This bike path has recently been resurfaced in Assen. It was slightly narrow but is now a generous width, about four metres. The path is alongside the road through an industrial estate and it is heavily used by many students and adult commuters to get to schools and workplaces near the city centre from a suburb on the other side of this industrial estate (though clearly less heavily used at the time when I took this photo).The main reason for this photo was to illustrate the style of lamp-post used. Not only is there a lamp for the road, but there is also one for the cycle path. This is to ensure that this path, like others, has adequate social safety so that cyclists are not put off using it just because it is dark.
Note also the usual high level of subjective safety due to being separated from the cars. These are the things that make for a high cycling rate. An industrial estate is never going to be the best place in the world to cycle, but the attention to details makes the best of a bad situation.
Out of interest, where would pedestrians walk in this area? Do they have to share the cycle path?
ReplyDeleteSam: Yes, at this point they would walk on the cycle path. Pedestrians are allowed to use the four metre wide cycle path when there is not a separate path for them.
ReplyDeleteWhere there are many pedestrians, there will be a separate path for them. That's the case in residential areas and in the centre of cities. This is a bit far out of the centre for that to be the case.