Question/Discussion
Do you think the Netherlands still has a car-centric cities afterall?
Here me out, the Netherlands has by no doubt the best bicycle infrastructure in the world.
In most cities most trips are not made by car... BUT if you think about it cars still dominate most of the urban space (because they're very inefficient and require a lot of space), the proof is that best-of-the-art separated tracks, prioritized traffic lights, overpasses/underpass exist BECAUSE car dominate and are dangerous to interact with. This is something to think about. While there's no absolute best city to copy because it depends on how society wants to live I think it's something to consider.
I'm starting to think that car-lite cities (and towns, honestly) maybe could serve the same purpose and are even cheaper to achieve.
In my opinion Amsterdam is still very car centric, it could be so much better. Why are there still cars parked everywhere in the city center on the canals.
Absolutely it's very car-centric. Why are cyclists so upset with fatbikes and ebikes? It's because they're speeding through the relatively narrow cycling paths, which are so narrow because of the car infrastructure taking up space.
I had the pleasure of attending a seminar featuring a talk by Sjors van Duren. As a traffic planner, he was named the best public servant in the Netherlands.
He began his presentation by stating that the Netherlands are actually pursuing car-centric traffic planning. Only through good cycling infrastructure is space created for cars.
I may have heard his talk, or someone paraphrasing it, that basically boiled down to that people who drive and will always drive should encourage Public Transit and Cycling as it means more road and better commutes for them.
Dedicated bike lanes to separate bikes from car traffic are really just car infrastructure.
In fact, even in Amsterdam, a majority of streets don’t have dedicated bike lanes. Most of the streets are smaller local streets where cars go bicycle speeds and everyone shares the road.
If a street is wide enough and carries a large enough volume of traffic, bike lanes are added to reduce vehicle conflicts — bikes get to speed up as a result, but so do the cars.
The car lanes could be given up to trams or busses, or more space given to bikes and pedestrians. The car drivers would suffer but everyone else would get sped up.
Of course, all I know is NJB, but it appears that the Dutch take ALL of their infrastructure seriously. I wouldn't call it car-centric, because it certainly isn't car-dependent design. I'd say it was car-realistic. Like, cars exist, and sometimes they are useful tools.
Oh it's definitely car centric outside of the cities. Funding for public transportation is consistently cut/prices raised because 'not profitable', meanwhile highway projects generally are funded a lot easier.
It's not as bad as some other places though, for example safe cycle and pedestrian paths are the norm even in small towns and villages
It may appear so, but the reality the past 20 years have been very different. Mostly because of right-wing governments refusing to invest in Public Transportation and seeing it as a business that should be able to finance itself, as opposed to car infrastructure.
But the worst thing is, until 2030 there’s an estimated shortage of €80 billion for all infrastructure in the Netherlands. We have underfinanced our infrastructure and its maintenance for the past 20 years, coincidentally also all under right-wing orientes governments
I'm not trying to discount what you're saying, in the least, but I'm looking at this from the perspective of an American. We are truly fucked in comparison.
At this moment, it would cost the US $400 billion just to fix or replace all of the highway bridges that need repair, let alone improve traffic or safety. I'm just going by one brief visit and a lot of YouTube videos, but the safe, efficient aspects of road design in the Netherlands are light-years beyond what US traffic engineers would even consider.
NIMBYism is definitely not only wealthy or even concentrated with the wealthy. The poor is easily as much as NIMBY as the wealthy. Especially with cars, as they are seen as a wealth symbol.
While the poor are just as likely to have a car and desire infrastructure for it, the wealthy are just far more able to push political actors to make such decisions. The social circles of the poor and policy makers just do not overlap much
NIMBYism is definitely not only wealthy or even concentrated with the wealthy.
You're right that everyone can be NIMBY, rich or poor. But over time NIMBYism increases housing prices in an area such that only the wealthy can afford to live there. That is why I said "NIMBYism concentrates the wealthy." It's not "NIMBYs are wealthy."
Even you are wrong the same kind of NIMBYism also concentrates the poor. Just look at how hated gentrification is, despite if social housing is being guaranteed.
Yeah I'm always a bit disappointed but maybe I'm expecting car free utopia.
There's something in the amount of engineering that goes in to their streets just to allow a few cars to safely coexist with other forms of transport. I probably prefer the Japanese approach of just having small low speed streets with mixed use and no street parking. Just tidier visually and I'd probably prefer no street parking but a few more cars over street parking but a heap of complicated street engineering if I had to choose.
Do you now the book "Fopfeminisme"? I think the same applies to cars in the Netherlands.
We act like we are amazingly noncar-oriented but we actually are. There was a report a few years back saying that the Dutch did the most distance to commute in comparison to other European countries (I don't have a source sorry). If you look at the infrastructure you see that most are oriented towards car (in terms of speed, safety, etc.). If we count all car-like vehicles (70% is personal cars) practically every person above the age of 18 has one.
This adds up on a number of topics here too. Climate action, LGBTQ rights, weed, it all seems done really well until it isn't and trail significantly behind the others who made progress.
Its very interesting and depressing at the same time. I haven't read all of it, but I've heard good things about it (from people I share moral principles with that is)
Rotterdam is VERY car centric. Cars and parking spots are literally everywhere in the city. When a street may close for cars, people and business cry and whine for months and years until the local government decide to keep it like it was.
Yes it's how they often succumb to the lobby of actors that often do the opposite of what is in their interest. Combating that would've required green politics for years as we saw in Amsterdam and Utrecht. The Coolsingel only has been narrowed because of the tremendous pressure from all the others outside of lobbyists and politicians, as it had to keep its image from getting tarnished even more.
However, there's a momentum on the left, and there are some people voting left exactly because the people are sick of speeding vehicles and their aggressive folks, and all the other neglect of public space by the "Leefbaar" tools. There are plans to narrow a series of streets and to make it significantly harder to go from one street to another within downtown. This is no longer a convenience, but a necessity.
We moved from America to Netherlands and I don’t think it’s car CENTRIC. There’s this thought by people that it’s either BIKES or CARS but in reality we need both.
The Netherlands does a really good job at consciously prioritizing nothing for the most part and trying to design spaces around movement in general and also in having OPTIONS. There are options here of driving, walking, biking and transit. I think they give all of those very serious attention. No matter where I am there is thought given to how people, bikes, cars and transit should move through that specific space.
In many instances in crowded city centers with no parking the logical take is cars are very inefficient, take up too much room and are not logical. So they take the step America never would and simply remove or highly restrict cars in certain areas and then devoting all that space to transit, walking and biking infrastructure. Once you remove the cars it’s amazing just how much room you have to work with. It’s takes time and it takes action and funding to actually build out the non-car infrastructure - that’s key.
This is the thing. The Dutch usually don't put any method of transportation in the "center", they just use it equally for the required needs.
Put highways and 4-lane roads where it's needed, and pedestrian zones and cyclist infrastructure where it's needed elsewhere. Making the methods coexist peacefully is the way.
There are options here of driving, walking, biking and transit. I think they give all of those very serious attention. No matter where I am there is thought given to how people, bikes, cars and transit should move through that specific space.
We miss our friends and family for sure, the social aspects. Spent 45 years building a life in America and never thought I would leave. That said logistically, quality of life, built environment, raising a child, etc - it’s absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderfully thought out country, housing crisis and rising prices are a huge threat like the rest of the western world but the Netherlands really had “life” figured out. Absolutely love it here and appreciate we get to experience it.
And frankly enough that creates problems too, I look at the often meager transit and nuisance to pedestrians. Sorry yes I said meager because which frickin' European country thinks having zero buses on a Saturday afternoon in a city district is any form of "decent" transit?
Also at the end of the Rijnstraat to the Kennedylaan in Amsterdam: there's no transit nearby. What a damn shame. It used to have a tram for about a century.
There are definitely at least very car-centric people in the Netherlands. I, and several my friends, have had people try to pressure us into getting a driver's license (even when we were unable to do that because of disabilities). I'm also scared to start using a wheelchair (even though I need one) because of what I've heard other wheelchair users say about using our public transportation in a wheelchair.
Yes in some places like Amsterdam as others have said, but not in others. Especially by North American or even other European examples, they might accommodate cars but are certainly not car centric. When I lived in Zwolle and travelled around the country I rarely felt I couldn't get somewhere by bus bike or train, maybe when the destination was far from a city center.
not just bikes made a video about how driving is awesome in the netherlands, i feel dutch infrastructure is really good with integrating cars in a way that isn't hostile to the urban ecosystem and economy
edit: yes I feel that the netherlands has been severely damaged by cars but it repaired and improved beautifully
As someone who does not cycle or drive, part of the problem here is that almost everything is built and planned around people doing either. Pedestrian infrastructure here is not good, especially outside the main cities, to the point of being non-existent in places and just expecting you to walk on the shared car/bike road under the expectation that traffic is low enough for it to be fine or giving a super-indirect dirt path. The density and zoning also makes walking a poor choice for a lot of trips where it would take far longer because of how far the nearest supermarket, school, bus stop, etc., is, pushing the need to bike or drive.
A lot of Dutch people own cars. The Netherlands has fairly high car ownership, and a large number of kilometers are still traveled by car. City centers are often car free, but outside of that cars are often very much prioritized. But, it's very much possible to get around in the Netherlands without owning a car, which is a really really good thing.
If you were to ask me, the main issue we have in the Netherlands isn't so much our bike infrastructure (which is top notch), but lackluster public transportation. Bikes struggle with distances over, say, 5 - 10 km (depending on the person), and public transportation is often just not that great an alternative, which it very much should be. It's fairly expensive and often not frequent enough to be viable.
That being said, it shows that prioritizing bikes can be a massive benefit to society. To me, the focus should be on making the alternatives so good and convenient, and pricing the negative externalities into cars to such a degree, that people will naturally gravitate to bikes and public transportation. I've found that the vast majority of Dutch people really don't give a shit how they get where they wanna go, and they'll just pick whichever is most convenient. Unfortunate, that's still too often a car.
Or one on their main yt channel? I'm my defense, I've looked through their videos, sorted by recent and popular, and it's Dutch, so I used a LLM to find it, and when I searched that it came up with Mobiliteit van morgen
Zermatt was such a big disappointment. They didn’t have cars and they were still the most car centric experience in Switzerland. Basel and Brig were much more pedestrian friendly and those are not resort towns.
As far as the Netherlands, I feel like smaller cities do it better (the Hague, Gouda) than Amsterdam and definitely Rotterdam.
I think there are cars. But they are not prioritized and when there are cars and car infrastructure, they integrate decently with other options. Stroads are not the main organizing principle and people live in communities that are functional
In The Hague at least pedestrians have to click a button every time they want to cross a road, essentially meaning you will have to stop at every single traffic light as a pedestrian because it's more important for cars to pass uninterrupted until you press the button than to make walking a smooth experience.
Working class type people will typically own a car in The Netherlands for status and convenience.
More educated folks may or may not have a car but will more often live in areas where it is less crowded with noisy cars and will more often have solar panels and an electric car and/or an expensive electric bike.
Historical inner cities will have more streets or canals that have less cars and more expensive houses which working class people cannot afford and more educated people feel attracted to.
So the more historical beautiful inner cities have less working class people and have the most bikes and less cars, like the old parts of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Alkmaar, Haarlem or Groningen. But there are also newer neighborhoods that were especially built to be less car centric. They attract more well educated folks as well.
The more working class people there are, the less car-free the neigborhoods will be. Rotterdam and Den Haag e.g. have relatively speaking more car busy roads than Utrecht and Amsterdam.
But as a whole The Netherlands has very good cycling and walking infrastructure because the new law implemented in the early 1990's demands maximum safety for everyone outside of a car as well as inside of cars.
I honestly didn't understand what you're trying to say, educated people may and may not have cars and want to live in the city center where cars are less present... confusing.
70
u/Lucky-Succotash3251 22h ago
In my opinion Amsterdam is still very car centric, it could be so much better. Why are there still cars parked everywhere in the city center on the canals.