Dutch ideas about traffic

[Roland Beinert]

True. I’ve heard of attacks on isolated bike paths before. It also probably has to do with recreational riding vs. riding for practical reasons. If I’m riding to the grocery store, I have to use the streets. There are bike lanes along some streets, but they’re scattered and don’t connect. Quite honestly, I have no clue why those bikers rejected Trace’s idea. I think it’s better to be seen than to surprise a driver, though. And a lot of cities require you to ride in the street when there’s no bike lane.

[Roland Beinert]

Hey Trace, where did you see that info about the reverse flow bike lanes in Colorado? I couldn’t find anything on them. I think it was you who mentioned them.
Parking lot/plazas? Is that what you’re comparing to a woonerf and shared space? I guess there’s a shopping street called a winkelnerf that could be compared in a very rough way to a parking lot/plaza here in the US. But from pictures those are more plaza and less parking lot. The parking in a woonerf is there partly to serve as an obstacle for drivers. Parking is placed in a way that keeps the drivers route from being a straight line.
To the Dutch, shared space seems to be about safety rather than combining social space and parking to save the developer money. Can you name an example of a parking lot plaza so I can compare it to a woonerf? Maybe here in the US some developers really have taken the idea of shared space and warped it into something else.

[Trace One]

Hello, roland. In Southampton, NY., two large commercial centers were presented as shared space – an addition to Bridgehampton Commons, and a new commercial development across the street, forget the name..You can see it on google. earth. ..they were not calling them woonerf, I was stretching the concept of my own volition..we did traffic calming in virginia everywhere..I am just tired of that whole thing. I hate cars, I want them out of the landscape with children, end of story, for me..If a street has such low volume that it has one car an hour, why is it a street for cars at all? And where does the street-ball game GO when that one car goes through it? Please answer that question for me..They hauled the stones for stonehenge without the motorized vehicle..But we need to have our little package of groceries brought to our door? Fire Island off Long Island functionw with human pulled carts..I say stop the cars way at the edge, and let everyone walk from there..Much nicer!
Reverse flow films of Boulder can be seen on Streetfilms.org, look up “Contra-flow bike lane” in Boulder, Co..Very lovely..Separated by landscaping..No woonerf there!

[Roland Beinert]

I can’t say I like cars much, either. I survived till the age of 25 without one and I’d gladly still be without one. My sister is four years older than me and has never gotten a drivers license, which I find impressive even if no one else does. But they exist here, and something else would take their place even if they disappeared.
People in the U.S. have been wanting to push cars to the edge of their city centers for several decades now. When they succeed, all it does is move the problem elsewhere. Jane Jacobs has a great chapter on that in Death and Life of Great American Cities. You just get parking lots and highway-like city streets surrounding your city center and cutting it off from the rest of your city. That’s why it’s better to slow them down and spread them out in the city, then give people plenty of alternatives. It’s not enough to relocate the problem.
You have to make it clear that pedestrians and bicyclists have PRIORITY ON ALL CITY STREETS, even the ones with cars. If they are always supposed to be in separated lanes and sidewalks, you’re saying “don’t worry about pedestrians, they don’t exist here”. Then someone dares to cross the middle of the street with no crosswalk, and the driver doesn’t expect it and WHAM! Don’t pretend people don’t try to cross busy streets. I’m sure you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. I’ve even done it before myself (it seemed like a good idea at the time). And don’t pretend drivers follow the rules. When they think it’s safe, they speed. When they can’t find somewhere else to park, they do it in the bike lane.
When I was a kid, the street we lived on was a culs-de-sac. I played there with the neighbor’s kids all the time. It was the center space between the houses and a nice paved surface, so it just kind of became a natural social space. 99.9% of the time the only cars were the ones owned by the people who lived there. When they came by, we kids moved to the side for ten seconds. No big deal. No driver would dare to speed there, because we were clearly visible and most drivers were neighbors. People love culs-de-sac for exactly those reasons. Was it a woonerf? No. Did it function a lot like one? Yes. I agree with the new urbanists that culs-de-sac push too much traffic onto main roads. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an alternative to the cul-de-sac that allowed a grid of streets? Oh wait! There is one! The woonerf!

[Trace One]

I don’t see cars as inevitable as the weather.. i see them as something that will be transformed to our will. It is possible to decrease car use – I disagree with your statement that excluding them will just put ‘the problem’ somewhere else. I geuss I don’t see cars as here to stay..’the problem’ is transportation; the solutions, over time, have been incredibly inventive, and involve all layers of analysis -psychology, energy, planning.

Good on you with the no car life-style..I didn’t have one for my first four years in California, which i am really proud of, and I have never relied on one, my whole life..But I am mostly a public transport girl..Used to bike to work in Southampton, but mostly I take buses and walk..In Fresno, it has been a learning experience..
At least we agree that use of cars should be lessened..I am really proud of you with the no-car thing – I find that to be very rare..
Fresno is waring me down, though..Just this month I started driving to work, although I deliberately located my home only two miles from work…I used to walk it, but at the end of the day, the need to get somewhere is beating me..I definitely see a side of Fresno no-one I work with sees, with my walking and bus-taking..Everyone should do it – especially congresspeople. That is the real america, to me, the people on the bus..
did you check out the streetfilms.org site? You would like it, lots of films about bikes and biking – very good site.

[Roland Beinert]

I guess I see cars as a transportation type: transport for moderately long distances for people like farmers and a good way to transport goods from trains or farms or whatever to individual stores. What fills that niche if cars go? Horse and buggy? There were problems with horse and buggy, too. Horses had to be stabled. Their waste had to be removed. People got run down by carriages, too.
A lot of people drive a car for individual use, and a lot of that sort of “one person to a car” type transport could be solved by more bike use. A lot of car use from city to city or city to suburb could be replaced by train or something. I think there’s a lot of unnecessary car use that could be solve by alternative transport. But cars have their uses.
I agree that it’s possible to decrease car use, but I don’t think stopping cars at the edge of a neighborhood or city really decreases car use. Jane Jacob’s book argues this better than I seem to be able to, though.
I did look at the streetfilms site. Very cool. Have you ever read a book called Green Urbanism: Learning From European Cities by Timothy Beatley?

[Trace One]

Will check out book – looks good, thanks! I have a lot of respect for U of Va. landscape school..
I want less personal vehicles because I see them as disruptive of the environment and of our social systems.. I think they (obviously) have led to the disintegration of our little social fabrics..I also blame the car for our national health issues, to some extent..Nothing new there..Cars can be replaced by walking.. i am from New York and grew up in Beirut and Europe, so I really grew up a non-car envirnoment..Absolutely hated the incredible car-culture, on confronting it for the first time in tenth grade in McLean Virginia..The High School there looks like a prison, surrounded by vast parking lots, and absolutely inaccessible by anything but car..We all know about that..Fire Island and Mackinaw Island work quite well without cars at all..
Thanks for the book rec..- will defnitely check it out.

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