Amsterdam Just Closed their Busiest Road 

My friend lives over there. He says that new ring roads that encircle amsterdam take away a lot of the traffic. In addition, many major roads have been moved below ground into complex cross city car tunnels as the streets above have been turned into walkable neighbourhoods

Gefeliciteerd met deze video, het gaat hier om de meest ingrijpende maatregel sinds jaren

@@electro_sykes What new ring roads?

I'll be honest, learning an intuitive way to understand eigenvectors might have just sold me.

@@chipdale490 many new ones.

To be honest, Amsterdam had a pro car party, who wanted to drain the beautiful historic canals, to turn them into parking spaces. Thank plan never happened.

Still better than inviting British/Americans as your political advisors

back then it seemed a vision of the future. cars were still a developing technology and it makes sense that they would want to bring their seemingly outdated infrastructure up to modern standard

THAT, my friend, is how you invent Hell.

Even just the second word on its own is bone chilling

My favorite is when they complain that cyclists and pedestrians don't pay for the roads while they are driving on city roads that don't receive any funding from their property taxes because they live in a suburb.

It’s one of the key reasons why NYC is able to implement congestion pricing. People in NJ don’t get to vote on the people who are implementing it.

@@traviskraemer Cyclists cost the taxpayer significantly less, so if anyone isn't paying for roads, it should be them.

Here in Iceland they've tried to refer to it first as "the war on private cars" and then when that was mocked, "the war on the FAMILY car". This "war" mostly consisting of building more bike paths and improving public transportation. The biggest issue has been turning some streets pedestrian-only, which has been protested by shop owners under the guise of caring about access for the disabled. Half of these shops aren't even wheelchair-accessible, which tells you exactly how much they care.

I don't think it's fair to dismiss the concerns of suburban residents based on the fact that they don't live in the city. They are totally legitimate stakeholders. Their taxes help fund all those museums and libraries, government offices and what not that are located in the city. They should have easy access to that. The city also depends on them as customers and workers. You need to actually weigh the benefits and downsides for everyone that is effected. On the one hand the danger, noise and air pollution has a massively negative impact on the local residents and workers. On the other hand you have the slight inconvenience to drivers who need to take a slightly longer route or use the excellent public transit offerings. It is this imbalance that makes reducing car free cities a good idea, not who is effected.

Admittedly reduced traffic speed (below 20km/15miles) can make those work Germany makes every town explicitly justify every location speeds are reduced

Mine cant even do bicycle lanes, the sidewalks are all stroad adjacent, and theres also literally just houses casually on the stroad (including mine)

In my city there was a bit of construction so they blocked the bicycle lane and put up a sign saying 'Bikers go on roadway.' That scared me. They regularly put traffic signs of all kinds in the bike lane.

Same here

At least they aren't wanting cyclists to have to pay road tax, insurance, and needing to have license plates like British motorists

Better still. Hope that your city learns to equal or better this

I envy the noise. Occasional reminders of the city, cars, and people without drowning out the natural quiet.

@@Urbanhandyman he lives in the Netherlands

Many people want to live in Europe, be glad you are an American and can move to the Netherlands under a DAFT visa.

As a Dutchie: I love our road/street system. Many city centers are just no cars at all now. They have to park on the outskirts and you have to walk or bike to get through the center. I personally moved from the big city in my province to a smaller town nearby. And I love it here. It's much more quiet, safer, more nature around, and more space for other things.

Amsterdam Just Closed their Busiest Road

@@LavaCreeperPeople Okay Thanks for The Info

That's actually a really good observation on perceptional bias!

an intelligent variation on the silly "if a bear does whatever in the woods but no-one's there to hear it"

same with "car drivers never go through red lights". They do. All the time. I see them do it. They just can't when there's other cars in front of them, which is most of the time.

There's unreasonable people on all sides, unfortunately that's just how it is. The Nimbys in the SF area are left-winged. The people objecting to better infrastructure in your area were right-winged. Good infrastructure is not bipartisan, and people (especially those in support of good infrastructure) should not be making it such an issue.

When you break it down into right wing being reactionary capitalists (always is) then it makes sense. Don't be afraid to commit, you are objectively on the right side. Folks try to label libs as left wing, but when you see where interests align, then it becomes clear. A great vid as always, and I appreciate how all urbanist channels are gradually coming to the left-wing realization. Cheers.

@@ZXNovaBoom Being a NIMBY is right-wing.

Thank you for the clarification. There are lots of "right wing" people that are in favour of urbanism and traditional city planning.

Don't know about Amsterdam, but rw pols in the US are 1) afraid of everything cept guns and 2) against everything other than guns, white Christianity (and supremacy), and cars--preferably big pick up trucks.

30 minutes from Adam Central to IJ tunnel?! Good gods, my sympathies, valiant hero. 100% agree about the "seats one" luxory-tractor idiots. There's OV (public transport), park n ride, rent a bikes, walkable cities.. And yet these entitled todlers insist on parking like they're cats: "What cross section?! I fits, so I sits." I've been fighting off the urge to feed these yuppie pricks their hood ornaments for decades, and frankly, it's never been a bigger struggle. Anyhow, you are an angel in the pantheon of transport, and may the gods watch over you. (And keep you clear of the Coen tunnel. Want fok dat gat in de grond.. XD)

It's always the fat SUVs that block the roads for the tram because they think they can squeeze in or they are just blind.

You are exactly right. These ppl who don't live in the Amsterdam are not willing to give up their privileged private car experience. This is a clash btw two lifestyles that ppl made their choice already. On the other hand drivers do have the need to go into the Central few times a year/month. Local municipal should also listen to the need from these migratory drivers so we can reduce their absolute need to go into a traffic. Let these municipal workers pass a survey when traffic is stopped. That will be great. As a driver I hate traffic.

Seriously, next time you're in a city with a lot of traffic, pay attention to how many people are in a car on average. In my experience it's like 1,2 on average, and that's being generous. Each driver occupies so much space it's absurd, not only do they drive obscenely large cars, they also need to keep minimum distances from one another, driving the wasted space up even more. Cars really are hilariously inefficient and harmful in pretty much every conceivable way, but buses and trams are communism 1984 george foreman I guess

Seasonal roadwork time here on the west coast of Canada. On my 20min walk to and from work, I see at least 3 blocked intersections each way as people enter an intersection they cannot leave due to stopped traffic in front of them and the lights change. Usually it's 3 cars deep that should never have entered the intersection at all. Usually one person in each car. Usually you can see the drivers waving their hands and cursing the drivers in front of them. Not their fault, mate.

There have been a few news articles about this. They endured a LOT of abuse during the first week.

@@NotJustBikes Carbrain is a real entitlement issue

And I am guessing for a low wage.

civilized talks with a lot of plesantary exchanges.. 🤣

@@ldorman And so are cars- blocking road and pretend they can do everything - then jumping red lights, damaging cars aso. This is my experience with cars.

Drivers often just don't believe the message. "That is just to discourage others driving, I'm sure it will just be open. They cannot just close a road, can they?"

Yeah, I was really surprised that they did this at the same time as they closed Sarphatistraat, to be honest. Also during the first week there was a big show at the RAI, which always causes traffic chaos in Zuid.

To be honest, I think the response should be "hmmm, car traffic is congested, let's take the train instead". Cars do not have the highest priority in a city, this entire channel keeps repeating that point. But I would argue timing could not be better, let's chase as many cars as possible away from city centers.

I understand there's also construction going on the A10 Noord motorway (that is a task of the national government, not Amsterdam).

​@@KoenPrinsAs someone in a different country, owning no car, I use taxicars whenever I need to travel faster than the usual public transport . Thus I too get annoyed at road closures that seem inconsiderate or unreasonable .

@@NotJustBikes This might actually be exactly why. It let them run a simulation of all traffic through the heart of the city being severely limited, yet this street being car-free. In other words, how well does the city hold in the worst case scenario if we shut down this through road.

Finger's crossed the "knip" stays that way. 🙂

As a resident of Kattenburg, I hope we get some support too 😉

Yep, this sounds similar to Tartu here in Estonia where we also make a road car-free for summer. But looks like we'll be stuck with through-traffic through the city center for many years to come for lack of an incomplete ring road. And on-going uncontrolled suburbanization.

Same in Tampere, rn only Hämeenkatu is closer from cars. I would like that to expand

Exactly, there is no such thing as "Right Wing Urbanism" and there never will be because of reactions like this🙄🙄

The construction business is often astonishingly corrupt as well, with years of extra delays and every time something was catastrophically misconstructed, whoopsie that bit was done by a subcontractor that's already out of business.

car drivers are often massive assholes to be fair.

you quite often see a pole in the middle of the bikepath if its a wide enough path for a car owner to see an entrance in.

The barriers are for a drawbrigde. Of course they extended the barriers into the bikepath. Bikes still do not have the ability to float.

Don’t worry. The other barriers are for the bridge, they’re not there because of the knip 😊

@@tardvandecluntproductions1278 That's why in Malaysia any bike path or sidewalk ends up as a motorbike lane so they end up having to put a ridiculous amount of poles that even wheelchairs and prams can't fit

Jason showed you the worst and most car centric road of Amsterdam.... did THAT hurt?

​@@buddy1155I don't think you understand, most American suburbanites can walk for a mile from their house and find a road nearly as big. I could walk for a mile in any direction and hit 6 different large roads with constant speeding cars and barely any crosswalks.😊

Fuck this country for its Transportation policies honestly. Germany will never ever get out of the asses of the Car industry and voters will never as a majority vote for actual good transportation planning. I'm so sick of it I will leave my home country after my Masters probably, just to go to a country where I can actually SAFELY RIDE MY FUCKING BIKE

Wer hat uns verraten??😡😡

"sozialdemokraten" haha eigentlich sehr rechts und antimenshen

Sadly a similar situation is brewing in Vancouver, BC, often listed as an urbanist dream for it's cycle lane progression over the last 10 years, a new right leaning ABC (All 'Bout Cars) party got into power, without having an anti bike platform during the election, got a majority on the Park Board too, and suddenly set about spending bike lane money on removing bike lanes. It has re-ignited the Critical Mass movement here, long dormant, because they had largely got what they wanted: equal representation for equal taxation. (Property taxes pay for city streets. (Thought I'd get that in before the Gasoline Entitlement brigade show up ....) Ken Sim (Mayor) is rapidly casting himself as anti urbanist due to tearing up plans for a bike lane on Broadway (once the new subway is complete) - with the whole point of the subway to replace vehicle miles, therefore allowing a reduction in lanes for cars. It's saddening that decades of hard fought victories on equality for non car users can be eroded so quickly after a very close election, and to the complete surprise of a lot people who voted for ABC - the party kinda lied, or at least were not up front about their true intentions.

Take a lesson from the French. They know what a protest looks like.

This is exactly the case in my observations. The American suburban phenomenon of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard!) seems to exist everywhere, perhaps by a different name. Entitled suburbanites are the most vociferous NIMBYs. Just look at any attempt to build high-density, affordable housing in the suburbs - the residents make it impossible because they are too worried about diminishing their property value. So everyone else has to suffer for their benefit.

I'm really looking forward to it too, but my biggest concern is that 6 weeks isn't long enough to result in a meaningful change in travel patterns. I've already seen a noticeable change in traffic from week 1 to week 3 though, so hopefully we get useful results out of it.

Here in Cologne there's several projects where closing streets (not roads yet, sadly) for cars are being tried out and it's definitely done for longer than just 1½ months, sometimes even more than a year afaik. And usually when a street gets closed to cars the local businesses complain at the start (because most business owners overestimate by far how many customers come by car), but are really happy afterwards because of rising profits. It just takes some time

I’m such a sucker for data driven decisions! Love seeing more channels help get the hard data on these changes out there rather than just the same tired emotional arguments!

@@NotJustBikes i feel like cars are not diverted far enough to incentivize different behaviour, they just complain and drive around. if instead they could only go to the inner city via the tunnels leading to the ring a10, ideally paying toll, i think that would lead to a much more meaningful reduction. also more pedestrianization! compared to other cities amsterdam is severely lacking in that regard.

Lol the protesters who did show up were able to protest on the street because there were no cars on it. Goes to show that space could be used for people rather than cars.

@@eriklerougeuh5772 That way, you'd be privileging the already privileged. When banning cars, everybody can still go by bike or foot.

😢

that's why governments (from city level to country level) need several parties, so no 1 party can get an absolute majority and do whatever they want. in the dutch way of government they (almost) always exist of several parties with their own agenda so they need to give a little to get a little and drastic change can never get pushed through by just one party.

The right-wingers got a lot of "donations."

@@Urbanhandyman 😂

north american infrastructure isn't just stupid... to me it looks like the city planners over there failed the tutorial of city skylines and still somehow got hired.

@@Urbanhandyman Worth noting his surname is literally Slaughter. Someone up the ancestry definitely did something to earn that name, and I'm not sure I'm ready to hear it.

As a born and raised Midwest American, I have had and will never not have a similar "I'll have none of your bullshit" tone in things I say based on or are facts. Things go a lot smoother in face-to-face conversation. On the anonymous internet though, there are plenty of wannabe bullies and white knights that will gladly lash out at such tone. As if they have the balls to do it in person.

I think we're past being polite and accommodating on these issues. Being unapologetic is a breath of fresh air.

@@moon-moth1 any chance you could point me in the direction of a study on the topic? I’ve been wanting to make a video on the economic advantages of taking cars away from city centers for a while, but haven’t been able to find many studies that feel really robust.

@@moon-moth1 Mariaplaats, Utrecht, the Netherlands. The council wanted to get rid of 20% of parking spaces. The business owners there wanted them all gone and be part of the pedestrian area the Mariaplaats borders. Some horses do drink when you lead them to water. :) (They got about 90% of their wish.)

I'm from Piteå in Sweden which have our country's oldest pedestrian street. It closed car traffic in 1961 and since then the pedestrian zone hasn't expanded by much. But this year they're working on removing a bunch of parking on a nearby street (leaving a few handicap spots). And of course it has not been met without criticism, even though there's a bunch of parking garages nearby but people can't be bothered to walk for a few extra minutes. Funnily enough, one of the main problem source of this issue is because of our alcohol laws. Alcohol stronger than 3.5% can only be sold in state owned alcohol stores, and there's usually only one of those stores in smaller towns. And here in this town it's located right next to where the parking spaces were so parking there was very popular. Opening another store on the outskirt of the town would decrease traffic in the center a lot but since it's state owned and regulated it's not that easy. I love that pedestrianisation is spreading throughout the world.

How long ago was Main Street in Ventura closed to car traffic? All the Street View images are from 2019. Also, out in the Phoenix area, there aren't any purely pedestrian streets, aside from 1 block of Central Avenue in downtown Phoenix, where there's a city center mall, though some towns have gotten close. Mesa turned Main Street in downtown into a street with only 1 lane of car traffic in each direction, though despite the light rail extension, there's still a ton of on-street parking and multiple large parking lots. Even then, businesses seem to be doing a lot better than they were before 2015. Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe is also thriving, though it's right next to a major university campus.

Looks like it was a temporary thing started during the pandemic that was made permanent yesterday.

The word stroad was coined by Charles from Strong Towns, in 2011, well before NJB existed. NJB is making a difference, but this is a far bigger movement already, and was already a movement long before NJB started.

Old Munich is beautiful and incredible. Post-war Munich is ugly and not nearly as liveable. At least the city centre is car free, but the surrounding areas have fundamental problems.

Going by videos from the "Black Forest Family", I'd say Freiburg is one of those. From comments on their videos I'd say Münster is another one.

In the US, we can only dream.

As someone living in Den Haag, I think that the trams in Amsterdam aren't very good at all, trying to push themselves through tiny city centre street. Here in DH the trams have their own lanes most of the time. Surely some routes here in DH also share the road with cars in some streets, but really not as much as they do in Amsterdam

On the tourist part, I imagine part of it is unfamiliarity - most Americans (speaking as one living abroad, though I don't actually own a car any more) are use to the idea of renting a car whenever they go somewhere (or driving their own) because that's a requirement in American cities. The other part of unfamiliarity may be the fear of being 'trapped' or lost without knowing how to get around; which, at least for Amsterdam isn't true due to how dense the transit system is (also Google maps helps in this day and age). Related to that may be a desire for freedom to get around, which, again for Amsterdam at least, is isn't true because it's so easy to get anywhere to anywhere in the city; you're never more than like... 5-10 minutes away from some kind of transit stop (or at least, it seems that way). As for non-tourists, that's probably more complex and individual - some people need it for work (real estate agents moving clients around) which I get. Others, maybe a personal desire and preference for cars even if it's the worse option in the city center. Others still might not like public transit for various reasons (experience with other systems being poor, dislike of crowds, etc).

@@PhotonBeast my real estate agent uses his bike whenever he can. Much faster to get around town than by car.

@@XEinstein true. But den Haag is similar to Amsterdam in that regard. Go see a city outside of the Netherlands and compare their tram system to the dutch.

@@XEinstein Oh, sure; I meant if they happen to be traveling with a client, particularity one that isn't already living in the city. Point is, I can see the need for a car for work travel reasons (and that's different than the need to travel to/from work).

Then, go on and do it, it'll be nice for you and the other people in your city, it's more or less the only way you can actually change something :)

Make your town a better place in a few years :)

I disagree. Urban Planning should not be considered part of Engineering. A great deal of the mess in North America is because for decades engineers, whose background is the physical sciences, lead urban design, which is a social science. Traffic engineers and urban planners should both have understanding of the other's basic principles. That is often not the case.

A friend of mine tried to do that with traffic/civil engineering but was basically crushed because the actual field is full of car-oriented planners and engineers who don't actually change their ways. That, or ones that know all this and gave up because the political opposition was too strong to let them actually improve the area. Good luck, but the actual problem isn't the technical or legal knowledge - it's having the political will to change the practice in the first place.

In the Netherlands there is a political divide between the cities and the provinces/rural areas, like all places, really. Amsterdam is run by leftist parties (the green party and the labour party, primarily), but the province is mixed and the national government is run by a centre-right neoliberal party. The smaller towns, villages, and rural areas need to rely a lot more on cars. I hesitate to call them "car dependent", because they're not, by North American standards, but car ownership is much higher in these areas. The neoliberal party (even at the municipal level) also courts the votes of the richest people in the Netherlands who have a much higher level of car ownership. So there is a legitimate element of these people looking out for their constituents/voting base. And while the Netherlands doesn't (really) have a car industry, Shell is Dutch, so there's an element of that in Dutch politics as well. The far-right oppose this project because of climate change denialism. Their voting record could be summed up by, "whatever the green party does, we do the opposite". That one is obvious. The centre-right parties are more difficult to understand. I genuinely don't know why the VVD (centre-right neoliberal) party was so keen to kill this project, literally from day one, when everybody knew that traffic would be bad in the first few weeks. Maybe some people closer to the situation can chime in.

Shell is not Dutch anymore.

I'll answer. For context: I am an Amsterdammer that's for a more strict and structured autoluw plan for the city. But even I had doubts about why they wanted a knip *here* of all places. What's not really mentioned in the video is that this road ends up going to the IJtunnel, connecting to Amsterdam-Noord and the A10 motorway ring. Though Amsterdam was quite early in making efforts to remove cars from the streets and putting filtered permeability in place, way back in the 70s, we are now suffering from a case of "handicap of a head start". Sometimes being radical and visionary is necessary to get something done. Amsterdam's way to going car light was done one street at a time. Slowly, bit by bit, the car dominance was being chipped away at. Visions and calls for the central area of the city to go car light (autoluw) already existed in the 1990s. But actual visions in government were always postponed to "later" or "in the future". To illustrate this, it is only in 2018 that the city came with a plan. And the best part? It's not even a plan of *what* they are going to do but only *how* they are going to do it. So while it may look obvious to some to "close such a busy street that takes cars downtown", it's really not. Amsterdam still hasn't decided exactly all the measures they will take to go autoluw. The fact that Brussels would be car-free (or light) before Amsterdam was absolutely unthinkable even 15 years go. It's also reflected a bit in the Dutch culture which is a culture of individual liberty and collective compromise. Opposed to French or Belgian culture that are more keen on authority. Making a big plan, working it out, and deploying it. In Dutch politics right now we're also suffering from our desire to not change too much at the same time and giving more power to indidiuals (or municipalities). The 1980s where big plans were made by the national government and then executed are definitely over. The first "anti-car" measure were always right in the city center, because that was were the space was too limited. These days the focus is shifting outwards because they realised the cars going into the city center are coming from somewhere and the surrounding neighbourhoods have gotten busier with people due to a population and tourism increase. People fighting back in the day about how they wanted to take a car to central Amsterdam have now been silenced by the overwhelming majority of Amsterdam residents who are perfectly fine closing off through traffic for cars, or even doing even more, to allow less cars to enter the city center. How else to execute this car light plan in the rest of the city though? Nobody knows. Not even the people in power, because there is no actual plan. Meanwhile the city government is planning or several knips to improve all kinds of things; air pollution, public transit throughput, safety, etc. But the general Amsterdam public, even those in favour of autoluw (and me included) can sense that there is no plan and it makes them questioning and uneasy. Us Dutch live and die by planning! That's partly why Weesperstraat seems such an odd choice to us and why we are hesitant to be clamoring for this particular knip. Meanwhile there are going to be cuts in the transit expenditure and transit investments are meagre compared to what is necessary to make full autoluw work for most people. And to understand that it's important to mention that Weesperstraat is one of a kind in the city. It's really one of the only wide through-route car-dominated axes with buildings along it really. There are other car-dominated places but those tend to serve mostly a local function. Because of its unique connection to the IJtunnel and quick access via Wibautstraat/Gooiseweg to A10 south. Combine that that Weesperstraat itself is a failure of a street. It indeed functions as a road (it's our stroad if you will lol). The "newer" buildings alongside it are of doubtful architectural quality, the street level setbacks, lack of shops, windows provide an unnatractive streetscape. So nobody loves this street, few people "use it", people only go through it to get to other places. That explains why people think it's ok to have this particularly ugly and unpleasant street have all the cars, if that's going to prevent them from taking other routes. To add to that, while the city center on this side of the Amstel is firmly city center, it's also the more residential and quiet part. There is less mass tourism here, there is less problems with cars on the roads. Just this particular through street. That is why people don't feel the same urgency for closing off this street compared to Rokin/Damrak right in the heart of the city center or the picturesque canals with parking alongside it. That's not to say though.. car drivers will always going to be complaining no matter what. And outsiders and right wingers shitting on Amsterdam because they don't want to have the same policies as their quiet monotone dull suburb is also a constant. Hope I was able to provide some insight.

Yes, this all makes sense. Weesperstraat is unique though, because it brings more vehicles into the city centre than any other. Maybe Amstelveenseweg moves more vehicles (I don't know for sure), but that's not dumping those vehicles in the centre. I think ultimately that's why Weesperstraat was chosen: it will be impossible for the autoluwe stad to become a reality so long as Weesperstraat is a road. The gemeente can do (and has done) many smaller knippen, and they've removed about 7000 parking spaces. But eventually Weesperstraat needs to change. They could do it slowly, over many years (decades?), or it could "pull off the bandaid" and see how bad it gets. The thing is, if the Weesperstraat knip is a success, then it brings the autoluwe stad plan much closer to reality. I really think it was brave of the gemeente to try it, and I respect them for it. It's a "high risk / high reward" strategy, and I can't wait to see the results.

​@@lkruijsw It's more accurate to say that "Shell moved their headquarters from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom for more favourable tax incentives" than "Shell is not Dutch anymore." But regardless, it still doesn't change the fact that Shell were incorporated in the Netherlands, they are a major employer in the Netherlands, and they have an outsized influence on Dutch politics.

Problem is that Amsterdam isn't consistant with the pricing. There is a P+R at the RAI and that has metro station for the new Noord-Zuid-lijn right in front of it. It works perfectly if you want to get to the city center. However, it isn't always 1 euro. We were there a few weeks ago and suddenly it was 32 euros to park for about 6 hours. And yes, the original purpose of P+R was indeed car pooling. The connection hubs where you park your car and get on public transport were originally called transferiums. But they now also use the P+R term for those.

The System of P+R in Amsterdam is great, but the measures they take in order to avoid abuse by residents makes it very complicated.

Same here in Belgium. Antwerp has P+Rs from every direction. Yet they are mostly empty. They are used for events though

You are very right, information about alternatives is a big factor. I remember reading an article about how good a car dealership was for borrowing a car to some kids that needed to go home from a club late when the busses no longer ran....only there was no need to go through all that trouble in the first place because we have a flex-transit service where you can be driven during late hours if you simply order in advance (like a cheap taxi you share with other people) . Not even the newspaper seemed to know or adress this, they just talked about how horrible it was that theres no busses.

well thats a problem, it's often little things like this. as a kid i was told to not worry about the lions, not to lets the mosquitios get you. hopefully they do something about public awareness

This is actually very similar to the topic of my latest video. As hard as it is to find time, we need to constantly be submitting comments of support on projects like this. Cause we need to drown out the loads of people submitting negative comments! But unfortunately, people who support a project are often way less likely to actually be vocal in that support.

@@DeKempster Yes of course, it's not possible for everyone everywhere to live without a car, but the fact that it's apparently pretty normal to have no car in certain areas is extremely tantalizing to me. It reassures me that it's a more feasible goal than I initially thought.

Fewer cars on the road means more enjoyable driving for enthusiasts.

@@JohnFromAccounting Yes, and just because you are a car enthusiast doesn't mean you don't want livable and enjoyable neighborhoods and city centers. You can always have fun with the car outside the city :)

Everybody who has a car in an area with good public transportation is a car enthusiast.

Just looking at the map the highway doesn't seem worse than the city route. How is that highway not faster and more fuel efficient? (Unless its somehow always over capacity)

That depends on the cars people drive through the city. For conventional gas / diesel vehicles that is definitely true, but for hybrids and electric vehicles there is minimal impact as their powertrains operate *much* more efficiently at lower speeds. Still a great idea nonetheless - there's little point to even having cities if people still need to drive cars to get around them.

True for gas-powered cars. Although, when the car is electric, everything flips. Starting, stopping, and idling on city streets is actually more efficient for an electric car than cruising at highway speeds. Banning thru traffic in the city center is probably still a good idea anyway, but this is a point worth stating that may be not intuitive to people not familiar with electric cars.

You’re probably right. But conservatives love to cherry pick facts when making their arguments rather than actually having a level head and looking at the situation as a whole. I’m actually working on a video right now about how a bunch of conservatives keep trying to claim that a road diet in Venice Blvd is slowing down emergency vehicle response times. But they conveniently leave out that the response times are highly correlated with the increase in car usage in the past few years and that road has a cement median so emergency vehicles can’t drive against traffic in order to get around traffic jams….

Parabolic, not sigmoid - first it goes up, then it goes down.

Can't be, Bielefeld doesn't exist ;)

As a half Dutch American who recently visited Amsterdam, same. The ease and comfort of using public transport in Amsterdam alone made me want to move there. Not to mention all of the other wonderful things about the city and country. I hate needing a car to exist where I live in California

There’s probably I good reason most of those people reached such state of ignorance and denial, they aren’t that good with facts. They will dismiss it as propaganda.

I am pretty sure the vast majority of people on the right wing in the Netherlands will be able to understand this video even in English. RU-vid provides semi-correct automatic subtitles as well.

If people are making excuses not to watch an English video, they will make up any other excuse. Like watching the video is bad for the environment or something.

It's not a chip it's ir strobe and or a radio transmitter. They installed the ir strode detectors in my town for emergency vehicles at stop lights. They worked good for like 2 years but the county cheaped out and most died. Also the Netherlands picked some really slow moving pistons that will eventually freeze up and shitty gates. They make better stuff like quick deploying barricades that are sold steel that will stop a semitruck at full speed.

IMO calling it ratrunning is a needlessly negative slur that only forsters the "us vs them" mentality, and showing that even if you are the "good guy" wanting cars out, you are actually not better than the entitled cardrivers. Traffic works like water, when it gets clogged up one place, it find other ways to get through. It is not about the cardrivers being rats and malicious, but them trying to find solutions on their problem. Being too stupid to use a roundabout is a completely different problem! I bet some information, some better signs and maybe drawings on the road, and a week or 2 with police to write tickets would learn the locals how to use a roundabout very fast, and the ones visiting would see how others are doing, and follow suit - it is not so difficult that north americans can't learn it.

@@Krydolph Rats are not malicious. They may even be less egocentric than drivers.

It is frustrating, because there's a lot about good urbanism that should appeal to conservatives. Chuck Marohn, who started Strong Towns is a lifelong conservative and came to many of the conclusions that I did, but entirely through fiscal conservatism and building traditional walkable towns that are resilient. I knew that the far right would be against this, because their policies are overwhelmingly driven by climate change denialism: they're against anything that's better for the climate. But I'm really disappointed at how it was the VVD (centre-right neoliberal fiscal conservatives) that were the ones leading the charge to cancel this project immediately. They don't even want to see the data, they just want it to stop.

I'm right-wing by American standards both socially and fiscally, and I'm continually disappointed by often right-wing responses to urbanism. It's something that everyone across the political spectrum should be able to get behind for their own reasons. For right-wingers it could mean a return to traditional, walkable communities and better small business opportunities with smarter zoning.

Oh man, better not look at what Berlin has done with all its Bicycle Projects etc as soon as the CDU got to power recently xO

​@NotJustBikes you wanna know another ironic thing, many on the American right think that European countries are all 'socialist' but in reality, according to The Heritage Foundation's Index of economic freedom, European countries like The Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden are ranked in the top 10 for economic freedom (Netherlands is #8) having a lot less small business regulations than the U.S. while the U.S. is ranked #25. Ironic how the "land of the free" is actually a lot less free market than European countries.

@@MulletDeath Yeah, basically anyone I know, from very left-wing to very right-wing has come to the same conclusion about how car-centric city planning fucks things up when I talked with them about it in detail. For very different reasons, but in the end most people agree that something has to change both for the people and the economy.