The Bike is King (and Queen) in The Netherlands

Following up on my earlier post "Making Cycling Easy - the Dutch Experience", I wanted to share more of my experience biking in The Netherlands. The Dutch have created their bike-friendly culture through years of prioritization of the bicycle as a mode of transport and accordingly have invested time and funding in this philosophy to make it a reality. The same can happen here in Arlington. Building the cycle tracks, bike lanes, 4-story bike parking garages, etc. is the easy part. The hard part is changing the mindset to allow it to exist.

The street scene below of a typical rural neighborhood in The Netherlands depicts this philosophy quite well. The street is narrow so it's designed to allow for bike lanes (in red and striped) on the outer portions of the street with one lane in the center for motor vehicle traffic. With the two bike lanes and one motor vehicle lane, it's a strong statement towards who gets priority on this street.

When two motor vehicles approach each other, they pass each other by both driving with half their vehicle in the center lane and the other half in the bike lane on their side of the street. However, when a cyclist is in a bike lane and two motor vehicles are approaching each other, the motorist moving in the same direction as the cyclist must wait behind the cyclist until the other motor vehicle has passed. Then the motorist may pass the cyclist in the center lane.

The suburban street below is wider and has more traffic of both motor vehicles and cyclists. By separating the cyclists from the motorists with a green buffer, it's creating an environment that most individuals on a bike would feel comfortable with as they don't have the noise, heat, dust, and fear of a motorist passing close to them at 30 mph. Below, cyclists are protected from motor vehicles with a soft buffer filled with trees and grasses.

We can learn a lot about how to recreate our transport networks in our cities, suburbs, and rural areas from the Dutch. We can also create healthier communities, limit obesity, and decrease carbon emissions at the same time.

Paul DeMaio, BikeArlington

Comments

[David]

May I live to see this before I die of old age.

[Dave Reid]

It great to see different ideas on road design to support cyclists. The street that appears too narrow for two-way traffic I'm sure would scare a lot of engineers but it likely really slows traffic.