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
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.
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 cars were still a developing technology and it makes sense that they would want to bring their seemingly outdated infrastructure up to modern standard
I'd like to be crystal clear that (obviously) not all people against the knip are right-wingers, and that's not what I'm saying in this video. However it was right wing parties (primarily the VVD and FvD) that were demanding an _immediate_ stop to a 6-week project on the first day. Why aren't they willing to see it through? What are they afraid of? I can understand someone saying, "I don't like something about this project", and then having a reasonable response like "... let's tweak the light timings at Piet Hienkade", or "let's also block off another street." or "... let's change the signage" or "... "let's collect this data differently." But to say "THERE'S MORE TRAFFIC ON DAY ONE!! CANCEL EVERYTHING!!!" is simply not an acceptable response to this project. As usual, the biggest problems are being caused by too many motor vehicles, but ultimately that's what this project is trying to solve. Is this the right solution? We don't know. But we sure as hell won't find out by cancelling it before we get any data. And I applaud the municipality for taking the bold move to collect that important information and for performing this trial. Objections are fine; that's how we improve. But if you just want to cancel everything and aren't interested in data, then I have no patience for you. We learn nothing from that. Meten is weten. Edit: if you are a right-wing urbanist then you need to start speaking up, because your representatives are destroying cities in your name; from the VVD in the Netherlands to the new mayor of Berlin, it is the right wing in Europe that is overwhelming pushing anti-urbanist initiatives. You need to let them (and your fellow conservatives) know you're not ok with it.
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.
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.
Meanwhile in America we're fighting to get protected bicycle lanes instead of painted bicycle gutters. Still amazes me how my city thinks it ok to build a painted bicycle lane along a 50mph stroad.
Admittedly reduced traffic speed (below 20km/15miles) can make those work Germany makes every town explicitly justify every location speeds are reduced
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.
A note on drivers' perception of the parallel traffic jam: if the road is packed half the time and empty half the time, all of the drivers experience it being packed, because by definition no drivers were there to experience it being empty.
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.
Suburban car owners being mad at a city that they don't live in because it's making changes? That never happens, ever, anywhere else around the world 😅😅😅
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.
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.
"in order to even get here, all of these drivers needed to ignore several signs telling them to turn around" There's some construction going on at an intersection down the street from me. I straight up saw a car go over the curb onto the sidewalk to get around the warning sign that was blocking the road.
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?"
Hey NJB, as a busdriver in and around Amsterdam, the first week was a horrendous time for public transport. So many people didn't believe that it happened, I guess, so driving from Centraal to anywhere to the IJ-tunnel took over 30 minutes (which would normally take us about 3 to 5 minutes). Nobody gave way, and just parked their big crossover/suv on the middle of the crossing. When finally through the tunnel you would get in the second traffic jam of everyone going to the A10 to drive around. Considering a few thousand of cars needing to go through a single lane road to get on the A10, there were a lot of cars. This traffic jam also causes busses that depart from Station Noord to get stuck while leaving the station. Oh, you're upset an 18 meter long bus is standing on the middle of a busy crossing because of a traffic jam that shouldn't exist in the first place? Sure, I guess. I see so many people sitting alone in their way too big cars, driving like spoiled 10 year olds. A few weeks in and there are still traffic jams, and still people that think that they can drive to Amsterdam Centraal via the Prins Hendrikkade while it has been blocked off for LITERAL MONTHS just blows my mind. UGH. I hope the knip stays and people stop taking the car.
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)
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.
Imagine a government that spends a delberate amount of time to study the effects of a potential policy change before actually going through with it, mind blowing stuff... sadly
@@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.
I ride Amsterdam everyday as a fietskoerier/bike messenger, and I'd like to add some other road closures I think are effecting the perception of traffic during this Mega Knip: there's serious construction on Van Wout and Stadhouderskade in De Pijp pushing traffic onto Sarphatistraat, which crosses Weesperstraat, and smaller construction on other streets that ring the center (Weteringschans and Marnixstraat, Rapenburg, etc) are slowing down rerouted traffic. It's a little bit of bad timing, but there is always maintenance going here so there would never be a perfect time.
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.
@@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.
I live in a neighborhood of Montréal, a city on the east coast of Canada. Our mayor has been greenlighting and promoting a lot more cycling and pedestrian spaces, including turning the main street of my mixed-use distict into a pedestrian street during the summer months. It has totally changed the feeling of the neighborhood, since we are no longer insulated by the constant hustle and bustle of traffic. I am getting to meet my neighbors and walking my dog is a pleasure instead of bee-lining to the nearest park while trying to avoid getting flattened by impatient drivers. You wouldnt wear a tuxedo to the beach, cars dont belong everywhere.
I live in this neighborhood and I can confirm it's totally transformed the atmosphere of the area. It's SO much quieter now, especially now that there aren't people racing between the stoplights at night. And the intersection at Weesperplein is much calmer now because there's fewer motorist jockeying for position on their way into the city center. I'm no longer worried about getting mowed down by a distracted driver when I cross the street (something I've seen happen several times in the years living here).
I live in Bandung Pretty much the best "Anti-Car" City in Indonesia. There is this one road that is filled with commercial activity, used as a main road to a lot of residence, used as a main road to a monument, campuses, and etc. Not only that, the road is small, very very small, and have the reputation of being "The most congested road in northern Bandung" or something along the line of that. One day I was working on a project about it's supposed congestion. What we found after we ask people there, and actually watch the road, we found that, there is practically no congestion outside rush hour and the weekend (mainly because there is an influx of rider from Jakartans). This blew my mind. We are expecting to write "there is a serious case of congestion, and the road needed to be widened" but no, instead we wrote "there needs to be some policy to limit an inflow of new riders in the weekend". This is where Iam convinced that, small roads dont cause congestion. Iam writing this, because Iam now very very sure, that these politicians and people that wanted wider road, dont actually live near those roads (surprised surprised). Because every single person that I asked that live near a small road says, there are no congestion most of the time.
@@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.😊
People complain about your tone. But it's just that Dutch blunt truthfulness. Motorists *are* entitled when they want places rich with opportunity to bulldoze their buildings and shrink space for people, just to increase through-traffic. I appreciate that you don't cater to the feelings of wildly uninformed and unrealistic people. I envy that you made it out and live in a country where just by living, you show how stupidly North America has structured their infrastructure.
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.
That shot at 8:05 breaks my heart a little. They had to extend the car barrier into the fietspad just so cars wouldn't drive onto the fietspad to avoid the car barrier. Car entitlement is wild, even here.
@@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
This channel along with a few others have inspired me to go back to university to retrain for a career in City planning and Public infrastructure. Thank you
What I'm starting to realize, is that many wealthy suburbanites feel entitled to access to urban amenities while restricting traffic in their own suburbs (the cul-de-sac and restrictive zoning, per se). As stated in the video, they aren't concerned about the pollution, they're concerned that their privilege to their entitlement (that hurts others) is being infringed on. They either see urban populations as lower class and inferior, and/or they are too selfish to consider the impacts of their decisions affects other people.
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've recently come to realize it isn't just "the car lobby." There are a *lot* of construction and construction-related companies out there that are *massively* invested in keeping our communities and streets poorly designed. They *need* us to keep filling and destroying our roads so they can fix them, renovate them, expand them and create new ones. It's a multibillion dollar industry.
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.
You really hit the nail on the head on this one. If most people living in a city don't own cars, then it's not fair that those who live outside the city suddenly have the leisure to just drive right through a mostly car-free environment for their own convenience. Causing noise, air pollution, and more unsafe roads to those who actually live there.
A similar project has come under fire n Berlin in the last weeks. The Friedrichstraße used to be a busy steet full of cars. It was blocked of as a test a couple of years ago and was somewhat well recieved and used by pedestrians, shoppers and bicyclists. However the new CDU/SPD government of the city decided to immediately halt all (!) new bicycle infrastructure projects, where any parking space would be compromised. And the reopened the Friedrichstraße for cars again. This weekend, there was a bicycle protest with over 10 000 demonstrators against the new plans. In Germany, we can only look with envy on dutch infrastructure imho.
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
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.
I work at the uni campus around here, so I bike through this every day. I've been really enjoying how much more quiet it's gotten and how easy it is to cross for my commute.
I have heard the word "stroad" used in places other than on these videos. I really think this guy is making a difference. These videos are sort of like pebbles dropped into a pond with the message slowly spreading to other parts of the pond. I think even here in the rust belt of North America that towns amd cities are going to become a lot more bike friendly in the next 20 years. This video showed a choice between a garden and a street difficult to cross by foot.
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.
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.
I have a friend who lives nearby and he said that some people in the neighborhood were trying to start protests on the street against this plan, although he mentioned that hardly anybody actually showed up, once again showing that most residents do not want so many cars in Amsterdam.
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.
I remember going back to my hometown a few years ago. They started converting some roads into bike lanes and making other bus exclusive. Apparently they spent years planning this, and making a transition into the new plans. Well, the local far right party won last elections, and overnight they destroyed all progress made in the last 10 years.
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.
I'm confused about the opposition to this project and what they want. As a California resident, I can relate it to our problems and assume that most ringwing folks live outside of the cities and want to drive into the city for errands. However, here it truly is harder to get into town without a car, but I assume Amsterdam has made that easy for more people. What do people prefer about their cars in this situation? They want to be alone? They want to carry lots of large objects? You even mentioned people can still drive in to a destination, just not all the way through, so that doesn't make sense either. Or are the right wing politicians just supporting the car lobby and don't really care about their constituents at all??
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.
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.
During the pandemic, in the city of Montréal in the province of Québec in Canada, many streets were made pedestrian. The local people got the taste of it and wanted the projects to become permanent. Believe it or not, even most of the local business owners got on board while most of them were opposed to it at the beginning. The same happened with cycling infrastructures.
The new right wing government in Berlin recently turned Friedrichstraße in the city center to a car street again and removed all pedestrian infrastructure and furniture, after it has been a pedestrian zone for a few months. They also announced that all work on improving cycling lanes will be put on hold and some lanes will be removed in favor of parking spots!!! Clearly out of pure spite. There was a huge protest today against this decision, I was surprised at how many people turned out on such a short noticed. Please keep fighting for better cities and protect every piece of progress you make.
The data on how it effects emergency vehicles will definitely be interesting to see. One of big claims made against low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) here in the UK is that they slow down emergency vehicles. In reality, data from the London Fire Brigade shows its traffic, not LTNs, that slows dow emergency responses the most.
I think the "Park and ride" (that was what you called it right?) is absolutely key for this! I get how much better it is without all the cars for the people living there, but both for the people not living there going to work, and for the ones that has to come in, just once in a while it needs to not be a nighmare. If it is easy to get a parking spot, easy to get the public transport, and it runs often - like 5 to max 10 minutes often, easy to get to a variety of key points in the city without having to change 10 times (or even 3) then I get it. And it has to be communicated clearly, and the people living in the city is not the most important to tell this to. But everyone who does NOT live in the city. They need to see and hear, just how easy it is, how they park cheaper than they would if it was in the city before, how they can just get in and get where ever they want, preferably with some kind of ticket that just covers whatever you need for the day, the weekend, the week, however you are staying. What I am trying to say, it needs to be easy and convenient for the visitors. And this an completely other point and subject, but do like many Norvegian carparks are starting to do, have EV chargers. Just normal "home" ones, there is no need for so many fast chargers, fast chargers should only be for the rare holidays and long cartrips, destination charging is the what we need - if you car is parked there all day anyway, you do NOT need fastchargers.
I live in tel aviv and I just today saw the distopian view of an ambulance with sirens blaring being stuck in traffic and unable to pass. Tbh tel aviv is super walkable and bikeable and I'm not complaining about it but the closing of large streets (like rokach street where I saw that) is definitely super important
Excellent to get your perspective from there Jason. A model to redo Bloor-Danforth reveals: reposition the curbs so they are 7m apart and all the remaining space is turned to bikeways and sidewalks; rent massive sidewalk area out to businesses who want to animate it. Pays for itself; roadway becomes a net positive cashflow for the city; saves weak towns.
I never understood why people, especially tourists, took their car into the center of Amsterdam. Its the one city I always used public transport without hesitation. Their system is close to perfect in comparison to let's say Paris, Brussels or any other major city I know.
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).
@@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).
I like how you put a scene of Munich as an example of a less car friendly city in Germany. As a Dutch person living there, I notice the results of the BMW lobby all the time. There are much better examples of deliberately car unfriendly cities in Germany.
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.
It’s very telling when one group wants to draw conclusions before any data has been gathered while another group allows time and data with the willingness to admit when they are wrong
4:14 a town I used to live, Ventura CA, recently closed their Main Street to cars and I’m now convinced that all cities should do it! Shopping, dining, and walking around on the street is now an incredibly pleasant experience due to how much car noise has been cut down! In the case like what you show in this video, it feels like citizens are getting a new park space. And having more parks closer to where you live can be huge for your mental health!
@@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.
As someone slightly right-leaning by Western European standards (as in: don't increase taxes and regulation without a good/strong reason, but don't hesitate with that), I hate that it's usually the right wingers who adopt these stupid takes, embarrassing themselves, and leaving no one credible to balance the political discussion. The individualist modes of transportation that belong in the city is walking and cycling, not cars.
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.
@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.
Unfortunately P+R in Amsterdam is going to be 6 EUR instead of 1 starting on July 3. I get it since it’s been operating at a loss for years, but it’s a bit of a steep increase for something that was motivating a LOT of people to leave their car outside of the center.
I do like this approach, as in London they’ve just only have a congestion charge through the city, where it doesn’t stop car traffic, but it causes rich people to drive and everyone else to rely on the public transport. This way everyone is forced to use alternative transport methods rather than cars and makes people equal.
I am currently driving a campervan through Europe. 8000km through many different countries. I would however not even consider driving in my daily life. My E-Bike gets me where I want to go quicker and more convenient than a car. I love driving as a hobby through the countryside, but cant stand driving as a commute.
What a great initiative, look forward to the results! Hope more cities, especially capitals, would try such experiments and would be willing to become car-free cities, at least in the city centers!
Every time I watch about Amsterdam, I'm convinced that I should study Real Estate, Engineering (Urban Planning is Engineering; then you have Traffic Engineering), or maybe Legalism; which is becoming a Lawyer. I would love to work for the city and county to transform stroads into bikeable/walkable boulevards with bus lanes, apartments, townhouses, larger parks, and so much more that I can add for a living and socialized city. Yes, I'm from the Southern US.
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.
I actually work close to here and cross this street every day, also to get lunch. I really, really like the change, it makes the road much nicer and easier to cross, reduces noise and makes it nicer to walk or sit along the road as well.
Being 'orangepilled' in the US is increasingly agonizing the more videos about (proper) urban planning I watch. I may have ADHD, anxiety, or some other factors making driving worse, but still. I cannot *wait* to leave the US, and try visiting places in Europe to see what sort of sheer differences I can spot. I currently drive 20-30 minutes from out of town to get to the nearest totally-not-blue-and-oversized "rhymes with All-Fart" grocery store, drive 20-30min back, and usually feel exhausted for the rest of the afternoon. And each time I find myself focusing on similar aspects of the commute: "Oh wow, a bicycle lan- and it's gone." "Why is this wide stroad set to 35 when the rest are 45 or 55? There's less points of conflict here!" "Gah, I hate turning out of this parking lot, it goes right into high-speed traffic, always feels dangerous." "Whoa-! Jeez, does this short street need multiple stop signs? I'd prefer if the speed was just dropped from 30 to 15..." "OMG, is that an actual traffic circle/roundabout?! ....In one of the least-busy areas outside of town? Well, at least they tried?" (I've seen 3 traffic circles in as many cities, and they're all out in the middle of nowhere, typically unused.) I even had a similar experience to your Houston video - decided to walk to a restaurant I really like, had the sidewalk cease to exist several times, had to cross a bridge next to high-speed traffic, awkwardly cross some roads, have the sidewalk cease to exist again, get asked by a passing driver if I had any drugs (?), and finally arrive - a 5 minute drive turned into a 40 minute walk, one-way. I called an Uber to go home. Everyone just accepts this as normal. It's bad. :(
That picture of the road through Museumplein horrified me, I never knew that existed (and should never exist again). Walking through that area several times in the past few years makes me feel really grateful they got rid of that road, and are getting rid of more.
I've been to Amsterdam almost 20 times for work from Finland, and you happened to pick the spot where I almost always stayed (Zoku)! Glad to see the neighborhood I'm most familiar with getting better, that road was the single most anxiety inducing things during my stays there when compared to the ease of travel everywhere else. Good thing I usually just had to walk down the road to Weesperplein station to get to the office.
Absolutely! As an American who grew up suburban sprawl I am so much happier living in a car free neighborhood. I love Amsterdam and De Pijp! Heel erg bedankt Amsterdam!
As a dutch person visiting Amsterdam often by car, I've never actually known what a P+R (Park & Ride) is until you told us in this video. I'm sure I'm an incredibly stupid person for not knowing, but... I feel like there's plenty of other ignorant people like me. They should somehow make it much more clear to people like me that a P+R is a place where you can park to use public transport and that it only costs 1EUR. I thought a P+R was a place for carpooling or something.
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.
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
I live in a small town in Canada and an this feels so familiar. We had an experiment to change the main street in the center of the town to a one way to create space for a bike path and more room for pedestrians. It was cancelled on the second day because of public outrage, even though it was actually fantastic as someone that lives « downtown ». We were not even talking about blocking car traffic, just reducing the number of lanes.
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.
This is actually going to be such an improvement to that road! I studied at the HvA for half a year and that road surprised me. Thinking about it, I have never experienced such a road before in except for abroad.
Recently I took a trip to Amsterdam and it was so nice to not have to rent a car, drive everywhere, and be able to bike everywhere without hundreds of cars passing you every hour. Amsterdam is an amazing, quiet, and beautiful city and I am so glad that they council is working on keeping it that way instead of giving into the car lobbyists.
I'm glad that one positive thing that came out of covid is that people got a touch of some streets being closed to cars and allowing more pedestrian friendly areas. I hope that helps create more pedestrian friendly areas with new construction. The whole city doesn't need to be super pedestrian friendly but just creating zones and paths will be great. For example, I live in Chicago and street designs are a grid system. If every 4 blocks (half mile) both north to south and east to west had no vehicles allowed on it, it would make walking and biking everywhere much easier while creating areas that would be full of outdoor dining, some green (trees, small parks, etc), and lots more businesses.
Hello, I live in Watertown, MA, a suburb of Boston. I wanted to tell you about the abhorrent transit situation that the nearby city of Lynn has found itself in. The city has been building more densely around its commuter rail station, however, the MBTA has closed the station due to the disrepair of the building, even though it was built in 1991. A new station will not be done until 2030, which is absolutely ridiculous. The city has urged the MBTA to build a temporary platform, which will take 12-18 months. Otherwise, they have to take a shuttle bus to Swampscot for the commuter rail or a shuttle to Revere for the Blue Line, which will take a long amount of time during rush hour. It's ridiculous that Lynn, which is the same distance to Boston and Brooklyn is to Manhattan, has no accessible transit to get to Boston. This is compounded by the fact of the large Latino and Black population in Lynn. This has also caused economic problems as building contractors to have densified around the station will suffer since young commuters will not move in without transit. This has led to a grocery store cancelling its plan to move into one of the buildings. I wanted to spread the news about this. If you want to see the full article, it's in the June 25th Boston Globe written by Joan Vennochi.
The 0.3 cars/household statistic is really encouraging to me on a personal level. I *hate* driving a car, but I always figured it was going to be an inevitability of growing up even when living in the Netherlands. It's really great to see that a sizeable majority of households in certain parts are able to do without.
@@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.
Comparing the two routes you showed, I'd guess the one through the city actually uses more gas anyway. Mileage in the city is worse because there is more starting and stopping, which means more acceleration, which means more need to push the gas pedal per unit distance. The highway route would need to be _significantly_ longer to make up for this.
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….
They actually think that driving 30% more distance on highway is more polluting than going through city center with stops and lights? I mean i know europe have motor stop systems as a default but isn't it universally known that you get better milage on the highway? Have they actually ever bought fuel for a vehicle?
A good moral and practical rule, is that the more someone is affected by a decision, the more say they should have on this decision. The converse is also true and just as important: the less someone is affected by a decision, the less their opinion should matter. The knip affects the people who *actually live* in the area a lot more than those who just *pass* there, so what the neighborhood wants is much more important than what the traffic driving through wants.
"Cities aren't loud, cars are loud. And cities without cars are quiet." - Welcome to Istanbul! There is no way to spend even half an hour with open windows and not go crazy with all the street vendors, bagmen, and others yelling all day long. Not to mention five times a day muezzin, and yes, bikes and cars honking non-stop.
@@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 :)
12 minutes that explains perfectly why there is no reason for any German city to have a car sewer through the center. And that carrots alone don't work to get cars out of cities, there needs to be a stick. Thank you Amsterdam for running this experiment and thank you @NotJustBikes for this video.
When I travel to a big city in the western part in The Netherlands (I live in a village in the Eastern part, work in the West) I never take the car. I ride on my bike to the station (5 minutes) and then the train to Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag etc. Music or a podcast om my headphone. There mostly the OV-fiets (rental bike). Vera easy and relaxed.
We have a redesign of a junction and a road off it to make it more bicycle friendly here in Bielefeld and the local papers have from day one been doing the emotional appeal of "chaos" even when the roadworks started It is interesting to watch. Our city's plans aren't as radical as Amsterdam's but we are moving in the right direction.
Great video, one thing though: As somebody living on Kattenburgerstraat, I can assure you we never had bad traffic here, until now. We did have people driving too fast. That was solved 3 months ago with street redesign, and a max speed from 50 to 30. I'm in favour of the Knip, but do find it annoying that they took one of the few neighbourhoods in Amsterdam-centre (Kattenburg) with a lot of low income people to take in all the traffic for this experiment. Seems suspicious to me.
It would be such a delight to see similar projects in some of the cities near me. I always find it such a head-scratcher when I see a major highway serve double-duty as the Main Street of a town. Most of the traffic ends up being through traffic, so you don’t really benefit much from it, and it clogs everything up because the actual residents of the community need to use that road for basic essentials too. So, props to Amsterdam for being willing to take on the car lobby. I hope their traffic study goes well so they can bulldoze a few more roads and put in some useful space instead 😀
I live nearby in Oost and love it. Even in a short experiment it seems to work as intended. Of course it creates problems, especially because most people were unaware and stuff like navigation software is terrible for cases like this. If this is properly implemented and changed I’m convinced most ‘problems’ will be pretty easy to sort out.
Jason, you need to publish this video in Dutch, so all the local right-wingers can see what you experienced and understand what the city is doing. Not that they don't understand English, they speak English very well, but this would prevent them from having any stupid excuse.
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. RUclips 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.
My university hospital has a bunch of gates despite obviously having regular emergency vehicles passing through. It's mostly pedestrians(eg students etc) and bikes. But the vehicles have chips that allow the gates to open prematurely so they can drive through quickly. Might be a fix here for those slowdowns.
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.
There’s a push to completely ban cars from the Melbourne CBD a push I’m completely in support of since I haven’t driven to the CBD by car for about 10 or 15 years even though I live in a rural town that’s around 30 kilometres from the nearest Melbourne train station, it’s far cheaper and far more convenient to catch public transportation to the Melbourne CBD instead of driving. The reason being is that driving to Melbourne means you’ll need to circumvent around the suburbs on a freeway or pay a $10 toll to cut though the suburbs on a tolled highway and when you reach the CBD you’ll be paying $15 or $22 to park your car as well as paying $60 to $100 for fuel it’s soo expensive on average it costs around $90 in and back out to home and yes you will be waiting in traffic. Catching the train will cost $17 to get in and back to home again, it takes the same amount of time every time you use it no matter what. This is why 80% of Melburnian’s choose any other method than driving to travel to the CBD and back.
The problem with the "knip", Amsterdam did it during the highway renovations. Having created one single lane from Amsterdam east to Amsterdam north, resuting in the "Amsterdam brug" having 24/7 heavy traffic.
0:17 I wouldn't be surprised if what you see in the background (with the CoSPoor sign above it) is one of the segments of the metro tube slowly sinking into the ground (which would place the time of this picture in the latter half of the 70s).
Driving on highways is usually better for cars than in a city. The roads are typically smoother, and better shape and there is less starting and stopping. So you aren't idling as much. I can understand some folks have a hard time with change. But I think the Knip is a good thing. I love that they are holding events to give people a feel for the possibilities of the street instead of just closing it off and hoping people take notice.
We're kind of dealing with something like this where I live. The street I live off of for a really, really long time was used by many as a major thoroughfare, despite it mainly being a residential area. Things changed slightly with the traffic patterns when the road no longer went through to the nearby east-west highway that the city has been talking about FOR TWENTY YEARS of turning into a freeway. There was a decent amount of protesting when that access was closed off from some drivers, but most adapted. Residents of that area were oh so happy that now there was only local traffic, and those local people were actually driving the posted limit of 30km/h, instead of 60+ like many like to do, which is great, because instances of kids almost being run over went from fairly frequent to almost never. Then the construction on the east side of the road happened last year, blocking off traffic for about six months. Oh man, was the quiet so nice to have. We recently got said quiet back when they started up construction again about six weeks ago for the west side. Protests have shifted from the stupidity of "how will I get where I'm going" (people not from the area cutting through to avoid traffic) to a more localized "we don't need super wide sidewalks!" Well, actually we do, because we're the test project for the city for turning residential areas into quieter, more walkable areas, and to make it safer for cyclists, since there's an insane amount of push-back against the mere idea of more bike lanes. Most residents at the moment though are annoyed we lost several crosswalks with lights, but word from planning is we will get those back at.... Some point. They took five months after the construction was done to get us a crossing at just one of the three that had lights, hence why I sound slightly skeptical. The thing is though, most who are doing the complaining don't realize that it's a massive concerted effort on a large scale to move towards the overall goal. That previously mentioned highway being turned into a freeway is still happening, although at what feels like a glacial pace, but it is indeed moving along, as is the third LRT line (and they have a fourth in the planning phase now). I think things being slow wasn't just to fully secure the funding and get ALL the plans approved, but also to try and have as much of the big, awful work being done all at once, so instead of of 5-7 years (or more) of construction in that area they can possibly do it in 3-5. They also needed the land to be able to pull all of this off, but once it's all done traffic should flow a LOT better along that highway. On top of it all, the city has done some testing with narrowing roads downtown, with the pandemic having helped make such possible, and they're looking into ways of being able to make such permanent, which is great, because downtown (and the area just west of it) was actually walkable, so if they're able to keep such momentum moving forwards drivers will naturally adapt, AND we should be able to hopefully see even more support of public transit investment. Then it's just the hope of them coming up with better routes, these new ones for the most part take longer, which really makes things difficult for regular riders.
An interesting thing is what traffic simulations said before this project. Is that data public? Also the german city i live in, cologne, is currently implementing a traffic simulation model that incirporates all modes of transport, not just cars (we were the first to start that process in germany but apparently the european bidding procedures slowed the progress so much that we're now really late in comparison, but I hope that in the future projects like this can be evaluated before they happen to see what the situation will probably look like, that would make bike-advocacy much easier.
Meanwhile in Zürich the biggest road into Zürich along the left wealthy lakeboard (it's colloquially called "Goldküste" - golden coast) has four lanes and is in dire need of resurfacing. It doesn't follow more modern road standards and the four lanes are too narrow. But the Canton has denied the city to experimentally close down two lanes in a test to see how it would affect traffic if it was two modern lanes plus protected bicycle lanes. For the second time.
Re: the "longer distance = more pollution" argument, it's not even clear that this is true - on the highway, you would theoretically be able to go faster and therefore you'd be much more fuel-efficient. Speaking from personal experience, when I take the highway from DC to NYC, that's a roughly 4.5 hour drive, 240 miles, that consumes about half a tank of gas. A comparable number of miles driven through suburbia or a city, at a much slower speed, consumes *way* more gas, something like 3/4 of a tank. This is just anecdotal, and I don't know how the numbers will work out in this case, but "longer distance = more pollution" is not at all obvious to me because car gas consumption / fuel efficiency is sigmoid, not linear.
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
3:35 the approach to the Queens Quay Streetcar Portal, that goes underground to Union Station, has obnoxious warning signs and lights, and even a gate that only opens for streetcars, and motorists still tailgate streetcars in a lane reserved for streetcars.
I was happy to hear you using the phrase "car sewer", as that has been my description of the freeways that chopped their way thru the neighborhoods around Mpls. Thanks!
Here in Halifax Nova Scotia, we tried to close a small section of a single road called Spring Garden Road down to buses and pedestrians only for the summer. It lasted a day and a half. Motorists in the city simply refused to stop driving down the road. They ignored all signage and signals, even ignored the traffic cops that were posted there to help direct traffic. Now, to be fair, the city did absolutely nothing to actually deter motorists. They didn't build any gates, install bollards or anything to limit access, likely due to having to still allow buses through, but still. It was a shockingly embarrassing failure on all accounts. I'm glad to see your city actually had the guts to follow through, however, that being Amsterdam, it's not that surprising.
Interestingly enough, Verona,Italy is unintentionally conducting a similar experiment, since it closed to traffic a huge stroad that separates the train station from the city center and it closed the two important underpasses that run right under this sort of stroad (your probably pass through there when you made the video about the hsr in Italy) The reason is not to cut traffic but to build the infrastructure needed for a trambus but the protests made when the closure was announced were basically the same. And I have to say I had the same sensation of how the stroad was really big and how much space was needed to move cars when I crossed it car free.
Hey NJB did you hear about Culver city in Los Angeles putting in bike lanes then tearing them out after backlash? Thought it might be an interesting video about how non car centric design progress is blocked and reversed in the US
Can you do a video on how the less able get about in the Netherlands. One of the biggest complaints that comes in the UK from the increase of things like LTNs is that it takes a lot more effort for the less able to get around. Specifically that it requires more planning than just, get in car and get to destination. Even if it would be faster without all the cars etc. I suspect the answer is just much better public transit than we have here
Good to watch some of the livestream of you capturing these video clips. 😊 Great video once again! I hope the study done makes some good short-term and long-term plans. Maybe we can even use the study to apply to road experiments in North America.
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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.
“Inviting American traffic planners as consultants” is an absolutely horrific phrase
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
I'd like to be crystal clear that (obviously) not all people against the knip are right-wingers, and that's not what I'm saying in this video. However it was right wing parties (primarily the VVD and FvD) that were demanding an _immediate_ stop to a 6-week project on the first day. Why aren't they willing to see it through? What are they afraid of?
I can understand someone saying, "I don't like something about this project", and then having a reasonable response like "... let's tweak the light timings at Piet Hienkade", or "let's also block off another street." or "... let's change the signage" or "... "let's collect this data differently."
But to say "THERE'S MORE TRAFFIC ON DAY ONE!! CANCEL EVERYTHING!!!" is simply not an acceptable response to this project.
As usual, the biggest problems are being caused by too many motor vehicles, but ultimately that's what this project is trying to solve. Is this the right solution? We don't know. But we sure as hell won't find out by cancelling it before we get any data. And I applaud the municipality for taking the bold move to collect that important information and for performing this trial.
Objections are fine; that's how we improve. But if you just want to cancel everything and aren't interested in data, then I have no patience for you. We learn nothing from that.
Meten is weten.
Edit: if you are a right-wing urbanist then you need to start speaking up, because your representatives are destroying cities in your name; from the VVD in the Netherlands to the new mayor of Berlin, it is the right wing in Europe that is overwhelming pushing anti-urbanist initiatives. You need to let them (and your fellow conservatives) know you're not ok with it.
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.
Meanwhile in America we're fighting to get protected bicycle lanes instead of painted bicycle gutters. Still amazes me how my city thinks it ok to build a painted bicycle lane along a 50mph stroad.
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
A note on drivers' perception of the parallel traffic jam: if the road is packed half the time and empty half the time, all of the drivers experience it being packed, because by definition no drivers were there to experience it being empty.
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.
Suburban car owners being mad at a city that they don't live in because it's making changes?
That never happens, ever, anywhere else around the world 😅😅😅
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.
"in order to even get here, all of these drivers needed to ignore several signs telling them to turn around" There's some construction going on at an intersection down the street from me. I straight up saw a car go over the curb onto the sidewalk to get around the warning sign that was blocking the road.
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?"
Hey NJB, as a busdriver in and around Amsterdam, the first week was a horrendous time for public transport. So many people didn't believe that it happened, I guess, so driving from Centraal to anywhere to the IJ-tunnel took over 30 minutes (which would normally take us about 3 to 5 minutes). Nobody gave way, and just parked their big crossover/suv on the middle of the crossing.
When finally through the tunnel you would get in the second traffic jam of everyone going to the A10 to drive around. Considering a few thousand of cars needing to go through a single lane road to get on the A10, there were a lot of cars. This traffic jam also causes busses that depart from Station Noord to get stuck while leaving the station. Oh, you're upset an 18 meter long bus is standing on the middle of a busy crossing because of a traffic jam that shouldn't exist in the first place? Sure, I guess.
I see so many people sitting alone in their way too big cars, driving like spoiled 10 year olds.
A few weeks in and there are still traffic jams, and still people that think that they can drive to Amsterdam Centraal via the Prins Hendrikkade while it has been blocked off for LITERAL MONTHS just blows my mind. UGH. I hope the knip stays and people stop taking the car.
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.
Imagine a government that spends a delberate amount of time to study the effects of a potential policy change before actually going through with it, mind blowing stuff... sadly
I would love to hear stories from the municipal workers at the Knip gates, and some SURELY civilized talks they had with drivers..
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.
I ride Amsterdam everyday as a fietskoerier/bike messenger, and I'd like to add some other road closures I think are effecting the perception of traffic during this Mega Knip: there's serious construction on Van Wout and Stadhouderskade in De Pijp pushing traffic onto Sarphatistraat, which crosses Weesperstraat, and smaller construction on other streets that ring the center (Weteringschans and Marnixstraat, Rapenburg, etc) are slowing down rerouted traffic. It's a little bit of bad timing, but there is always maintenance going here so there would never be a perfect time.
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.
I live in a neighborhood of Montréal, a city on the east coast of Canada. Our mayor has been greenlighting and promoting a lot more cycling and pedestrian spaces, including turning the main street of my mixed-use distict into a pedestrian street during the summer months. It has totally changed the feeling of the neighborhood, since we are no longer insulated by the constant hustle and bustle of traffic. I am getting to meet my neighbors and walking my dog is a pleasure instead of bee-lining to the nearest park while trying to avoid getting flattened by impatient drivers. You wouldnt wear a tuxedo to the beach, cars dont belong everywhere.
Note that once Paris implemented more bike paths, emergency response times there dropped significantly and for the first time, since 2000.
As a resident of this neighbourhood, thank you for your support in this matter !
Finger's crossed the "knip" stays that way. 🙂
As a resident of Kattenburg, I hope we get some support too 😉
I live in this neighborhood and I can confirm it's totally transformed the atmosphere of the area. It's SO much quieter now, especially now that there aren't people racing between the stoplights at night. And the intersection at Weesperplein is much calmer now because there's fewer motorist jockeying for position on their way into the city center. I'm no longer worried about getting mowed down by a distracted driver when I cross the street (something I've seen happen several times in the years living here).
I live in Bandung
Pretty much the best "Anti-Car" City in Indonesia.
There is this one road that is filled with commercial activity, used as a main road to a lot of residence, used as a main road to a monument, campuses, and etc. Not only that, the road is small, very very small, and have the reputation of being "The most congested road in northern Bandung" or something along the line of that. One day I was working on a project about it's supposed congestion. What we found after we ask people there, and actually watch the road, we found that, there is practically no congestion outside rush hour and the weekend (mainly because there is an influx of rider from Jakartans). This blew my mind. We are expecting to write "there is a serious case of congestion, and the road needed to be widened" but no, instead we wrote "there needs to be some policy to limit an inflow of new riders in the weekend".
This is where Iam convinced that, small roads dont cause congestion.
Iam writing this, because Iam now very very sure, that these politicians and people that wanted wider road, dont actually live near those roads (surprised surprised). Because every single person that I asked that live near a small road says, there are no congestion most of the time.
Everytime I open a new NJB video, and see the streets of Amsterdam. I experience new levels of pain everytime as an American suburbanite
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.😊
People complain about your tone. But it's just that Dutch blunt truthfulness. Motorists *are* entitled when they want places rich with opportunity to bulldoze their buildings and shrink space for people, just to increase through-traffic. I appreciate that you don't cater to the feelings of wildly uninformed and unrealistic people.
I envy that you made it out and live in a country where just by living, you show how stupidly North America has structured their infrastructure.
@@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.
That shot at 8:05 breaks my heart a little. They had to extend the car barrier into the fietspad just so cars wouldn't drive onto the fietspad to avoid the car barrier. Car entitlement is wild, even here.
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
This channel along with a few others have inspired me to go back to university to retrain for a career in City planning and Public infrastructure.
Thank you
What I'm starting to realize, is that many wealthy suburbanites feel entitled to access to urban amenities while restricting traffic in their own suburbs (the cul-de-sac and restrictive zoning, per se).
As stated in the video, they aren't concerned about the pollution, they're concerned that their privilege to their entitlement (that hurts others) is being infringed on.
They either see urban populations as lower class and inferior, and/or they are too selfish to consider the impacts of their decisions affects other people.
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've recently come to realize it isn't just "the car lobby." There are a *lot* of construction and construction-related companies out there that are *massively* invested in keeping our communities and streets poorly designed. They *need* us to keep filling and destroying our roads so they can fix them, renovate them, expand them and create new ones. It's a multibillion dollar industry.
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.
You really hit the nail on the head on this one. If most people living in a city don't own cars, then it's not fair that those who live outside the city suddenly have the leisure to just drive right through a mostly car-free environment for their own convenience. Causing noise, air pollution, and more unsafe roads to those who actually live there.
A similar project has come under fire n Berlin in the last weeks. The Friedrichstraße used to be a busy steet full of cars. It was blocked of as a test a couple of years ago and was somewhat well recieved and used by pedestrians, shoppers and bicyclists. However the new CDU/SPD government of the city decided to immediately halt all (!) new bicycle infrastructure projects, where any parking space would be compromised. And the reopened the Friedrichstraße for cars again. This weekend, there was a bicycle protest with over 10 000 demonstrators against the new plans. In Germany, we can only look with envy on dutch infrastructure imho.
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.
I work at the uni campus around here, so I bike through this every day. I've been really enjoying how much more quiet it's gotten and how easy it is to cross for my commute.
I have heard the word "stroad" used in places other than on these videos. I really think this guy is making a difference. These videos are sort of like pebbles dropped into a pond with the message slowly spreading to other parts of the pond. I think even here in the rust belt of North America that towns amd cities are going to become a lot more bike friendly in the next 20 years. This video showed a choice between a garden and a street difficult to cross by foot.
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.
Looking forward to the follow-up already! Even though im sure we already can guess the results
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.
I have a friend who lives nearby and he said that some people in the neighborhood were trying to start protests on the street against this plan, although he mentioned that hardly anybody actually showed up, once again showing that most residents do not want so many cars in Amsterdam.
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.
I remember going back to my hometown a few years ago. They started converting some roads into bike lanes and making other bus exclusive. Apparently they spent years planning this, and making a transition into the new plans.
Well, the local far right party won last elections, and overnight they destroyed all progress made in the last 10 years.
😢
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."
I'm confused about the opposition to this project and what they want. As a California resident, I can relate it to our problems and assume that most ringwing folks live outside of the cities and want to drive into the city for errands. However, here it truly is harder to get into town without a car, but I assume Amsterdam has made that easy for more people. What do people prefer about their cars in this situation? They want to be alone? They want to carry lots of large objects? You even mentioned people can still drive in to a destination, just not all the way through, so that doesn't make sense either. Or are the right wing politicians just supporting the car lobby and don't really care about their constituents at all??
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.
During the pandemic, in the city of Montréal in the province of Québec in Canada, many streets were made pedestrian.
The local people got the taste of it and wanted the projects to become permanent.
Believe it or not, even most of the local business owners got on board while most of them were opposed to it at the beginning.
The same happened with cycling infrastructures.
The new right wing government in Berlin recently turned Friedrichstraße in the city center to a car street again and removed all pedestrian infrastructure and furniture, after it has been a pedestrian zone for a few months. They also announced that all work on improving cycling lanes will be put on hold and some lanes will be removed in favor of parking spots!!! Clearly out of pure spite. There was a huge protest today against this decision, I was surprised at how many people turned out on such a short noticed. Please keep fighting for better cities and protect every piece of progress you make.
The data on how it effects emergency vehicles will definitely be interesting to see. One of big claims made against low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) here in the UK is that they slow down emergency vehicles. In reality, data from the London Fire Brigade shows its traffic, not LTNs, that slows dow emergency responses the most.
I think the "Park and ride" (that was what you called it right?) is absolutely key for this!
I get how much better it is without all the cars for the people living there, but both for the people not living there going to work, and for the ones that has to come in, just once in a while it needs to not be a nighmare.
If it is easy to get a parking spot, easy to get the public transport, and it runs often - like 5 to max 10 minutes often, easy to get to a variety of key points in the city without having to change 10 times (or even 3) then I get it. And it has to be communicated clearly, and the people living in the city is not the most important to tell this to. But everyone who does NOT live in the city. They need to see and hear, just how easy it is, how they park cheaper than they would if it was in the city before, how they can just get in and get where ever they want, preferably with some kind of ticket that just covers whatever you need for the day, the weekend, the week, however you are staying.
What I am trying to say, it needs to be easy and convenient for the visitors. And this an completely other point and subject, but do like many Norvegian carparks are starting to do, have EV chargers. Just normal "home" ones, there is no need for so many fast chargers, fast chargers should only be for the rare holidays and long cartrips, destination charging is the what we need - if you car is parked there all day anyway, you do NOT need fastchargers.
I live in tel aviv and I just today saw the distopian view of an ambulance with sirens blaring being stuck in traffic and unable to pass. Tbh tel aviv is super walkable and bikeable and I'm not complaining about it but the closing of large streets (like rokach street where I saw that) is definitely super important
You are doing important work with these videos. Im very happy to have seen this channel grow so much past years.
Excellent to get your perspective from there Jason.
A model to redo Bloor-Danforth reveals: reposition the curbs so they are 7m apart and all the remaining space is turned to bikeways and sidewalks; rent massive sidewalk area out to businesses who want to animate it. Pays for itself; roadway becomes a net positive cashflow for the city; saves weak towns.
I never understood why people, especially tourists, took their car into the center of Amsterdam. Its the one city I always used public transport without hesitation. Their system is close to perfect in comparison to let's say Paris, Brussels or any other major city I know.
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).
I like how you put a scene of Munich as an example of a less car friendly city in Germany. As a Dutch person living there, I notice the results of the BMW lobby all the time. There are much better examples of deliberately car unfriendly cities in Germany.
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.
It’s very telling when one group wants to draw conclusions before any data has been gathered while another group allows time and data with the willingness to admit when they are wrong
4:14 a town I used to live, Ventura CA, recently closed their Main Street to cars and I’m now convinced that all cities should do it!
Shopping, dining, and walking around on the street is now an incredibly pleasant experience due to how much car noise has been cut down!
In the case like what you show in this video, it feels like citizens are getting a new park space. And having more parks closer to where you live can be huge for your mental health!
@@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.
Must be nice having a government that actually cares about quality of life for its people.
In the US, we can only dream.
It's weird to think about how we as humans are now serving these machines (cars) that should be serving us.
As someone slightly right-leaning by Western European standards (as in: don't increase taxes and regulation without a good/strong reason, but don't hesitate with that), I hate that it's usually the right wingers who adopt these stupid takes, embarrassing themselves, and leaving no one credible to balance the political discussion. The individualist modes of transportation that belong in the city is walking and cycling, not cars.
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.
Unfortunately P+R in Amsterdam is going to be 6 EUR instead of 1 starting on July 3. I get it since it’s been operating at a loss for years, but it’s a bit of a steep increase for something that was motivating a LOT of people to leave their car outside of the center.
I do like this approach, as in London they’ve just only have a congestion charge through the city, where it doesn’t stop car traffic, but it causes rich people to drive and everyone else to rely on the public transport. This way everyone is forced to use alternative transport methods rather than cars and makes people equal.
I am currently driving a campervan through Europe. 8000km through many different countries. I would however not even consider driving in my daily life. My E-Bike gets me where I want to go quicker and more convenient than a car. I love driving as a hobby through the countryside, but cant stand driving as a commute.
What a great initiative, look forward to the results! Hope more cities, especially capitals, would try such experiments and would be willing to become car-free cities, at least in the city centers!
Every time I watch about Amsterdam, I'm convinced that I should study Real Estate, Engineering (Urban Planning is Engineering; then you have Traffic Engineering), or maybe Legalism; which is becoming a Lawyer. I would love to work for the city and county to transform stroads into bikeable/walkable boulevards with bus lanes, apartments, townhouses, larger parks, and so much more that I can add for a living and socialized city. Yes, I'm from the Southern US.
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.
I actually work close to here and cross this street every day, also to get lunch. I really, really like the change, it makes the road much nicer and easier to cross, reduces noise and makes it nicer to walk or sit along the road as well.
Being 'orangepilled' in the US is increasingly agonizing the more videos about (proper) urban planning I watch. I may have ADHD, anxiety, or some other factors making driving worse, but still.
I cannot *wait* to leave the US, and try visiting places in Europe to see what sort of sheer differences I can spot. I currently drive 20-30 minutes from out of town to get to the nearest totally-not-blue-and-oversized "rhymes with All-Fart" grocery store, drive 20-30min back, and usually feel exhausted for the rest of the afternoon. And each time I find myself focusing on similar aspects of the commute:
"Oh wow, a bicycle lan- and it's gone."
"Why is this wide stroad set to 35 when the rest are 45 or 55? There's less points of conflict here!"
"Gah, I hate turning out of this parking lot, it goes right into high-speed traffic, always feels dangerous."
"Whoa-! Jeez, does this short street need multiple stop signs? I'd prefer if the speed was just dropped from 30 to 15..."
"OMG, is that an actual traffic circle/roundabout?! ....In one of the least-busy areas outside of town? Well, at least they tried?" (I've seen 3 traffic circles in as many cities, and they're all out in the middle of nowhere, typically unused.)
I even had a similar experience to your Houston video - decided to walk to a restaurant I really like, had the sidewalk cease to exist several times, had to cross a bridge next to high-speed traffic, awkwardly cross some roads, have the sidewalk cease to exist again, get asked by a passing driver if I had any drugs (?), and finally arrive - a 5 minute drive turned into a 40 minute walk, one-way.
I called an Uber to go home. Everyone just accepts this as normal. It's bad. :(
"They're afraid it might work" well said!
That picture of the road through Museumplein horrified me, I never knew that existed (and should never exist again). Walking through that area several times in the past few years makes me feel really grateful they got rid of that road, and are getting rid of more.
I've been to Amsterdam almost 20 times for work from Finland, and you happened to pick the spot where I almost always stayed (Zoku)! Glad to see the neighborhood I'm most familiar with getting better, that road was the single most anxiety inducing things during my stays there when compared to the ease of travel everywhere else. Good thing I usually just had to walk down the road to Weesperplein station to get to the office.
Absolutely! As an American who grew up suburban sprawl I am so much happier living in a car free neighborhood. I love Amsterdam and De Pijp! Heel erg bedankt Amsterdam!
As a dutch person visiting Amsterdam often by car, I've never actually known what a P+R (Park & Ride) is until you told us in this video. I'm sure I'm an incredibly stupid person for not knowing, but... I feel like there's plenty of other ignorant people like me. They should somehow make it much more clear to people like me that a P+R is a place where you can park to use public transport and that it only costs 1EUR. I thought a P+R was a place for carpooling or something.
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
Love your coverage. Hope to see these plans work out.
I live in a small town in Canada and an this feels so familiar. We had an experiment to change the main street in the center of the town to a one way to create space for a bike path and more room for pedestrians. It was cancelled on the second day because of public outrage, even though it was actually fantastic as someone that lives « downtown ». We were not even talking about blocking car traffic, just reducing the number of lanes.
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.
This is actually going to be such an improvement to that road! I studied at the HvA for half a year and that road surprised me. Thinking about it, I have never experienced such a road before in except for abroad.
Recently I took a trip to Amsterdam and it was so nice to not have to rent a car, drive everywhere, and be able to bike everywhere without hundreds of cars passing you every hour. Amsterdam is an amazing, quiet, and beautiful city and I am so glad that they council is working on keeping it that way instead of giving into the car lobbyists.
I'm glad that one positive thing that came out of covid is that people got a touch of some streets being closed to cars and allowing more pedestrian friendly areas. I hope that helps create more pedestrian friendly areas with new construction. The whole city doesn't need to be super pedestrian friendly but just creating zones and paths will be great. For example, I live in Chicago and street designs are a grid system. If every 4 blocks (half mile) both north to south and east to west had no vehicles allowed on it, it would make walking and biking everywhere much easier while creating areas that would be full of outdoor dining, some green (trees, small parks, etc), and lots more businesses.
Hello, I live in Watertown, MA, a suburb of Boston. I wanted to tell you about the abhorrent transit situation that the nearby city of Lynn has found itself in. The city has been building more densely around its commuter rail station, however, the MBTA has closed the station due to the disrepair of the building, even though it was built in 1991. A new station will not be done until 2030, which is absolutely ridiculous.
The city has urged the MBTA to build a temporary platform, which will take 12-18 months. Otherwise, they have to take a shuttle bus to Swampscot for the commuter rail or a shuttle to Revere for the Blue Line, which will take a long amount of time during rush hour. It's ridiculous that Lynn, which is the same distance to Boston and Brooklyn is to Manhattan, has no accessible transit to get to Boston. This is compounded by the fact of the large Latino and Black population in Lynn. This has also caused economic problems as building contractors to have densified around the station will suffer since young commuters will not move in without transit. This has led to a grocery store cancelling its plan to move into one of the buildings. I wanted to spread the news about this. If you want to see the full article, it's in the June 25th Boston Globe written by Joan Vennochi.
The 0.3 cars/household statistic is really encouraging to me on a personal level. I *hate* driving a car, but I always figured it was going to be an inevitability of growing up even when living in the Netherlands. It's really great to see that a sizeable majority of households in certain parts are able to do without.
@@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.
Comparing the two routes you showed, I'd guess the one through the city actually uses more gas anyway. Mileage in the city is worse because there is more starting and stopping, which means more acceleration, which means more need to push the gas pedal per unit distance. The highway route would need to be _significantly_ longer to make up for this.
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….
One of the few channels I actively look forward to seeing new videos on, thank u
They actually think that driving 30% more distance on highway is more polluting than going through city center with stops and lights? I mean i know europe have motor stop systems as a default but isn't it universally known that you get better milage on the highway? Have they actually ever bought fuel for a vehicle?
A good moral and practical rule, is that the more someone is affected by a decision, the more say they should have on this decision.
The converse is also true and just as important: the less someone is affected by a decision, the less their opinion should matter.
The knip affects the people who *actually live* in the area a lot more than those who just *pass* there, so what the neighborhood wants is much more important than what the traffic driving through wants.
"Cities aren't loud, cars are loud. And cities without cars are quiet." - Welcome to Istanbul! There is no way to spend even half an hour with open windows and not go crazy with all the street vendors, bagmen, and others yelling all day long. Not to mention five times a day muezzin, and yes, bikes and cars honking non-stop.
I am 100% a care enthusiast, but I would love to see more cities do this
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.
12 minutes that explains perfectly why there is no reason for any German city to have a car sewer through the center. And that carrots alone don't work to get cars out of cities, there needs to be a stick. Thank you Amsterdam for running this experiment and thank you @NotJustBikes for this video.
When I travel to a big city in the western part in The Netherlands (I live in a village in the Eastern part, work in the West) I never take the car. I ride on my bike to the station (5 minutes) and then the train to Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag etc. Music or a podcast om my headphone. There mostly the OV-fiets (rental bike). Vera easy and relaxed.
We have a redesign of a junction
and a road off it to make it more
bicycle friendly here in Bielefeld
and the local papers have
from day one been doing
the emotional appeal of "chaos"
even when the roadworks started
It is interesting to watch.
Our city's plans aren't as radical
as Amsterdam's but we are moving
in the right direction.
Can't be, Bielefeld doesn't exist ;)
The thing about cars is they are just so fast, zippy and convenient - until EVERYBODY has one - and then it's exactly the opposite!
I'm so thankful you make RUclips videos! You're my favourite RUclipsr by far!
Great video, one thing though: As somebody living on Kattenburgerstraat, I can assure you we never had bad traffic here, until now. We did have people driving too fast. That was solved 3 months ago with street redesign, and a max speed from 50 to 30. I'm in favour of the Knip, but do find it annoying that they took one of the few neighbourhoods in Amsterdam-centre (Kattenburg) with a lot of low income people to take in all the traffic for this experiment. Seems suspicious to me.
It would be such a delight to see similar projects in some of the cities near me. I always find it such a head-scratcher when I see a major highway serve double-duty as the Main Street of a town. Most of the traffic ends up being through traffic, so you don’t really benefit much from it, and it clogs everything up because the actual residents of the community need to use that road for basic essentials too.
So, props to Amsterdam for being willing to take on the car lobby. I hope their traffic study goes well so they can bulldoze a few more roads and put in some useful space instead 😀
I live nearby in Oost and love it. Even in a short experiment it seems to work as intended. Of course it creates problems, especially because most people were unaware and stuff like navigation software is terrible for cases like this. If this is properly implemented and changed I’m convinced most ‘problems’ will be pretty easy to sort out.
"Car sewer" is such a great phrase. Now when I look at stroads, all I see is turds going down a pipe! 😆
Jason, you need to publish this video in Dutch, so all the local right-wingers can see what you experienced and understand what the city is doing. Not that they don't understand English, they speak English very well, but this would prevent them from having any stupid excuse.
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. RUclips 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.
My university hospital has a bunch of gates despite obviously having regular emergency vehicles passing through. It's mostly pedestrians(eg students etc) and bikes. But the vehicles have chips that allow the gates to open prematurely so they can drive through quickly. Might be a fix here for those slowdowns.
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.
There’s a push to completely ban cars from the Melbourne CBD a push I’m completely in support of since I haven’t driven to the CBD by car for about 10 or 15 years even though I live in a rural town that’s around 30 kilometres from the nearest Melbourne train station, it’s far cheaper and far more convenient to catch public transportation to the Melbourne CBD instead of driving.
The reason being is that driving to Melbourne means you’ll need to circumvent around the suburbs on a freeway or pay a $10 toll to cut though the suburbs on a tolled highway and when you reach the CBD you’ll be paying $15 or $22 to park your car as well as paying $60 to $100 for fuel it’s soo expensive on average it costs around $90 in and back out to home and yes you will be waiting in traffic.
Catching the train will cost $17 to get in and back to home again, it takes the same amount of time every time you use it no matter what.
This is why 80% of Melburnian’s choose any other method than driving to travel to the CBD and back.
The problem with the "knip", Amsterdam did it during the highway renovations. Having created one single lane from Amsterdam east to Amsterdam north, resuting in the "Amsterdam brug" having 24/7 heavy traffic.
7:20
Love the car that casually blocks the light rail.
0:17 I wouldn't be surprised if what you see in the background (with the CoSPoor sign above it) is one of the segments of the metro tube slowly sinking into the ground (which would place the time of this picture in the latter half of the 70s).
It's a very important subject, especially now when it's still possible to do something before the heatwave.
Driving on highways is usually better for cars than in a city. The roads are typically smoother, and better shape and there is less starting and stopping. So you aren't idling as much. I can understand some folks have a hard time with change. But I think the Knip is a good thing. I love that they are holding events to give people a feel for the possibilities of the street instead of just closing it off and hoping people take notice.
We're kind of dealing with something like this where I live. The street I live off of for a really, really long time was used by many as a major thoroughfare, despite it mainly being a residential area. Things changed slightly with the traffic patterns when the road no longer went through to the nearby east-west highway that the city has been talking about FOR TWENTY YEARS of turning into a freeway. There was a decent amount of protesting when that access was closed off from some drivers, but most adapted. Residents of that area were oh so happy that now there was only local traffic, and those local people were actually driving the posted limit of 30km/h, instead of 60+ like many like to do, which is great, because instances of kids almost being run over went from fairly frequent to almost never.
Then the construction on the east side of the road happened last year, blocking off traffic for about six months. Oh man, was the quiet so nice to have. We recently got said quiet back when they started up construction again about six weeks ago for the west side. Protests have shifted from the stupidity of "how will I get where I'm going" (people not from the area cutting through to avoid traffic) to a more localized "we don't need super wide sidewalks!" Well, actually we do, because we're the test project for the city for turning residential areas into quieter, more walkable areas, and to make it safer for cyclists, since there's an insane amount of push-back against the mere idea of more bike lanes. Most residents at the moment though are annoyed we lost several crosswalks with lights, but word from planning is we will get those back at.... Some point. They took five months after the construction was done to get us a crossing at just one of the three that had lights, hence why I sound slightly skeptical.
The thing is though, most who are doing the complaining don't realize that it's a massive concerted effort on a large scale to move towards the overall goal. That previously mentioned highway being turned into a freeway is still happening, although at what feels like a glacial pace, but it is indeed moving along, as is the third LRT line (and they have a fourth in the planning phase now). I think things being slow wasn't just to fully secure the funding and get ALL the plans approved, but also to try and have as much of the big, awful work being done all at once, so instead of of 5-7 years (or more) of construction in that area they can possibly do it in 3-5. They also needed the land to be able to pull all of this off, but once it's all done traffic should flow a LOT better along that highway.
On top of it all, the city has done some testing with narrowing roads downtown, with the pandemic having helped make such possible, and they're looking into ways of being able to make such permanent, which is great, because downtown (and the area just west of it) was actually walkable, so if they're able to keep such momentum moving forwards drivers will naturally adapt, AND we should be able to hopefully see even more support of public transit investment. Then it's just the hope of them coming up with better routes, these new ones for the most part take longer, which really makes things difficult for regular riders.
An interesting thing is what traffic simulations said before this project. Is that data public?
Also the german city i live in, cologne, is currently implementing a traffic simulation model that incirporates all modes of transport, not just cars (we were the first to start that process in germany but apparently the european bidding procedures slowed the progress so much that we're now really late in comparison, but I hope that in the future projects like this can be evaluated before they happen to see what the situation will probably look like, that would make bike-advocacy much easier.
Meanwhile in Zürich the biggest road into Zürich along the left wealthy lakeboard (it's colloquially called "Goldküste" - golden coast) has four lanes and is in dire need of resurfacing. It doesn't follow more modern road standards and the four lanes are too narrow. But the Canton has denied the city to experimentally close down two lanes in a test to see how it would affect traffic if it was two modern lanes plus protected bicycle lanes. For the second time.
Re: the "longer distance = more pollution" argument, it's not even clear that this is true - on the highway, you would theoretically be able to go faster and therefore you'd be much more fuel-efficient. Speaking from personal experience, when I take the highway from DC to NYC, that's a roughly 4.5 hour drive, 240 miles, that consumes about half a tank of gas. A comparable number of miles driven through suburbia or a city, at a much slower speed, consumes *way* more gas, something like 3/4 of a tank. This is just anecdotal, and I don't know how the numbers will work out in this case, but "longer distance = more pollution" is not at all obvious to me because car gas consumption / fuel efficiency is sigmoid, not linear.
Parabolic, not sigmoid - first it goes up, then it goes down.
As an American, this hurts in the feels. Keep posting, and maybe one day my family can also move out there
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
Great video. Unfortunate for the people coming by car but as an Amsterdam resident I am loving this.
People also learned that you shouldn't try to take your car in the centre of Utrecht of Groningen. They learn that about Amsterdam as well.
@@buddy1155 Fine by me
3:35 the approach to the Queens Quay Streetcar Portal, that goes underground to Union Station, has obnoxious warning signs and lights, and even a gate that only opens for streetcars, and motorists still tailgate streetcars in a lane reserved for streetcars.
I was happy to hear you using the phrase "car sewer", as that has been my description of the freeways that chopped their way thru the neighborhoods around Mpls. Thanks!
Here in Halifax Nova Scotia, we tried to close a small section of a single road called Spring Garden Road down to buses and pedestrians only for the summer.
It lasted a day and a half. Motorists in the city simply refused to stop driving down the road. They ignored all signage and signals, even ignored the traffic cops that were posted there to help direct traffic.
Now, to be fair, the city did absolutely nothing to actually deter motorists. They didn't build any gates, install bollards or anything to limit access, likely due to having to still allow buses through, but still. It was a shockingly embarrassing failure on all accounts.
I'm glad to see your city actually had the guts to follow through, however, that being Amsterdam, it's not that surprising.
Interestingly enough, Verona,Italy is unintentionally conducting a similar experiment, since it closed to traffic a huge stroad that separates the train station from the city center and it closed the two important underpasses that run right under this sort of stroad (your probably pass through there when you made the video about the hsr in Italy)
The reason is not to cut traffic but to build the infrastructure needed for a trambus but the protests made when the closure was announced were basically the same.
And I have to say I had the same sensation of how the stroad was really big and how much space was needed to move cars when I crossed it car free.
Wow, thank you for that video. I am very much impressed by this data driven and iterative approach to changing the city.
Hey NJB did you hear about Culver city in Los Angeles putting in bike lanes then tearing them out after backlash? Thought it might be an interesting video about how non car centric design progress is blocked and reversed in the US
Can you do a video on how the less able get about in the Netherlands.
One of the biggest complaints that comes in the UK from the increase of things like LTNs is that it takes a lot more effort for the less able to get around. Specifically that it requires more planning than just, get in car and get to destination. Even if it would be faster without all the cars etc.
I suspect the answer is just much better public transit than we have here
Good to watch some of the livestream of you capturing these video clips. 😊
Great video once again! I hope the study done makes some good short-term and long-term plans.
Maybe we can even use the study to apply to road experiments in North America.