Great interview, John. Really interesting to hear what Meredith is doing now. Sounds great news for Belgium. You bring important insights to a wider community of campaigners for change.
Around 33:00 this seems essential to me and is the very reason why Jason Slaughter called his channel Not Just Bikes. There are very few bike people, it’s not (just) about bikes! My views about The Knip slightly differ from the ones expressed by Meredith, although I mostly subscribe to what she is saying. I fully endorse the experiment itself, even if the outcome might be disappointing. That in itself is a useful learning experience and teaches us stuff we can exploit in future projects. I grant it to you that we need to raise the awareness to the raised problems but the question is always - to what extent? A general needs to be brave but not too far ahead of his troops! Striking the right balance is key…
Yep. I also like to remind myself (and others) that changing the status quo is always hard, and we have to have a sense of empathy that these changes can be fear-inducing even when the net result is overwhelmingly a positive result for society. With that said, if the transformations stay in long enough, we humans tend to adjust and adapt both individually and collectively.
yeah this might time the experiment might have failed, but hopefully the look into it why it failed and in the (near) future do it right. one of the biggest mistakes was calling it a "knip", cutting something feels negative, so people will easily associate it with something bad. they could have called it something like "giving back the street to the residents". now instead of taking something away (for drivers), you framed it as giving something (to the residents). and even though you still do the same thing, now it sounds a lot more friendly, and people will see it as something positive.
@@ChristiaanHW Precisely. Framing is so very important. Change is hard enough without inflaming passions unnecessarily. Thanks so much for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
@@ActiveTowns That is why I, as an amateur Dutchie, place emphasizes on ... a) changing the rigid US zoning codes first. Like promoting mixed use zoning (urban densification). Without the ridiculous requirements of increasing road width and increasing parking spots. The rules can be changed almost instantly (not considering resistance to change). Creating mixed urban zones takes (more) time (to implement). b) create more frequent and dedicated bus lanes to promote public transportation. This can be done almost instantly with minimal cost (not considering the car-centric resistance for losing a car lane in favor of public transportation). Fancy and expensive and timely train/metro/tram infrastructure can be done concurrently or later. c) Change traffic rules and regulations favoring and protecting pedestrians and cyclists. As opposed to the current US idiocy of blaming cyclists being hit by right turning cars and blaming pedestrians being hit by cars for merely crossing roads. d) Discourage city car traffic by creating infrastructural city division for private cars. That is, make it hard or impossible for cars to go from one city section to another city section directly. Instead, a private car is forced to get back to a ring road first and then enter the other city section from a different ring road exit. Note: More suitable for dense(ified) cities. Less suitable for urban sprawled cities.
Agreed! 💯 Meredith is a thought leader in this movement, and we are lucky to have her working hard to make cities around the globe become safer, more inviting places. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
She made an excellent point about communication! Because especially in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht it's more communicated as waging a war against cars then it's about improving the quality of life for everyone and how it's actually a more pleasant neighbourhood when the work is done. By some of these local political parties if you have a car you're already looked at as a lesser lifeform, but when you dare to use it on a daily basis (for whatever reason) you are even considerd the most terrible of bad guys from a superhero movie or something. Communication is still key a lot of times!
I have a two-camera setup - one attached to the bike facing forward and the second is handheld focused on my on-bike interview guest. Thanks so much for watching and for asking. Cheers! John
@ActiveTowns who is watching the road? Or do you use a AI tracker? Anyway, probably should not ask this, but since we can't keep a phone in our hand...is this legal. Or are you banking on the Dutch seeing it through the fingers 🤞😁
Yeah, it's not a cell phone, but rather a camera with a wide-angle lens strapped to my wrist so I can still control the bike as needed. And yes, I am able to watch the road and navigate since I don't need to actually be looking directly at the camera or my guest at all times. I am not using an AI tracker yet, but perhaps in the future.
@@Streetsinsideout Thanks! I do have over a decade of practice honing this skill, nd it's definitely gotten easier over the years with better equipment
Somewhere in a video the Not Just Bikes person said that Belgium resembles the USA in car centric planning. That’s why the roads are so bad somehow, don’t remember exactly why. Something financial. So if that’s true, an American as bicycle prof is a good idea in this case. I suppose she know what good initiatives are going on in the states and can share that in Belgium.
Yeah, Belgium is playing catch-up for sure, which is why they are engaging researchers such as Prof. Glaser. If you're curious, here are a few videos I've produced: Reflections from Brussels ruclips.net/video/KKG4oyvBhf8/видео.html and from Ghent: bit.ly/3YU1ejM
Alweer Amsterdam, het is maar goed dat Meredith een knapperd is dan schijnt iig de zon in A'dam ;p Leuke video John, ik wacht nog wel n paar maanden tot je een keer Breda door fietst, het ligt letterlijk aan de grens van België want Hazeldonk (grens) hoort bij Breda haha. Cheers
Speaking about Belgium bike infrastructure..... I have biked the traject Maastricht-Schoonhoven dozens of times over the years... At this place 51°08'40"N 5°36'54"E there's a big "FU" from the Belgium government to bikers. Someone paid an official for a stamp of approval for this.... Comming from the south you're forced off course... then you try to return to the bike path along the Albert Canal at 51°09'11"N 5°37'40"E ... and that turns out to be a trap. A trap with a shiney bike sign,.. and 50m of nice asphalt (for the photo; proving the construction of a bikepath in order to get the subsidy from one of those bureaucracy layers....) ... ending no-where.... That is; ending 15m from the bikepath along the Albert Canal.... Can you believe it! If I had been an investigative journalist, I would have gotten to the bottom of how this could have happened.
Meredith talks about being curious. To cycle through Belgium you have to be it bit more curious than in the Netherlands, I recognize the difficulties you can run into as a cyclist in Belgium, on the other hand, they have cycle routes that are very beautiful and you will not find that in the Netherlands. Also I Belgium they have this Knooppuntennetwerk, I use that many times to help me find a decent route,
Well.. Maybe the rule 'a bicycle is a one person vehicle' should be scratched from Belgium police reasons to stop you when you have someone at the back of your bike.
I'm so jealous seeing you cycling through my old hometown, where I grew up, while looking at eight bicycles in my home in the UK. Cycling here is dreadfully dangerous, and parents wouldn't dream of letting their children ou to ride a bicycle.
Absolutely! And building out an "All Ages & Abilities" network goes a long way to this end by providing safe and inviting mobility options across a wide spectrum of disabilities.
@@ActiveTowns I complete agree. When you get a chance in 2025, please visit Boston and check out the new cycling network that link Somerville, Cambridge(Harvard MIT) and Boston that connects all 3 cities. Also check out Boston Cyclist Union while you're at it. Thank you for the content, Cheers 🥂👍
Nope, not filmed by phone. I’m able to control my bike with both hands as needed and have received plenty of thumbs ups and hat tips from the Dutch police.
It seems to me that you are trying to integrate impossible functions of a city on the same location. 1) The city has to be vibrant, a center of trade and economics, and 2) the city needs to be friendly for green lovers, children playing and raising a family. Both at the same place is impossible. That is why families live not in a business district or city centers, but elsewhere. You can't put a worldwide trade center in a suburb, and you can't place family life next to a trade center. You need to split functions. And yes, that is how commuting starts. And yes, that is how "car gutters" are necessary to link the two functions. The only solution I see is to have the economic hubs outside the city. My father drove CEO's and they went to great lengths to move their head office to the center of Amsterdam (from effectively a suburb of Amsterdam called Haarlem) because that showed better on their communications. (HQ in the city of Amsterdam!). This desire is common in the elites. You are fighting an uphill battle and one I don't think is realistic. And no, they won't go by bike or train. They'd rather stay overnight in a hotel or something than to leave the car behind. That is how it works.
Not sure about always knowing more necessarily, but yes, a fresh set of eyes has the potential to see things in a new light that locals might become numb to.
@@ActiveTowns Better put than me........by the way I am Britsh born, lived in Nederland for over 20 years, now a Dutch citizen. Live in the Arnhem area, location of the world's longest one day walk, and the location of the Bilderberg Hotel, but that's a secret...!!!!!!!!!!!!!
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Really enjoyed this. Meredith is a wonderful and articulate advocate, and cycling in general is lucky to have such people.
Yay! So delighted that you enjoyed the conversation. Really appreciate you tuning in. Cheers! John
She is fantastic. Such a great advocate for livable city life!!
I agree.💯
Great interview, John. Really interesting to hear what Meredith is doing now. Sounds great news for Belgium. You bring important insights to a wider community of campaigners for change.
Thank you! Always appreciate having you tune in. Cheers! John
Interesting interview and wonderful ideas for change. It does take the right "words and framework" when introducing change.
Thanks for watching! I'm glad you enjoyed the interview.
Nice one Prof. Meredith and active towns
Yay! So glad you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for tuning in. Cheers! John
My favourite cycling professor! Curious to learn about her views on the difference between Belgium and The Netherlands.
I'll be sure to do a follow-up video with her on that subject.
Always LOVE the content with Meredith!
Me too! Thanks for tuning in. Cheers! John
Around 33:00 this seems essential to me and is the very reason why Jason Slaughter called his channel Not Just Bikes. There are very few bike people, it’s not (just) about bikes!
My views about The Knip slightly differ from the ones expressed by Meredith, although I mostly subscribe to what she is saying. I fully endorse the experiment itself, even if the outcome might be disappointing. That in itself is a useful learning experience and teaches us stuff we can exploit in future projects. I grant it to you that we need to raise the awareness to the raised problems but the question is always - to what extent? A general needs to be brave but not too far ahead of his troops! Striking the right balance is key…
Yep. I also like to remind myself (and others) that changing the status quo is always hard, and we have to have a sense of empathy that these changes can be fear-inducing even when the net result is overwhelmingly a positive result for society. With that said, if the transformations stay in long enough, we humans tend to adjust and adapt both individually and collectively.
yeah this might time the experiment might have failed, but hopefully the look into it why it failed and in the (near) future do it right.
one of the biggest mistakes was calling it a "knip", cutting something feels negative, so people will easily associate it with something bad.
they could have called it something like "giving back the street to the residents".
now instead of taking something away (for drivers), you framed it as giving something (to the residents).
and even though you still do the same thing, now it sounds a lot more friendly, and people will see it as something positive.
@@ChristiaanHW Precisely. Framing is so very important. Change is hard enough without inflaming passions unnecessarily. Thanks so much for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
@@ActiveTowns
That is why I, as an amateur Dutchie, place emphasizes on ...
a) changing the rigid US zoning codes first. Like promoting mixed use zoning (urban densification). Without the ridiculous requirements of increasing road width and increasing parking spots. The rules can be changed almost instantly (not considering resistance to change). Creating mixed urban zones takes (more) time (to implement).
b) create more frequent and dedicated bus lanes to promote public transportation. This can be done almost instantly with minimal cost (not considering the car-centric resistance for losing a car lane in favor of public transportation).
Fancy and expensive and timely train/metro/tram infrastructure can be done concurrently or later.
c) Change traffic rules and regulations favoring and protecting pedestrians and cyclists. As opposed to the current US idiocy of blaming cyclists being hit by right turning cars and blaming pedestrians being hit by cars for merely crossing roads.
d) Discourage city car traffic by creating infrastructural city division for private cars. That is, make it hard or impossible for cars to go from one city section to another city section directly. Instead, a private car is forced to get back to a ring road first and then enter the other city section from a different ring road exit.
Note: More suitable for dense(ified) cities. Less suitable for urban sprawled cities.
Excellent interview John....very impressed with the professor!
Thanks! She is always a delight to talk to.
She needs to come to the U.K. and educate the majority of politicians, MSM presenters and the driving public on the benefits of cycling
Excellent! We need her most urgently in Trinidad and Tobago!😉
I'm sure she'd be happy to. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
Good luck to Meredith with dealing with the multiple administrative layers in Belgium, even worse than in The Netherlands 😊
Yep. The good news is that Ghent is leading the way for the rest of the country to follow.
❤❤❤ prof Glaser
Agreed! 💯 Meredith is a thought leader in this movement, and we are lucky to have her working hard to make cities around the globe become safer, more inviting places. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
She made an excellent point about communication!
Because especially in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht it's more communicated as waging a war against cars then it's about improving the quality of life for everyone and how it's actually a more pleasant neighbourhood when the work is done.
By some of these local political parties if you have a car you're already looked at as a lesser lifeform, but when you dare to use it on a daily basis (for whatever reason) you are even considerd the most terrible of bad guys from a superhero movie or something.
Communication is still key a lot of times!
Yep! Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
Hi, how are you doing the rear view shots?
I have a two-camera setup - one attached to the bike facing forward and the second is handheld focused on my on-bike interview guest. Thanks so much for watching and for asking. Cheers! John
@ActiveTowns who is watching the road?
Or do you use a AI tracker?
Anyway, probably should not ask this, but since we can't keep a phone in our hand...is this legal. Or are you banking on the Dutch seeing it through the fingers 🤞😁
Yeah, it's not a cell phone, but rather a camera with a wide-angle lens strapped to my wrist so I can still control the bike as needed. And yes, I am able to watch the road and navigate since I don't need to actually be looking directly at the camera or my guest at all times. I am not using an AI tracker yet, but perhaps in the future.
@@ActiveTowns well, you achieve very nice shots with the setup. Especially considering biking in a crowd.
@@Streetsinsideout Thanks! I do have over a decade of practice honing this skill, nd it's definitely gotten easier over the years with better equipment
Somewhere in a video the Not Just Bikes person said that Belgium resembles the USA in car centric planning. That’s why the roads are so bad somehow, don’t remember exactly why. Something financial. So if that’s true, an American as bicycle prof is a good idea in this case.
I suppose she know what good initiatives are going on in the states and can share that in Belgium.
Yeah, Belgium is playing catch-up for sure, which is why they are engaging researchers such as Prof. Glaser. If you're curious, here are a few videos I've produced: Reflections from Brussels ruclips.net/video/KKG4oyvBhf8/видео.html and from Ghent: bit.ly/3YU1ejM
Alweer Amsterdam, het is maar goed dat Meredith een knapperd is dan schijnt iig de zon in A'dam ;p
Leuke video John, ik wacht nog wel n paar maanden tot je een keer Breda door fietst, het ligt letterlijk aan de grens van België want Hazeldonk (grens) hoort bij Breda haha.
Cheers
My Breda solo ride is coming up soon. Trying to get my on bike interviews out first before I dive into all my solo rides of me talking to myself. 😂
@@ActiveTowns Haha nice man I also talk to myself regularly and sometimes it gets quite out of hand🤣🤣
👍👍
Partbers from outside the bike space: interesting critique of the industry.
🙌
Speaking about Belgium bike infrastructure..... I have biked the traject Maastricht-Schoonhoven dozens of times over the years...
At this place 51°08'40"N 5°36'54"E there's a big "FU" from the Belgium government to bikers.
Someone paid an official for a stamp of approval for this....
Comming from the south you're forced off course... then you try to return to the bike path along the Albert Canal at 51°09'11"N 5°37'40"E ... and that turns out to be a trap.
A trap with a shiney bike sign,.. and 50m of nice asphalt (for the photo; proving the construction of a bikepath in order to get the subsidy from one of those bureaucracy layers....) ... ending no-where.... That is; ending 15m from the bikepath along the Albert Canal.... Can you believe it!
If I had been an investigative journalist, I would have gotten to the bottom of how this could have happened.
Thanks for tuning in and providing this insight
Meredith talks about being curious.
To cycle through Belgium you have to be it bit more curious than in the Netherlands,
I recognize the difficulties you can run into as a cyclist in Belgium, on the other hand, they have cycle routes that are very beautiful and you will not find that in the Netherlands.
Also I Belgium they have this Knooppuntennetwerk, I use that many times to help me find a decent route,
Bike kitchen is fietskeuken in Dutch?
Yes, but not here. I was expecting an cargo bike with a kitchen.
Without knowing, I'd expect something like fietscafé. :)
🙌
Well.. Maybe the rule 'a bicycle is a one person vehicle' should be scratched from Belgium police reasons to stop you when you have someone at the back of your bike.
Agreed 💯
I'm so jealous seeing you cycling through my old hometown, where I grew up, while looking at eight bicycles in my home in the UK. Cycling here is dreadfully dangerous, and parents wouldn't dream of letting their children ou to ride a bicycle.
Thanks, for tuning in.
ADA Compliance should always be at the forefront of urban planning as well.
Absolutely! And building out an "All Ages & Abilities" network goes a long way to this end by providing safe and inviting mobility options across a wide spectrum of disabilities.
@@ActiveTowns I complete agree. When you get a chance in 2025, please visit Boston and check out the new cycling network that link Somerville, Cambridge(Harvard MIT) and Boston that connects all 3 cities. Also check out Boston Cyclist Union while you're at it. Thank you for the content, Cheers 🥂👍
...include Bycycle Repair Man from Monty Python in your tutoring.....
hehe 😂 a bit of Python is always fun
I hope it's not filmed by phone. Otherwise it's a € 180 fine.
Nope, not filmed by phone. I’m able to control my bike with both hands as needed and have received plenty of thumbs ups and hat tips from the Dutch police.
@@ActiveTowns So you see you did some great camerawork! Great to hear!
It seems to me that you are trying to integrate impossible functions of a city on the same location. 1) The city has to be vibrant, a center of trade and economics, and 2) the city needs to be friendly for green lovers, children playing and raising a family. Both at the same place is impossible. That is why families live not in a business district or city centers, but elsewhere. You can't put a worldwide trade center in a suburb, and you can't place family life next to a trade center. You need to split functions. And yes, that is how commuting starts. And yes, that is how "car gutters" are necessary to link the two functions. The only solution I see is to have the economic hubs outside the city. My father drove CEO's and they went to great lengths to move their head office to the center of Amsterdam (from effectively a suburb of Amsterdam called Haarlem) because that showed better on their communications. (HQ in the city of Amsterdam!). This desire is common in the elites. You are fighting an uphill battle and one I don't think is realistic. And no, they won't go by bike or train. They'd rather stay overnight in a hotel or something than to leave the car behind. That is how it works.
Thanks so much for watching and sharing your perspective. Cheers! John
....the foreigner always knows more..........they see things locals don't......
Not sure about always knowing more necessarily, but yes, a fresh set of eyes has the potential to see things in a new light that locals might become numb to.
@@ActiveTowns Better put than me........by the way I am Britsh born, lived in Nederland for over 20 years, now a Dutch citizen. Live in the Arnhem area, location of the world's longest one day walk, and the location of the Bilderberg Hotel, but that's a secret...!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@brian5154 Cool! 🙌