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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
On Thursday, we were extremely lucky to receive a talk from Jan Nederveen from Gemeente Delft (Town of Delft). He spoke to us about some of the challenges an old historic city like Delft has as it tries to expand its cycling path. As in larger cities, the introduction of the motor vehicle threatened traditional patterns […]
Roger Geller, one of the PSU instructors, gave his lecture on Wednesday on “The Making of the Bike Friendly City.” Portland has several conditions that support cycling infrastructure before that was even a consideration. Good mixed-land use and flat land created ideal conditions to create a cycling network. As Roger said, “when it comes to bike […]
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 […]
Our first lecture of the course was lead by Peter Knoppers, an engineer at TU Delft who are “hosting” PSU (who I’m visiting with) and Northeastern University. The lecture was entitled “Surviving the Netherlands” and in addition to some important tips (like 911 = 112), he told us a little about Dutch traffic markers. Shark’s […]
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 […]