1y ago

Amsterdam to give car traffic less priority as streets and sidewalks fill up

nltimes.nl Amsterdam to give car traffic less priority as streets and sidewalks fill up

Amsterdam will give car traffic less priority in the future. The city’s streets and sidewalks are filling up as the population grows. Traffic speed and flow will get less focus as the Amsterdam government tries to find space for everyone, traffic alderman Malnie van der Horrst (D66) said in a guidan...

Some interesting points:

That may mean that Amsterdam residents will have to “wait a little longer” during rush hour, motorists may spend longer at red lights, and locals may have to accept that same-day delivery is a thing of the past.

Cyclists will also have to adapt. Next year, the city will introduce streets where faster cyclists, often on e-bikes and fatbikes, can choose between the motorway or the bike path. Those who choose the bike path must adhere to a speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour.

For a city moving in the opposite direction: Change to the mobility law - Berlin CDU wants to abolish priority for cyclists

24 comments

Same-day delivery is such a recent expectation. To call it a "thing of the past" may be accurate as in "no longer available" but it's also misleading with its unintentional implication of a longer history. If it was just a brief blip, we'll manage just fine. Livable cities and a livable planet have to be our priority.
- I'm inclined to agree with you. For me personally, at-home delivery is a new thing completely, let alone same-day. Where I came from, that's still not the norm, we would just go to the post-office to pick up our items.
  After some initial interest in at-home delivery when I moved to Europe, I realised that I now find it much more comfortable to redirect my parcels to a Packstation and pick them up on my own schedule.
  
  Yeah, I grew up in a remote place, lived somewhere with to-the-door post for quite a while, and now live in a remote place again ... I pick up my post from the village bar, and it's a very good excuse to stop for a drink while I'm there :-)
- For me it is not about next day delivery bout about certainty of when a package will arrive. I don't care if it takes 2 or 3 days, but be accurate on when you are coming.

Relevant xkcd: Urban Planning Opinion Progression
- I like how he included notjustbikes in the comic

Why is Amsterdam so far ahead of anyone else regarding city planning
- They had a serious cultural moment as the result of a few dead kids that made safe transportation design a higher priority to speed/"reducing congestion". Similar to how backup cams were mandated for new vehicles in the US as a result of a few VERY tragic incidents.
  This took a LOT of people who would otherwise be considered part of the car and driver constituency and moved them to a new vision zero constituency.
  Everything else, at least at the start, flows from there. Once you commit to making your roads safe above all else, it rapidly becomes clear that car-first transportation design will simply never get you there. You need to roll safer alternatives to driving. And the more you do, the more the benefits compound. Building car-first transportation, as it turns out, is absurdly expensive compared to serious commitment to multi-modal design (the classic comparison is Amsterdam/NYC/Houston -- as a percent of the municipal budget, Houston is about double NYC and NYC is about double Amsterdam in terms of what they have to spend maintaining their transportation networks. Roads for cars are the most expensive form of transportation in spite of most other transit projects being judged as "too expensive").
  There's some other very specific factors (e.g., the Nazis throwing all their bikes into the river during the occupation, creating a bit of patriotic imagery around a bike), but in my opinion the focus on vision zero is the main thing.
  Unfortunately, it was lightning in a bottle. It's very unlikely you'll be able to copy that kind of cultural movement anywhere else. So in the rest of the world, it'll be up to dedicated, persistent, serious advocacy. I suggest you read/join Strong Towns, look up to see if you have a local bike/walk organization that does events, check if your city has a vision zero program, and above all else investigate your municipal planning commission (MPC) to see if they have public meetings -- showing up to an MPC meeting gives you a VASTLY outsized voice compared to anyone who doesn't, especially if you follow a good policy advocacy playbook to make persuasive arguments.
- Don't forget that a few decades ago they were the same as everyone else, if not below average in terms of having a city designed for humans. It goes to show how effective consistent public policy is for changes like this.
- Japan's urban design is pretty excellent as well, for different reasons

Cyclists will also have to adapt. Next year, the city will introduce streets where faster cyclists, often on e-bikes and fatbikes, can choose between the motorway or the bike path. Those who choose the bike path must adhere to a speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour.
Legendary.
In my town, cyclists aren't getting better, but the subway and bus system is. Much love to the convenience it's afforded!

Those who choose the bike path must adhere to a speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour.
Thank goodness. Some of those e-bikes are becoming a serious menace on the bicycle paths these days. There's a growing trend where especially fat bikes get modified to go faster than their original speed and without having to actually pedal. I wonder how they're going to enforce this though.
- They're the Dutch, so there probably is going to be little active enforcement. Because bike riders and car drivers are not a different species of animal and sound, effective methodology to traffic enforcement is the same for both.
  They'll just design bike paths that make you feel uncomfortable if you are going significantly beyond those speeds in areas where it is important to keep people to those speeds. They'll signal with clear design what speeds you should be going.
  Relying on enforcement for traffic rules is not an effective strategy. Engineering is the only thing that really works -- and the Netherlands is the case study proving that point.
  Though personally, the evidence suggests it is below about 20mph/30kmh where the risk of serious injury drops off in a collision. I wish they'd be targeting 25 or even 30 as the max speed instead of 20. 20kmh/10mph is a speed a non-ebike operated by a reasonably fit person can be moving.
  
  I doubt they're going to introduce a lot of new infrastructure from the beginning. It's probably going to be signs and new regulations at first. Like when they restricted mopeds from using the bicycle lanes.
  Maybe I'm mistaken though. I'm not a resident, I just work in Amsterdam.
  The problem about speeds is not so much how serious an injury you get when you have a collision, but more how much damage you cause to others. Especially during rush hour, the lanes can be crowded with people going to work, kids going to school, etc.
  As long as everyone cycles at about the same speed, it's not that much of a problem. But those bigger e-bikes are way faster (and heavier) and can cause quite a bit of damage when they hit someone. Preferably they should create separate lanes for faster cyclists instead of forcing them on the motorways.
  Anyway, if you're interested I did a quick search about the problem and got you a translated link to a recent article about the problems.

locals may have to accept that same-day delivery is a thing of the past
In a pedestrian-friendly city like Amsterdam, couldn't they mostly replace this with a pickup depot / Amazon locker type setup? (maybe residents with wheelchair / limited-mobility / etc permits can still get front-door package delivery, but it's not something most people need)
- you can also make deliveries in cargo bikes.
- Pretty much every supermarket in Amsterdam is also a pick-up location for packages. So you can get your package while you do groceries. However a substantial portion of packages is still delivered home even when delivery cost is higher. People just really like the convenience of it.

@agrammatic
and locals may have to accept that same-day delivery is a thing of the past
Aren't cargo bikes a viable option?
- At the face of it, it seems plausible to me that cargo bikes do not offer the capacity needed to guarantee same-day delivery to all of those who currently use such services.
  
  That is not entirely true, in fact in Europe there is a trend of replacing delivery vans with cargo ebikes:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63DdEe_8aM
  
  @agrammatic oh 🙁 perhaps delivery robots will be able to offer this some time in the future.