There's More to Dutch Roads Than You Think

on the 1st of August 2023 the city of Toronto publicly announced the creation of a Dutch styled intersection in its downtown the announcement along with a pretty nifty video was met with delight from local advocacy groups but what does Dutch styled mean exactly why do images of safety upgrades make people think immediately of the Netherlands and why are so many engineers and planners so eager to Brand their latest design as Dutch the Netherlands although being small has a massive reputation for creating excellent and Safe Transportation Systems its City centers look like this the most popular vehicle is this and its traffic death rate for the last 50 years has done this but as the irritated Belgian might point out the Netherlands isn't the only Golden Boy in the lobby Denmark's capital of Copenhagen is world famous for cycling and Danes have plenty to be proud about German cities like fryberg and leig have tram and cycling networks that could hold their own against most Dutch cities in fact it might surprise you to learn that the Netherlands isn't even the best performer in Europe when it comes to Traffic Safety ranked by traffic deaths per million of inhabitants a European commission report in 2022 found that the Netherlands only came in ninth place out of the 27 member states of the EU but before we get too disappointed and start unsubscribing from Dutch urbanist channels wait just a minute because while the land of windmills and cheese isn't the only nation in Europe with safe bike Lanes they are absolute Champions when it comes to building them everywhere if you've been fortunate enough to visit Europe multiple times you might notice a pattern a popular and often touristic City Center with lots of pretty buildings and museums inside of a pedestrianized Zone with easy access to public transit and a safe environment for cycling but once you exit the downtown that safe and enjoyable envir environment gives way to much more Auto oriented infrastructure or if you travel to multiple cities in the country the quality of Transportation can vary drastically from City to City sure liip in Germany is quite good for cycling but good luck if you go to bham or Hogan breaking this pattern is where the Netherlands really stands out it doesn't matter if you're in Amsterdam utre Konan MCT the he or Lia they all have the same safe structure in both the downtowns and the outer suburbs nor would you have to stick to the large cities we can see the same Safe Systems in the small towns and Villages scattered across the country and along the rural routes linking it all together this doesn't mean everything is perfect but the general rule is that you must look a lot harder to find the bad than the good so why is the Netherlands so good at making its infrastructure uniform it's not as simple as pointing to a single piece of legislation or telling the story of how a few Forward Thinking engineers and planners managed to inspire an entire country with their Vision it'll take analyzing five fundamental components that exist independently but when they come together it creates a transportation system Second To None the year is 1994 the channel tunnel opens Finland votes to join the EU and in a small corner of Europe the Dutch Parliament approves the vegan Fair carees vet the road and traffic law complimentary to a new traffic code passed in 1990 these reforms were an attempt to shake things up a little bit in the nation's fight against traffic deaths by 1985 the country had managed to cut fatalities by 56% from an all-time high in 1972 but in the following 5 years progress slowed to a trickle with a reduction of just 4% it was becoming clear that something new was needed a Fresh Approach where only a complete rethinking of traffic regulations would do the previous strategy based on the traffic law of 1966 could really be summarized as preventing crashes by making them illegal the default response of the traffic authorities to problems would be to amend the traffic law so it would no longer be legally possible for problematic situations to arise maybe introduce a new road category add a new regulation sign or just add to the list of things that were prohibited The Regulators were in the driver's seat and the engineers were playing catchup by just implementing the new ass signage or adjusting Road designs to meet the latest regulations the result was a convoluted mess of dozens of Road categories that was starting to do more to confuse people than to boost safety but the traffic reforms of 1990 and '94 changed all that by cutting regulations so aggressively that it could make a libert Arian blush the overwhelming number of Legally defined Road categories were downsized to just three the a the kitting and the strum viic the reduction and simplification process was so thorough that the legal text regulating traffic in the Netherlands could be held in this small book here but the reforms didn't only remove rules it also added new Concepts and precedence a crucial one being that the design and appearance of road infrastructure must stimulate the desired traffic Behavior this shifted the primary responsibility for traffic behavior from The Regulators to the road designers for instance if a city wants a residential street to be calm the traffic law defines 30 km hour regulatory signs that can be enforced by the police and basic rules of the road other aspects like getting the majority to comply with the new speed limit how to create safe behaviors and intersections and the locations of traffic markings was going to have to be figured out by the road designers in charge of the project or as another example want to create a cycle Street where cars behave like guests behind the cyclist well sorry bucko there's no legal text or regulatory sign to find of the traffic law that can stop Dutch drivers from overtaking cyclists if they want to so you'd better come up with a way to design the street to shoot away as much car traffic as you can and encourage cars to only pass in a safe manner this new Dynamic where the government kept itself to basic traffic rules and leaving designing to the designers changed the Paradigm and revolutionized everything now if you're listening from abroad and have experience with getting stonewalled by arbitrary traffic regulations the thought of being Unshackled from code books to chase after your most ambitious designs Probably sounds pretty great right but transitioning to a system overnight where you inherit most of the responsibility for driver behavior and be without the blanket support from traffic signs is not a challenge that anyone should take lightly or alone for that matter Dutch Road designers needed to start acting less like bureaucrats relying on arbitrary rules and more like scientists using data to achieve desired outcomes to help with this transition two organizations would step forward the swov or the V is the primary Institute for research for Road Safety in the Netherlands they publish General statistics like how many Road deaths and injuries occur every year in the Netherlands to analyzing which types of travel surfaces are the most dangerous or comparing the benefits of different kinds of intersection design think of the swov like the eyes and ears of the Dutch Road system as an independent group group their data helps paint a clear and unbiased picture of the challenges facing the transportation system it is these insights that point designers in the correct direction to then concentrate their efforts but if the swov is the eyes and ears then the second organization the S aov is the brain like the S swov the S ero is also an independent group but its mission is to provide empirically proven design recom recommendations for engineers and planners across the country for instance when research found that collisions with ballards was a leading cause for hospitalizations of cyclists the ER got to work by doing a series of field tests to figure out the safest Ballard setups while still being able to stop cars everything like the distance between ballards illumination at night Ballard height and the length of guidance marking was tested the results were then bundled into a design guidance for Road designers ERS titled A valti on beiling in for pollen fitp or an evaluation for the recommendations of Ballers on bike paths this publication is available here and can be accessed by anyone with a membership to the sovas Technical Library of course Ballers are just one small example the same kind of resources exist for every aspect of the road system like roundabouts programming smart signals or foot paths for pedestrians and the s a's work doesn't end once the guidance is published they need to be updated regularly so they often collaborate with local governments to discover unexpected issues and get feedback on their designs from those who implemented them with the joint efforts of the swov and the S arov Dutch roow designers enjoy access to the most cuttingedge research and designs in the world while retaining freedom to design what they want the concept of of retaining freedom to design what they want can pivot us to the next component of the Dutch system many might assume that there is a strict code defining what is and isn't legal to build on public roads in the Netherlands but this would be incorrect In fact none of the design guidances in the country are legally mandatory and on top of that the Netherlands has no licensing system for Professional Engineers chartered Engineers or any other kind of designation that gives exclusive rights to approve engineering plans theoretically anybody can propose any type of design that they want I know this might come as a surprise but don't just take my word for it even the SE Aro admits in their own texts that their design standards have no legal or mandatory status a road authority could theoretically ignore them just as quickly as it took to read them and after all just because something is better doesn't mean everyone will use it just ask my native country the United States about the metric system how does this contradiction exist in a place where everything seems to be so similar everywhere I mean how else could such uniformity and design across an entire country be possible if it's only voluntary surely something must be happening to explain why all these roads are so similar well indeed there is the legal concept of the responsibility of safety just how an airline has a legal responsibility for the safety of its passengers or or a food company has responsibility for safety of people eating their product traffic reforms also introduce this concept to public roads now the Dutch Highway Authority that fat would be responsible for the safety of all drivers using its highways or a city like utk became responsible for the safety of cyclists using this bike path however this doesn't mean that a drunk driver who gets in a crash on a Dutch freeway can just turn around hold the right spot or that legally liable Road authorities can only be held liable for crashes that are reasonably within their power to prevent but it does hold them to account on two things maintenance and design for example if a Dutch road is riddled with potholes which ends up causing an accident the road authority absolutely could be held liable fixing potholes and keeping the road in good condition are reasonable things within a road Authority's power to do another case would be if a cyclist gets injured using a dangerous Crossing when there are alternative designs proven to be safer since the road authority is the owner and has the power to approve the design of the facilities it operates it also falls within the reasonable power to only approve the safest designs to protect its users so what's a road authority manager looking to avoid bankruptcy from legal settlements to do invest like hell in proper maintenance and follow the design guidelines that have been impaired empirically proven to be the safest option possible so while using the S aov isn't legally mandatory there is one hell of an incentive this incentive is a Nifty tool but it also has a useful companion that can block stubber designers from causing lasting damage now the Netherlands certainly isn't the only country with environmental legislation but they do go a step further by mandating environmental targets for roads like noise pollution any new or reconstructed Road inside City Limits needs to try to achieve 48 DB around the same loudness as a conversation in your home so just to give you guys an idea this is my voice at a normal conversation level and this is the loudness of the road when cars are driving on as you guys can see in here it's pretty much around the same around the 43 D marker or like air pollution tion roads can generate all kinds of toxic pollutants like pm10 particulate matter with a diameter up to 10 micrometers small enough to enter your lungs and heart where they can cause serious health issues Dutch law sets a strict limit for the annual average at 40 microgram per cubic meter so if a road authority wants to rebuild or widen a road they must prove that it will comply with these limits or risk having the project blocked an easy way to see this mechanism at work is by looking at the Dutch freeway system or the reen on Google Maps notice how the freeway skirt around cities instead of blasting through the center La style it's a great example of how freeways are supposed to be used Expediting trips from City to city and not being relevant for trips inside a metro area because the environmental law allows freeways to reach up to 65 DB in loudness but only allows 48 DB inside of City Limits this more or less forces Road Engineers to follow the S Aro advice to not build freeways straight through cities and we can see the same principle inside the cities also most Dutch roads are only one lane in each Direction sometimes two as we approach City Limits but never more than two it turns out that one more Lane to fix traffic bro is much harder to do when the widened Road can only be as loud as people talking in a room there's no way six Lane strads could meet this requirement just listen to how loud this five Lane stro in North America is so because environmental legislation makes Road widenings a non-starter it forces local leadership to seek out Alternatives that actually work like more efficient signals better bus connections or more cycling the final component for discussion isn't technical like the previous ones but rather cultural it's the piece of the puzzle that isn't about how to do it but more about the why why was there so much motivation to reform in the first place why was there so much invested in research and design knowledge when it didn't happen in other nations and why bother with such a complex systems of incentives instead of a blunt Forest mandatory approach to understand this we need to touch on the Dutch tradition of poer politique to understand poer politique is to understand the geography of the Netherlands and the history of the Dutch relationship with it as most of you probably know a large chunk of the Netherlands land mass is under sea level elevation there's little to worry about today about catastrophic flooding but hundreds of years ago the Fortress that the Dutch built to protect themselves didn't exist most of the land was wet marshy and very flood prone so the towns were developed in dri areas that were called poers a poer is an area of land that's surrounded on all sides by raised embankments for protection from flooding a Kinton empty cereal bowl placed in a sink if major flooding happened during the storm the surrounding Countryside would flood but the small island of civilization inside would stay dry the obvious downside of this setup is its fragility all it took for a poter to fail was a single poorly built or poorly maintained section for floodwaters to punch through and turn the dry Island into one giant swimming pool coexisting with this fragile reality would end up shaping politics in a rather particular way in order to survive and keep their feet dry these poters learned that they had to govern themselves in a way that allowed political participation across all classes and professions when it came to anything related to managing water this is because poers that were run more like dictatorships ended up being much more likely to flood after all dictators often make decisions from their own singular assumptions and can't easily be criticized or shown the shortcoming of their decisions when everyone has a shared interest for survival it ended up being a far better system to let everyone's voices be heard this long-standing tradition is how the Dutch concept of poer politique was born and it continues to be relevant to this day nowadays poer politique is emphasized even more in Dutch public spaces it's the same commitment to reach a consensus that motivates the Dutch to come up with solutions that are good enough to satisfy everyone solutions that can make the streets safe Crush congestion on roads preserve a healthy environment and do it in a way that's affordable for the government it was this commitment that led to the raise of each component we discussed and then coming together to produce a system that continues to inspire people around the world every day

Channel: Build the Lanes

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Id: b4ya3V-s4I0

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 15 2023