Bus stop bike parking. Enormous need on weekdays, less on weekends. Mass parked bikes in The Netherlands are not "abandoned".

2006 situation at Marsdijk bus stop in Assen. Note old inferior
road crossing at the western side with traffic lights for bikes
which no longer exist. Courtesy Bing Maps.

When we first moved to Assen there was a lot of work taking place at the North of the city. A road was being rebuilt to provide better access by motor vehicle to the North and the cycle-path alongside was also being rebuilt to provide a far better route by bicycle to the North.

There was also work going on to provide more space for business in the same part of the city, so new office buildings were constructed

Google Maps image marked to show current day cycle-parking
in red. The new office building (blue spot) required extra
car parking. Overall there are fewer car parking spaces
now than in 2006, but far more bicycle parking spaces.
Note also the improved road crossing. Cyclists no longer stop

At the same time, the facilities for buses were being improved. The existing bus-stop which could take just one bus at a time was expanded into four bus stops. At the time, the cycle-parking for the bus stops was considerably enlarged as well.

The bus services from this stop have been successful and therefore because people cycle to this bus-stop, more cycle-parking was required.

The cycle-parking has been expanded since it was originally built by taking away car parking spaces. The full extent of cycle-parking now is as shown in the image where cycle-parking is highlighted in red. Some of this was built over spaces which had been constructed as car parking only a few years previously.

This bus stop is on the Study Tour route so we have shown it with varying amounts of cycle-parking to quite a few visitors to Assen. Because we always operate the tour on week days, the cycle-parking is usually full with bicycles which belong to commuters (you can catch a bus from here to Groningen or other towns and cities). However, if you visit the same location on the weekend, the cycle-parking is almost empty.

There is a persistent myth about how massed bikes at Dutch railway and bus stations are "abandoned" however this is not true. The rates of usage are enormous compared with other countries and actually the people who manage cycle-parks like this are very efficient at removing abandoned bikes so that legitimate users can find a space.

The video shows the same cycle-park both on a week day (Wednesday of the last Study Tour so some participants are in the video) and on a Sunday so that you can see the vastly different rate of use:


Click for bigger video
Explore the area on Google Maps:

Bigger map. Google Maps data currently dates from 2009 so does not show the most recent changes in the area. There's a bus lane here, but it is not combined with the cycle-path. I've never seen a combined bus and bike lane in the Netherlands.

There are hundreds of spaces here, and their presence demonstrates which you can't take bicycles on buses in The Netherlands. It's nice to be able to do so, but it only works if very few people use a bicycle to get to the bus stop. In The Netherlands you can't rely on that.

The long red building is both a football club and Chinese restaurant.

Update November 2013

This cycle parking was upgraded again in November. The parked bikes are now sheltered from the weather.

Today the September open Study Tour is viewing this bus stop amongst many other locations in Assen.

Central reservations enable cyclists and pedestrians to cross safely

Where cyclists or pedestrians must cross a road which is used by an appreciable number of motor vehicles, central reservations make a huge difference to safety. They allow the cyclist to cross just one stream of traffic at once, which is moving in one direction, before making a second decision from the centre of the road before crossing again.

Of course, such a reservation needs to be adequate in size. The crossing shown above, in a residential area in Assen by the local shops, allows two cyclists travelling in each direction to pass each other, and is long enough for a bicycle with trailer to stop safely in the middle. it also has a completely separate crossing for pedestrians, and of course both the cycle and pedestrian paths on both sides of the street. The speed limit for cars is 50 km/h (30 mph).

Here is another view of the crossing:

Open in Google Maps - note that cyclists don't suffer from a "pinch" effect due to cars because there are separate cycle-paths either side of the crossing.

When we first moved to Assen, there
was no central reservation at this
crossing. Image from a leaflet
explaining the change

This is an example of a crossing which works extremely well for cyclists, but it is not in any way an unusual or unique design. It's actually strikingly normal - there are so many crossings like this in Assen that I couldn't possibly count them. You need look no more than a hundred metres to the South from this one to find three more which are similar (see them here on Google Maps).

However, that this is very common doesn't imply that such crossings have existed forever. Actually, this one was retrofitted quite recently.

Back of the same leaflet
explaining what was
being done to improve
safety. Particularly
aimed at school children

Note five features on and around this crossing which make motorists slow down. Firstly, the shape of the crossing requires that motorists must decelerate and change course to go around it. Secondly, the width of the lanes either side of the central reservation is narrow which makes maneuvering difficult at speed. Thirdly, the road is narrow and there is no central white line. This makes motorists less sure of their position on the road and further reduces speed. Fourthly, the speed limit is 50 km/h (30 mph) on this street, which provides access, and 30 km/h (18 mph) on surrounding streets. Fifthly, there is also a pedestrian zebra crossing here for which motorists must stop if a pedestrian is crossing. Cyclists don't have priority in this case, but often receive it anyway.

The requirement that motorists have to swerve could be dangerous to cyclists due to a pinching effect if cyclists were on the street but because there are parallel cycle-paths on both sides of the street there is no danger at all.

See also videos showing the same crossing in use by hundreds of school children.

This can be seen as something which is easily "lost in translation" when implemented elsewhere because while the same concept might appear elsewhere, the implementation is completely different. For example, here's the same concept as implemented in Cambridge, UK:

Crossing of Madingley Road in Cambridge, UK. This is one of several roads in Cambridge which are unpleasant to cycle along and which can be difficult to cross safely by bicycle. We used to do this with our children, but this made us very much the exception as most people would not see this as a safe thing to do with their children. It's important for campaigners to realise that they are part of a self-selected group. Conditions like this are a reason why keen cyclists stop when they have children.

The example shown at the top of this blog post from Assen is on a relatively minor street with a slow speed limit and a significant but not enormous flow of vehicles. Those are the conditions in which  a crossing, if built to a high enough standard, can work well. However this Cambridge example is on a major arterial road, one of the busiest in Cambridge. This central reservation is too small in both dimensions. It does not slow traffic because the lanes either side of the reservation are too wide and it doesn't cause motor vehicles to change course, but the central reservation is also too narrow. Only one person can use it at a time and it can't be used if towing a trailer. It also doesn't feel safe because there is not much separation from high speed traffic. There's also no separate provision for pedestrians and neither pedestrians nor cyclists are prioritised at this crossing.

What's more, the speed limit here is much higher than that of the Assen example, at 40 mph (64 km/h) and this is a major arterial road into Cambridge so there are usually far more cars driving here than you find at the equivalent looking crossing in Assen.

When we crossed at this point with our children it was difficult to accompany them and cross the road safely. What's more, when I pulled a child trailer across this junction it didn't fit, so I had to make the crossing in one step.

It's an example of something extremely inadequate being installed in completely the wrong situation. The closest equivalents we have in Assen would be this or this.

Another view of the crossing of Madingley Road. It's similar to Huntingdon Road a little further North and many other roads in and around Cambridge. These are part of the reason why Cambridge's cycling is limited to a demographic group. View Larger Map

If your only reference to good infrastructure design comes from books, websites and looking at Google Maps, then it is very easy to misinterpret what is seen on the ground in the Netherlands. This is why it is important that planners from English speaking countries should see for themselves what good infrastructure actually looks like, and see it in the country which has the best standards. Referring only to what is in, for example, the UK can only result in copying from bad examples. It is to try to help to prevent this problem that we organise study tours.

See other examples of ideas "lost in translation", enabling of crossing the road, and perhaps most important, examples of what works in the Netherlands.

Two views of the school run in Assen

Two views of the school run in Assen videoed by people who came on the CEoGB study tour.

I think it's worth pointing out that motorists have priority over cyclists at the crossing. However, the occasional toots you hear are from drivers indicating to cyclists that they can cross:

David Arditti.

Joe Dunckley.

If you start the first video, wait 25 seconds and then start the second, then you'll see two views of the same scene synchronized.

This is what it looks like when cyclists truly don't come second best to drivers. This is what it looks like when there are genuinely "safe routes to school". This is what the Netherlands looks like forty years after the Stop de Kindermoord campaign fought for the safety of children.

Compare with the chaos that still exists in the road where we lived in Cambridge.

To book a study tour, click here.

Integrated Transport

We hear a lot about integrated transport, but what does it mean ? I've always assumed this referred to being able to switch between modes as convenient. So, it's useful if train stations and bus stations are in the same place. It's also rather useful if you can leave your bike somewhere sensible if you wish to take a train or bus.

This is done wonderfully well in the Netherlands. In virtually every town, the train station is located in the same place as the bus station. There is also nearly always a bicycle shop including cycle hire of two kinds - OV-fiets (public transport bike) for regular commuters to take each day they arrive in the city and the regular kind for people who just rarely hire bikes and want one for a few days when visiting.

You'll also find plenty of cycle parking at the railway stations, and also at bus-stops in town - the bikes shown in the picture are at a large bus-stop in a residential part of Assen - and even at bus-stops out in the country.

The same large bus stop on google maps streetview:

Grotere kaart weergeven
And as seen from above:

Click to see on Google Maps Since this blog post was written, more car parking spaces have been converted into cycle-parking. The greenish area in the centre top of this image and the cars parked to the top left of that area are now areas of extra cycle-parking.

For more examples of ample bicycle parking so that bikes can be used with other forms of transport see my videos of cycle parking at Assen Station and at Groningen Station, or see all the Integrated Transport, bus, Cycle Parking or Commuting stories.

There are also some examples of parking on the photos page.