BicycleDutch
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2015–2020
5:10 · 630K views · Feb 23, 2014
A five-minute BicycleDutch episode showing how Dutch junctions are designed so cyclists and pedestrians can cross safely. It explains the layout choices that separate and protect them.
Recommended as a short, comprehensive look at Dutch junction design, often cited when discussing intersections as a solved problem.
3 comments from Hacker News
Welcome :) There's quite a few interesting videos on traffic design in the Netherlands, junction design is a big topic, as well as separating lanes. Videos like these might be fun to watch: [LINK] If it piques your interest, there's more comprehensive videos too like this one which is still only 5 minutes: this video
The impression I got from Amsterdam is that the city (and by extension the Dutch) has simply accepted all the behaviors that cyclists will do in a less cyclist friendly environment (run stop signs, ignore pedestrians, turn without signing and so on), and then just built infrastructure to support that natural behavior. As a pedestrian unfamiliar with the city, at first I found it hugely annoying that so little space was left to pedestrians, but once I figured out where not to stand, I started to have a much better appreciation for how it contributes the functioning of the city. In fact, I was kind of surprised at how little boat traffic there is these days. Having read and watched some videos on how the Netherlands does road planning for safety, the approach seems to be a much more "descriptive" approach to adapting road shapes and forms and cycle lanes to the natural behavior of people using those modes of transportation. For example, squeezing the width of lanes down naturally causes car drivers to slow rather than covering the area with signs telling drivers to slow down. This approach is slowly being adopted elsewhere ( [LINK] ). Lots of thought also into mixed-mode junction design this video [LINK]
It's one of the things Copenhagen can learn from the Netherlands, where it's a solved problem at most intersections: this video [LINK] Also see [LINK] from 6 minutes on for right turns in Copenhagen.