Rethinking Street Design - Drive Slow and Go Faster

[@MaartenRobijn]

I've been reguarly driving that (through)street in Amsterdam. It never felt slow, not crowded. It really has a good flow. I have never been in a traffic jam on the street during all the travels there, nearly always during rush hours. So I can confirm that it really works (even from a car driver perspective).

[@TheLiamster]

An analogy I learnt is that traffic is like a snake that moves through cars where they brake causing the ones behind them to brake before speeding up again and so on. This phenomenon can go on for miles even after the initial stoppage and reduces travel time for every vehicle

[@redhidinghood9337]

Cgp grey?

[@_PJW_]

'accordion-effect'. Research shows it is often caused by a single driver. That is why road authorities enforce dynamic speedlimits.

[@eugenetswong]

There are 1 or 2 KZbin videos of cars driving in a circle. They start off evenly spaced out, and then encounter phantom traffic jams. Check it out.

[@bartmannn6717]

It gets even worse, when traffic capacity is at its maximum: You just need one ding-dong stopping on the street for any stupid reason, thinking it's no big deal, the 3 cars behind him just need to wait a minute. It's not 3 cars, it's ALL cars. Hundreds of people being stuck and waiting for ONE stranger down the street doing something insignificant.

[@Chamarel]

It's fun when people show clips of Amsterdam and I recognise where these clips have been taken.

[@_PJW_]

Not only Amsterdam but Utrecht also.

[@Chamarel]

@@_PJW_ I'm not in Utrecht too often so I don't recognise too much of Utrecht haha

[@funtimedavi]

I never got to visit Amsterdam, but only by urbanism videos, I guessed where was this road.

[@Arjay404]

They key here is AVERAGE SPEED. It doesn't really matter if you can go 120km/h if you have to wait for 10 minutes at an intersection, when instead you could go 40 km/h and not have to wait at the intersection. The time to get to your destination turns out to be faster in the 40km/h example.

[@Hank-d7q]

Or 4 hours with 0.9 miles vs 30 minutes where you can travel 20 miles/hour.

[@ScramJett]

Build The Lanes has a good video outlining how intersections are the limiting factor for traffic volumes. In a nutshell, there is a limit to how many vehicles per hour that can move through an intersection, and that number already exceeds the volume of ONE traffic lane. Adding more lanes literally does nothing to improve volume. It does, however, allow for overtaking and unsafe speeds.

[@richardhltrp1791]

mr negative. The difference is that we can walk and bike everywhere, which reduces car traffic, so one lane is sufficient. In the US, walking anywhere is not common and is considered dangerous, whereas here, even minors can safely do all those things, except drive a car at 16. In a car-centric country, it's dangerous for children, a concern that may not be as prevalent in America.

[@doom-generation4109]

​@@richardhltrp1791I think you completely missed their point. They weren't against the concept at all, quite the opposite. You're both on the same side.

[@eugenetswong]

Scram, I think that you mean the opposite: the single lane exceeds the limit, as opposed to the other way around. I loved that video.

[@ScramJett]

@@eugenetswong Yes, it was a good one. I think you're right. In any case, the main point is that adding lanes doesn't solve anything because intersections are limited to no more than around 1500 vehicles per hour, regardless of size while a single lane of traffic maxes out at 1400 vehicles per hour. So, even with two lanes (2800 vehicles per hour) you can never overcome the physical limitations imposed by intersections. And he was pretty clear that these were rather generous numbers.

[@ScramJett]

@@doom-generation4109 yeah, I was kind of confused by his comment also. Because we are on the same side.

[@thebackyard7661]

i was not expecting to see a street a few blocks down the road from my home in the first 10 seconds of the video, but you peeked my interest!

[@ryn2844]

I live near these and use them a lot. They work, for all types of road users.

[@bertkreft9689]

Buthan took another approach. The capital Thimphu was home to Bhutan’s sole traffic light - for just 24 hours. It was quickly removed to be replaced by a now famous policeman who directs traffic with flamboyant, white-gloved hand movements from the middle of what is one of the city’s busiest streets.

[@RaniVeluNachar-kx4lu]

Totally. I try to run about 2 mph under the posted speed limit, not to infuriate the cars behind me, but on a multilane road, they can pass if they want. What it proves is often they do race ahead of me, and then wait at the next Red Light while I am still toddling along and finally I get there and maybe just wait a few seconds or the light has just turned green and I am moving slower, but I haven't had to stop completely as I see the back up ahead and slow down. No, I don't see the point of racing each other to the next Red Light. Fast is really slow and Slow is fast. I knew this years ago. If everyone slowed down, all that would happen is we spend more time driving and a lot less time sitting waiting for the Red Light to cycle to green.

[@Knackebrot]

It is incredible what you can achieve when you limit left turns and street parking as much as possible.

[@TaisuFilmu]

Oh well, I hate traffic lights.

[@ScramJett]

Everyone hates traffic lights. That is, everyone except traffic engineers.

[@elijaha773]

I'd love if you did a follow up video about how the Dutch design rural roads, particularly ones with truck traffic. In the southern USA, there are a few primary designs, none of which are friendly for bikes. There are four-lane roads which have 12 ft shoulders and a 40ft sunken median or 12ft center turn lane. In towns, the shoulder may be replaced by a sidewalk. I'm not sure why the collector road scheme isn't used more.

[@streetscaping]

Yes, I will make a video about rural roads as well! For now, you can check my Road and Street Design In the Netherlands video where I cover them briefly

[@richardhltrp1791]

i can tell you alreaduy that biking lanes in rural areas are mostly completely separated from car traffic !

[@mourlyvold64]

@@richardhltrp1791 "... biking lanes in rural areas are completely separated from car traffic!" Far from everywhere, I'm afraid. Many rural roads are among the most dangerous in the Netherlands. Only drivers' decency will safeguard you there and (fair enough) it usually does.

[@richardhltrp1791]

@@mourlyvold64 i changed my post for you ! hope you are happy ! and the exception does not make the rule !

[@mourlyvold64]

@@richardhltrp1791 No offense was intended, my friend. But the adjustment is appreciated anyway. What is the exception and what is the rule really depends on how deep you get into rural areas, though. I wouldn't dare to bet on either. Peace.

[@VladislavRassokhin]

Addition for 5:47. The speed limit on Van Nijenrodeweg east of Buitenveldertselaan is 50 km/h. There was a temporary reduction (30) this summer due to construction work on the intersection with Van Leijenberghlaan.

[@picobyte]

Not counting our bridges,Here in Stadskanaal there are zero traffic lights.

[@henkvanbruggen6818]

The colonies have also barely paved roads.😊

[@arnomrnym6329]

Lets give everyone is traveling a safe space and more nicer and liveable areas on bigger streets. I wish we had more of these kind of infrastructure in Berlin. Thx 👍🏾😎

[@richardhltrp1791]

i love Berlin ! greetings from The Hague !

[@arnomrnym6329]

@@richardhltrp1791 🙂

[@JaNouWatIkVind]

I love Berlin too! Traffic in the city was sooo much better than in Munich, Munich drove me nuts 🤪 bike lanes crossed by cars, broken side walks. Berlin is a gem.

[@richardhltrp1791]

the Dutch will have a huge pile of copper when they pull out all those cables from the traffic lights 😂

[@Welgeldiguniekalias]

Of course reducing the number of lanes does not cause congestion. It's not really counterintuitive at all. The long straight is never the bottleneck, the intersection is. Doubling up lanes on the straight just gives drivers an incentive to race each other to the next red light.

[@Hank-d7q]

Gee, NJB, made a lot of these channels possible.

[@funtimedavi]

I still didn't like the idea of pedestrians having to stop and find a gap, in my car centric city, I sometimes cross the street without attention, even where there are pedestrian lights, but thankfully in some parts of the city driver are more respectful. It seems that when it has the zebra crossing the priority is for people, and when it is like in this avenue it is for cars. It is a great idea and it probably works in streets with 45/min, but on avenues with more than 70 vehicles/min it would be very bad for pedestrians.

[@carstarsarstenstesenn]

Zebra crossings are still pretty dangerous. Intersections are where the majority of pedestrians crashes happen, unless they're small and built to protect pedestrians like in Hoboken. Large intersections with zebra crossings and lights are very dangerous for pedestrians with cars turning on red, especially at night

[@thedutchhuman]

They can do that, but if you compare the usa and the netherlands you see that in the netherlands the highways go AROUND the cities and that gives much less traffic in the cities, even though the cities are much too big there. From there you can tackle it as you present it in your video. In the usa you often have no possibility to bypass the city if you don't have to be there.

[@carstarsarstenstesenn]

Yup. I know other cities have it worse, but where I live in Chicago, there's so much traffic from people going from IN to Wisconsin and anywhere beyond those two states, since there's a giant lake. It makes the traffic and pollution (air and noise) far worse than it should be in the city.

[@carstarsarstenstesenn]

Chicago could do this with its boulevard system though

[@eugenetswong]

To reduce highway traffic, cities could add more bus service. Adding proper exits and entrances to allow for smoother merging would help.

[@thedutchhuman]

@@eugenetswong I understand where you are going with this, but the problem is, and many know this, that the car manufacturers lobby and limit public transport and even buy it out in order to sell more cars....if I am correct, NotJustBikes has discussed this before. If the car manufacturers had NO influence, like laws have been passed here in Europe, you would have a completely different picture and more public transport plus cycle lanes, better infrastructure etc. (see the Netherlands for example). Safety for pedestrians and cyclists is the most important, cars are secondary.

[@eugenetswong]

@@thedutchhuman Well, come on. Carmel, Indiana, had the same challenges, and they succeeded. Cities are tearing down freeways.

[@jusssie010]

These trafic solutions which I absolutely love here in the Netherlands would only work in the USA if the cities, suburbs, villages, shopping centers, sports clubs etc would be build smaller and closer to each other. America is pretty big so these solutions wouldn't work well mabye in the city center and smaller towns but in between the big cities and suburbs the distances are to big. So in the future new cities and small towns should be build like Dutch cities, towns and villages.

[@eugenetswong]

Most cities can at least build like Carmel, Indiana. Using roundabouts and other cool stuff would help the traffic to slow down. Also, cities can change lights to flashing yellow and flashing red, when volumes are low.

[@zmooc]

The size of the US has absolutely nothing to do with it. US zoning laws do; they explicitly forbid building cities for human speed and human size...

[@ferryvantichelen6521]

Who really likes traffic lights anyway?

[@Sustainable_Engineer]

You could even put a tramline in the middle

[@Shaquille0624]

I love this but I can’t imagine this in a US city. Deeply curious what Dutch planners could do to a US city

[@PropagandasaurusRex]

If they could do anything, they would have done it by now. This idiotic obsession with Dutch urban stuff is just overhyped and ridiculous.

[@BuildNewTowns]

Let's design and build our own cool towns.

[@callyral]

​@@PropagandasaurusRexOf course Dutch planners can't do anything in America, they do stuff in the Netherlands because they're Dutch

[@frisianmouve]

Not build bike lanes everywhere, but only next to some of the bigger roads which I think might be the biggest misconception that bike lanes are everywhere here, but they're not. They're usually for GOW's where there's more car volume and higher speeds so seperation of cyclists and cars is required there, not for neighbourhood streets. He'd designate most of the streets as ETW and think about how neighbourheed streets can be designed around 30km/h or I guess it'd be 20mph for the US. Here they're mostly brick, but I think that'd be too expensive. Considering the sheer size and cost it'd probably be easier with speed bumps and street narrowing to traffic calm those streets. For the typical stroad environment that are so prevelant in the US you'd want to seperate the local access function from the through-traffic function. My best solution for them would be one lane in each direction for through-traffic in the middle and parallel slower streets for the local access function that double as safe streets for cyclists. An example might be the Bedumerweg here in Groningen. Through-traffic in the middle, local access on the sides and still actually no cycle paths needed as the side streets are sufficiently calm for mixing of traffic. And much more limited access straight onto the road instead of so many driveways straight onto fast-moving traffic that are dangerous and lead to unnecessary conflict points. If plenty of local access isn't required you can just go like the Paterswoldseweg here with nice cycle paths on each side

[@mourlyvold64]

@@PropagandasaurusRex Would you at least allow us to introduce 'stroopwafel' shops? You'll love it!

[@tuomio5043]

This only works when you have very small traffic volumes. In my small american city that 1km space between intersections would be filled to gridlock between traffic lights for 4 hours a day. This kind of design only works if most destinations are close enough for walking and cycling.

[@edipires15]

The street showcased doesn't have small traffic volumes. It's a very busy road, connecting the southern neighbourhoods of Amsterdam that are outside the ring road

[@tristanridley1601]

There are SOME American streets with ridiculous volumes. But, American streets also make volumes look much worse than they are. You would be shocked how many Also, huge areas of American cities are dense enough to function for cyclists, while being too low density for pedestrians. You just need to make cycling safe, and traffic can come down.

[@zmooc]

It's sort of the other way around. It all starts with urban design, ensuring almost everybody lives at walking or at worst cycling distance from supermarkets and anything else they regularly need. Without that, building for human speed and human size is hopeless. The problem in the US is that zoning laws effectively forbid exactly that, making everybody either dependent on a car or on someone with a car. And unfortunately, that's very difficult to fix once it's in place because buildings tend not to be that easy to move...

[@BartWillems1969]

"This only works..." is the standard response of US city planners to explain why they still adhere to 1875 design standards. Instead they should adopt a "what can we make work in OUR city" approach but that seems too much to ask.

[@tuomio5043]

@zmooc I completely agree with this. I am on board with urbanism. I just struggle to believe that these solutions that work in the Netherlands with 50% car commuting or less would work well if copy pasted into my town where 85% of people commute by car and they live much further from work.

[@Sven_E]

You've made a major mistake in your video. There are roads in Utrecht which were reduced in lanes and it resulted in major traffic jams through the city. Utrecht failed doing this because Utrecht made their major arterials smaller without reducing the amount of cars. The amount of accidents increased and the traffic flow became way less. The traffic lights added to the 't Goylaan for example made traffic even worse. The decision of Utrecht to reduce the amount of lanes on arterials is a major flaw. There are projects where this was succesfull but most of these projects unfortunately failed.

[@julianpowers594]

Source?

[@mymemeplex]

More traffic is sometimes the objective, so that the alternatives become more appealing.

[@eugenetswong]

I'm commenting to see what sources might be provided. I won't criticize if none are provided.

[@DanDanDoe]

It is very finicky, yeah. I've not experienced much issues with it, but it's also a road I try to stay away from around rush hour. There are alternative routes, but many people still try to use it. It can get gridlocked quite easily if a driver makes a mistake, but overall I do think it's an improvement over the old situation. Speeds are a lot slower. The municipality changes some major roads with the idea that people who need to be elsewhere in the city leave the city limits, go on the highway/ring and then reenter the city on the right side, rather than use roads like this to go straight through the city. It doesn't help that when the street was changed, the southern ring road was also under reconstruction, often leading to slower traffic there. So one of the alternatives became less attractive and people still opted to use the Goylaan.

[@streetscaping]

I am sure that traffic planners anticipated that there would be increased traffic after the reconstruction. Just like when cities reduce the number of lanes to make space for bike lanes, traffic may worsen in the short term, but in the long run, it will improve.

[@alessandropalmeri4875]

Although I understand this and I think it’s beneficial to urban planning, I was navigating the center of Amsterdam last weekend (I’m from Brussels) and I was constantly confused and stuck in weird intersections because one, every thing is the same color and the same height making it very difficult to know where to stand and two because it is clear that pedestrians are not the priority and cyclists just expect you to literally rush through the sidewalk (if there is even one).I really like the bike as a transportation method but i think I had a quite the culture shock and was constantly harassed by cyclists that could not care less if you were it their way or not.

[@fohward]

Yeah, Amsterdam cyclists are out of control. But that's a big city thing though. More traffic, more stress, more anonymity. In other cities and towns in the Netherlands, cyclists actually stop for you automatically when you have right of way, say at a zebra crossing. In Amsterdam, as a pedestrian you learn to either weave or *claim* the right of the way (as long as the cyclist can still reasonably break to let you pass, of course).

[@alessandropalmeri4875]

@@fohward So if I understand it correctly, it is a phenomenon that primarily happens in Amsterdam but not in other Dutch cities, is that right?

[@fohward]

@@alessandropalmeri4875 correct!

[@zmooc]

What you consider confusing probably isn't but you're just not used to it. The same is true for me in Belgian cities; as a pedestrian you will inadvertently walk onto the bike lanes, but after a few days I get used to it. Note that in specific situations where other options are not possible (of which there are a lot in historic cities like Amsterdam due to space constraints), shared infrastructure is sometimes designed to be confusing on purpose. The more confusion, the more people pay attention, the safer shared infrastructure tends to be.

[@alessandropalmeri4875]

@ While I understand your point and the logic behind the design and also the fact of getting used to a new system, I feel like pedestrians shouldn’t have to run and risk getting into an accident because cyclists can’t be bothered to slow down at a zebra crossing

[@Polderweg]

This AI voiceover is 🤢🤮

[@tristanridley1601]

This is the real dutch man's voice. I get that AI voices are taking over youtube, but this is a human. He sounds a bit different only because of an accent.

[@streetscaping]

@@tristanridley1601 I only speak a bit of Dutch, I am Latvian