There's More to Dutch Roads Than You Think
There are five key ingredients that go into making Dutch Roads. Can you guess them?
Chapters
0:00 Intro SAVE THE EARS
3:25 The Traffic Law
7:35 The CROW&SWOV
10:02 The Responsibility of Safety
13:25 Dutch Environmental Laws
16:05 Polderpolitiek
Sources
Toronto’s Protected Intersection
www.cp24.com/news/part-of-tor...
Dutch Fatalities Per Year
theseus.swov.nl/single/?appid...
EU Safety Statistics
ec.europa.eu/commission/press...
The WegenVerkeersWet 1994 (The Road and Traffic Law)
wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR000662...
RVV 1990 (Dutch Traffic Code)
wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR000482...
CROW Technical Library
kennisbank.crow.nl/kennismodule
PM10
rac.com.au/home-life/info/air...
PM10 Health Effects
www.marlborough.govt.nz/envir...
Dutch Law on Air Pollution
wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR000324...
Dutch Law on Noise Pollution
www.atlasleefomgeving.nl/them...
Credit to other Creators
Toronto Intersection Rendering,
• Bloor Street Reconstru...
Copenhagen&Freiburg Footage,
Not Just Bikes
• Copenhagen is Great .....
• Germany's "Green" City...
Leipzig Footage,
Adam Something
• Germany's Secret Cycli...
Stroomweg Footage,
Not Just Bikes
Bicycle Crossing Footage,
• Gevaarlijke fietsovers...
Dutch Polder,
• Hoe maak je een polder?
The Dutch way of road design started with public pressure. When I was a kid in the Netherlands in the 1970s, there were massive protests to make the roads more safe for cyclists and pedestrians. There were also car-free Sundays when the oil crisis hit and the country slowly started rethinking the role of cars in public spaces.
Auto-loze-zondag, m'n moeder heeft tijdens een auto-loze-zondag op de snelweg gelopen vertelde ze me vroeger een keer
Why ''more safe'' instead of ''safer''? English has comparative forms. Use them.
@@CpmSam BS -> those 'Auto-loze-zondag' (no one was allowed to drive on sunday to safe fuel) were there because of the 70's oil crisis!
@@MA-ck4wuone: 🤓👆 Two: he’s DUTCH not an native English speaker , so shut up
@@TvTToasted Dude, I'm a native speaker of Dutch. That's not an excuse. We have these same forms: veilig -> veiliger, groot -> groter. You're the type of person that stops learning as soon as they turn 20 years old. Get outta here.
Thanks for making the point at 2:20. Many people still forget that the Netherlands is not leading just because of the quality of the infrastructure, but because of how incredibly consistent it is
It's weird how often it's said that " has great cycling infrastructure!" while it's just *one* city, constrained to the urban area of that city, while in the Netherlands you can go to any backwater town and it's consistently great for cyclists - even the rural interconnecting roads have dedicated cycling lanes.
And even when a non-dutch city has "good bike infrastructure", it's not evenly good. You get a good bike lane here and/or there, but like. A left turn? In Copenhagen? Do you _want_ to die? And they don't seem to have noticed that the most dangerous thing is when a car and a bike share space, so when cars need a right turn lane the bike lane just dumps you into that. Where now a car might want to turn right, while you're still waiting for green. NOT TO MENTION how car culture tells learner drivers to block cyclists from moving to the front where at least they'll be packed together and somewhat safer. God Forbid you need to cross the road where there isn't a dedicated traffic light. And NEVER. In the history of EVER have I seen civil engineers look at a round about. And go "You know what, having cyclists have right of way blocks the traffic flow here. So how's about we take the cyclist crossing *OFF OF THE ROUNDABOUT* so now all cyclists who need to go straight have to stop in the middle of the bike path, look 180* in the back of their head to see if there's oncoming cars. Get back on their bikes and be sitting ducks as a pig transport trailer tries to leave the town with 50km/h." Fucking hate that roundabout.
@@ikt32 yeah, and our national parks have whole networks of bicycle lanes, with taverns only reachable by bike (like Carolinahoeve in Rheden). If you live away you park your car at the edge of the park, load off your bikes and go. All networks connect, the whole country is a mesh of bike lanes, like you say. It's used for both daily transport and for recreation. The latest thing is to try and get people to wear helmets, especially older people who buy electric bikes and don't know how to handle them. They are also the generation that thinks that helmets draw attention or makes one look weak, the same way they view hearing aids. The rest of the country doesn't care one bit that you have a helmet (or a hearing aid), we care that you don't hurt yourself when you bonk on the road (and whether you enjoy your life).
@@ikt32I regularly take the bike between rural areas of the Netherlands, and while the existence of occasional interconnecting bike lanes is quite impressive, they're not at all pervasive nor do they all connect up easily. Also, road surface quality for cars outside of the city is usually excellent; but bike paths are often poorly maintained or designed to be almost impossible to maintain (next to huge trees with roots that split the surface every 3 years or so; or with 5cm+ deep holes for drainage that are outright dangerous, or bike lanes that have clearly been torn up to place something underground and then haphazardly resurfaced, or with weirdly placed curves or right-angled routes to get around obstacles like a specific property or other bit of infrastructure, or with really thin widths such that it's tricky if you encounter bikes from the other direction, or shared infrastructure with pedestrians (that alas often enough walking dogs that are quite happy to jump in front of a bike or just get jumpy and be unpredictable) or worst and most common of all, extremely dangerously poor visibility on cross-direction traffic and specifically including driveways. Hedges and trees often have zero or even negative margins to the drive-way and bike lane, so you basically can't see anything on the driveway until you're basically already crossing. There are quite a few roads I just don't take any more because they're that dangerous due to the impossibility of safely seeing other traffic. I'm still glad they exist, but they're still pretty bad in most really rural places. It's worth planning bike trips well if you want a smooth journey, and you're going to have to take weird detours often. Or, sometime, just taking the road anyhow, even though that's clearly slightly dangerous.
@@ikt32I mean I've definitely seen some roads where bikes are allowed that aren't particularly safe in backwater towns here, but they are pretty rare
1:15 A note on road fatilities: elderly on e-bikes. Dutch road fatilities rose sharply again in 2022 because of e-bikes, more specifically elderly people riding e-bikes. It was the first rise in years. Accidents tend to be more often fatal for elderly people, and because of e-bikes they cycle more, they cycle faster. It is very specific. In raw numbers there are about 700 road fatalities yearly now.
The trouble is, that people think, because you don't need a license (or the license you made for cars 50 years ago and have since, almost, only driven cars includes the 45 kph variant) everyone can just ride a ebike / bike. You only have 2 wheels, so you actually need more skill not less. Yes you endanger others less, most deadly accidents with ebikes do not even involve other traffic. The good news is, you know do see elderly people taking courses. so they there might be a improvement over time. Still, beyond a certain point, elderly people have the traffic awareness and reaction time of a drunk person. But the independence a bike provides is hard to let go off. even in countries with superb public traffic.
@@beyondEV Not entirely true. E-bikes than can go above (with the motor) 25km/h are not legally e-bikes any more. They fall under a different category vehicles (the same thing like a moped/scooter falls under) that can have a max speed of 45km/h.
I think it’s about time to treat such bicycles the same as the moped with a blue plate (which also has a speed limit of 25 km/h) or the Spartamet (from the 80’s). A license plate and a compulsory liability insurance. The number of times I’ve seen someone on a bicycle overtake me on the right (so that person also ignores the speed limit on that road) is ridiculous and you should be able to hold someone accountable when they cause an accident.
another side-note: The Netherlands are more densely populated than the countries with lower fatalities per 1 million inhabitants. When people live closer together, streets are busier, and more potentially dangerous situations occur. I'd be interested to see what the casualty rates are if we ignore the parts of Sweden or Iceland that are rural to a degree that no place in the Netherlands is
@@proman9849 My moms Ebike (bosch) is limited to 25 but it easily goes to 33 kmh without much effort
As a Dutch civil engineer I can say I always design within the regulations and only deviate when there is no room or maybe will result in extreme costs (though this is usually handled in a project specific requirement). When we deviate we always have to give a valid reason that will be put on paper and checked with the client. Designing within the regulations makes our work much easier. Also, we always have safety in mind and will bring it up if we see unsafe situations. For example a few months ago I had the client change a design for a small parkinglot because cars would have to back out in reverse across a bicycle lane.
When will ice skaters get their own lanes? I mean, the stupidity can't stop here - at bike lanes?
@@KZhead_Stole_My_Handle_Too American ☕
@@KZhead_Stole_My_Handle_Tootf
@@KZhead_Stole_My_Handle_Too Yeah as we all know, ice skaters always use concrete to skate on, so it makes sense to have their own concrete or asphalt lane. Stupidity is in the eye of the beholder
we got canals for that m8 @@KZhead_Stole_My_Handle_Too bikes are not used as sport or leisure (by most people) here its just a methode to get from A to B
I have lived in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. And as a Dutch native, I can see and notice, the difference between Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo, with all the big places in the Netherlands. The infrastructure might be great in those Scandinavian cities. But as soon as you leave the city limits and enter the rural areas, it is a complete different story. They are not a paradise, as many of the road engineers think, they are. But you need to see it for yourself.
Correct. I'm British, but I've been to the Netherlands twice, Sweden twice and Denmark once, and NL definitely has the most consistent and well developed infrastructure. I had pretty good experience in Belgium too (did lots of cycling in Brugge), but I don't know how they do outside of the big cities.
they are simply not comparable because of population density and geography, well, perhaps denmark
although scandinavian countries have a far way to go regarding their city infrastructure
Yep, Sweden still carries a lot of baggage from a history of not one but two global car manufacturers - Saab and Volvo - and the accompanying national pride. Up until a few years ago, the old town of Stockholm was flanked by one of the world's first cloverleaf intersections, built in the 1930s instead of a normal bridge. "Progress" and "success" meant cars and lots of them. We only started healing from that mindset during the past decade.
@@magnushultgrenhtc Kanske sant i Stockholm och andra storstäder. Men anledningen till varför nederländernas modell för landsbygden inte funkar här är för att deras landsbygd i princip är en villaförort här. Vår landsbygd är oändligt mer glesbefolkad än deras. I annat än de typ 10 största städerna så hjälper inte cykelinfrasturkur - 90 % kommer ändå alltid behöva köra bil, och det ska ju inte vara något negativt.
What also plays in: The Netherlands does not have natural stone, no mountains. Instead stones had to be baked from clay. Already for centuries red 'clinkers' are laid down in a fishgrate grid. Today, residential and shopping areas, where you don't want speed, still use red clinkers by default, while through roads, where higher speeds are invited, have grey tarmac. Grey indicates fast. Red (purple) indicates slow. Those colours are used deliberately nowadays to tell people what speed is most suitable, but the distinction originated accidentally through time.
Klinkers zijn glad als de pest. Daar wil je niet eens hard rijden als het koud is geweest.
I never knew the color had to do with speed... just thought it depended on the year/region they made it or whatever
Over glad gesproken. Had niks moeten zeggen. Code oranje voor gladheid door ijzel hier.
I thought it had more to do with the noise and bumps, and the with of the road. tarmac is smooth and wide and allows hard driving. Klinkers are bumpy, noisy, and often are narrow roads with a lot of speed bumps. Forcing you to slow down.
@@ElAnvaBar Certainly, tarmac allows for smoother and faster driving. But if in towns you see bicycle paths or shared spaces and they've laid tarmac, then it's usually red tarmac, to signal 'slow'.
Finally someone mentions the traffic law! I've gotten tired of pointing it out as a cornerstone to all the people drooling over physical infrastructure. The law changed the mentality of car drivers towards bikes from squishes to The Bike Is Lava. Laws first, traffic calming second. I remember NJB mentioning it only once in passing and I'm still hoping for a full episode on it. Maybe he doesn't want to discourage North Americans. 😀
The Bike is Lava! I am going to steal that
And awareness! Everyone knows the campaigns in august and september about kids going to school again, to keep them safe, and anticipate on the fact that they are playful.
Don't forget the pedestrians. Pedestrians are Lava too
@@w18853 True, but I haven't yet found many international videos praising and gushing over our sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. Although to his credit NJB does just this on a regular basis, but he's not international, he's one of us. 😁
well bikers are over protected right now. they think rules dont apply to them. like lighting at night thats not needed, pointing where your going to go who does that anymore thats so 1960`s or my favorite one, no hands on the steering bar because they are texting on their smartphone while crossing a intersection using only shifting their body weight to turn and taking up the whole road. if they happen to crash in to some one the others wil get the blame and bill.
Please take into consideration that the Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe. That is why, if you compare it with sparsely populated Scandinavia, you see that there are relatively many deaths on the road.
and i like to add that a significant part of those deaths (of bicycle riders) are older people. a lot of the older people in The Netherlands have electric bikes nowadays, but a lot of older people cycle faster on those bikes than their reaction time can handle. so they don't have the time to react to other traffic anymore. also older people (sometimes) seem to have a mentality that the world will look at for them and they don't have to look out themselves. i encounter a lot of older people that just don't follow the rules anymore. older people and young people are the most dangerous on the roads, and because of the ageing population more and more people fall into that "old person" category. i would like to see the statistics of road deaths/injuries in both numbers by mode of transport and by age, and if they could show how many were riding an electric bike that would really give the complete picture. a decent chunk of the old people driving electric bikes who get hurt/die are one sided accidents, so it's just the person getting injured that is involved (like just falling over) ps. i would like to add that the amount of fatalities was a bit of a surprise to me 36% was cyclist and 30% was car, never knew the numbers were so close
Even in sparsely populated countries most people live in cities where the population density is high, so I think this is a weak argument at best
@@frisianmouve Because of the pressure of water, Dutch cities are far more compact than other cities: narrow and winding streets. That's also what proud Danes forget to mention when comparing Copenhagen with Amsterdam.
It’s also just a bad argument to only look at traffic deaths to judge bicycle infrastructure. Sweden is ranked number one on traffic safety but their bicycle infrastructure is very lacklustre. I for one am a lot more cautious when cycling in Sweden because I have no faith in the cars noticing me where as in the NL I have confidence that I’m not going to get killed when cycling
also a total different mindset. in scandinavia, people mostly obey the rules. In the Netherlands, the majority drives too fast and don't care about the rules, plus there is a lot more stress on the road.
From a Dutchie, you did pretty well on the pronounciation of dutch names!
Yeee!
And the placement of the 'godverdomme' at the road manager
I heard a good AmsterdAm instead of EmsterdEm 😁😁🥰
Disagree! You can totally hear the odd accent!
@ukpropertycommunity accent is different from pronounciation. And Dutch names-wise, he did pretty well. Better than most other native English speaking people I know.
There is one other factor. Before we design a road or intersection, we count traffic. Not only on the road or intersection itself but in the (wide) surroundings. Designs are data driven. If there is a lot of local (short distance) car traffic, we look if we can make an alternative which can make more people using the bicycle. Intersections will be designed in a way the main direction (if there is one) gets the most priority.
He also didn't mention the stricter checks/rules on car safety items like brakes, lights and good tires and so on. Especially compared to the US.
@@Torchedini Also important, but not for road designers. A good road design prevents (severe) accidents, car safety reduces the impact.
Isn't it part of the 'eyes', SWOV job?
@@wilsistermans1118 I missed him identifying what the factors are in road design, such as visual narrowing. All the video showed at that time (about 6:30) were haaientanden and the main street in red asphalt (which is associated with bike lanes but he didn't say it).
I had no idea about the sound level rules in the Netherlands. What an absolutely wonderful idea!!
It's very good, and very strict. There are models developed during the design face where you need to prove that your project will not surpass sound levels. Due to this, our trains run more silent and in recent decades specific types of asphalt were developed that reduce noise. When I cross from old asphalt to new the sound inside my car lowers by 20-30 decibels. It's always a sigh of relief. I went to the US recently and the roads are so loud there, like goddamn. My girlfriend and I were walking along the road in the first day and it was terrifying. Everytime a car came past I had to resist the urge to dive away.
Although I did know about noise levels, I never realised how strict they are. I live in the eastern part of the Netherlands (which some people think is all just farmland), and some highway exits and connection roads to the next villages were were replaced in the last couple of months. Each road taking approximately 2-3 months depending on the weather. I definitely did not consider them bad, since there were no potholes or anything, but these new roads are super smooth and nice to drive on. This proper maintenance also comes at the cost of high road taxes though.
He isn't entirely right about there not being any multilane roads though. There are, but not everywhere and usually just for motorized traffic with no entrances for foot and cycle traffic. Going to 6 lanes or more is only for mayor highways.
Noise isn't measured though. It's only calculated. I believe even the formula is written down in law. Something like 20 years ago noise pollution became a thing and there were several court cases. But there were not rules around it. To prevent high costs for governments and municipalities and to prevent deviations because of various ways of measuring it, it became national law to calculate it. This makes it clear for everyone and prevents discussions. (Up to a certain level.)
@@TyphloRanitar But at least your tax money is being used intelligently. Unlike here in the US. . .
"0:46 as an irritated Belgian might point it" I'm that Belgian, I feel recognized, thanks
Ik voel met je mee.... Hopelijk word je snel beter! -Met liefde, je vriendelijke buur van 't noorden.
I think this might be my favourite video on comparative Dutch standards, fantastic work. As someone interested in safe streets, sustainable transport etc it always seemed like there was something missing from the typical story about "everybody was driving and then stop dè kindermoord happened and then they came up with Super Cool designs and enforced them and everything was great" tale. In particular looking at legislation here in the UK like LTN1/20 and trying to answer why bad designs keep being made, change is slow and new guidance is ignored. We are stuck in the Netherlands pre1990 eara, we have standards that are very difficult to change, rules that supposedly keep everything in line, so so long as The Standards are being met there's nothing else to do
We have LTN1/20 but how often is it actually used? And who is looking at it when it is remembered? My impression is that building and maintaining foot/cycle paths falls to highways agencies whose real job is roads, so dealing with anything else is just an optional extra if central government happens to be offering funding for it. If there's no state body with routine funding for (non-commercial) infrastructure then that infrastructure will never exist.
Great comment. Same feeling.
Be careful what you wish for. If the British cycled as much as the Dutch and with exactly the same level of fatalities and age profile, then that would translate to 1,116 cycling deaths in the UK in 2022 (simply multiply the number of cycling deaths in Netherlands by the population difference). Of those, more than half would be over the age of 65. Cycling, and especially on eBikes appears to be particularly dangerous for the older part of the population. As you get older, you are simply less able to withstand injuries. I should add, in 2022, for the first time fatalities per million kilometres cycled in the Netherlands was a little higher than in the UK. The statistic needs to be treated with a little care as to the demographics of the cycling community in each case. There are more elderly cyclists in the Netherlands for instance, not to mention usage. Cycling in Now this is all fine if you understand the risks, but cycling is hazardous, even without cars about. Many cyclists I know, including me, have ended up in hospital without any other vehicle being involved. It gets more hazardous as you get older.
For people with balance problems, including the elderly and for those with other mobility difficulties, tricycles and adapted cycles are available so one may continue to cycle safely well into one's old age.@@TheEulerID
As a dutch traffic engineer I can say you've done proper research. Good job explaining how and why we do what we do. I'd like to add the motivation for every one of my roaddesigns or solutions. We must design a road for people, not for cars. Sometimes it's the same (highways or other big roads) but more often it's not. Ask yourself soms questions: "What would I want if I live here" "What would I want if my child crosses the street here" "Do I feel safe walking here?" Whatever applies to the situation. Also, we go to the people and ask them what they want. Get their opinions and ideas and merge them with what we already know. Many politicians will only sign for roadworks if it's for the greater benefit with support. In The Netherlands traffic engineers work with legislators, it's 2-way communication.
Swede here - we definitely have that carbrain "central areas of larger cities only" situation. In smaller cities, as well as in suburbs, you will have bike lanes that are basically ...the sidewalk.
Sweden has some very rural areas, with sometimes barely just a gravel road connecting villages. In addition, distances in rural sweden are a lot longer - which makes bicycles less useful. A lot of swedens infrastructure is pretty good, if you consider how few people it serves. Although some well-mapped gravel paths for cycling would be nice... Not sure about cycling around the major cities, is there good infrastructure around them?
@@NoOne-ef7yu Why? You can bike in those cities, or can't you?
Here in the Netherlands we have sidewalks that are bike lanes. As in, there's a bicycle lane, but no sidewalk, so pedestrians have to use the bicycle lane. Usually mostly happens adjacent to arteries though, smaller roads do practically always have sidewalks. And I don't think I've ever encountered it in a place that's too busy for it to be safe.
Meanwhile I saw a cyclist stuck behind pedestrians on earphones in my country along a sidewalk (where there wasn't dedicated cycling lanes), & when the cyclist eventually managed to overtake to pedestrians, the pedestrians stared at him. Maybe the pedestrians thought the cyclist's bicycle was hogging up too much space on the sidewalk
@@LeyrannThat is usually the case in Sweden. The majority of the cycling infrastructure is shared. Where we are lacking is design on a national level. No city or province builds exactly the same. And the state uses a different rulebook aswell.
I would be curious to see what you think of the experiment at Amsterdam Central Station by the ferries. The place where there is SO much varied traffic coming from SO many directions that the designers seem to have decided: no rules here! No markings! You guys all pay attention and figure it out for yourselves! And it magically somehow works.
'shared space junctions' are a pain in the arse !! The only reason why it more or less works at A'dam Central is because there are no cars. But you should ask elderly or mothers with baby strollers how they find it . Elderly will probably avoiding it, thus harming the 8-80 access goal. My aunt, at 77, could do a split and could (ice) skate really well (better than I !). But she got hit on the sidewalk, by a teen on a bike ("oh, sorry madam"). But she got a nasty leg fracture and kept nerve fall out. The deteriation had begun ! A 2 yr old (unleashed) labrador jumped onto my old mum. She fell ,got serious bruises and did not (and will probably not) recover fully from it. When you are vulnerable, you really don't want to 'negotiate' in traffic. Just as you don't want to share a road with F-150s driving 80-100 kmh. You want seperate space and regulations that protect your space and movement.
@@lws7394right but if you walk about 20 meters to the left there’s a zebra crossing. You’re not forced to use the crossing op is talking about
@@evathegrandevery crossing on Amsterdam Centraal is dangerous because of the sheer number of people that have to cross there and because of the mix of literally every type of traffic that you can legally find on a road, bikes, cars, buses and trams. Due to the location of the station there are two or three chokepoints where a huge volume of traffic has to pass through. The only way to make that slightly better is to maybe completely ban cars on Prinks Hendrikkade and on the front side of the station completely and only allow car traffic from the back side. And ban bikes there as well, make it a pedestrian only road. Of course this might create more problems on the back side but given the natural chokepoint of the west access bridge of the station, with cars, pedestrians, buses, trams and bikes sharing the same road it's the only way.
This is why I’m not a fan of the Dutch’s complete reliance on bikes. I think the optimal mobility system consists of trains trams busses and legs/wheelchairs
That reminds me of Keizer Karelplein in Nijmegen
This got to be the most accurate video on why and how our roads became what they are. One thing that pretty much every video seems to forget though; pretty much everything essential is within biking distance for most citizens. In many countries there seem to be "zoning laws" in place. Here you'll see small areas with a few essential shops all across a city (Besides the one bigger city center)
The recent rise in accidents in Nederland is due to the advent of electric bikes and old people going to fast.
exactly, using an electric bikes they are able to go faster than the can react to. so they get in trouble before they had the time to see it coming. (like crossing somewhere before they notice other traffic coming their way)
Vlak de jongeren niet uit. Motortje+jeugd-helm=ongeluk.
@@Treinbouwer ja, jongeren gedragen zich vaak gevaarlijk maar als het mis gaat kunnen zij vaak nog op tijd uitwijken. en als ze vallen is de uitkomst vaak minder ernstig. ouderen hebben die voordelen niet meer. ze hebben een slechter/trager reactievermogen en als ze vallen raker ze vaak ernstiger gewond. beide groepen kunnen gevaarlijk zijn/doen in het verkeer maar voor ouderen llopt het sneller slecht af.
The 'recent rise' is not as consistent and dramatic as he makes it out to be. Some years are just outliers.
@@NS-un5lz You cannot disregard or rule out outliers just because they are outliers. You first have to access why they are outliers in the first place and then decide to rule them out. For me a yearly average is not an outlier.
Really great production value! Most new urbanism videos from new channels sound like ai scripted garbage covering the same topics we all heard before. This was a unique take on a unique topic that was well written and illustrated! Hope to see more from you.
Dutchie here, altough correct on most points there are a few other points to add. All of the (dutch) "hanze steden"and most of the cities that got their city rights before the Napoleontic wars have build their their centers with horse-and-carriage in mind. Ergo the traffic was one way in nearly all of the streets (with canals between opposing lanes.This made the option of promoting bikes and pedestrians over cars (in a lot of cases cars are banned altogether) much easier. This transition is nearly impossible for modern car focused cities. Another point of interest is that IF a municipality opts to for instance redesign an traffic intersection, and if the intersection later has more traffic related problems (i.e. traffic related accidents/injuries/fatalities), it either has to revert to the old design or has to be surveyed and then redesigned. The cost of which will be for the designer/contractor.
ahum, that's not how polders came into existence :) the major cities in the Netherlands predate polders with a lot of them located around rivers to give access to good transportation (that's why there are quite a lot of city names ending in 'dam'). Until the advent of the railroads most transport and travel tended to be by boat (beurtvaart en trekvaart) hence the canal system of Amsterdam and other cities. Polders only became a thing during the golden age as a way to create farmland (and make a nice profit while doing that) The governing bodies for watermanagement (Waterschappen/Hoogheemraden) (the oldest democratic elected institutions in the world) came into being to be able to manage the maintenance of flood defences, this predates polders as well (WestFriese omringdijk) and had, before that been, undertaken by monasteries.
I think the gist of this video is fine for a video about our infrastructure and not our polders. But you are technically correct. The best kind of correct. That whole creating of farmland didn't always work out so well though *cough* Heerhugowaard *cough* :D
So what's to be thought about his description of 'polder politics'?
@@etbadaboum to be honest, I stopped watching after the rather hilarious incorrect description about how polders are safe islands in time of floods, but I just rewatched it to the end. The crux is kinda right, but the need to cooperate had not so much to do with polders as with the need to maintain the flood defences, nobility, clergy, citizens and farmers had the choice to either cooperate or drown. (I must admit I just read a bunch of Dutch websites who claimed the same thing (well, not about the cities, but about polders) anyway ... it was not the polders what was the driving force, polders were the most visible by-product of the model, the main goal was keeping dry feet, Hoogheemraadschap-model would have been a more correct term, but not as catchy.
@@remko2 Thank you!
Awesome video man! By far the best one so far and it keeps getting better. It’s coincidental that you’re talking about the PM regulations that exist here, i was recently diving into it and looking at their plans to reduce it even more, i’m just not sure how they plan to fix tire pollution and brake dust pollution. I guess we’ll see 😊
Lower speeds and less braking, I would say. But it rains a lot, so all PM will be washed from the air anyway. 🙂
@@ronaldderooij1774 that’s a really good one, the rain, I didn’t even think about that and it does certainly help with reducing the pollution. Slower speeds too, but i’m a little skeptical of how this would work on the freeways where people like to drive faster than the speed limit and be as close as possible on each other’s bumpers which results in braking for every little reduction in speed and whole congestion snakes forming, that’s also the reason why sometimes congestion seems to just pop up out of nowhere, it’s people having to brake while being too close to each other and whole snakes braking car by car. Anyways the future will show us what’ll happen and i’m kind of seeing regenerative braking as a solution to the brake dust problem. Only boss we got left are the tires lol.
For the freeways, 'trajectcontrole' i.e. speed cameras that check a car's average speed over the entire length of the distance between on- and offramps, works pretty well to deter speeding. If speeding for 10 km at 10 km above the speed limit means you need to spend the next 10 km dawdling along at 10 km below the limit (and hoping your average speed won't be calculated by the cameras before you equalize to the limit), it becomes a lot less inviting to speed. So most people stick to just below or at the max.speed limit, as speed averaged over a longer distance doesn't get some extra km/h buffer for camera accuracy in sending the speeding ticket. When most cars are travelling at approximately the same speed, there's also a lot less need to overtake and weave in and out of other traffic lanes. This also limits the need for a lot of sudden braking and helps reduce crashes. Finally, overhead traffic cameras (e.g. on viaducts, overhead signage or possibly even on streetlights along the freeway) are being trialled to police distracted driving by people holding phones, people tailgating, etc. - that still needs to be implemented much more widely.
EVs will solve the brake dust pollution I guess, but how serious is this problem in the first place?
@@etbadaboum how serious? Well it’s very serious. Tires and brake dust pollute the air more than exhaust fumes.
I appreciate this explanation so much! It really delves into the thinking behind the Dutch traffic design better than I think any other video I've seen on the topic. This idea of engineering outcomes rather than enforcing outcomes is really key to the success of Dutch road design. North America's approach to getting 100 bowlers to bowl a perfect strike every time is to have a coach, and hit them with a stick each time their form is off. Worse still, the coach is rarely there, maybe 2% of the time. The Dutch in comparison put up gutter guards, angle the alley to the middle, make the middle pin bigger, and design an oil pattern that encourages the ball to give a strike.
I am sure many dutch will be in the comments, as one myself from Utrecht who bicycles about 50km/day around the area this was a nice video even for us to understand why we are different and how steps in the past set us up for a in my view different mindset and way todo things. For me just driving around the thing that always hits me is on avg how consistent things are compared to other places. When i get bored on my normal rides i just pick a direction and go for 2 hours and see where i end up and i can be 99% sure that on the end of the road or street i am on somehow they had a plan and implemented it what i should do on my bicycle and more and more not just 'here you go a path for you' but more 'look what we made at the end of this street just for you aint that cool' ideas and designs. The way the pressure has been applied to make this happen over several decades makes it very interesting to research but also difficult to copy for other areas in the world since it takes time lots of time and a shared mindset within a community as large as a country.
One thing I heard in another video is how the roads and streets have been improved slowly over the years rather than mandated all at once so that whenever a street or road is going to be re-laid it's then that all these changes are implemented. I think the incentive system is part of that but it must have been a difficult 30 years in terms of some fairly large changes going on piece by piece. The support of the local people for enduring these changes to have a better world to travel in is breathtaking. Just about any change where I live is met with hostility and half measures and corruption.
@@Biomirth Yeah its normal to upgrade when maintenance needs to be done anyway. And its not my work i just look at what they are doing in Utrecht/Netherlands. Next to that upgrade to new guidelines when we need to work on it anyway. We also see things being updates after accidents (or multiple) and/or to make the city 'flow' better in Utrecht that is not weird since they have/are adding a massive part so things need to be 'rewired'. Compared to other countries putting in or upgrading roads/streets to have balance between all users not just cars is not a massive political issue so its a constant flow of changes over decades. My first memories of the city and cycling/walking is from the early 1970's till now a good 50 years and in my mind the implementation seems to be speeding up over the last 20 years but that could also be simply the methods used now are more stable and easy to pick out like color of roads, removing of traffic lights, removing of car lanes and adding bicycle first streets. In a way a biycle first street is a good example a street might already have been like that since well bicycles where there anyway and cars did on avg slowed down but i/we notice more because it became red, middle gets a bumpy strip and some signs ..
@@scb2scb2 Where I live they'll put in 1 mile of bike lanes, then a narrow car-only bridge with no sidewalk, then traffic calming abruptly ending in a highway, then more bike lanes for a little while, then lots of huge 6 lane roads. It's an absolute mess! The absolute worst thing my city has done is add bike lanes because they're very sporadic and drivers don't know what to do with them so just park in them or drive in them. Was safer before really. That's why the consistency in The Netherlands is so remarkable to me. It's like people here have good ideas but nobody has the political will to make a coherent plan for the whole city.
@@Biomirth Yeah it must be hard for goodwilling people working on this to only have limited effect and as a result fixes to be spotty since there is no overal accepted political or practical will to get this done. Thats why this video is so nice it explains kind of what happened and why we see places like Utrecht changes over the decades. I still need to bicycle about 80km this year on my 'main' bicycle to pass the 10.000km point for 2023 in and around utrecht. I do at times put some of my rides online (youtube: dutch bicycle rides) so you can check for yourself what i mean with there is always a 'hint' on where to go next. Not that its always the same or the same level but by now each road in and out point has at least some plan implemented over the last 50+ years.
@10:30 "Theoretically, anybody can propose any type of design that they want" A nice example of this was the "unweaving" of several highway lanes of the Clausplein, Den Haag. Look for the name "Henk Sijsling". He was a local engineer that had to stand in a traffic jam there every day, and he thought of a better solution which was eventually implemented.
Very informative and well-produced video, it really asks questions I've had in my mind for a while as a civil engineering student.
Love your fearlessness at pronouncing Dutch words. They're not perfect but you make an educated and honest attempt, and what more could anyone ask for? None of this "sorry to butcher your language while I put zero effort into getting it right" bullshit so many English speakers resort to when pronouncing foreign to them names.
One thing that skews the statistics is always forgotten: population density. (and mode of transporrt) If the population density is (much) lower, inherently the number of accidents drop too. apart from the small city states (Monaco, Malta and San Marino) The Netherlands tops the charts with 521 inhabitants per square kilometer [3.8 and 6] , the next one is Belgium with 376 [5.4 and 9], UK with 272 [2.9 and 5.7], and even the ministate Liechtenstein has less with 238 [? and ?]. Luxembourg 238 [8.7 and 9.9] Andorra (tiny state) 164 [7.6 and 7.9] and Germany with 161 [ 3.7 and 6.4] closes the top 10. (Danmark which was mentioned has 139 [3.4 and 7.2] In brackets [] are traffic deaths per 100,000 UK hasants and per 100.000 motor vehicles respectively, Only the UK has less deaths, but almost half of the population density. Then there is another skew in the figures as there are much more bicycles in the Netherlands. This skews the traffic deaths per 100.000 motor vehicles as within traffic deaths are also those riding bicycles. It is therefore very difficult to have a metric taking all this into account. I do believe that taking population density, number of bicycle drivers into account, the Netherland only being surpassed by 2 countries with significantly less cyclists and a much lower population density (UK and Denmark) on the statistic of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (per 100,000 motor vehicles their death toll is higher) does an exceptionally good job.
Copenhagen and Freiburg are still 25 years behind the Netherlands in their bicycle infrastructure.
I think the biggest issue with Copenhagen is that they’re not limiting car travel. When you walk out of Copenhagen central station your met with multiple 4 lane stroads this is almost impossible to find in Amsterdam unless you go to like the outskirts. I think if they were to fix this it might begin to compete with Amsterdam. That’s of course because Amsterdam does not even have the best infrastructure in NL
Yes, they are. But the will is there and the people are cycling. And as 'Build the Lanes' illustrated, the blue prints for good infra are available, adapt them to the local situation and they're done.
@@emildegerth Copenhagen has it's own problems to deal with. Amsterdam developed more outside the city center in places like Zuidas which are more car centric. In Copenhagen you are dumped in the heart of both the old city center and the metropolitan heart. It's not hard to find big roads in Amsterdam either, but the difference is they kept their tram network so most of them are broken up by rails. But by far the biggest barrier restricting cars in copenhagen is that 2 key bridges directing traffic to Amager island are right next to the city center, if you directed traffic away people coming from the north of the city would have much longer travel time. Amsterdam has 2 high capacity highways around the city and even a tunnel connection next to city center they are only starting to restrict now.
@@emildegerth FUnny enough the center of Amsterdam has the worst bike infrastructure I can think of compared to any other Dutch city center. There are way too many cars, most of the streets are unmarked, no seperated bike lines, its awful.
I find Copenhagen a lot better than Amsterdam because it is car friendly and bike friendly. I didn’t go to Utrecht and Amsterdam anymore since the lefties in Amsterdam and Utrecht pretty much killed of cars and introduced insane (criminally high in my opinion) parking rates. When I go to Utrecht I only go by bike, the shops and restaurants are suffering because of it. Many moved or are planning to leave the cities because the anti car policies is draining their income.
Being a Dutchie, I learned a ton. Thanks BTL!
It's funny that you should mention the Polder Model; I've lived in the Netherlands all my life and not once have I ever heard anyone speak of it as a good thing. It's a system that works well in densely populated places where "my way or the high way" approaches are almost never feasible, but it also has a number of downsides. Under the Polder Model, ugly, hard fought compromises are the norm and hammering these out can take a lot of time and effort. It also means that innovative ideas rarely ever come to fruition as they were originally conceived. In the Netherlands, nobody ever _really_ gets what they want, nor gets truly screwed over. It's easy to become blind to the upsides of all that, if you've never gone without them.
Very good video!, i learned allot from it.. even though i am dutch myself! I do want to add a few things to it, regarding our highways.. When it comes to the RWS, since they are responsible to a certrain degree for each highway users safety. They have placed ALLOT of camera's on the highways, if the system see's a car parked/standing still on the emergency lane. The system will automatically update the matrix signs (matrixborden) so either the lane next to it gets shown an "X" sign when there is less then one meter of space between the vehicle and the next lane, so you are not allowed to drive on those lanes when the X is on it. Or they will show "90" , "70" "50" or "30" to indicate a mandatory altered maximum speed. These matrix signs are placed above the highway, and you will see these ALLOT. The same happends in the case of an accident ofcourse. Another nifty little thing is when the camera's notice that cars are slowing down, the matrix signs will also put up a new mandatory speed. So people can immidiatly see from a distance that something is going on, cars are already told to slow down a few hundred meters before the actual "bottle neck" part is reached.
This was a beautiful essay well delivered. One of the best road videos I've ever seen.
What a spectacularly good piece of content from such a small channel. This is million plus subs territory. Also, lots of hilarious Easter eggs in there if you speak a couple of words of Dutch.
Never been more delighted to read the word godverdomme
Incredible Documentary! - I've heard of Poldor-politiek before, but I didn't think that the roads would link to it. Thank you for the learning opportunity
Wow. Thank you for this great breakdown. Somethings I knew and have been telling people with few listening. Somethings shared in this video I didn't know but I have been inspired by them and my plan to integrate those ideas into a holistic shift that our culture, and law needs changing.
Torontonian here. You nailed the reason I’m not that excited for the Bloor/St. George plans mentioned at the beginning. It looks like a great intersection, but it isn’t part of a broader plan. As long as we are putting in place safe infrastructure one location at a time, we aren’t going to get there. Great video!
Also this flashy green color is horrible!
And another awsome good video! Very good explanation why the whole dutch traffic system is so uniform and good. By the way, compliments for your dutch prononsation ✅️
Hey man. Random dutch dude here. I just wanted to say that I really liked this video. Such an original topic, not to mention I use the cycling lanes so many times a day. Just let you know I appreciate the vid.
This was a great video! I’ve been hearing and seeing examples for years now of road safety in the Netherlands and even how different it was 50 years ago, but never found good ways to learn how or why those changes ever took place. A really interesting and cool new perspective on the forces behind change, thank you.
I am happy to live in a pedestrian zone (on the corner of the street at 1:52 ) so I don't have to own a car. The supermarket is a minute walk, central train station 10 minutes walk and I can reach everything else in the city in 30 minutes biking. If I don't feeI to bike I can take the bus or tram. I even can use a shared car within 5 minutes walking if really need it. I really feel blessed. I wish everyone can have this possibility.
Yeah, but I would hardly be able to get to work without a car, I also enjoy living the center of a city, but still need a car.
@@vanCaldenborgh Maybe I am a bit lucky, but my work is 5 minutes walking from the trainstation, and the train ride takes 10 minutes, so it takes me less than 30 minutes to get to the office door to door by train...
@@vanCaldenborgh I know the problem, I’m a field service engineer and my van is my toolbox, so public transport or car sharing is a little bit difficult. What is very frustrating is there are city councils saying only electric cars may enter the city from 2025. But there are no suitable vans available only very large luxury person vehicles, and they are so heavy (2 - 2,5 tons) you can’t take anything with you with a b driving license. Most people forget if you drive a trailer/caravan with your hybrid or electric car you need a BE drivers license ecause the load capacity is above 3.500kg, even that single axle trailer with a capacity of 750 kg is over the limit
@@kasper2970 I am an automation engineer, worked in almost all lines of industry like logistics, chemistry, solar, semi-conductors, everywhere were processes to get optimized and automatized. I bet that around 75% to 80% of the employees of all those producing industries are not able to reach their work in a *reasonable* amount of time with public transport, *if* at all. I worked all over Europe and beyond, but let's take a Dutch example, the huge Chemelot commercial park at the A2 near Urmond. Most of the employees live in very nearby cities like Heerlen, Sittard, Roermand or Maastricht were all the culture and social life is. At early morning, even with heavy traffic, you need to leave with the car for work around 20 minutes before start, or let's say 25 minutes to be sure. With public transport, it would be around 70 to 80 minutes at average, just to reach your work always in time. And for all the people who happen to have late or night shift, which in the chemical industry everybody has to do from time to time, there is no public transport at all, you can not get home after late shift, since there is no public transport, you cannot reach night shift for the same reason. There is no public transportation in the Netherlands during the night, at least nowhere I worked. Also another commercial zone in that region, which came up in my mind now, Avantis in Bocholtz, is even worste, planed in the late 1990ties at the A76, quite some companies were more or less forced to move there, away from all public transport, absolutely planned around the car. And when they make the car more expensive, it will not mean workers will switch to public transport, they can't, they just will have less net income, since there is no alternative. 80% to 90% of the local workers I got to know came every day by car in both commercial parks, and not why they all loved the car so much.
God, i wish that Germany had those rules with PM 10...
In combination with "when redone" would sadly end in "we can not ever redo this road in any way". For me the responsibility thing is the bigger missing part for Germany, as it requires cities to upgrade roads to current standards.
@@kailahmann1823 Absolutely. Polderpolitiek in Germany would be a godsent (though I guess one has to be careful what one wishes for). But imagine people actually taking responsibility for their actions.
Good job on the pronunciations! I really think it's facinating how our/my tiny little country has so much influence
really informative video. as a dutch resident who has lived in various countries such as the uk and australia i have always marveld at dutch infastructure but i never knew the history behind how it came to be. thanks for sharing.
It might be informative to note that Dutch traffic design, traffic law enforcement and infrastructure upkeep management are centered around three advancing principles, safety, free flow and sustainability (veiligheid, doorstroming en duurzaamheid). In that order of precedence. In practice it means that any change to or activity on the existing infrastructure has to significantly advance at least one of these three principles without significantly diminishing any other. 12:51 lmao
Nitpick: you mention "consensus" when talking about polderpolitiek, but an issue with polderpolitiek in the contemporary interpretation is that it's often about _compromise_ (bit of everything, nobody gets entirely what they want) rather than _consensus_ (a solution is found that fully meets everyone's needs by digging down to the root cause of the disagreement). This is a small but important distinction that makes polderpolitiek much less effective and much more prone to conflict than it theoretically _could_ be, and I'm not sure whether this has always been the case historically or whether it has just sort of been watered down that way over the centuries.
Seconded. A foul example of this was the response after the Ukraine referendum where the government declared that the opinion of the non-voters should be taken into consideration as well and hypothesized that their reason for passing on suffrage was that they agreed with the political view and saw no reason to explicitly confirm that. Long story short, they ignored the referendum outcome. Do disagree with the remark that polderen causes nobody to get what they want, I'm certain that a small group of people do in fact get everything they want!
Originally, the polderpolitiek was a set of agreements between the landowners (nobility), the local clergy (church) and wealthy merchants (bourgeoisie) which all wanted to do entirely different things with the land and the only thing they could agree on was that it should be protected from flooding. So no, it hasnt been watered down (nice pun) over the ages, its always been like this.
@@TheSuperappelflap Thanks, that answers that question then :) Do you have any recommendations for places to read more about the specifics of that?
@@crytocc Start with wikipedia and then check the sources
Love the detailed explanation and legislative background. This channel definitely punches above its weight on urbanist KZhead.
Great vid man! Goes into great detail on subjects I grew up with but never knew why or how they worked!
Very well done indeed. Very enjoyable informative and well thought out👍
What's very important about the statistics is the same thing we see with wealth inequality: when you're known to provide "good" (not perfect) data, and the others are known not to, the results are to be taken with a grain of salt. Great video overall.
This is lovely, clear and concise. Your Dutch pronunciation is understandable and very much appreciated, very well done!
You nailed this good sir. Hats off to you. I think you're the first "urbanist" youtuber that included the history of polderen into the why of our infrastructure
Awesome video. Very well researched. On the poldermodel, you got the essence. It is a bit more complicated than that, though. It would be nice to mae a video "out of scope" on the history of authority in the Netherlands from the year 400 (after the Romans left) until the 18th century. You will discover that that history is completely different from the rest of Europe and probably the world because of the geography and also the history.
if you want a more indepth video, the content creator "Hoog" has one about it
Woa, that's a daunting task. You are talking about over 1000 years of history, a lot of which is not very well documented. The history of polders is indeed more complicated than described in the video, as other people in the comments also have noticed. But it gives a good picture, so I am perfectly happy to accept it. The rest has a lot to do with involuntary death and taxes as well as people with swords and battle axes who were happily destroying each others flood defenses.
Well, this is an urban planning channel. Maybe you can make that video.
@@Conclusius68 to be fair, not much happened between 400 and 1500 in the netherlands. It only got interresting once we declared indepence from the spanish
@@gijskramer1702 Right, nevermind the Carolingian dynasty, who were originally from just across the border in Germany in Cologne/Aachen, and founded the the Frankish kingdoms which spanned half of the continent, that the low countries were right in the middle of. Forget Charlemagne who brutally converted the Saxons to Christianity over a period of decades and founded the first state in the low countries as an administrative unit in his massive empire. Forget about the entire existence of the HRE after that, which the northern and eastern parts of the Netherlands and what is now Belgium were part of, the Hanseatic League which shipped massive amounts of goods from the Netherlands to England, Scandinavia, and along the north sea and baltic coast all the way to St. Petersburg, which was the initial source of trade and wealth that funded our eventual expansion into the new world and the indies. Dont mind the centuries of viking raids along the coast, the endless wars between the French, Germans and English that we were in the middle of, all the wars between the counts of Holland and all the other provinces over land rights, and eventually the Burgundian inheritance that saw us fall under the Spanish crown. No that was not interesting at all, what a boring thousand years it was.
Dutchy here. A few years ago we had very few traffic deaths. Then came the smartphones.. so many accidents!
E-bikes also cause a lot of the accidents
@@kempo_95 Teenagers + smartphones + electric bikes, the unholy trifecta of traffic accidents.
I've had when I approached a few cyclists from behind with my scooter that I thought they were drunk, until I managed to safely pass them only to find out that their telephone was more interesting for them than the road. The fact that from behind I couldn't tell the difference between phone usage and being drunk might show how dangerous those things are regardless of any vehicle and regardless of any traffic rule.
Nice. As a Dutchman: we are so used to cycling paths that in my village there was an uproar when the municipality wanted to change a road to a car-bike share one after refurbishment. Als to the surprise of mant, we often have three different bicycles each, a stadsfiets, a racefiets and an old rammelkast you don't mind losing when you forget where you left it after some pub crawling.
Here from Not Just Bikes, glad I had this channel recommended to me. Subbed.
Awesome video! The intro was a bit loud though, compared to the rest of the video.
I almost got a heart attack the moment the volume spiked 300% when the intro came on 😅
Great video, I hope to see many more
Wow, as a native Dutchman who has lived in 9 different countries in Europe and North America, I learned a lot from this video even about my own country! Well done!
Very interesting. I now understand why, when I am in Holland, it looks like they have just resurfaced and repainted every road for me! We could do with this method in the UK.
You did a pretty good job pronouncing those Dutch terms. 👍
So I just saw this video come by in my KZhead recommendations.. and you end up being literally around the corner of me multiple times. That's pretty crazy! Hope you loved the visit to Delft. Great work on this video! I'm always proud of our roads. Unfortunately, the simple traffic law is sometimes problematic.. there are too little types of vehicle defined, thus sometimes things get awkwardly matched. For example, mopeds can drive 45 km/h but they end up on cycle paths where they are too fast, or on normal roads where they are too slow.
"The CROW and SWOV" is such a great pub name!
I played this video in the background while studying. Your voice is very calming, lol. Thank you! :>
Great video but please make the intro similar volume as the rest of the video
Well done 👏
OMG, this is top 5 urbanist videos on KZhead of all time!!!! SOOOOOO IMPORTANT!!!!
Just found your channel and subscribed. Thanks for the great content!
I love these deep dive videos. Really insightful, thanks!
1:15 interesting side note that might be relevant in this statistic, is that all 8 countries with a lower rate of road-fatalities have a (far) lower population density than the netherlands. If you cross the path of less of your countrymen and -women on a daily basis, there is a lower risk of getting killed.
There hardly are any more densely populated countries exterior for some citystates.. So yes. That is worth mentioning!
Yeah it’s also safe to say that cycling in Sweden (the number one country for traffic safety one Europe) does not feel very safe. Many cars do not seem to be looking out for cyclists compared to NL
If you remove the part of switzerland which is unsuitable for building, you get a different picture. Almost the entire population lives in the somewhat flat areas.
But in Ireland, for example, the most dangerous areas in the country for road deaths are rural roads. Bad roads, without footpaths, where people speed (and enforcement of traffic rules, including drink driving rules is less). Ireland, despite this, has lower road deaths per capita than The Netherlands. I would like to see a combination of deaths and serious injuries reported, not just deaths when comparing countries.
Yeah but from my experience dutch drivers aren't as patient. Maybe just Eindhoven but people get pretty close to your car if you dont go above the speed limit. Also people dont stop at zebra crossings and put their foot down if you cross so you walk faster.
Keep up the good job with your incredible work ethic. You are an inspiration.
Thank you for taking the time to learn dutch pronunciations. It’s appreciated!
I was wondering how a bicycle collision with a bollard would put someone in hospital, and then I remembered the horrifying speeds that Amsterdam cyclists move at with total disregard for vehicles, pedestrians, and even each other.
My mom was cycling a few meters behind my dad on holiday and looking more to nature then what’s right in front of her. She crashed into one at full speed with her knee and after 3 years it has mostly healed but she can still feel there is something wrong. A few cm higher and she would have a mangled knee.
The world: You can't make everybody happy the Dutch: Then you are not trying hard enough
My take on this is that in the rest of the world people strive to be happy, whereas the dutch more have an approach that if everyone tries to make other people happy, in the end more people are happy than in that more selfcentered approach.
Instead everyone is a bit dissapointed!
@@andrelglinnenbank2856 Oh, people here are quite self centered. We just like money. Traffic deaths are bad for the economy. High traffic throughput means more trade can flow from the harbours to the rest of Europe, and higher labour productivity. Which means, more money. Did I mention we like money?
Really nice video. I’ve just finished my study Mobility in The Netherlands. I really like the infrastructure we have.
I love your explanation about polderpolitiek! Such a giant part of the culture and everyday life. Big and small.
"good luck if you go to Bochum or Hagen" I had to laugh so hard on that… It's actually the whole region and while they have a rather dense network, it's quality is complete shit. Comparing these to cities in Northern Germany it looks like they once where on the same level, but the "Pott" ran out of money to maintain and upgrade things around the 1990s.
that intro music is way too loud, wtf
sorry, when i was producing it i played it at 50% volume. Ill tone it down from now on
@@buildthelanes I enjoyed the video but the intro scared the shit out of me haha
Nice we got some understanding
Very well done video! You packed a whole lot of great information into an easy to understand way. That's hard to do.
15:11, recognized Rubensplein, Schiedam. Lived there. But as an extra exit from the highway was opened at the end of the 90's straight into the road connecting to this roundabout. The traffic intensity went up a lot, especially during rush hours causing repetitive traffic jams and lots of car and motorcycle noise. We moved to a quieter place. In a 'woonerf' type of traffic profile. So these slower speed interconnect roads in older city parts can still be very noisy. But not as bad as a highway.
1:42 wowowowowo check your sound levels dude, the intrographic is waaaaay louder then the rest of the video, wtf (runs to amplifier to not wake neighbors up)
Great video but the intro is so loud it jumpscared me
Those numbers on traffic safety don't show anything about how densely populated the Netherlands is, compared to every other country on that chart. Not only that, but Rotterdam has the largest port in all of Europe and massively increasing the number of trucks on our roads. I wonder what their numbers would look like, if their roads would handle the same capacity.
17:43 Well, not exactly. Usually the cities and towns were built on natural elevasion and farms were traditionaly build on man made hills it there as a seriouse risk of tlooding. Usually, they started to pump water out of lakes for farmland. Polder is also sort of sinonimouse for an area of farms. After a while, cities expended into that dry land, and only in the case of Flevoland building houses was a goal too, but of course farming still was the main goal. There is an other practice too: building dykes to protect usualy dry land from flooding. That practice is way older, but still used to protect an existing town from flooding.
"Godverdomme" 😂 12:55
If it ain't dutch, it ain't much.
This is how a lot of things in the Netherlands work. We are a very Libertarian country in the sense that if we can, we try to reduce rules and let the market handle it (ask the VVD). Same goes for our healthcare. It is completly privatized, nothing is government owned unlike the NHS in Britain (which we outperform) but the government does regulate the sector and puts in price caps for insurance.
12:41 I had to do my drivers test at a similar roundabout in Groningen and the amount of bikes that come through here is insane. It might even be there but im not sure
I was half expecting the video to end with "...this is Cody, from Alternate History Hub" due to the mascots. But in all seriousness, great video. You got another subscriber.
@15:15 i can asure you there are plenty of crossings in city centres or near city centres in the netherlands 10 lanes wide (5 in 2 directions) meeting 6 lanes wide (3 in 2 directions). BUT most roads anywhere in the world are 1 lane in each direction...... because you have to build roads to connect homes, businesses, services, towns and cities and not all connections have heavy traffic because not all places are densely populated. So not all connections require multiple lanes. Not just in the netherlands.... but yes the netherlands might have a higher % of 1 lane roads, i have no data on that. But thats more about the sheer number of roads we have than keeping it small, because we build houses and then roads EVERYWHERE.... In the US, Canada, Russia, Australia you can find miles and miles of forrests, parks or a desert or farms with just 1 or 2 roads connecting towns... in the netherlands, there are no huge open areas where nothing has been built, so when there is a denser population, theres more roads needed to connect.... with more roads, you need less lanes. unless your talking population density per AREA instead of per country, because then you would get the LA style 8 lane 2 direction highways running down the middle of the city.
There's a deeper lesson here to be learned. Which is... that top-down detail oriented regulations cause problems and even suffering in a community. What needs to happen is that you take a value (like safety)... give it a hard number (like acceptable deaths per traveled km) and then enforce that number, and then give those under you the freedom to figure it out. Which in turn forces those working on the problem to use proven scientific methods to attain those goals. Instead of assuming you at the very top have the truth and it needs to be enforced uniformly on everyone in the same way, you allow for people to think up creative ways of attaining the goals situation dependent. It feels like perhaps a universal rule for community building of any aspect.
I learned so much. Thanks for making this video!
The Netherlands have really convenient roads but they do need to reconsider their pedestrian green light timer. I am never able to cross the road while its still green, sometimes i have to stop on island. I can't imagine how old or disabled people cross it. If you are on bike, the moment you start it already blink yellow (i still cross but some probably can't). And strangest of things is that islands for bike only lane (where there is no pedestrian crossing) often don't' have button on it. Once i had problem with chain, so i couldn't cross whole road and cars in front already started to drive, i stopped on the island (it was pretty big road) but there was no button. Luckily, someone else behind came to cross it. So while overall i think dutch roads are cool (i like triangles on the road the most) that particular thing i mentioned is weird.
It's not weird. A blinking pedestrian light means "last chance to cross", and when it goes red you can safely reach the other side without issues. It's all part of the exit and entry time timing in use. The same goes for amber lights. Stop if you can, when it just goes red when crossing the stopping line you're still perfectly safe. Ontario Traffic Man has a good video on this: kzhead.info/sun/aq-Jd7qIb2eNo40/bejne.html
@@therealdutchidiot still, if i compare to any other counties i've been netherlands have probably the shortest green light for pedestrian crossing. again, you can cross only if you apply rules you mentioned and you walk with at least average speed of healthy individual But i did mentioned that old people have no way to cross it without waiting for second time (though in reality they just walk anyway) P.s. offtopic: I also visited Poland about 3 moth ago and i felt like i could crawl there. Especially in centrum
@@ojgfhuebsrnvn2781 Funny, because the pedestrian islands here typically use staggered light setups, the next light typically goes green 4 - 8 seconds after the first one.
You do it by walking faster. The average man here is 6 foot 1, 185cm, and has quite a stride. I always get across easily in time. As mentioned before, after the pedestrian light turns red, you still have like 5 seconds to cross. Additionally, if you just keep walking, the cars waiting at the red light will wait for you, even if they get a gree light, because if they hit you thats going to do damage to their car and cars are expensive here.
There are a couple of additional things to point out which in one way or the other have infuenced our transport: The infrastructure for private transport is very good in the Netherlands. We probably have the best roads in all of Europe. But to be fair, we are a small country and it is easier to organise such infrastructure in a small country. Now I understand that this isn't everything (you will know when you will cross the border with Belgium, just listen to the sound of the road), but it definitely helps in getting things consistent and uniform. What isn't so good is the infrastructure for public transport. Especially in the last years, it has become just terrible because it is overpriced (with prices continuing to increase), irregular and unpredictable, and often slow in comparison. Some places are not so well covered with connection to public transport, other places are covered but getting there is so indirect that it will add a significant amount of time, and in the case of the trains: as more stations are added or "promoted" they keep stopping all the time. Meaning that what used to be a relatively fast journey now is extended as travel times on the same route increase. As an example, Vlissingen-Amsterdam used to have 11 stops. That has more than doubled to a whopping 23 stops. It is exactly all these problems with public transport which gets people back in their cars. Why spend a lot of money on not reliable public transport which also takes significantly longer (and with less comfort) when I can drive myself in a car there? Additionally, most drivers are used to cyclists on the road (and their unpredictable behaviour, especially in the larger cities). So they generally drive slightly more hesitant as they are more alert, decreasing incidents. Roundabouts are 2 way for cyclists, meaning as a driver you have to look for cycle traffic coming from both sides on the roundabout. And motorbikes/scooters are usually banned from the cycle lanes (that wasn't the case before) which helped to cut incidents too. However, the introduction of ebikes is one of the reason there is an increase in accidents again.
The small country excuse again. Can we please stop defending bad design by stating "but the Netherlands is small"? It has no bearing on the actual roads. Never had, never will.
@@therealdutchidiot i'm not defending bad design nor am I making the argument that our roads are great because we are a small country (I even cited Belgium as the counter argument). What I do say is that it is easier to standardize and manage oversight on infrastructure in smaller countries. Because how your governance is organized and where responsibilities are designated matter a lot and part of that is informed by sheer size of what it is that needs to be governed. What the video makes clear is basically incentive structures. Governance is all about incentive structures. We only have three levels (nationaal, provinciaal, gemeentelijk) of governance. It makes things easier and more straight forward to facilitate implementation of good designed infrastructure.
Prices as well. On a recent trip to Vlissingen my daughter s family of 3 where visiting her husband parents, and were planning to see friends around Netherlands. Were all for trains, but looking at prices borrowed relatives car.
😅I watch this from San Francisco where I am continuously having to point out that, just because we’re not as backward as Louisiana, does not make us liberal or progressive. Here installing new old-tech street lights passes as safety improvements, so every block has one and none of them reflect real time traffic patterns and increasingly, more and more drivers are running them, often at speed. Transit is also delayed by these lights which offer no priority to on time transit vehicles and most certainly, they do not recognize nor afford priority to pedestrians or cyclists. We are an intensely walkable city, even with all major projects dating back to the fifties, from Maritime Plaza to the UCSF Mission Bay Campus designed around car centric thinking; but we are still a city that is over run with cars, and for whom planning gives more consideration to cars than people. It’s nice to see this channel showing what makes Netherlands what it is for pedestrians and cyclists, taking in the nuances and comparing them to other European cities that appear pedestrian friendly. And I haven’t even mentioned the horrors of Vegas and Phoenix, which I recently visited.
When you showed roads in Delft and stood at an intersection where you compared the volume of your voice with the road, I was like Leonardo Dicaprio in that one movie whistling and pointing at the TV like *whistles* HEY I KNOW THAT, I LIVED THERE
Great video! I did notice you called out Copenhagen for their safety regarding bicycles, however you then went back to generic traffic deaths per million of inhabitants. I personally would be interested to know more about cycling-safety specifically. For example the number of deaths per kilometer/mile cycled. That would give an interesting insight about the impact on this specific method of transport.
Good example of the responsibility of safety is the crossing shown at 15:17, the traffic light where the cyclist is waiting used to be a regular crossing with give way signs for cyclists and pedestrians, causing many accidents resulting in some casualties. After which the traffic light was added, now there are two lights following each other rather quickly, but lesser to no accidents!
This is a great video to capture the systematic approach to having a functioning cycling network.
Well-made and informative video, great stuff, definitely sticking around for more. But wow that intro music was loud