that this causes.
I've covered a few times in the past how things didn't quite measure up in Groningen, and this is another of those blog posts, focusing this time on two newly built pieces of infrastructure which are not what they could have been.
A street which has been redesigned
For many years, one of the least pleasant roads to cycle along in Groningen has been Gedempte Zuiderdiep, especially in an Easterly direction. This road has a very strange layout, where the central "road" section is reserved for buses only while the part which looks like a cycle-path is actually for private cars as well.
Gedempte Zuiderdiep this afternoon. The car was going very slowly behind a cyclist, but this meant everyone had to go very slowly because "none shall pass".
Good drivers on Gedempte Zuiderdiep just get in the way. They catch up with a slow cyclist who they can't easily overtake and stay behind them, but this means the entire "cycle-path" is blocked so that everyone has to travel at the speed of the slowest cyclist. That's no way to make cycling convenient and attractive. Bad drivers toot and rev their engines and make close passes which is no way to make cycling safe and attractive.
The layout also places cyclists in the door zone of parked cars. It's simply not a good layout for anyone except bus drivers, who have the only smooth asphalt that any more of transport has: a lane all to themselves which they hardly use at all.
Now you might think that this obviously not very good design might be the subject of "a street which has been redesigned", but it's not. Instead, Groningen has instead copied this design elsewhere.
The newly rebuilt streets, A-Weg and Westerhaven, have a few changes, which are for the worst.
This time the car parking is on the opposite side of the cycle-path which does slightly reduce the likelihood of dooring but only at the expense of drivers having to look all the way through their cars (or vans which can't be seen through) to decide when to pull out, rather than only over their shoulder.
The surface is again tiled, but even though it's new it's already even more bumpy than the old layout in Gedempte Zuiderdiep.
There is no allowance for how actual bicycles go through corners. Ninety degree turns on the spot are required.
Pedestrian crossings have been eliminated
This street used to have a slightly too narrow, but smooth separate cycle-path. Recent re-work puts cyclists in this lane with cars.
The Google Streetview car caught an example of a driver going along slowly but a bit too close for comfort behind a cyclist, much as in my photo above. The gap to the left of the cyclist, especially with that forgiving kerb providing more space on the left, will lead to very tempting opportunities for a less cautious driver to overtake. In this photo you cab see how as you cycle over this bumpy service you have a very good view of the wonderfully smooth asphalt over on the left, which is reserved for buses only.
The surface is so bumpy that it doesn't even look flat in this photo. Though this is nearly new, it is already much worse to cycle over than the older example in Gedempte Zuiderdiep, and much worse than the old asphalt cycle-path which used to be here. Note that drivers are provided with forgiving kerbs to get into parking spaces but cyclists are not provided with the same luxury so that they can park easily outside shops.
Look at the details: Completed around September last year and it's already falling apart.
To turn into Westerhaven from A-Weg you have to make a left turn next to this incredibly sharp and tall rectangular kerb. This reduces the effective width of the turning to about half. You then get to cross a couple of lanes of bus only asphalt before again riding on a bumpy cobbled surface.
This is how the old Westerhaven looked. The asphalt cycle-path was of its time and a bit narrow, but it never had cars in it. It was in need of resurfacing and the better course of action would have been to widen at the same time to improve this already good design. Oh, and look at that pedestrian crossing. There are none of those in the new design.
Why has Groningen done this ? Why substitute cyclist (and pedestrian) unfriendly designs for old but serviceable designs which merely needed a slight upgrade. Does this city actually want people to cycle ?
The new fietssnelweg (high-speed cycling highway) which isn't quite good enough
We have many examples of very good cycle-paths in this area, but none of them were used as inspiration for the new fietssnelweg. Instead of a smooth surface, this new route (the first 3 km of a 30 km route) has 1500 permanently built in bumps along its length, and while at the moment they're not a total disaster, these bumps will only get worse with time. When there are many hundreds of very well designed cycle-paths in this area which have continuous and smooth concrete surfaces, why did Groningen instead choose a substandard method to construct the new flagship fietssnelweg cycle-route ?
This could have been so much better if a continuous concrete cycle-path had been created instead of using these separate sections with bumps in-between. Also that traffic light and then the speed bumps ? The routing seems sub-optimal.
As well as the substandard surface, courtesy of Easypath Nederland B.V (read more about it here), the new fietssnelweg also does not have optimal routing. The route which has been chosen requires cyclists to ride between house boats and the gardens which belong to those house boats. I don't think it will surprise anyone to learn that the residents are not especially happy. Would you let your child walk out of your door to play in the garden if they had to cross a motorway to get to that garden ?
Protests against the new fietssnelweg in October last year because residents of the house boats, unsurprisingly, feared the arrival of many high speed cyclists going along a path between their door and their garden, changing the character of what was a relatively quiet cycle-path. I've ridden along here a couple of times in the past but never really felt comfortable doing so because of the proximity of peoples' homes. The council apparently didn't foresee this conflict source
The 'solution' which Groningen seems to have come up with is to build speed bumps on the fietssnelweg to slow cyclists down, on a cycle-path whose whole reason to exist is to speed cyclists up. I saw one of these speed bumps under construction today:
I cycled along this path a couple of weeks ago. Today the path was blocked while cycle-path speed bumps were being constructed. I don't think this will address residents' issues. In my opinion the fietssnelweg would be better on this side of the canal rather than over there.
Did anyone think this through ? For many years I've used the existing good quality route on the other side of the canal to ride to Groningen. The straightness of the new concrete section shown in the video does save time over the relatively twisty route on the other side of the canal, but couldn't a straight path have been built on that side instead, or cyclists redirected to the other side before they reached the point where there would be conflict with the house boat residents ?
Those speed bumps in full. Not what a fietssnelweg ought to be made of
This first part of this fietssnelweg leading into Groningen and then within the city seems to have a lot of built-in problems for a flagship project.
And what happens at night time on the fietssnelweg ? There is lighting provided on the motorway for the convenience of drivers, but on the cycle-path we're completely on our own in darkness. This is really not a good example of prioritizing bikes.
On the tenth of February, a 63 year old employee of the Fokker aircraft company in Hoogeveen was seriously wounded at 7:30 in the morning while cycling to work as a result of a collision with a car driven by a 19 year. The next day, he passed away in hospital. Shortly afterwards, one of his colleagues contacted me and asked that I take a look at recent changes in and around Edisonstraat where the collision occurred.
Edisonstraat was redesigned a few years ago as part of an attempt to improve the flow of motor vehicles on the ring-road to the east of Hoogeveen, especially to benefit car commuters who had suffered from congestion in the past. Particularly of importance to this blog post, a main road through a mainly industrial area was re-aligned because traffic jams formed there. It is quite possible that the new design which resulted has met that primary aim, however for cyclists the new arrangement is undoubtedly less safe than before.
It would be unfair to say that cyclists were completely forgotten during the new works because fresh red asphalt cycle-paths are evidence of there having been some thought about those who cycle. However the quality of design for cyclists is poor. The end result is requiring cyclists to take a detour if they wish to remain safe, or to use roads which are more dangerous now then they used to be if they wish to make an efficient journey.
What's went wrong with Edisonstraat ?
The cycle-paths which used to run alongside Edisonstraat provided a direct route to work for many people in Hoogeveen. In particular, they led directly to and from one of the biggest employers, Fokker, at Edisonstraat 1. Not only did these cycle-paths offer a direct route for cyclists, they were had also proven to be extremely safe. There are no recorded incidents involving cyclists on the ongelukkenkaart.
Unfortunately, when main roads in this area were re-aligned to increase capacity for more motor vehicles the cycle-paths were removed along Edisonstraat leaving cyclists to have to ride on the road amongst motor vehicles.
Cyclists have little choice but to travel on the right side of right turning vehicles at this junction. That is the only way to reach the cycle-path which runs left-right in this photo
In addition, a roundabout which had a perfect safety record was removed and replaced by a junction which gives east-west traffic priority. A roundabout with consistent priority on each arm has been replaced by a square junction which gives cyclists priority across one arm, no priority across a third arm, and no crossing at all on the fourth arm. The roundabout particularly improved safety for cyclists because as drivers were made to divert from a straight line this naturally slowed the traffic. The new junction design encourages far higher speeds than before
Green line - original route. Red line - new route
The original direct north-south cycle-route has been replaced by a route which involves a detour and two sets of traffic lights. In a distance of just 200 m, these two sets of traffic lights can easily add more than a minute to journey times.
Unsurprisingly, there is evidence from tyre marks on the ground around the junction that many people on bikes avoid using the new longer route but find more direct routes which follow a line similar to the older faster route even if these are in some cases dangerous. It's clear from watching the way people use this road and junction that not just a few but many people choose not to take the suggested detour. Most of them do so by riding on the "wrong" side of the road across the junction following the route that I take in the last part of of the video above. Unfortunately, the new road design makes even this relatively dangerous.
The fatal collision occurred on a part of Edisonstraat where cycle-paths had been removed. If those cycle-paths had not been removed then the same collision could not have happened. Therefore it is very difficult to come to any conclusion which doesn't include removal of this safe cycling infrastructure as at the very least a contributory factor.
The blue line shows a possible relatively safe new route.
A new route should be constructed which restores safe cycling on the direct north-south line. This could be constructed on the west side of Edisonstraat. There is plenty of space. In addition, action needs to be taken at the new crossing to reduce traffic speeds and make crossing the road safer than it is now.
However my suggestion of restoring one of the cycle-paths only addresses some of the issues. Re-building the roundabout and restoring cycle paths on both sides of the road around that roundabout would be the best way of restoring the previous high level of safety in this location. Note that it is known that the design of roundabout which was used in Edisonstraat previously reduces the injury rate for cyclists by 87% over an un-signaled junction. Better examples of a similar roundabout design appear to be rather safer again, while this particular un-signaled junction has proven itself to be dangerous.
Old design vs. new design
Because this part of Edisonstraat is no longer the ring-road of Hoogeveen, it's clear that planners thought this meant it no longer required a cycle-path for safety. This has been disproven by unfortunate recent events. The road still carries a lot of through traffic from the industrial area of which it is a part. This includes many trucks as well as a lot of commuting traffic. The space where the cycle-paths used to exist has not been re-used for anything else and it would still be relatively easy to re-instate the cycle-path in order to make cycling safe once again on Edisonstraat.
In each case the top photo is the old situation and the bottom photo shows what exists now:
There's still plenty of space on both sides of the road for cycle-paths. Still plenty of traffic which cyclists would be better off avoiding.
The corner of Edisonstraat and Siemensstraat is a relatively good place for a cyclist priority crossing. Drivers will in any case already naturally slow down for the corner and this can be encouraged further by good crossing design with a raised table and obvious cyclist priority. There is plenty of space here to ensure good sight-lines.
Other obvious problems with the new design
Desire lines should not be ignored by planners. The huge number of tyre marks in the grass here show where people actually want to cycle, but the designer of this cycle-path has decided to send them on a detour instead.
Unfinished path edges and sharp corners on the path increase danger, especially at times with low visibility.
As they leave the city, riders of mopeds limited to 45 km/h are required to join the cycle-path at this point. Cycling infrastructure in rural areas should be suitable for moped speeds. The standard of design for moped infrastructure is often poor across the Netherlands. I don't believe it to be safe to leave a 50 km/h stream of traffic safely at this point and successfully negotiate these kerbs, narrow path and sharp corners at speed. Note that while the budget for this project didn't stretch to sufficiently safe cycling infrastructure, it does seem to have been adequate to pay for a house sized folly.
"Take care! Dangerous crossing".
Any junction which needs a sign like
this is not well designed. Note that the
signs were in place for at least a year
before the fatal collision occurred.
Safe road designs do not require warning signs
That those responsible for the new road and junction felt they had to install signs to tell people that it is dangerous does not inspire much confidence. Perhaps drivers might be careful when they first drive past such a sign, but human beings don't remain in a constant state of alertness over long periods of time. After a short time, signs like this simply become part of the scenery and are ignored.
Signs do not solve the root problem of a junction being of a dangerous design. The real solution for dangerous roads is to redesign the road, not to install signs.
Note that this new junction design is not only dangerous for cyclists, but for all road users. There have also been crashes between cars at this junction. However the consequences are always more serious when vulnerable road users come into contact with motor vehicles.
Good infrastructure design is important.
Bad cycling infrastructure design isn't merely an aesthetic problem. It's not something which matters only to fussy campaigners. Badly designed infrastructure kills people.
There are many aspects of what makes up good infrastructure, and nice new red asphalt is but one of them. An efficient direct route with an older surface is far more useful to a cyclist than a super smooth detour which is designed to look nice. Unfortunately, the new design in Hoogeveen scores well so far as minor issues are concerned (smooth red asphalt, countdown timers on traffic lights) but less well on the important issues (direct route, not waiting at traffic lights). Removing the existing direct and safe route by bike and replacing it with a choice of indirect and safe or direct and dangerous presents people with a choice which no-one should have to make. i.e. get to work on time vs. perhaps not get to work at all.
Never present a choice of efficient but dangerous vs. inefficient but safe. Everyone will find themselves tempted by the fast but dangerous route at some point in time. Usually cautious adults late for a meeting, reckless children fearful of arriving late at school, and anyone who simply gets fed up with extra delays will opt for the dangerous route. Design should always take real human behaviour into account. The path through the grass illustrates that not only is the more dangerous route popular, but also that the designed corner radii at the junction between cycle-paths is far too small.
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.
