"There were only a handful of people swimming across the river, so we had no idea that so many people would be using this new bridge we just built here."
I remember when i was a kid i thought growing up in America would be so much better than here in Europe, but as i got older i realised that actually, I'm more privileged in many ways. In my neighbourhood alone I have 5 shops, gym, dentist, pharmacy, vets, swimming pool etc etc all within 10 mins walking distance. I'm in my mid 20s now and never needed to buy a car, everything is reachable by either walking, cycling, bus or train.
'merica is finished. The appeal of the USA was always freedom, ability to make a home, nature. Now the USA is driven by WORK - so you can afford Medical, College, Dentistry ... and inflated prices for Food and Houses (houses that are built to a shit standard; that can only be afforded in the dead, depressing 'new ' neighbourhoods' that are like living in a wooden Toy Town) In just one generation, the USA has inflated prices, interest rates, and costs across the board. At the same time, they have exported 'good' employment to China and the Far East. At exactly the same time Large Corps, have taken their 'Tax Liabilities' abroad... so Apple and many others, do not contribute properly to the USA system. If you add-in a TIDAL WAVE of non-working, non tax-paying immigration - you have a country in a tailspin
Yep. the differences between Dutch and German cities are details - in both countries you *always* have all four options (walking, biking, transit and driving) available, just with different levels of comfort. And it's the same in other European countries, which is why you can copy those ideas there. But in North America it's a completely different type of urban planning, that doesn't just prioritize cars, but almost completely ignores other options - like streets without sidewalks or like a shopping center, that doesn't have a walking option to the neighborhood directly across adjacent. Or building a grocery store that's so far away, it even takes forever to even drive there. As I often say: As if it's made _intentionally_ hostile to anyone outside of a car.
@@miles5600 "Cycling in Germany is normalized, but marginalized." I couldn't agree more. I appreciate that people usually respect the bike infrastructure quite a lot, the problem is that the infrastructure is designed like shit! During my 1 year stay, I struggled in multiple intersections, ridiculously steep ramps, conflict with pedestrians on sidewalks by lack of bike lanes on wide streets, stairs without alternatives, non-marked tight one-way passages in bridges, and one aggressive, confrontational driver yelling at me for circumventing a non-existing segment of bike crossing. Things desperately need to improve. Still preferable to what we have in the Americas, though LOL.
Aa you're watching this, Doug Ford's provincial government in Ontario, canada, (where Toronto) is trying to pass legislation to stop building new bike lanes, and ripping out ones installed is the past 5 years. Truly insane.
In the Netherlands the issue in the 70's wasn't space. It was safety first and then congestion. There were just too many accidents with cars involving children. The left was in power and they had the political willpower to enact change, with support of the population (unimaginable nowadays). Bike infrastructure just happened to be part of the solution and its success spread rapidly. The facts that it was cheaper to maintain and was a more efficient use of space were happy byproducts.
@@Ronnet It's a combination. Until 1970 no construction, shop, or office worker could pay any car. And because of school reforms kids from 12 and older had to go to enormously big schools. A break point in society when there are many traffic deaths and an oil crisis.
In the field of cycling infrastructure, there were two initiatives in the mid-seventies in my hometown Tilburg and in The Hague where a continuous cycle path paved with red asphalt, as free of intersections as possible, was constructed. That was in fact the start of a cycle path system through an entire city in the following decades in the whole of the Netherlands. With every redesign of existing streets, specific infrastructure for cycling was taken into account from then on.
it is also the zoning. Allow shops and little shopping centres in neighbourhood. I live in an inner city in Netherlands and have 4 supermarkets in walking distances, cycling distance there are 10 to 15 supermarkets where I can cycle to.
I lived in an old trolley neighborhood where the trolley was gone, but the shops at the stop remained. It was really nice and convenient for me because I was a block away. It wasn’t so nice for the homes right next to the businesses. So long as the people whose lives you want to change get properly compensated, it’s a great idea. Otherwise, not so much.
Jason is right - I've lived/worked in NL in the '90s; then to Ottawa. Visit NL yearly post COVID, this year is the first year I actually biked; the previous years it was walk/public transit. When I moved back from NL a generation ago, I looked for a place where walking/transit/biking was easiest; it was in a not-so-desirable hood, now, 30 years later, it's VERY desirable. Things are changing, but it takes decades.
Happy to see big names popping up on this podcast! I genuinely love this channel, and I'm excited to see you guys get more recognition and subscribers! Behind the scenes I imagine the conversation between Mike and Jason going a bit like Kramer's reality bus tour episode of Seinfeld Jason: Why do I have to go on the podcast? Mike: Jason, you're a minor celebrity, you know if you go on this thing it could create a minor stir!
Greetings from the netherlands , imman expat from the real london ,, 17 years here in Zwolle , Netherlands, love tnat the algorithm bought me here ,, i shall follow your channel with interest
I like the clips where you study traffic lights in the Netherlands. You must be a real nerd to stand for hours or even days near a traffic light and watch it change color. But I learned a lot of things that I never knew living here for several decades. Thanks
As an architect I design every building from the perspective of the user. That can be the owner of a home, but also their visitors. Every type of person you can expect in a building is what I think about when designing. The same way should be done with designing cities. What do different kind of people need. What feels practical, what feels safe, what makes people connect and look out for each other, what brings people peace and quiet spaces. You can use this in every scale possible when designing a city and you will for sure create well functioning places. Not just bikes showed me how a lot of things aren't as obvious as I thought they were living in The Netherlands. I have taken certain elements with me in how I perceive my work.
I would recommend looking into how Edmonton is tackling this issue. They're probably one of the most progressive cities in Canada with good local solutions to the car problem, in spite of funding issues caused by the Alberta Government.
I don't ride for fun. I don't think of it as a luxury. It was a primary reason for moving to Montreal from Ontario seven years ago. I hate sitting on my butt in a car. I don't own a car. I need activity - movement. I love getting around using the power of my body. Riding my bike works my lungs and heart, although not my upper body, unfortunately. So I guess it's my main form of exercise and it's productive. I do it because it gets me somewhere using my own body's effort. That thrills me. I always ride alone.
I don't know about Canada, but I have always thought that the main problem for the US is the *zoning* laws in suburbia. They force the country into a car based life style via a self-fullfilling spiral: 1.) Because of the separation of functions people can not do their daily things (get groceries, let the children go to school) within their own block 2.) Therefore people need to do all these trivial things in other blocks, which implies crossing wide stroads where there are many fast driving cars 3.) These stroads are wide and dangerous for pedestrians, so people take the car even for simple things 4.) Because everybody does that by car, there is very little other kind of transportation, and very few amenities for those who want to do things in other ways, like cycling or walking etc. etc. etc. This is completely the opposite in the Netherlands. Here we have "bestemmingsplannen", which fullfill the same role as the zoning laws in the US, but they function in completely the opposite way: in the bestemmingsplan it will be laid out: 1.) what kind activities should be in each block: These could be a primary school, grocery store, laundromat, some cafés or cultural facilities, etc. Those functions are implemented by normal private businesses. The bestemmingplan only says that there should be space and a location for these business in the residential zone. 2.) also ameneties for other kinds of transport such as cycle paths, sidewalks, busroutes etc. etc. part of these plans 3.) In this way the Dutch "zoning" systems enables people to live largely independent of the car. Children can cycle to school (which they often do in groups), getting groceries is done in a few minutes by bike or walking (And therefore supermarkets don't need huge parking lots...), etc. etc. The above does *not* mean that people do not use cars. In fact the Netherlands is one of the most car-dense countries in the world, and the large majority of families own a car. However, people can chose whether to use the car (for longer trips, or bigger purchases or things to move), or people can chose to just walk or hop on the bike to the store around the corner, or to the kindergarten, etc. This gives *freedom of choice* makes life so much more relaxed! (and not to mention *cheaper* and more efficient!) Change the zoning laws and you change how people can *chose* to live and do their daily things!
You must be young? If you go back to the 50’s and 60’s the VAST majority of Americans loved cars. It was never about forcing people to do a GD thing. It was about accommodating the things most people wanted. This is one of the bits of nonsense which really holds back urbanism and cycling infrastructure. When normal people hear this nonsense, they totally tune out the speaker.
@@nunyabidness3075 My age is 63. So I grew up in the 60's and 70's, when here in Netherlands governments thought that the car was the future. Only to learn that pure reliance on the car leads to a distopia. In the Netherlands - and this is important! - the car-ification of the cities was stopped by the ordinary people who stubbornly kept cycling, when the government wanted to turn everything into highways and stroads. That "fantastic" bike infrastructure that we have nowadays came only later when governments started seeing the many advantages of that. Reality is that life in a car-monoculture is terrible. People are couped up in their metal boxes, and have no alternative. Life in a country like the Netherlands, where everybody has a *choice* (and yes, you CAN use a car in the Netherlands, and nearly all families have one, I do to!) on how to do things is a 1000x more livable and free (!)
It would be interesting if there was a study of when bicycling declined with children. I mean even in the suburbs in the old days children would bicycle everywhere. Yes it was made for cars and certainly adults used it. I think what generally happened to why we lost the freedom is because of the concern of safety. We just went through a different path from the Netherlands. I mean technically, there's no reason why you can't bicycle around in the suburbs. Instead, they prioritized the idea that it's unsafe to bicycle. Thus we do not want to encourage it. That's the difference in the way that North America have treated the issues of safety. If anything, originally suburbs with thought of as safer than cities. That's why suburban neighborhoods are designed to be slow speed. It's meant to be safer for you to ride your bicycle walk around the neighborhood There are some things I don't agree with Jason on. For instance, I do not always think you need sidewalks and neighborhoods. But in his case he's dealing with Toronto which is much more urban in comparison to places I would be referring to. There's plenty of suburban/ rural areas where I don't think that that would be smart to do. Instead, I would just say that you need to make the road safer. And to make it very clear, it is a shared space. * I know I'm biased and that I came from a neighborhood that didn't have sidewalks but it literally isn't that bad. You can still walk. You can still ride your bike in them. It more depends on how much traffic that area is going to get. And the cost of it. Another thing, we do have examples of walkable communities. In North America but none of them are about the bicycle. Technically if we just connect suburbs neighborhoods with a shared walk path. It would have literally fix some of the problems. Things I do think that should be standard. However our schools there should be a thought that children should be able to walk to school or to bicycle to school. The sidewalk should always be in place within a nearby school and bicycle lanes. Of course, public transportation is one of those hard nuggets to solve in a suburban environment. But bicycle, walkability is actually much easier to solve.
@@nunyabidness3075 Bruh.. So in your definition being "ordinary people" means that you are unable to think of something new, and that you have to remain locked in into one thought and one habit forever.... A single track life so to say.. I think you underestimate ordinary people brother
@@ElieWeissenbach-xx1yi No, in this case I was referring to people not into urbanism and bike infrastructure. I stand by my statement. It’s not me making a value judgment on people here it’s you. My point would be that if we want change, we have to be strategic and persuasive.
Nice to see my city (Montreal) mentioned. Yes, we have been having a lot of bike lanes being added. Yes, the REM is there and will expand in the coming years. It sucks, though, that the CAQ government doesn't want to help transit agencies with operations subsidies.
Poor children were not such a major reason in the Netherlands. Until the early 1970s, Dutch municipalities were small and poor. Cities tried very hard to become as modern car-friendly as American cities, but found out that with their budgets they would never succeed in reasonable time. Only the biggest cities came close. There was also a total ban on demolition of habitable houses.
I hardly think about it because it's all so natural growing up here. But seperated bike lanes are HUGE for safety and there is always trees/bushes/grass in between the car and bike lanes which makes the experience more enjoyable then a concrete jungle.
Even in Montreal, where I live, there are certain neighbourhoods (quartiers) that are better-equipped with bike infrastructure. This is fine if you stay in your own quartier, but if you want/need to go further afield you need to connect with a metro or bus for the remainder of the journey and leave your bike outside the station. As a 65 year-old woman I find riding my bike less stressful than the metro, which is crowded, chaotic, full of announcements and bells and whistles. I'm usually exhausted by the time I get to wherever I need to go as a result of the switching transport methods and dealing with lots of people. I'm an introvert, so other people are a challenge for me.
I love language... Even though we're thousands of miles/kilometers apart and speak a completely different language...I also live in a quartier (kwartier in Dutch). Pretty sure one of the inspirations for the street names in my quartier is named after some fella that helped 'discover' Canada. (I live in a Zeeheldenkwartier/Sea Heroes Quartier). There you go, your portion of free worthless info 😂
I've heard lots of complaints about the trains in Germany, a 15 minute delay time being one of the norms, and that type of norm deters people from totally relying on public transport. Here in the Netherlands we've had many post-Pandemic cancellations of trains frustrating commuters ... some even opting for cars to avoid the stress and hassle of not arriving to work on time. And post-Pandemic there are currently fewer trains running, which is also causing uncomfortable overcrowding. No situation is perfect and we need to keep working on our transport problems all the time too. But, simply said, if you build it they will come. And if public transport is made reliable - if bike paths are safe and comfortable to use - many more individuals will opt for this mode of getting around instead of having to deal with costly car and road tax expenses in our country.
German railways were being neglected for a long time leading to delays. Currently, the railways are being fixed, leading to (temporarily) even more delays.
It should be mentioned that you still need a car if you don't live in a big city or have family in villages. You can't get everyware by public transit and it can be rather impractical. It takes me more then 1½ hours to go to uni, while It is less then halve an hour by car. I just don't have my driverslisence yet and get free public transit included in student funding.
I've always seen zoning as the main problem for Canada and USA. I'm so used to how things are built here in Sweden that's it's (or was, before learning more about it) completely foreign to me to just build for cars. The 15-minute city isn't a concept; it's just the basic way of building urban and suburban areas. Pretty much wherever you go here that's more dense than a sparse village has a "centrum", or a local "town" centre with most things you need on a daily and weekly basis. Being able to walk everywhere is seen as obvious. There are always pedestrian paths leading from one area to a neighbouring one. Cycling just follows, as that uses the same paths. That's probably the main problem we have here in Stockholm with cycling. It's more of an afterthought compared to walking, public transit, and cars. But we still have that connectivity the American suburbs lack. No isolated suburbs or shopping malls. Basically, the benefit we have here is that even when cars became popular, we never stopped walking, so we never stopped designing cities for that. Oh, and the fake concerns people have about snow and hills and stuff, we have that. I'm reminded of another video, if not NJB it was probably City Beautiful, that had a graph for why people didn't cycle. Here, in the dark north, darkness was less of a concern than in more southern areas. If you live in an area with environmental challenges, you learn to deal with them. You don't make excuses for them.
The Netherlands has streets without a sidewalk. If a street has no through traffic, then it's fine to mix pedestrian and car traffic, because there'll be so few cars.
The city of Ottawa has great recreational cycle pedestrian paths built by the Federal National Capital Commission, but these paths do not extend thru the center of the city. The City is including protected cycle lanes when roads are being restored, but these restored roads are often not connected to each other . It will likely take another 30 years before these cycle lanes will be connected
If the dutch build a new district they first look at infrastructure and facilities like schools and (grocery)stores. They have to be within a reasonable (walking)distance for everyone but also to reach for bikes and cars
Really sad to listen to this positive chat about progress in Toronto only for the Ford Government to speak about overruling the will of the Toronto government and rip out bike lanes! CycleTO has a petition to support bike lanes that everyone in Ontario should support because the Government's actions will change rules for bike lanea across Ontario.
Thank for posting but I spent a year in Holland one month. It has nice people and nice food, but because of the lack of private transportation that isn't bikes, there isn't the kind of social life you see in Midwest cities here in the US and Ontario. With the exception of places like The Haag and Utrecht with large expatriate community, they roll up the sidewalks at 6pm. North America is vast and spread out, but even so, we are more social than we realize from our high schools, colleges, theaters, bars, library, ball parks, etc. than Holland. What we are and what we are not, we need to think about and appreciate more than we do.
Dang, Jason , You're right I have it backwards, bike just show that the city works. My brother has a boat in Makkum that he goes to every summer, and his tales of Holland, Denmark and Sweden draw my own Dallas into sharp relief.. I sub to you and think you are on target and do it with style. You and City Nerd help me live in Fake LA. Election may be what determines where we end up.
Yeah, that’s one of the big problems of suburbia/car dependency. Why build anything close by when you can drive? This results in people not wanting to switch away from cars, because they built their world around them.
There are, depending on the city. You can walk to them depending on where you live but it’s nowhere near ideal. Even so, it’s way better than American suburbs.
15:55 Markham?! The example I didn't expect! RE: the Cornell neighbourhood of Markham: the first phase of its "new urbanism" was built in the early 2000s. While it is *more* pedestrian and cycle friendly than The Rest of Markham's Sprawl, they failed to actually allow for sufficient non-residential uses. Need to get groceries? A coffee? Closest grocery store is 4km away on the other side of a freeway. The result is a dense neighbourhood...with nothing to walk to but the hospital. (And don't get me started on the bus terminal with no pedestrian connections to anything.) Poor land use strikes again!
I live in the UK and have been to the Netherlands 3 times and Canada about 12 times now. Jason is right about the land use. The inner cities aren't so bad in Canada. Most of them (especially the older ones) could easily be fixed with bike lanes and more/better/faster transit. The bigger issue is travel within the suburbs and commuting from the suburbs to into the cities. Housing is so spread out and the zoning laws mean retail and offices are far away from houses. It makes cycling undesirable (because it takes too long) and transit less viable (because of the low density). The UK is built with roughly twice the density of Canada, and even WE struggle with car use outside of London. Canada just needs to stop sprawling out and start in-filling its inner suburbs with more density. It also needs to allow mixed use zoning.
Please don't become like the Netherlands, we manage to be one of the most influential countries in the world with a tiny country. Just imagine what we could become with all that space and oil... The whole world would speak Dutch and ride bikes!! 😁
Instead of buidling another copy paste suburb, the US could build a Dutch (or even just European) style small city. So having everything you need in that community, mixed used buildings, public transit lanes, short cuts for cyclists and pedestrians etc. And i'm sure within a short time that would become a city halve the US will want to live in. And when other states/politicians see that they will start to copy it. But for it to work you need two things: 1. A group of people with the vision and guts to do it. 2. Do it right. - To much roundabouts in the US are still made to be taken quickly by cars, but that means you sacrifice a lot of the safety benefits of roundabouts. - Or building bike lanes that don't connect a start location and an end location.
I am Dutch. Dutch cities are very compact and old. They were designed for horses, boats, walkers and carts and later bicycles. People were poor. And its all flat. In 1860 we started with a railway net. A lot of canals too. And shops were alway small and many. The clever thing is indeed switching to cycling in road design. And to separate traffic users.
The same goes for North American cities. The Netherlands just stopped transforming their cities to facilitate cars in the 70's/80's. North America kept on transforming.
More then 60% of every city in the netherlands was built after the 60s on farmland and woods. Only the city centers are old and built before the car. We just plan to build things in a way that is more useful. I mean flevoland was seabed until the 70s and that is build in a useful way where a car is optional and everything is within reach.
@@rogerk6180 Not true. Almost all Dutch cities are several centuries old. Only the Flevoland towns are new and these also have ‘American’ problems. They miss a old, cosy and compact core.
Id just like to live where I work, or work where I live. But that wont happen. Or, affordable public transport. Somehow no Political party tries to push for affordable public transport. Eventhough its the cleanest and most sustainable way of transport.
I know people who hate public transport and won't use it. The idea of being surrounded by strangers who might pull a knife, push you onto the metro tracks is frightening..
Especially when you're talking about building on farmland, why compare planning in the Netherlands (less than 0.1 hectares of farmland per person) to Canada (1.5 hectares, the 3rd most in the world)? The common idea that farmland is especially scarce in Canada seems to have come out of nowhere. Liked the point about needing to start from where we are rather than looking to replicate other places, but it feels like the amount of space we have is also part of that. Honestly as a younger person it feels like some false economy to prioritize protecting every last bit of farmland over housing. Less than 1/5 of new builds in Ontario are single family homes already. We can see empty nesters hoarding family homes (largely also built on farmland) for 1 or 2 people even as many claim there is no space for us, and honestly, it's gets old.
@@buddy1155 The Netherlands exports a lot of high-value products, which Canada is notoriously weak at (including in many cases a lot of value-added processing being done elsewhere). My understanding is that the Netherlands is not self-sufficient on things like grains that require more land but are less valuable as exports, which Canada largely is. It's not possible for every country to operate like that at once, but yeah, much of Canadian agriculture is not especially intensive and there's plenty of ability to e.g., grow more in greenhouses if its decided local production outweighs the extra energy costs. Not really running out of land.
@user-64962 Seems to me you are missing a point with your answer: The Netherlands needs to be protective of their farmland because they have too little of it. See, the reason why they started the poldering in the 16th and 17th century: They got mouths to feed and when you have lakes maybe dry them out and feed yourselves. And they kept doing that. 😂😊
@@user-64962 We have just insane yields, we used to have the only agricultural university in the world (several countries figured out that is a smart thing to have). We are correct that our products have in general high added value (like cheese and Heineken beer). But we are also good in staple food like grain, potatoes. We are hated for our tomatoes, not only by European countries that can't compete but also African countries, that don't need greenhouses and have cheap labour but still can't compete against Dutch imported tomatoes with high import tax.
Zone regulations, first of all, when building a new suburb, try to incorperate shops, litle supermarkets, a hairdresser, just like for a surburb of 1500-3500 people, a GPA-doctor/ dentist/ supermarket/ hardwarestore,, i know the big companies want to take it over, but it will also be the change to build satelite stores. Please excuse my gramatical mistakes.( I wonder where the google IA is right now to correct things) For most occupations it would be good to have this community (1250-3500 residents) to have a private business, hairdresser, nailspecialist, supermarket, church, security, drogerystore, and so forward.
@fathybalamita1537 Our country is full of old people. We have snow. Our jobs are dispersed in the GTA with the largest number of jobs in Mississauga airport lands, not downtown. Most people don't have lifetime jobs in one place. Biking can work for a very few. Does not work for most.
Simply not true. North American (and any Anglo Celtic) life and culture are way more peer oriented, while Dutch, German and Scandinavian culture is MUCH more individualistic.
@@a.j.kaastra1317 thanks for the information. In NA, because of the vast distances between population hubs, I believe there is more emphasis on individualism rather than community. Living in a high density situation is perceived to be lower class; single family is considered a higher class living standard. Culture.
Remember that we could never have had this infrastructure when we wouldnt be liberated by the Canadians! Americans can claim they´ve won the 2nd world war, but in NL we know that the Canadians were the ones that set us free.
Have to push back on the comments on the culture of cycling in Netherlands raking a foothold in the 70s. Fuel shortages from world war 1 and 2 plus the rebuild period gave cycling the ability to become synonymous with being Dutch. The car culture today in the netherlands is apparently atrocious compared to the 1960s when my mother left. Second point, the comments in the gardner come from a very white collar point of view. I'm sure over 1billion worth of goods and services annually are transported into downtown Toronto to support its residents and businesses. All of those condos have monthly fire alarm testing and frequent plumbing and elevator repairs. Those service people are not coming down on a bike with tools in a backpack. The beer kegs and cases of wine aren't being delivered to restaurants on an escooter like an uber eats delivery.
And yet significantly less congestion would take place if majority of the non-delivery/non- service drivers were off the road. The gardiner isn’t necessary for trucks and trades people to access the city, trucks have to drive through city streets anyways to deliver goods. Do you think Dutch cities don’t have services/goods delivered? The Gardiner is terrible for residence of the city and literally only benefits the people who live outside of Toronto
@PAPADRACOLIN in Amsterdam they use the a10 which I complete ring around the city which toronto core does not have. Most distribution centres are located near schipol and would use thus highway to access the core. In the hauge the centre is not near the water but is beside the a12 highway. Rotterdam the major port also as s100 series ring around the city similar to Amsterdam. Bothh Amsterdam and Rotterdam highways run alongside clostle to the water.
@a.j.kaastra1317 the businesses, specifically restaurants and bars, do not receive food and beer and wine deliveries by bicycle. I would love someone to capture a video if this is incorrect.
With people like Jason you always have the feeling that they are tipping over to the extremist side. With 75% ban on cars in the city. He has the same tendencies as people he criticizes, such as most car owners in the USA who don't want bike lanes. Expenses of car lanes. My opinion is that everyone has the right to have a car and can park in front of their own home (Do not ban cars from the city (center)). Just as everyone should have the right to walk and cycle safely from their home to wherever they want to go. By means of sidewalks, 30 km neighborhood zones, separate cycle paths, etc., etc. The government must facilitate it and residents must be able to choose of their own free will what they want to use. Whether it is a car, bicycle or public transport. But should not be forced or imposed. No, I am not a car extremist, in fact I do 95% of my commute on foot or on my 30 years old bike (to work, gym, shopping, etc.).
I mean, that’s fair? But the problem is cars are being currently treated as the default, and their infrastructure is heavily subsidized and paid for by taxes to hide the expense for the average person.
The Netherlands has a lot of cars, and is also good for driving, but is designed more cleverly. The way to reduce cars is not banning them, but making the other choices better (ever try driving in the centre of Amsterdam, it's hell, and not because of anti-car infrastructure)
@@Bubble-Foam That might depend on where you live. I speak from my situation. I live in The Hague, the Netherlands' 3rd largest city in the country. About 550,000 people, so it doesn't come close to really big cities. Here they started 20/25 years ago to convert 2 lane car lanes into 1 car lane so that large separate cycle paths could be created in both directions. Where they weren't yet. This means reducing car lanes and increasing independent cycle paths.. In newly built neighborhoods of the last +-30 years, the car is no longer the priority in the Netherlands, but pedestrians (children) and cyclists. The old city centers such as in The Hague, almost 800 years old, are of course not built for this, so compromises have to be made. ..
Nobody is talking about banning anything. But if you build more public transport and walk and bike infrastructure, every person on a bike or in a tram is another car off the road. If you take 500 cars per hour off the road this way, the roads will seem positivly empty and you are quickly aproaching taking those percentages of vehicle trafic away from the city. Car lanes are simply wildly inefficient in moving people about. A single buslane can easilly replace 2 car lanes and make still make using that street betterfor both transit users as well as drivers.
@@RAMDH what jason is talking about is pretty much exactly what was done in the netherlands, and nobody sees that as extremist or that people have been banned somehow from using cars or whatever. Imagine every pedestrian and cyclist you see on a daily bases in the hague instead being in their own giant suv added onto the street into trafic. That is pretty much how it is in the usa in a lot of places.
You realize bike lanes do not suffer as much as nothing heavy is using it, therefore low maintenance. But when you do maintenance, better look at the design and include bike and public transport lanes in it.
