Eliminating the risk of "Dooring": Good cycle infrastructure design keeps cyclists out of the door zone and saves lives

Alberto Paulon is the second cyclist in the image. The collision happened  few video frames after this image. Read more about the incident here and here.

A few days ago on a road in Melbourne Australia a car door was opened. Alberto Paulon was cycling past the car at the time. He collided with the door, fell into the path of a truck and, sadly, he died. This tragedy could and should have been avoided.

Injuries and deaths due to "dooring" incidents are common around the world. Such incidents are sometimes viewed as an unfortunate side-effect of cycling, a problem requiring driver and/or cyclist education. Cyclists should not be under constant threat of death depending on how they position themselves on roads. There is no reason for roads to be designed in such a way that danger results from mistakes by their users when they could be designed to reduce the chance of mistakes becoming tragedies.

Door zone collisions can be almost entirely eliminated by changing the design of roads. This blog post illustrates how that can be done.

What's wrong with Sydney Road, Melbourne ?
The road on which this incident happened is in the Brunswick area of Melbourne, which has a high rate of cycling for an Australian city. Unfortunately, while the people who live in and use the shops in this area cycle quite frequently, the road is designed to serve those who are passing through in motor vehicles and no proper separate space has been found to keep cyclists safe.

A twenty-one metre wide road is more than wide enough to allow cycling in safety, and more than wide enough to provide cycling facilities which are free from the "door zone" problem. However this will require making a choice of what the purpose is of Sydney Road.

Is the purpose of Sydney Road to provide a route for trams, for motor cars and trucks or is it a local shopping street. While there is an attempt to make this road serve all types of users it is likely that it will not serve any of them well. Cyclists are amongst the most vulnerable users of any road and therefore amongst those users most likely to be injured or killed as a result of inadequate infrastructure.

A narrower road in Assen is much safer for cycling
The photos below come from Groningerstraat in Assen. Groningerstraat is a through road of approximately 18 metres wide. This makes it three metres narrower than Sydney Road in Melbourne. Despite its relative narrowness, Groningerstraat provides a very high quality environment in which to cycle. It's very convenient and also very safe. Dooring is almost impossible in Groningerstraat.

Layout of Groningerstraat. 18 m in total are divided between 1.8 m wide pedestrian paths, 2.2 m wide unidirectional cycle-paths, 2.8 m wide lanes for motor vehicles leaving space for green buffers, drainage and car parking. Thanks to Streetmix.

Safe, sociable side-by-side cycling is possible in both directions along Groningerstraat.

Car parking alternates from one side to the other along the length of the road. The pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is constant.

Angled "forgiving" kerbs are used so that a cyclist who makes a mistake and collides with the kerb will simply mount the pavement and continue for a while rather than being injured. Note that in this photo the cyclists shown are riding racing bicycles. It was taken during one of several large racing events which take place in Assen. Racing cyclists use cycle-paths in the Netherlands because there is no advantage to riding on the roads.

The drain provides a gap between parked cars and the cycle-path. It provides a significant part of the total space required to open a car door. In any case, the cycle-path is wide enough that two people can pass an open door side-by-side in safety. If there are more than two side-by-side then cyclists can mount the forgiving kerb should they have to. Remember that in the Netherlands it is usual to ride on the right so most people wouldn't come close to a car door and in any case there is no risk of falling in front of a motor vehicle if they crash for any reason.

There are several reasons why cycle-paths in this position do not create a dooring risk.

1. It is normal in the Netherlands to cycle on the right, and that places an individual cyclist as far away as possible from parked cars as they are passed. If you live in a "drive on the left" country like the UK you need to reverse this image.
   
2. The drain / buffer between parked cars and the cycle-path is wide enough for a significant proportion of the total car door side.
3. The cycle-paths are of a width which allows two cyclists passing side-by-side to very easily pass an open door in safety.
4. If a cyclist swerves away from the car then they may meet the kerb between the cycle-path and the pavement, but this is an angled "forgiving" kerb over which it is possible to cycle in safety so swerving won't result in injury.
5. The Netherlands is a left hand drive country. Therefore doors of cars parked in the conventional direction (the blue car above is parked against the flow) will most frequently be opened on the opposite side of the car from the cycle-path.
6. This is residential parking, not business parking. Therefore car movements are less frequent and car doors opened less often.
7. It is possible for cyclists to swerve, stop or even crash without any danger of being run into by a motor vehicle. This means that the very worst outcomes are avoided because riding straight into a car door won't result in a secondary collision involving another motor vehicle - the cause of the death in Melbourne.

Subjective safety principles require designing roads so that they are easy to use and forgiving of mistakes. These principles are credited with reducing the rate of injury and death on Dutch roads.

Other Dutch examples

A through road in Groningen with shops on both sides. Layout is similar to Groningerstraat, but this older example doesn't have a forgiving kerb or a gap between parked cars and the cycle-path. In-between parked cars there is additional danger to cyclists due to the metal posts shown above. Such posts should never be used to separate cycle-paths from roads. On colliding with such a post, a cyclist will almost certainly fall and that fall could be onto the road where a secondary collision with a motor vehicle is likely.

A cycle-lane in from Assen. Cycle-lanes present a greater dooring danger to cyclists than a cycle-path for several reasons: 1. A cyclist who rides into an opened door can fall in front of a moving vehicle. 2. dooring is more likely because every car has a driver, who sits on the side of the vehicle next to the cycle-lane, while only some cars have passengers (average occupancy being around 1.2). On-road cycle-lanes are not good cycling infrastructure. In this case there are factors which reduce the risk. A 0.5 m buffer between parked cars and the cycle-lane offers some space for a door to open and the 2 metre width of the cycle-lane offers some swerving space for cyclists. Narrower cycle-lanes without a gap between car and lane are far more risky. Also note that these cars are parked next to residences. Therefore they do not move so frequently as they would if parked by shops. At this location it's also of note that the motor vehicle lanes are just 2.8 m wide. This is wide enough for all vehicles, with careful design ensuring that it works even through pinch points.

This road leads through villages south of Assen, providing a safe route for cyclists to the city and beyond. Approximately 1 km of the route is shown in the video. On the other side of this road there is a canal. It would make no sense at all for cyclists to have to cross the road in order to ride in the opposite direction to that which I'm riding in so a bidirectional cycle-path is provided on one side only. This is older infrastructure so not ideal in several ways (narrow for a bidirectional path, not always a smooth surface) but it functions well and provides another example of how to deal with on-road parking and entrances.
Cyclist injuries are rising across the English speaking world

Tracey Gaudry from the Amy Gillett Foundation is quoted in the ABC news story as saying that The road toll is decreasing across the country on the whole except for bicycle riders. So what is happening is that the work that is being done to protect occupants of motor vehicles, not enough is being done to protect vulnerable road users, including bike riders." The same is true across most English speaking countries because while there has been a rise in the numbers of people cycling, there has not been any significant improvement in the safety for cyclists.

The blue line shows a clear rise
in cyclist injuries in the UK.

I have long been of the opinion that the concept of "safety in numbers" is a myth. Recent increases in injuries where the cycling infrastructure has not been improved would appear to confirm this (for example, recent statistics from the UK). The Netherlands has the best cyclist safety record in the world because the infrastructure is designed in a way which reduces the chance of cyclists being involved in collisions which could result in injury or death. Countries which do not follow this lead

Click here for details of the study tours.

Lots of "Sydney Roads", not many "Groningerstraats"
Many roads across the world have the same problem as does Sydney Road in Melbourne. Many of them could be improved by following the same engineering principles as are demonstrated above. On the other hand, there are relatively few roads like Groningerstraat in which these principles can be demonstrated. That is why this road has featured on our study tours since it was rebuilt in 2007.

Groningerstraat also demonstrates other examples of good design, such as an extremely safe and convenient traffic light junction and a very well designed and safe side-road crossing. Assen has many examples of good infrastructure which extend well past this one road. To see and learn from these and other examples of good design as well as to have problems caused by bad designs pointed out, book a study tour.

The "Dutch Reach" ?
What has become known as the "Dutch Reach" is the idea of teaching drivers that they should open car doors with the hand furthest from the door in order that they turn and have a better chance of noticing cyclists. This is claimed to reduce the incidence of dooring. It may indeed have a small effect, but it's mostly a distraction. The "Dutch Reach" is not the main thing which keeps cyclists safe from being injured by cycling into car doors in the Netherlands.  The main thing which keeps cyclists safe is the design of infrastructure which makes dooring nearly impossible. That is what is described above.

There is a campaign in Melbourne which has been calling for a cycle-path along Sydney Road for some time.

London. 42 years behind and counting. The revolution still hasn't started.

Two years have now passed since London's cycling "czar", Andrew Gilligan, told the world that his city was 40 years behind Amsterdam.

London's mayor, Boris Johnson, has now been in power for more time than it took to transform the entirety of the Netherlands for cycling, with no substantial progress occurring under his time in office. London's record on achieving press coverage is phenomenal. There has been a lot of noise made in London about cycling. Unfortunately, actual building of well-designed infrastructure is another thing altogether.

According to London's plans from two years ago, the peak year of expenditure is 2015. Yes, this is it. What does not get done in 2015 has less chance of being done later. This is the year when expenditure on cycling reaches its peak of £18 per person per year. That's about 2/3 of the usual Dutch level of expenditure. For the other years of the plan the expenditure level will be less than £10 per person per year, under 1/3 of the Dutch level. As I pointed out two years ago, the plans simply were not ambitious enough. London can never 'catch up' with the Netherlands by spending only a third as much for a limited period of time. Perhaps this is why the target in London is for a mere 5% of journeys to be made by bike.

A selection of proposals from last year
Sadly, proposals for new infrastructure in London remain inadequate. Here are a selection of those which I've seen over the last year.

Dangerous central cycle-lane leading into advanced stop boxes (including one in the fourth lane over). That's not cycling infrastructure, it's yet more paint.

How many lanes and places to cross ? Why ? This proposal was praised in some quarters as at least including some segregation of modes. What it actually does is demonstrate that the designers don't understand that bicycles are not the same as cars. Cyclists don't need extra traffic lights which apply only to them, they should be able to avoid traffic lights in order to make cycling journeys faster.

"Gobsmackingly bonkers". More ASLs, on-road lanes and the addition of a cycle-path which for some reason goes straight through the middle of a roundabout. Safe roundabouts for cyclists look entirely different to this idea.

The "cycle waiting bay". A bizarre idea. How many people actually want special places where they can wait beside the road before continuing their journey rather than infrastructure which allows them to complete their journeys both safely and efficiently ?

'Advanced' lights, on-road lanes, multi-colour cycling facilties, dangerous multi-stage turns.

Update May 2015: One that I'd missed which is so awful in design that it really must be listed here. A redesign for Queen's Circus Battersea roundabout which is actually under construction. In some places this has been described as "Dutch", but it's very far from any real design for a Dutch roundabout. This junction is also far too busy for a Dutch roundabout design so in the Netherlands this junction would in fact use traffic lights instead. As we can see form the photo, traffic lights are actually installed, so this won't flow freely like a roundabout. I'm assured that the cycling infrastructure under construction is actually narrower than that shown in the picture.
Update July 2015: Watch a video which demonstrates this roundabout in action. Enormously long delays for cyclists, combined with red jumping by drivers which puts cyclists in danger even after they've waited for a green light.

The ludicrous ideas

London's "Skycycle". It doesn't actually
exist of course and hopefully never will
because this is neither convenient nor
affordable.

Of course we've not only seen lacklustre plans like those above, but also completely preposterous ideas. Cycle paths were proposed both in the sky and below ground, both of course far more expensive and less convenient places to put cycling infrastructure than where sensible people have been requesting it - ground level.

But why stop there ? The Bounceway offered the intriguing idea of trampolining to work, backed by a grant from Transport for London to a company which went bankrupt shortly afterwards.

There was also a proposal for a bridge full of trees over the Thames which it may or may not be possible to cycle over. Update 2018: Note that this proposal, which consisted of almost nothing when I wrote the previous sentence, turned into the "Garden Bridge" project, which was cancelled without anything being built but through a fantastic degree of mismanagement still consumed 46 million pounds.

Discussing these things has wasted many hours of many peoples' time, detracting from focus on what the city should really be doing. It all demonstrates that London is still missing the big picture.

What London should really be doing
The lacklustre but serious proposals demonstrate that those working on road designs in London simply do not understand how to create good quality cycling infrastructure. The crazy ideas demonstrate something else: that those in charge don't know what to ask for.

What London needs to do now is exactly what the city has needed to do for the last 42 years:

Quietly get on with building a high quality grid of cycling routes to every destination and which absolutely everyone can use

Cycling doesn't need buzzwords. press releases, mocked up pictures which show inadequate plans or exaggerated claims. Cycling in London doesn't need people on the other side of the planet to be told about things that you might get around to doing in the future. Stop putting so much effort into trying to get good press and far too little into achieving results.

Length of headlines is far less important than length of cycle-path. The actual need of cyclists to be able to ride from wherever they live to wherever they need to go should not take a very poor second place to appearing to do the right thing to the world's press.

London has started to use the language of a grid, though they've misunderstood the intention. What is required is a very fine grid. To try again to make it clear, I'll explain how it is from my home in the Netherlands. I have to ride for just 30 seconds along 30 km/h residential streets with no through traffic (we live in a cul-de-sac - a design of street which naturally reduces through traffic) to reach either of two very high quality cycle-paths (this one and this one) which between them provide me with an efficient and safe route to every possible destination in the whole country. This is nothing special - it's normality in the Netherlands. What's more, the cycle-paths making up the majority of the grid are built to an extraordinarily high standard and maintaining the integrity of even small parts of the grid can require some surprisingly large works. This is what leads to the very high degree of subjective safety required to make cycling attractive to everyone.

Click here for details. We'd be very happy to
show TfL people what is actually required
in order to help to prevent them from making
further mistakes

Another concept which appears to have been misunderstood on its journey across the North Sea is that of unravelling of cycling routes from driving routes. London's "Quietways" are implied to mean something similar, but the emphasis is completely wrong. Rather than cyclists having direct main routes, they are given back streets. What's more, London's "Quietways" cannot even be expected to be quiet. This simply isn't good enough to effect mass cycling.

Where cycle-paths cannot be fitted along narrow streets, unravelling removes motor traffic so that even the youngest of cyclists can get right to their destinations in the Netherlands.

We'd like to help London to do the right thing, but this is only possible if the city will let us help.

Where the money goes
2015 is to be the peak year for investment in cycling in London. However this doesn't mean that the figure of "£18 per head" allocated only for this year can be spent on new infrastructure projects in the city. It can't be spent in that way because their are already many other things for which the funds have been pre-allocated. One of the largest sinks for money is the public bike hire scheme in London.

I visited London just over a year ago
Cyclists still look like this and there
are good reasons why that is so.

London is building public fountains rather than providing running water to every home. One of those "fountains" is the bike share system. I've been pointing out why bike share systems are not really a solution for mass cycling since 2009.

Five years ago we discovered that London's hire bikes had already cost £23000 per bike, making them the most expensive bikes in the world. Operating costs for the system remain very high at around £24 M per year. This figure is around 1/6th of the total funding available for the peak year of 2015 and more than 1/3rd of that for other years, greatly reducing how much money is left over to spend on infrastructure which could enable everyone to cycle.

Londoners owned more than a million bikes before the bike hire scheme started. A lack of bicycles was never the reason and is still not the reason why so few journeys are made by bicycle in London. The problem was and remains a lack of truly safe places to ride a bike.

Does London have unique journeys ?

Londoners use their cars for almost
 exactly the same purposes as the Dutch
use their bicycles

People often imagine that their own cities have problems which don't exist in the Netherlands and that this makes it more difficult to accommodate cycling. That really does not apply to London. Londoners makes the same journeys as Dutch people, both by length of journey and for purpose. However rather than making these journeys by bicycle, Londoners use other means including the car.

Attractive, safe, go-everywhere cycling
infrastructure is missing from London

Travelling by bicycle is not attractive in London now because of the conditions which people face on the streets of the city scare the masses away. We already know how to attract everyone to cycling.

There's a very good working example of what truly works a few kilometres to the East of London and I'm very happy to demonstrate it to anyone who is interested.

It's important to stop over-selling what London has done
Unfortunately, the over-selling of London doesn't only affect the UK. Hype from London spreads around the world. This leads to people in such places as Tokyo and Belgium seeing London as an inspiration - and therefore looking most firmly in the wrong direction rather than seeking to emulate best practice.

New funding announcement
Some readers may be aware that the British government announced extra funding for cycling two days ago. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the extra funding announced is far too low a figure to make a real difference. In order to match the Dutch level of expenditure, the UK needs to spend more than £2 Billion pounds per year on cycling, but all that has been promised is £114 milion spread across four years and only available to be spent in some areas of the country.

How the DfT illustrates their funding
claim. It's a long way from what Dutch
children look like when they cycle.

The latest announcement follows a familiar pattern by using big and impressive sounding numbers in a way that may well confuse readers so that they think that cycling is being funded well. In reality even the largest number in the announcement ("This brought the total investment in cycling by this government to £588 million") reveals a paucity of ambition. That £588 Million spread across the five year life of the present government leaves us with British government funding for cycling which is still at a rate which is only around 1/16th of that required to match Dutch levels of expenditure. This level of funding does not represent an improvement over the early 1990s when cycle funding already hovered around one pound per person per year.

Read more about the Deputy Prime
Minister's cycling revolution.

The Deputy Prime Minister claims that Britain is "in the midst of a cycling revolution". This is the sort of language which we have heard many times before, and also claims that "this money can help Britain become a cycling nation to rival the likes of Denmark and the Netherlands". It's simply not possible for Britain to begin to rival countries which are decades ahead in cycling until the government takes cycling seriously. Far from proving that the government has begun to do that, this announcement actually proves that cycling is still not being taken seriously in the UK so we should expect a continuation of cycling at a rate of around 1-2% of journeys.

You can't catch up by running slower than the people who are ahead of you. The UK's cycling decline took decades of under-investment and to make cycling normal once again requires decades of a high level of investment.

Britain last week
I was in Britain last week to visit family. While there, Sustrans called on people to celebrate 20 years of the National Cycle Network so I dutifully borrowed a bike to ride along roads which are far busier than they should be in such a small town in order to take photos.

NCN 33 wiggle onto a muddy beach.
If the tide is in, what then ?, swim ?
We're supposed to #celebrate20 this ?

What passes for the National Cycle Network in this part of the UK consists of several signs threatening a £500 fine to anyone who dared to ride on a wide pavement to avoid the traffic, followed by a very small and out of the way sign telling people to ride on the pavement for a short distance, and then an inconvenient wiggle down onto a beach which has mud so sticky that one of the world's very few hovercraft rescue services was established in the area to pull people out of it.

Celebrate what, precisely ? This is not the efficient go-everywhere cycling infrastructure required to get the masses to see cycling as convenient.

I also visited a new housing development which was repeating the same mistakes as other new developments in the UK. i.e.it was designed only for cars, but with the twist of providing so little space for cars that there's nowhere to park them but over the pavements. In order to convince people to use alternatives to driving, the alternative must be realistic. Carrots work better than sticks.

The same mistakes are being repeated time and time again in the UK.

Update March 22 2015
London has "quietly" abandoned the target of a 5% modal share for cycling by 2026, leaving no real target for growth at all. It's perhaps worth reflecting on what I wrote about this target two years ago:

'setting a target of only around 5% of journeys by bike is not very ambitious at all. Nowhere in the Netherlands has such a low modal share and Britain has been promised more than this before. The lack of a serious target shows that this is not a real attempt to "catch up".'

Now that even that lacklustre target has been abandoned, what now for London ?

The video below shows current cycling conditions in London. For three seconds starting at 1:06 you can actually see a brand new cycle-lane which was opened just a few days ago. Yes, it lasts just three seconds on the video. A 5% cycling modal share will remain beyond London until there are real changes to the infrastructure. No quantity of press releases and no amount of training will ever cause the population as a whole to cycle on streets which look like this:



Update July 2015
Andrew Gilligan has used the spectre of "fending off" myself and other "people like that" as an excuse not to be available to the public on social media, particularly through Twitter.

Readers may remember that I've actually offered to help London on many occasions. Invitations were first sent in 2005 before our first study tour in 2006. They were sent again, to Boris Johnson, in 2008. Since that time I've offered study tours free of charge to Boris Johnson on two occasions: Once in 2011 and then again in 2013. Note that only the second offer dates to the first offer dates back to well before Andrew Gilligan started work in London. The second free invitation was extended to him as well as to his boss, Boris Johnson.

I don't offer to work for free for no reason. I did so because I genuinely wanted to help and I did not want the cost of the tour to be in any way a reason for London not to send representatives.

We have still had no official contact with either Andrew Gilligan or Boris Johnson. Not even a proper acknowledgment of our invitation having been received. It is disappointing that Andrew prefers to try to discredit me by slighting me as he did at the Hackney Cycling Conference rather than engage with me and my genuine attempt to help London's authorities to improve conditions for the people who live in the city.

As I pointed out over a year ago, London's (and the UK in general's) lack of interest in tackling cycling is killing people. People die every day, either from their lack of exercise due to driving or from the danger on the roads due to traffic. It's an ongoing emergency situation.

My postal vote for the UK to remain in the EU was
posted a few days ago - with a bicycle stamp upon it ;-)
Sadly, this was sent to me so late that it was probably not
counted, so I could not help the country avoid catastrophe.

Update June 2016
Boris Johnson is no longer the mayor of London. He is now leading a campaign for the UK to leave the EU and he has ambitions to become the prime minister of the UK. Please remember that this is the same BJ who was "fired from The Times in 1988 for fabricating a quotation" and who made his name by taking an extreme euro-skeptic position, inventing many of the ridiculous myths about the EU which have since been comprehensively busted.

Note: Most of the invitations which I've sent to London were sent before Andrew Gilligan started working at the city in 2013 and before I joined Twitter in 2011. The idea that Andrew Gilligan should particularly be concerned that I'd contact him through Twitter is patently absurd.

Street design hostile to cycling. The Citadel development and Jan Fabriciusstraat in Assen are examples of a greater Dutch malaise

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.

1. Current Dutch recommendations call for a 2 to 2.5 metre width for on-road cycle-lanes, and an absolute minimum when space is tight of 1.7 metres. But these lanes on a very wide road with much traffic are just 1.3 metres in width.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Rather than progress, what is being proposed here is a return to the policy of 50 years ago when cycle-paths were being removed from Dutch cities to make space for more cars. Like most cities, Assen fought these mistakes in the 1970s and 1980s and recovered from this mistake.

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 ?

"Assen Cycles". As recently as 2005,
Assen had a real ambition to increase
cycling Where's that ambition now?

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.

The Netherlands still leads the world in cycling and Assen still has better infrastructure on average than most other Dutch cities. That's why we live here. There are plenty of good examples of infrastructure here as well as the less good and we show both of these on the study tours.

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".

I don't write blog posts about the newest unproven infrastructure or regurgitate press releases which claim improvements in safety which are not confirmed by actual data. I caution against assuming that everything Dutch is worth emulating because it is only by copying from and improving on the best examples in the Netherlands that real progress can be made elsewhere. The best examples are not necessarily the newest, and they are usually not the most well publicized either.

Come and see

Click right here for more details.

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.

The end of free car parking in Assen city centre and how this has caused problems for cyclists

Veemarktterrein a few years ago. Not full, but quite a lot of cars were parked here.

For many years, the Veemarktterrein a few hundred metres east of Assen city centre offered free car parking. Anyone could park their car here for as long as they wanted free of charge. The attraction of free parking wasn't enough to make people drive when they had a better alternative so though it was free of charge, this car park almost always had spaces in it. This area on the edge of the city had a valuable benefit for cyclists because it helped to keep cars out of the city centre streets.

The same car-park this week on market day. The cars haven't disappeared - they are now driven further into the city causing consequences for cyclists.

The policy on car parking changed at the beginning of this year. A charge of €1.30 per hour was imposed for parking in this previously free car park, with a limit of €5 per day. At the same, car parks in the city centre which were already the cheapest in the Netherlands had their maximum charge halved to just €6 per day. The result of this policy is that the out of town centre car park is no longer attractive to drivers so they continue right into the city and use multi-storey car parks which were previously often largely empty.

The result is many more cars are driven into the centre of Assen and this causes more conflict between motorists and cyclists.


The crossing of Het Kanaal at the Venebrug is not signalled and is shared with pedestrians. This is one of the locations where there are now more problems due to more cars

The inner ring road is shown as a red line. The previously
free of charge car park is the green area on the right. Blue
squares show the locations of car parks which have
been made more popular by the change in policy.
Note how these are close to red spots: points identified
as dangerous to cyclists in the Fietsverkeernota 2005.

The Inner Ring Road has been made more dangerous
Because the city centre car parks are reached by driving along the inner ring-road, extra motor traffic is being generated along the streets which make up the ring.

Locations along this route have long been known to be problematic for cyclists. Several of them were pointed out as being dangerous to cyclists and in need of improvement by the Fietsverkeernota of 2005.

Locations where there are now more cars and more danger for cyclists include the following. Where there are links below, further information can be found about problems in those locations:

1. The Kerkplein Shared Space
2. Weierstraat outside De Nieuwe Kolk
3. The difficult left turn from Weierstraat into Minervalaan
4. The crossing of Nobellaan by Het Kanaal
5. Crossings of Het Kanaal
6. Jan Fabriciusstraat
7. The junction of Stationstraat and Oostersingel
8. Zuidersingel

"Parking in demand - Gemeente Assen policy bearing fruit"
But also see the next headline on the same topic

Update 2016

The result of encouraging drivers to bring their cars further into Assen is now known. There's been an attempt to spin this as success, but actually it's no such thing. The change in policy is not good for cyclists, drivers, shop owners or the local economy.

Two articles appeared in the same February issue of one of our local newspapers. I've reproduced them both here.

"Income reduced - cars park for less time"

It is true that drivers now use the paid for parking spaces more often than before, but this has actually resulted in a fall in income for these garages because drivers now stay for shorter periods in order to avoid paying.

What is happening is that people drive to the supermarket, pick up a card allowing them to park for free for three quarters of an hour and then they do their best to avoid overstaying such that they have to pay more. Fewer people now drive to Assen, use the free parking, and remain for the entire day.

The result of this is that local shops other than the supermarkets have almost certainly lost customers due to the change in policy.

Overall results:

1. Local government has lower income than before
2. Drivers are annoyed because parking is no longer free
3. Cyclists are annoyed and endangered because more cars come to the central streets.
4. Local businesses have fewer customer

No-one has actually benefitted.