A look inside Dutch street design details: A more people-oriented approach

In this episode, I connect with Steffen Berr, an American engineer working as a transportation advisor for the city of Haarlem in The Netherlands, for a discussion about the difference in street design approaches between the United States and The Netherlands and how Dutch design can encourage more people of all ages and abilities to walk and bike more often.
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Helpful Links (note that some may include affiliate links to help me support the channel):
- Steffen’s KZbin channel / @buildthelanes
- Steffen's recent There's More to Dutch roads than you think video; • There's More to Dutch ...
- Steffen's article about Traffic Engineering in the USA vs The Netherlands: bit.ly/3xxWO8e
- Steffen's TikTok: / steffthetranspodude
- The Roundabout video: • Roundabouts: The Rad, ...
- Not Just Bikes Million Subs Celebration Video: • I GOT A NEW TRUCK!! (A...
- My Haarlem Reaction Video w/ Jordan Clark: • A reaction video w/ Jo...
- BicycleDutch Channel: ‪@BicycleDutch‬
- My interview w/ Avital Barnea: • Reflections from Avita...
- My interview w/ Mr. Barricade: • Bringing protected bik...
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Credits: Video and audio production by John Simmerman
Music via Epidemic Sound: bit.ly/3rFLErD
Resources used during the production of this video:
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- Editing software Adobe Creative Cloud Suite: bit.ly/35DBDDU
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Background:
Hi Everyone! My name is John Simmerman, and I’m a health promotion and public health professional with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization in how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.
Since 2010, I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be while striving to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."
The Active Towns Channel features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.
Thanks once again for tuning in! I hope you find this content helpful and insightful.
Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2023

[@twowheelsgoodbrum1077]

Haarlem has a special place in my cycling heart. It was the first Dutch city I visited in the early 1990s and it transformed what I understood about what was possible for cycling and I’ve been eulogising ever since. Still visit regularly. It’s a lovely city, great for cycling and close to nature and the sea. All accessible by bike. It’s my model for what we could to in my home town in the UK.

[@ActiveTowns]

Cool! 😎

[@dutchuncle2716]

31:00 Haarlem station is about 40 years older than Amsterdam Centraal. It's also one of the few train stations that is located within the old city walls. It very well might be the oldest train station still in use in the Netherlands.

[@ActiveTowns]

It’s a beauty for sure! 😀

[@garyharty1902]

I really enjoyed this conversation with Steffen. It has helped me understand why it is so difficult for me to communicate with the traditional, typical North American traffic engineers in my city. Transportation in their minds is limited to cars. If time, space, and money is left over after they have addressed level of service, then we can talk about safety and active forms of transportation. But there is never time, space, or money left over. Very frustrating! I envy Steffen that he had the ability to create a great and rewarding career opportunity for himself abroad.

[@ActiveTowns]

Yep. I'm glad this was helpful. 😀

[@nathang4682]

Steffen equating American transportation engineering practices to doctors in the middle ages is very similar to Jane Jacobs comparing urban planning practices to bloodletting in The Life and Death of American Cities. Sad that things haven't changed very much since she wrote that in the 60's!

[@ActiveTowns]

Yep, pretty much.

[@nonya3259]

Nice job Steffen!

[@ActiveTowns]

Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you are enjoying the Channel. Cheers! John

[@eduardveres3501]

Great video, thanks. Will Delft have the honour to see you again next year ?? Maybe Jordan is also in the mood to cross the pond again.

[@ActiveTowns]

Perhaps! I'll definitely be attending the Velo-city Conference in Ghent in June; travel beyond that will depend on how much money I can raise between now and then. Thanks so much for tuning in. Cheers! John

[@KeesBoons]

Steffen is one of the people who has made me belief there is still hope for the infrastructure in the US of A. Engineers who think for themselves and not just follow the standards because they are the standards are the gems around the world, and the way to improvement. This basically is the case in any field of expertise. If only there was a way to remove the money from the industries from politics, it could go fast. Thank you again for a great interview.

[@ActiveTowns]

Agreed! Although we can’t keep loosing them to The Netherlands 🇳🇱 hehe 😀Thanks so much for watching. Cheers! John

[@KeesBoons]

@@ActiveTowns Steffen can't be the only one in the US (I hope), and who knows, maybe he'll be back some day.

[@kailahmann1823]

When seeing the situation in the US, I often wonder if they even have this difference between a through-road and an access-street?

[@ActiveTowns]

Yeah, I wonder too... hehe 🤣 In all seriousness, part of the problem is that too many places continue to build streets based on highway designs that encourage through-road speeds. Cheers! John

[@twowheelsgoodbrum1077]

Great conversation. Seeing European transport design through different eyes and creating a transatlantic conversation is vitally important for our futures.

[@ActiveTowns]

Glad you enjoyed it! 😀

[@MLWitteman]

Great video! And nice to feature my hometown of Haarlem. I can’t for these infrastructure improvements to get implemented. Especially the area around the train station deserves some extra attention. Wouldn’t it be great to get our tram/street car network back in the city, and surrounding region?

[@ActiveTowns]

Yay! Thanks so much for watching. You are absolutely right. Cheers! John

[@AMacProOwner]

Once again, great interview! It feels like both parties got to say everything they wanted! Thanks for sharing. I decided to share six of my personal highlights/notes from this talk. Just things that felt important to me. 25:40. This really speaks to the effectiveness of auto's takeover of streets. In small scales cars are helpful. So obviously the city adjusts to make it even more helpful. A true Tragedy of the Commons playing out. 28:47. "It's really easy to damage part of the city and takes a very long time to undo the damage" Especially when it's something the inhabitants all are proud of. - It's often literary impossible to recreate the same emotion. 39:27. Nah, car traffic is like a gas. Take propane as an example. Let it loose and it explodes violently. Instead bottle it under high pressure. Now it's useful and safe for many to use. 47:25. The language has adapted is another thing I'm jealous of. The fact that roads are not "cycle streets" or "made for people" but instead has "staying quality". - A plane is made for people but not nice to be in. But if a plane had nice "Staying Quality" that's a whole different thing. 51:39. I wonder how bricks and winter would mix. Probably fine? Snowplows in Sweden are not really famous for being gentle even against asphalt. Luckily we're upgrading to sweep+dissolved salt! 1:00:45. The duet of hearing part of the system being explained and the stunning ride-along was an excellent touch. Great editing.

[@ActiveTowns]

Thank so much… Cheers! John

[@ChristiaanHW]

In The Netherlands we barely use snow plows. (Only place i remember seeing them is on airports) We almost exclusively use salt and occasionally sweep the snow away. Nowadays we only get a few days of snow a year (only a couple of centimeters). Ice is more of a problem, rain in the evening and at night when the temperature drops it freezes. It has to be said that salt also has its cons, mostly it's not that good for cars and bikes. But it does work better than just scooping the snow of the road, and it vecoming someone else's problem.

[@tubularap]

Thanks for another great episode on our shared living spaces.

[@ActiveTowns]

You are quite welcome! Really appreciate you tuning in today. Cheers! John

[@colleenharrison2942]

Great interview with Steffen. His view point of American streets/cities vs Netherlands is really interesting. Hope cities continue to make our streets better and safer.

[@ActiveTowns]

Thanks for watching! So glad you enjoyed it. Cheers! John

[@FacelessJanus]

Safety, is the issue. Steffen, what did/could you do in the US in this regard ?? Taking into account that ALL partipants in traffic need to be safe, even drivers. As I am sure you will have noticed a few differences in regard to driving just as well. It starts with getting a license, which is different, the roadworthiness of a car, not having anything in your hands besides the steering wheel, securing loads, the position of traffic lights at crossings, NO right on red, etc etc etc What could you do as traffic engineer in the US to improve safety ??

[@ActiveTowns]

I’ll let Steffen answer for himself if he has a chance, but I think he addresses this in the conversation… he was frustrated, knew there was a better way, and chose to seek out that direction. Part of the value of his videos he produces IS to help with the challenges you outline.

[@buildthelanes]

If there was one thing I could do is to force every travel surface in the US be categorized by its intended function. Pedestrian zone, Access, short through movement, and long through movements. One of the biggest issues is that we don’t have a clear vision for what we want from our travel surfaces so we play around the edges and don’t have a clear sense of direction of where we want to take the design of something. When you decide what you want, this becomes much more straightforward or obvious. I would also remove the need for a PE to approve engineering plans for traffic issues

[@Cl0ckcl0ck]

Street wear = c * vehicle weight/number of wheels * vehicle weight/number of wheels * vehicle weight/number of wheels. Smaller European cars already have a huge impact on street wear. Half the weight of the car results in 1/8th of the wear. And bikes have close to zero impact on street wear. The average car in Europe weights 1600kg, in the US it's 2050kg. That means that streets wear out twice (2.1 times to be precise) as fast in the US because of car weight alone.

[@ActiveTowns]

Yep... and it's getting worse every year, unfortunately. Beware, these behemoths are headed toward Europe as we speak and should be stopped. Good luck. Cheers! John

[@mourlyvold64]

@@ActiveTowns "behemoths", there's a new word I learned. And here I was, thinking my English was pretty good.

[@BogFiets]

Whoa.... I'm from Sacramento and went to Cal Poly

[@ActiveTowns]

Nice! Small world sometimes. Thanks for joining us today. Cheers! John 😀

[@graemetunbridge1738]

thanks John

[@ActiveTowns]

You are quite welcome! And thanks for watching 😀

[@NewBunny-vc2pm]

Maybe I'm missing something about how the bricks are different in the Netherlands... but it's really not pleasant to bike on brick streets in most cities here in the US. To the extent that in Boston for example we request that the city use decorative stamped/painted brick patterns instead of actual bricks. I don't think the issue is just excessive car wear and tear.

[@ActiveTowns]

When done well, the brick streets and pathways are quite smooth for bikes... the old cobblestones, yeah, not so much. Thanks so much for watching. Cheers! John

[@mourlyvold64]

Besides what John mentioned in his reply, well layed brick surfaces being relatively comfortable to cycle on, there is another issue this kind of street design adresses: If there's one thing the last few extremely rainy months in the Netherlands forced us (again) to think about is the water-permability of road surfaces to buffer the excesses of stormwater. Subsurface drainage systems just can't handle the amount of percipitation fed into them during the increasing heavy rain events we're experiencing. Every liter of water reduced helps to alleviate this problem. Especially in urban areas green (or rather blue/green) roofs can play a major role to mitigate this problem too.

[@JacobBax]

How do we call "end of pavement" ? couldn't understand.

[@ActiveTowns]

Steffen will definitely need to address that. Hehe 🤣

[@Michiel_de_Jong]

"kantverharding" ,.. but that isn't a word used by normal people. That's civil-engineering-talk.

[@JacobBax]

@@Michiel_de_Jong Thanks, I have heard that before but not on a daily basis, maybe 2 or 3 times in my 69y old life.

[@tuinbuddy3385]

@@Michiel_de_Jong Is dat wat anders dan "stopbanden"? Of is een stopband kantverharding, maar zijn er meer opties?

[@ronaldderooij1774]

One block away from my house in the Netherlands, they made "fake klinkers" by putting red asphalt and then melt in a grid on the surface. It is indistinguishable from "real klinkers" even up close but cheaper to make and maintain. I usually don't take that street, even not on the bike because the put it full of horrificly high bumps to slow down traffic. But even at 6 mph it is too high for most cars to take comfortably and on bikes it is a no go (1 bump ervery 50 meters or so).

[@ActiveTowns]

Interesting. Sounds like a failed project to me if people are hesitant to ride on it. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Cheers! John

[@therealdutchidiot]

Seems to me they got the positives, but overdid the grid causing it to be too bumpy. In the long run, the second they have to access wiring or piping they'll have to scrape off that part of the surface, probably using actual bricks to patch it back up, making it even more annoying.