Back in the Netherlands, Starting in Leiden
In past years on our Dutch trips, we’ve set out on a bit of a mission to see how far the bike network extends… And turns out it extended everywhere we went… This year would be a bit slower paced, enjoying a few cities and their surroundings within South Holland… There was no focus other than to once again enjoy the Netherlands, but there are always things to see along the way that are worth sharing… Read on…
Leiden Bound
Our trip begins at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, unpacking the Bromptons, stopping in Hoofdorp just to the south to drop the bike suitcases off at the Florian Hotel, which provides bag storage through the Bounce app, and by doing that, allowing us to travel a bit lighter until we’re back at the airport. When we’ve dropped bags here in recent years, the frontage was under construction, but today we had the newly constructed bike path taking us to the door. There’s always more that can be done! I probably should have taken a photo of that path but hadn’t really thought to get the camera out at that point… But then we stumbled across this...
This pointy-looking suspended roundabout made me think of the Hovenring that always gets so much press, but this, I’ve never seen mention of it before… I had to stop and take a photo or two… As we continued further, we encountered more suspended structures of similar style, and I’m curious if these are by the same firm that did the Hovenring… Below, a huge bridge structure providing essentially a local road over this main road that at this time of day at least, didn’t have much traffic using it… Note the separate turn signals that can remove conflicts at intersections if phased appropriately…
Classic views of the Netherlands as we make our way south towards Leiden… From a bike path on one side towards a shared road on the other…
One more rather large, spiky suspended structure on the way…
Passing through Nieuw-Vennep just south of Hoofdorp, is this interesting and perhaps over-the-top signal… Traveling southbound on a bi-directional bike path on the east side of the road, you can make a left turn as the bi-directional facility turns to the east. It doesn’t really need that dedicated left turn signal… The other signal accommodates a diagonal movement to an on-street bike lane or the continuation of the bi-directional bike path to the west. A nice surprise was the Schwung app compatibility, something I’d only seen previously in Den Bosch last year… If you didn’t see that blog post, check it out, but as you may be able to tell from the photo, your phone communicates with the signal on approach and gives you a quicker green when possible… Never stop innovating to make life easier for people traveling by modes you want more people to travel by…
Continuing south, the light was pretty neat coming through the trees along this stretch, but that bike path felt pretty narrow for a bi-directional facility when passing people in the opposing direction… Still, it did the job of getting us where we needed to go with no traffic stress…
The path widened out and turned to red as we got closer to the city… The volumes picked up a bit too…
Normal service resumed as we head into the centre with loads of people getting around by bike… Sometimes two people on one bike… It’s always great to see scenes like this when back in the Netherlands…
As we close in on our place right in the centre, the buildings become more traditional, and the lift bridges appear…
An Evening Walk Around the Centre
For Canadian readers… A familiar name on the building in the background… The second time we’ve seen that in the Netherlands actually… Who knew…
Klinkers being pulled up for one reason or another… We tend not to use them in Canada as they require ongoing maintenance, and are subject to more freeze/thaw cycles, but it’s pretty neat to see how easily a couple of guys can lift them and put them back after doing whatever they needed to do underneath. Saw that a few times on this trip…
Another classic Dutch scene… Canal homes with people riding by on bikes… Again… Two on one bike casually chatting away on this occasion, and a few boats in the foreground…
The main shopping street in Leiden… You don’t need special clothing to ride a bike…
You don’t need special footwear either…
More canal scenes featuring people riding bikes and boating…
As we loop around back to the centre, I snapped this floating bus stop… The directional TWSIs from the back of the sidewalk to the boarding area and the warning TWSIs either side of the bike path are similar to what we’re starting to do in Canada… The concern I have with this example is that pedestrians don’t seem to have priority. In fact, where crosswalk markings should be on the bike path, there’s a bike symbol that perhaps signals that bikes are intended to have priority. Did they simply decide to sign it as people use it? i.e., people aren’t going to stop on bikes so lets not suggest they should… There’s also some very subtle drainage along the edge of the bike path…
More Scenes from the Centre
The first full day, we just walked around the centre, getting familiar with the city. I took some photos along the way… Some of the biggest hills in Dutch cities are just the grades to get over the canal… No entry except for bicycles, which is the case on most Dutch streets that are one-way for vehicles…
This one is the far end of that main shopping street from above. It’s not a woonerf, just a pedestrian zone with bicycles allowed…
Ashamed of your bikes? Cover them up with a field of cows…
A constrained bike path example… Just raised and with a beveled curb separating people cycling and driving… Maybe added after the sidewalk or maybe a conscious decision to separate people biking and walking more than those driving…
More people doubling up on the bike… There is quite the café culture in the Netherlands, even when they don’t really get the weather for it much of the time… People like being outside, hanging out, and watching the world go by… And that’s a very pleasant thing to do when traffic is restricted or limited in volume and speed, and the street has space for such uses, and you can watch all manner of people walking and riding by. It creates a vibrancy on the street that’s just not possible or enjoyable when too much space is given to cars and there’s too few people on the street…
Life feels so civilized riding or walking along the canals. Cars are generally allowed along here and often will park millimeters from the edge of the canal, but when they’re not prioritized, it feels very different… There’s no real traffic calming; it’s just uncomfortably tight in a car…
Back on the main shopping street…
One of the main gateways into the City from way back…
We took a break from all the walking, sitting on a bench here for a bit, and it was interesting to watch how people moved through this area… From cars coming around the corner too fast and straying into the bike lane, to people on bikes cutting the corner through the crosswalk as they turned left out of the side street like you see below…
Bollards are a common topic of conversation in the field of bicycle facility design these days, and I have some photos of the better way the Dutch forewarn you of them coming up in future posts… But in many cases, like the one below, there’s no forewarning, so you need to keep your eyes peeled…
I don’t think this is a bicycle street, maybe just a shopping street, but it felt pretty comfortable on a bike and there was perhaps strength in numbers regardless of any design features… I’m not even sure I saw anyone driving a car along it…
I love these small streets… We need more 5-metre-wide right-of-ways…
I just liked this scene… While I talked about vibrant streets above, the openness and emptiness of this view somehow was also interesting…
Alphen aan den Rijn
A new day and back on the bike… A new bike path as we leave the city heading an easy 15km east to the town of Alphen aan den Rijn for no real reason other than it was somewhere to go… At the outset, a truck that doesn’t quite fit…
As we cross a highway that sits below street grade, it features this odd structure above it that extends quite some way, more than seems necessary... Maybe support for it to be covered entirely in the future? If you know, let me know…
As we head out of town on what feels like a two-lane arterial, two interesting traffic calming elements stood out: one reducing traffic to single-lane alternating flow with quick-build curb extensions and a speed cushion between; then further along, a chicane that slows drivers down, and in doing so, really changes the feel of the road… In this area at least…
Continuing along with the wind at our backs…
Entering the outskirts of town, the bike path continues adjacent to some multi-family homes…
A lift bridge in the centre of town provides what looks like a poem as you wait for boats to pass…
We parked the bikes in the attended free bike parking in the centre… No fancy fobs to check in and out with like in Utrecht, but it feels more secure than just parking on the street…
A few more shots from around town…
Something I love in the Netherlands is the ability to just follow the red signs to the next town, but sometimes you might want to take the long way home. On the way back, we used the fietsersbond app to take the nature route, but that meant following turns on an app, and with no phone mount, my wife innovated… We started off on rural roads through farms…
Then bike paths through fields… The red signs still appear here and there as the nature route sometimes uses the signposted routes…
Heading to the Hague
On our last day in Leiden, we’re heading out of the city again, heading south to The Hague, a trip of about 30 km southwest. Leaving town, we’ve been through this intersection before, but I realize the turn signals for bikes are to make up for the fact that this is not a protected intersection that allows two-stage left turns. Rather than provide a turn box to facilitate the two-stage turn, they’ve provided a bicycle left turn signal to make a diagonal one-stage left turn across the intersection. There are separate push buttons to call each bike signal, and the brick directional arrows are kind of interesting too…
A little further south, still in Leiden, the bike path sometimes transitions to frontage roads that essentially function as low-volume bicycle streets. This bike crossing provides a safe crossing between the two frontage roads. The significant set-back from the main road allows drivers to focus on yielding at this crossing separately from dealing with conflicts at the main intersection…
A bicycle roundabout… A good way in theory to manage the intersection of two bike paths without needing to stop, but people tend to make an early left rather than take the longer route around the roundabout… Maybe during peak times compliance improves, but I wonder if making one approach yield to another is a simpler way to do it…
Heading further out of Leiden, what used to be a shared roadway with advisory bike lanes is now closed to cars with some simple concrete blocks…
A congested highway… It does happen in the Netherlands too…
A bike path that loops around under a main road and below the level of the adjacent canal…
Dutch Ski hill…
That’s how you do downhill skiing in the Netherlands… Actually we had a few of those in the UK too…
Back to that bridge that was in the opening photo… We didn’t take the most direct route to The Hague as I wanted to check out this interesting bicycle bridge… The Burgemeester Waaijerbrug winds it’s way across a busy road and railway tracks, and opened in 2013 at a cost of €7 Million. Bicycle Dutch did a good write-up on it here.
Up on top of the bridge… They could have built is more simply I’m sure, but I think these iconic structures help put a city on the map in terms of a commitment to cycling…
Making our way into The Hague, the bike path takes priority over the local streets that have a stop condition rather than the more common yield. Sight lines were pretty bad between the bike path and local street so with a desire to give priority to the bike path, it forced this rare use of a stop sign…
A little further along, the Jan Linzel viaduct was opened in 2020, creating new connections over a highway and between communities. It features another bicycle roundabout managing turns… Again, Bicycle Dutch provides more insights here.
The bike path continues over the bridge and into The Hague, while a busy road drops underground into the Victory Boogie Woogie tunnel - yes, that’s its real name - a 1.6km-long tunnel that is part of the Rotterdamsebaan road project. Google AI tells me the tunnel is designed to improve traffic flow and accessibility to The Hague's city center and the Binckhorst area and is notable for its sustainable design elements, including solar panels, a fine dust reduction system, and the use of low-energy asphalt. I guess AI is ignoring that encouraging car trips into a busy urban centre that’s well served by other modes conflicts somewhat with the sustainability claims… But I’m speculating, I’m not aware of the full rationale for the project…
Making our way through the streets of The Hague, this was interesting… You could argue there’s far too much parking here, but I love that the frontage road is basically designed like a bike path, making the drivers very much feel like it’s not their space! Little details like this reframe priorities on our streets, and we should look for more opportunities to do things like this…
We were in The Hague to see the American comedian Derek Mitchell, who is perhaps better known as Double Dutch, at one of his work-in-progress shows that aligned well with our trip. If you like funny takes on Dutch life, follow along via his social media… A bike one below to start you off…
We’d move on from Leiden the next morning, heading south to Schiedam where we’d spend a few days, then back north to Scheveningen for a couple of days. After leaving the Netherlands, we spent time in Valencia, Spain, then Gdansk, Poland for Velo-City, before a final few days in Utrecht… Sign up for my newsletter (link in footer) if you’d like to be notified when those blogs are posted… I’ll leave you with a guy taking his other bike for a ride as we made our way to the train station to get back to Leiden…