A Study Tour participant from Uppsala in Sweden just uploaded this video shot two years ago during the school run in Assen. This is an area within a suburb of Assen near local shops built between primary schools (age 5-11). The same thing happens every day.
Parents accompany many younger children, but you'll note that almost all children of all age groups ride their own bicycles and that older primary school age children are independently mobile. Also note that cycling is always a sociable side-by-side activity. If cycle-paths were so narrow that they enforced one-by-one cycling then they would neither have the required capacity for this many cyclists nor would they be useful for parents accompanying their children.
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Probably amongst the cutest things you'll see this week, this video from our local TV news is of the BMX national championships for walking bikes held in the town of Klazienaveen in Drenthe. There were four different categories: 5 year olds, 4 year olds, 3 year olds and 2 years or younger.
At the moment, our local TV station has a series of programmes entitled "Week van de fiets". This was the first installment, in which people are interviewed about their cycling habits. Drenthe has more segregated cycle-paths than any other province in the Netherlands and this is part of the reason why Drenthe is one of only two "five star" cycling provinces in the country (the other is Friesland).
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| Take care! Pilot of self driving vehicle. Vehicle can't swerve. Keep 1 metre distance. |
Just over the border in Appelscha (that's in Friesland but supported in part by a grant from Drenthe) there has been a trial of a self-driving bus along a cycle-path. The bus travels at a maximum of 15 km/h and is as wide as the cycle-path on which it travels.
Result: perhaps not much actual danger, but plenty of unwelcome chaos. Cyclists are told they have to swerve because the bus cannot. People who have been interviewed after riding the bus say that it's only useable if you've got all day to make your journey.
Note how the seats in the bus are three abreast. Even in the Netherlands, every other mode of transport is always given width to enable sociable travel, even if as in this case that means that due to a bus entirely filling the cycle-path, the legitimate users of the path are forced to ride on the grass !
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| A Dutch blogger's suggested solution :-) |
Update: I'd barely posted this before I read that these buses will return next week. Apparently, actual people are to be employed to stand along the cycle-path and instruct cyclists on how to avoid the bus without a driver which is filling their cycle-path. This is beginning to sound like some sort of comedy skit.
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| Changes in Assen 1960/2014/2016. More. |
Over time, this area of the city has changed from a busy through route to a rather quiet street and as of a few weeks ago in 2016 it has been a pedestrian zone in which cycling is permitted.
The news item warns that the promised electronic detection of motor vehicles driving through this area will be switched on soon. From the 1st of October, motorists using this area will receive a written warning. After the 1st of November they'll receive a €90 fine.
The Netherlands is actually a very easy country in which to be a driver, but you can't drive a car everywhere because this limits the options of other people. If Assen's city centre streets had been allowed to continue to fill with cars, then the streets would be even more chaotic than they were in the 1970s and this city really would not be the pleasant place it is today. Not all recent developments are good, but the overall we are still heading in the right direction.
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I wonder what happens if such a bus encounters someone who cannot get off their bike and walk through the grass, e.g. a (disabled) trike rider, handbike rider, wheelchair etc. or a velomobile. I also wonder whether anyone working on this pilot project has considered this in advance...
ReplyDeleteGreetings,
Erwin and Tante lies
Sustainable Safety actually says that even buses and cars should be separated from each other when possible, a 12 t bus with 60 passengers, each 60 kg including any baggage, would be a total of about 15 t and tends to be more rigid than cars.
ReplyDeleteI've been having ridiculously hard times convincing people that the Dutch have emergency services able to operate on narrower roads and will not get into hold ups and can still go over speed humps, that yes we can afford it, no, our snow is not too expensive to clear from the cycle paths and that people can still cycle in the cold, even of less than -15 C. They feel like they are being pragmatic. It seems absurd to be even having to make these arguments, I try to point out their hypocrisy when they claim to have committed to Vision 0 and they refuse to even narrow 3.75 metre wide arterial road lanes. I can't even convince them to do things that would even do good for the drivers like roundabouts, let alone roundabouts with cycle paths around them. Bloody fools.
How does the electric detection of motor vehicles work, especially in relation to recognizing the driver/vehicle so they can be fined?
ReplyDeleteErwin: I wondered the same. There seems to have been no foresight at all on the part of those who back the bus.
ReplyDeleteRobert: It's tough to be a campaigner. It's perhaps not surprising that people are generally resistant to change which they see as being beneficial only to an out-group of people unlike themselves but, as you've discovered, there is also opposition to change even if that results in benefits closer to home.
Mads: I'm fairly sure it's a camera with number-plate recognition. I'll go and have a look around and update the blog post.
Dear Robert,
ReplyDeleteThis is a constant feature of human nature that is unlikely to change. Niccolò Machiavelli commented upon this at the beginning of the 16th century.
"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it."
For different translations, see:
http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Machiavelli.html
Conclusion: Pilot projects are good.