How I Became a Dutch Transportation Engineer (Lecture)

[@pautjioekho93]

Nice lecture! I was involved in the Europaweg roundabouts when I worked in Haarlem until 2019. Main reason for making the 'downgrade' possible can be found in the neighbouring town of Heemstede. The Europaweg in Haarlem used to be 2x2 lanes and leads to Heemstede where their road is limited to 2x1 lane. The number of cars entering Haarlem will therefore be limited. The 2x2 lanes on the Haarlem stretch was never fully used and research with a traffic model with future urban developments showed that stretch of Europaweg would hardly increase in number of cars. This can be explained because the majority of commuter traffic use other roads to go to the highway. That's why it felt fine to downgrade to 2x1 and gave us the possiblity to replace the traffic lights with roundabouts. As you mentioned, the roundabouts helped in improving the traffic flow. Traffic consultancy firm Bono Traffics from Kampen helped us with the analysis and made the design of the roads and intersections. Glad to see that it still works.

[@birgitberr5784]

It's an inspiring invitation to visit and get to know the Netherlands.

[@nathanyellll]

beautiful place.

[@harirajah4108]

Critical thinking should be required for all engineers!! Thank you for this wonderful video!

[@NL2500]

The Hague, a city approximately 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Haarlem, has a population of 514,000. There too, many two-lane streets have been reduced to one lane in each direction. The quality of life has greatly improved in these narrowed streets. We love greenery, the city has more trees than inhabitants 😊 Despite all the bicycles, approximately 600 of every 1,000 inhabitants in the Netherlands have a car, 39th place worldwide, we are certainly not car-free and somewhere in the middle when it comes to the European countries.

[@ob_dowboosh]

5:05 the bridge on the left was restored without bike lanes. Only bike-pedestrian paths (with completely no separation between bike and pedestrian traffic) were added to the bridge, despite being a part of the EuroVelo 4 route between Kyiv and France. Car lanes were built to the highway standards (too wide), despite it is in the city of Irpin, so it encourages speeding.

[@mariusfacktor3597]

16:00 That's a very important insight that all American traffic engineers have missed. We don't have free flow traffic in cities so the assumption that more lanes will move more people is just false. The intersections are the bottleneck and wider lanes actually cause more delays at intersections. It's amazing that it took until 2024 for a smart student who studied in the Netherlands to finally bring this insight to the US. Now that we have this knowledge, please for the love of god stop widening our streets.

[@C0deH0wler_]

You should check out Auckland's Draft Regional Transport Plan. It mentions intersection design & technology quite a lot. It looks promising.

[@dandugan1131]

Great lecture! As an American traffic consultant I’d love to hear more deep dives into Dutch planning practices and comparing it to the US!

[@birgitberr5784]

Fabulous presentation! 👌

[@mdhazeldine]

Great case studies. I would love to know how the Dutch would "Dutchify" my country (the UK). Having looked at NJB, your channel and many others and looked at the UK and the Netherlands on Google Earth/Street View, I have come to the conclusion that we would struggle to implement a lot of Dutch principles, simply because our main roads are often too narrow for bike lanes. We could definitely improve access streets, but our roads are more of a challenge. One thing our councils love to do is make bikes share lanes with buses, which to me seems a bit crazy because if I was on a bike, I would not want to have to negotiate with buses. I'm not sure what the Dutch rules are in that regard?

[@shervetsel]

That seems to be the case in the UK. I guess the thing with bus lanes is that, indeed, when a bus comes, it's a more dangerous vehicle to negotiate with, but they are way less frequent than cars so you end up not having to deal with motor traffic that often. And about roads being narrow. Yep, I do see that while cycling here. Apart from just cutting lanes/making one-way roads, I don't really see any other solution which does not involve meddling with buildings or gardens or green space. There's another point, tho, which I feel it's usually not considered fully. The UK is very hilly. How do you make a portion of road, where you quickly reach speeds of 50kph/30mph on your bike quickly, safe? Do you build winding paths? Do you divert cycle flow to less steep sections?

[@JimCullen]

The bus thing is really frustrating. It's nice because sharing with buses means sharing with fewer overall motor vehicles, but that's where the pros end. Bikes and buses often travel at the same average speed, so on its face it might seem like a good idea. The problem is the profile of their travel is so wildly different. Buses travel very fast and then stop for ages, while bikes travel continuously at a lower speed. This means if they share a lane, they both have to frequently overtake each other, which forces them to go out into the general traffic lane, which is especially dangerous for cyclists.

[@ronaldderooij1774]

A popular solution in the Netherlands is to build a car road around the village and close off the village center for cars (by movable bollards, or modal shifts). So the village can only be accessed from the road around the village on a few inlets (mostly two). If the village has money, they build the way around it low, so it won't infringe on the view and muffles the noise, but you also see dykes and forested parks for that purpose.

[@ronaldderooij1774]

@@shervetsel With the electric bikes, hills should not be a problem (limited to 25 km/h). As for now, the Netherlands has only a few places with such descends. I grew up near one of them, and it was fun! Happy to be still alive. My record speed was 60 km/h before entering a hairpin (I had a speedometer on my bike, of course!). And yes, it destroyed my rear brake within a year.

[@Paul_C]

Swov and Crow. These two institutions are basically the base of how roads are designed. CROW is the design guidelines and SWOV is the database of scientific research for all of it.

[@ivanruiz2218]

That was excellent, thank you. I learned a lot fromthis.

[@tomasbeltran04050]

Cool video!

[@andreplugge2239]

heel informatief, leuk!

[@shadeblackwolf1508]

given the 30 year resurfacing lifecycle, and being on this for 20 years now, currently streets from the 90s are being redone... work should become a little cheaper over time, as roads are already closer to current best practices

[@JasperJanssen]

Except that best practices are always0]-evolving. Thirty year old roads are different from today, twenty and ten year old roads are closer to today but most likely are still quite far from ten and twenty years from now.

[@JimCullen]

This was an awesome lecture to see, but I honestly think it's titled quite poorly. You talk a little about yourself and how you get into the role, but the majority of the lecture seems to be more about the Dutch design philosophy, how the Dutch design philosophy is better, and case studies demonstrating how to apply the Dutch design philosophy. I don't know how you could capture that in a title, but something more accurate would be, to me at least, also more _interesting_ and clickable.

[@dutchman7623]

He graduated as a civil engineer, but did not want to be a designer of bridges and viaducts. So he started with the other aspect of civil engineering; traffic flow, transportation. And just like space engineers, there is little choice if you want to be on the highest level, NASA (US) or ESA (headquaters NL). The Netherlands not only have a dense highway network, just like coastal areas in the US, but also a dense bicycle, pedestrian, train and water network, the main center of Europe's aviation network, and home to the biggest transport harbor outside China. So everyone who studies transportation ends up in the Walhalla of transport and civil engineering; The Netherlands.

[@iWhacko]

I get what you mean. I think he meant the title to mean more something like: "Why I ended up staying in the netherlands" (because the road planning actually makes sense And I learn much more here, and things are working)

[@TenryoTV]

nice

[@freudsigmund72]

31:17 What will stop people from driving on the cycle path? for one, the fine is € 189 (US$ 202,50)

[@JasperJanssen]

Also, the red asfalt.

[@tuomio5043]

Is it possible to left turn off of the end of the street in a car? I am referring to the diagram at 28.12

[@iWhacko]

If you mean if you're coming from the right and want to make a left turn down? Probably yes, it looks like a sharp turn. And the turn to the right is much wider. But looking at the other picture of the total overview, it's a 2 way road. So yes. But there could be a sign forcing you to the right around then block, but I don't think so.

[@timschellekens4529]

It won't be possible, this is also the case for current design. When looking at 24:50 most cars will take a right earlier and enter the discussed intersection from the top. The cars that have that option will probably have to do an u-turn somewhere or go right where the arrow "aansluiten op bestaande situatie" points. This road probably ends up at the same one as the 24:50 one.

[@tuomio5043]

​@@iWhacko Yeah my comment was about the tightness of that left turn. I would be shocked if that could be made in a large car

[@buildthelanes]

No, it is blocked by a bollard it is only open for bikes

[@dimrrider9133]

Dura Vermeer ;p

[@wimschoenmakers5463]

If it ain't Dutch, it ain't much!