From cycle path to cycle route

As part of an elaborate cycle plan the city of 's-Hertogenbosch is currently updating its cycling infrastructure. The city wants to raise the modal share of cycling from 33% to 44% of all trips (Note that these figures are  not reliable. They are not for "all trips" but result from not including walking as a transport mode and only considering cycling within the city). David has already written about this 2009 plan before and he has shown some of my video's with parts of the plan. Some weeks ago I showed you how (also as part of this cycling plan) new red asphalt was rolled out in another street.

This blog post wil focus on one of the updates that was also finished. This was a street with a collection of cycle paths and service streets. In the new plan this street had to be updated with the latest minimal requirements to be a real main cycling route. With the update finished we see it can indeed be called a main cycling route now. We see this shift in thinking about cycling infrastructure all over the Netherlands. Governments in charge of road building (from the State, to the Provinces to the municipal authorities) think and plan much more in routes rather than in individual streets or paths. Which really is an improvement and gets the grid complete.

  

Before: cycle path ends in shared service street

After: cycle path continues as bicycle street where cyclists have priority and cars are guests

While the streets had to be redone completely, the city took the opportunity to also change all the sewer pipes, the telephone, data and electricity cables and the water and natural gas pipes. This is the usual thing to do in the Netherlands. There is good coordination between all the companies responsible for all these systems under supervision of the city or municipal authorities. This dates back from the time (not so long ago) that all these services were run by the councils themselves. Since all cables are underground in this country it is a very good thing that there is this coordination. You wouldn't want streets to be dug up separately by all the different companies.

All new cables and pipes for natural gas, electricity, water, telephone, television and data.

All the sewer pipes were also renewed.

The elaborate works took place late 2009, early 2010 and the below video gives a short overview. Not only were service streets completely redone, where necessary the existing cycle paths got a far better surface as well.

To see the full impact of this updated route, you can see the before and after situation in the video below. 

To be able to read all the annotations it is best to watch the video on YouTube in a larger size. (The annotations are not fully shown in the window below.)

Now that so many of the works were finished, two years after the cycle plan became active, the city of 's-Hertogenbosch apparently felt confident enough to be a candidate city in the election of 'cycling city of the Netherlands 2011'. It is one of the 18 cities in the long-list in this election by the Fietsersbond (Cyclist's Union). This summer five of the cities will be chosen to go to the final election.

Note that the figures for cycling modal share in 's-Hertogenbosch