Houten: A Planned City in de Nederlands

Today, we were able to visit Houten, a planned city near Utrecht and speak with André Boterman who works in the City’s planning department. Exploring Houten and hearing more about its history from André made me consider several other planned communities I’ve interacted with. Houten had three centres, the old city, Houten (the phase one centre) and […]

Retrofitting for Protected Bike Lanes in de Nederlands

In Delft, we have been looking at streets which have been converted from streets with bike lanes to cycle tracks (otherwise known as protected bike lanes). Both Delfgauwseweg and Ruys de Beerenbrouckstraat have received this treatment. On Delfgauwseweg, the street has been converted to a two-way cycle track on the west side of the street. […]

Bicycling Dutch Video Response

As I mentioned earlier, we were lucky enough to have Mark Wagenbuur from Bicycling Dutch come and speak to our class. His youtube does a far better job than I can of describing and contextualizing the history and infrastructure of Netherlands cycling. In the video above, you can see the large cycling facility under the […]

Course Day 5: Day trip to Amsterdam!

On Friday, we took a break from the class and Delft/Rijiwijk to visit Amsterdam, the City of Bikes. I’d never been to Amsterdam, but I’ve been reading about it for years (I’d highly recommended the history of Amsterdam by Russell Shorto if you’re interested). It fully lived up to my expectations. There were cyclists crowding the […]

Course Day 2: Designing for People and One Big Windmill!

Day two started with another introductory lecture and a more in-depth lecture on the history and design of Dutch city design as it evolved with cycling. The introductory lecture was given by Peter from TU Delft and was a basic breakdown of transportation in de Nederlands. It largely reinforced what we had read in our […]

First Days in de Nederlands

Well, I’m sorry to announce this via blog, but I’m probably not coming home. The Netherlands is beautiful and everyone bikes! Biking is so pervasive here that there are panniers sold in almost every store. Since there are no London Drugs here (horror!) I’ve found my new favourite everything store called “HEMA”. They even have […]

I Love Transit! Camp 2015

Last September 4th, right as I kicked off my return to grad school, I took part in Translink’s Adult “I Love Transit” Camp 2015. You can see the Buzzer’s article on the camp here. They have much nicer photos than I do. As part of I Love Transit Week, the “camp” was a tour of the Burnaby […]