As a roadworker myself. I find it nice to see people have such intrest in what seems to be something very ordinary. Also i have to be picky as you made a mistake in the naming of the klinkers. As the Waalformaat is 5cm wide. infront the garages are the dikformaat (7cm wide) and the road is made of keiformaat or 10 duimers (10cm wide).
Als ik soms zie in wat voor omstandigheden jullie bezig zijn buiten.. petje af. Verbaast me altijd weer een beetje hoe van een schijnbare zandbak toch weer wat moois gemaakt wordt :)
I find it helpful to remind myself that a lot of work may appear ordinary, but is in its own right very special. Makes you respect people their skills. I for one would be absolutely horrible at roadwork as I would have no idea about good practices. I'd probably take at least ten times as long to make something a hundred times worse!
As a road constructor, this makes me proud. It's hard but honest work, and the experience you gain from the older people is worth more than what you read in the books.
With the removal of early retirement for jobs like this, I do worry about the sustainability of the literally back braking work of paving streets by hand.
@@matthijszeeman5351 well we're also one of the biggest innovators whilst using machines, most new roads that are being laid are with the bricklaying machine that slowly paves the entire road, ofc you still need to fill in and check manually afterwards but it saves the backs of our people. Atleast they get a siginificant pay here, construction workers will exist here forever especially if we need them because we can just up their pay and with the rising of the sea I expect an new deltawerken in the coming 10 years since most places of our country aren't fit for 2/3m rise over 60 years and with the current drought killing the roots in our dunes we have a lot of upgrading to do.
I had a chat with a city council traffic engineer here in The Hague and he mentioned that the permeable honeycomb pavers only really work if they're not parked on all the time. Grass tends to wilt if the parking space is occupied most of the time, which is why they're good for event/overflow/visitor parking, but not so good for residential use.
Similar paving can be used without grass. Plants are in general difficult to keep in good condition in such pavement. But even without the green, it's good for water retention. I have a driveway built like this, mostly because the ground is clay and it's difficult to get rid of all the water during heavy rain. It works great.
@@jankoodziej877 I expect that the primary function of the grass is to keep the sand together, in sandy areas, and keep it from becoming a pool of mud and eventually just pavers with holes.
As a traffic engineer myself i heard from a colleague of mine that we are currently about to use a new type of permeable surface on which grass will grow through it. Even if there are cars parked on it. Don't know if it will work but we already have a section under use so hopefully it will be a good usercase.
@@crytocc no, not really, you don't need grass to do that, and you don't put sand in there, but gravel. For grass you need soil and you need to make sure it will have enough water. Another option for grass is a heavy plastic mesh, which is placed on gravel (same as paving) and filled with soil. But it has much more space for soil, so the end result looks almost like a regular lawn, yet it can support the weight of cars.
I'm always so impressed with the dutch ability to build with bricks like this. Here in north america we just seem to lack the skill base to do this properly and so many projects I see that try to make surfaces like this end up with serious deformation issues within a year or two. I guess it's mostly all about site prep.
In The Netherlands they also deform slowly, but it’s not that bad. Cars have suspension and bikes don’t go that fast so bumpy paver roads aren’t as bad as bumpy asphalt roads.
In some places they can also be laid from a drum. A big truck comes up, and lays down a entire mat that is 25-50 meters long. The bricks are laid and glued on a plastic mat in the factory, rolled up on the drum and just require the sides to be finished once laid. This only works for straight roads of specific widths and lengths, but it can make it go very fast, and the uniformity is very nice.
Brick roads are typically used for slow traffic residential roads and can get quite non flat. But that's only a plus connecting nicely to the speedbumbs there to calm traffic. A bigger deal i find that the sidewalk tiles in my neighborhood (the dutch typically use square, i guess 25 by 25cm or so, tiles for that) regularly deform or get loose and can sometimes create a tripping hazzard. But also that is an issue of not to big importance. Interestingly though in my city people are kind of responsible for the walkability of the sidewalk in front of their house and should inform the municipality about loose tiles which the municipality will fix free of charge.
7:18 another very important upside of klinkers, and one of the main reasons a lot of dutch cities are switching back to em for road surfaces now, is that if you _do_ need to service some utilities along the way, it's a lot easier to rip up just a small bit of street and then repave it seamlessly. I recently moved to Germany, and I am shocked by the insanely patchworky asphalt here (although that is probably also partially due to the fact that they put the asphalt straight over the klinkers, allowing for cavities to form which can freeze)
I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany and witnessed some work being done. In Munich they use a lot of pavers that are a little larger, but seeing the utility company pull them up, do work, and replace them with ease was amazing. The first time I witnessed it my mind exploded and I wonder why we use so much concrete and asphalt in the USA.
Also a cool fact of the reason loads of dutch streets with a 30km/h speed limit use klinkers, is that you can hear the speed you're doing while driving. Asphalt gets quieter, and so do cars themselves, making people drive too fast too quickly when not looking at their speedo since one of the biggest senses of speed, sound, is taken away. Have you ever driven over 30km/h on a klinkered road? You'll definitely notice, so there is a safety benefit too :)
North American road engineers wouldn't dare. Every road around here has to be 24 metres wide with the smooshest black top possible only to set the speed limit to 30... wonder why people speed...
What's also nice about the gutters having a different color, is that the street seems narrower than it is, which motivates drivers to slow down, while they still have room to maneuvering when necessary.
Awesome. I remember when I first moved to Tha Hague, they changed multiple full width roads into bike only, giving the classic red klinkers. Was faacinating watching a very busy car road turn into something so relaxed and quiet.
This is so fascinating! I just moved to the Netherlands from the west coast of the US as well, and it's so interesting how many roads and sidewalks here are brick, I had no idea the thought that went into it was so detailed!
When my (Dutch) street got redone, they used a road printer to lay down those “dikformaat klinkers”, this meant that the brick layers didn’t have to work on their knees, but could lay the keperverband standing up and by slowly moving the cart they were standing on, the bricks were laid down gently. Later in the day they’d use a “trilplaat” to secure the klinkers and to level the street.
I grew up in a region in Germany that borders the Netherlands and it pains me that we can't seem to get it right while our neighbours are doing it splendidly just a couple minutes away. Everybody I know loves going to the Netherlands but nobody understands what makes it pleasant to be there
I engineer such streets for work, awesome to see that you’ve followed the construction process in such detail! I’m very proud of the level of detail and neat solutions that we apply here in the Netherlands ❤
Great video! I wish I had documented when the street I used to live in got redone. It was a massive upgrade! They literally raised the whole street (and adjacent streets) by about a meter, because that's how far the street had sunk relative to the houses. The street became smooth once again and they also introduced sidewalk level parking which I'm a big fan of.
Sooo, you live in Gouda (biggest example of this I'd ever seen with some house having 3 steps going up to the front door, which a few decades earlier had been ground level).
@@roderickvannoorloos1967 Not just Gouda, but that whole region. Everywhere were they lower the groundwater table in areas with peat soil; the peat degrades, oxidizes (releases a huge amount of CO2 too) and subsides. Then farmers with their ever bigger tractors complain their equipment sinks into the fields, their buddies at the water authority lower the ground water table... and repeat. There are 90 year old houses with original sewers while the 30 year old houses in peat-soil areas all had their sewer lines broken off where they enter the home. Because the home on piles doesn't sink... yet the soil around does.
I’m not a big fan of sidewalk level parking. My 30km/u street exits on a 50km/u street with this kind of parking with a cycle lane right beside it on street level. Even with just a few centimeters extra height the parked cars block the view of the upcoming cyclists (and cars) which can create dangerous situations. You can only see them coming when the nose of the car is on the cycle lane. When I cycle on that lane, I always have to be extra aware of cars exiting the side streets. One street over they’ve also raised the cycle lane which eliminates this visibility problem.
Do you by any chance live at Sveadal in Schiedam? I'm a Civil Engineering student at the Hogeschool Rotterdam, and we had to do a project about that neighbourhood, which I for that reason visited about 1,5 years ago. It was crazy to see those streets being sunk by at least a meter at some parts.
Frankly this sums up why I moved to the netherlands as well. The dutch ability to build extremely liveable and cosy living spaces will never cease to amaze me.
I mean, its out of necessity, we dont have any space left to waste. Every square centimeter has a designation. If we wasted space on inefficient living space for people, there would be less space for farming, for water, and for recreation. We dont have the luxury of having lots of abandoned buildings, unused plots of land, and widely spaced cities. Its not just something we do for fun.
This is amazing! It's so cool to see how a road can look when it's actually been thought out and designed. Here in the UK every road just gets a fresh layer of badly installed tarmac when it becomes too damaged. Here the only thing that matters is doing the job as cheaply as possible (while probably still costing 20x what your road did). It's so cool to see how roads can look when they're designed and planned out for the better.
Her in Bergen (Norway), we have an interesting system in the city for all road works. What we have is something that have received the nick name "grave klubben" (Digging club). What this "digging club" does is coordinating between everyone that have something in the street (utility, internett, road, municipality, etc.). For example the local garbage company can come and inform the "digging club" that they want to install on of their Vacuum garbage system in that street and connect it to rest of it's grid. The Club inform all the other companies and municipality about this and ask if they also need something done. And they will all come together and do everything together. The idea is that the road only need to be open up once.
In the Netherlands they have a job-creating system which means that the street is first broken open to renew the water pipes. Then the street is closed again. 2 weeks later the street reopens to renew the power lines and then the street is closed again. 3 weeks later, the cable for internet is renewed. Then the street is closed again. After 5 months, when it is winter and it is certain that work will have to be stopped due to frost, the street is opened up again to lay the final paving. Most likely the pavings will be of inferior quality so the entire work will have to be redone in 3 months.
Great video! But as a fellow Haarlemmer, I’d like to correct you on 1 minor mistake. The city coat of arms. There are not 5 stars on the emblem, but 4. The top element is the cross of Jeruzalem. Given to Haarlem by the patriarch of Jeruzalem during the crusades. The full and official coast of arms is as follows: The coat of arms of Haarlem consists of a red shield with a silver sword with golden handle under a white Jerusalem cross and flanked by 4 white six-pointed stars. Above the shield is the Imperial Crown of Austria under barren branches holding two Damiate bells, all held up by two golden lions standing on the motto of Haarlem. The motto of Haarlem is Vicit vim virtus (Latin for virtue conquered violence).
I recently moved to Liechtenstein, one of the smaller European countries. what's interesting about Liechtenstein is that within the last 2 years all the streets have been completely rebuilt to install district heating. No side street has been spared. At the same time, sidewalks were widened and trees were planted.
I really love the video here. As someone from Central Texas who has never traveled to Europe, I'd certainly imagine that such projects would be a delight to watch come into fruition. My city's atitude around biking is changing for the better, though I certainly hope that the urbanism and street design in the video will be popularised here.
I have cycled past that street countless times while I lived in Haarlem before I moved away to Ede. Never knew I was so close to one of my favourite TH-camrs.
The nice thing about the old waalformaat klinkers, because it is a baked product they last very long and hold their colors. The concrete klinkers become grey over time. It is possible that the baked klinkers can be several centuries old.
This is very interesting to see! For someone who's studying sustainability science in the Netherlands but grew up in Germany, to me it is so surprising how Dutch street "repavings" are almost always actual updates, whereas in Germany this only happens in selected well-off municipalities or in municipalities with a lot of active citizen or aware politicians. Living in Heerlen, I noticed how this may be a reason for the Netherlands being way better at handling the post-industrial transitions. In Germany, former mining towns still look miserable in many cases, while Heerlen - I'd argue - has actually become a nice city. Maybe a future video could look into how the different approaches to city planning result in better transitions/transformations of formerly industrial cities or areas compared to Germany or the Rust Belt in the US.
Germany is a unique case because of the reunification happening only roughly 30 years ago and development in the east still being behind to this day. Another difference Germany has compared to the Netherlands, which the USA also has, is lower population density and more space. You dont have to upgrade every road in every small town. Sure it would look nice but its not critical. Over here, if we have one bad road, that results directly in a lot more accidents because there is so much traffic even in small towns. And dont forget that the Netherlands for the most part has always been focused on trade, and agriculture, not on industry. Yes we had a few mines, but most of the industry historically was located in the southern Netherlands, now Belgium, and just across the border in the Ruhr. Thats where the coal mines were, and thats where the industry was built. Nowadays our biggest industrial area is in the harbor at Rotterdam where oil, gas and hydrogen are processed. There are still some chemical plants and manufacturing plants in the south, they were built there specifically when the mines were closed, to provide jobs in the area, and construction was heavily subsidized by the government. Billions of euros of tax payer money were put into in the 60s and 70s these projects, and the companies that now own these facilities such as DSM, VDL Nedcar and Chemelot, are still operational. Most of the time at least. Overall the transition to a service economy was much easier here because we never relied on heavy industry, which was the case in the US and Germany.
@@TheSuperappelflap Good points and I generally agree. I just briefly want to point out a few things: population density may be higher across the entire country, and that would explain why roads on the countryside would be neglected. However it does not explain why particularly dense areas in Germany (i.e. the Ruhr region up to Cologne) are still lacking behind in updating their street designs and assuring high quality upkeep. Additionally, you make a great point about the reunification in the 90s (there were actually 2 reunifications if you also consider the reunification with the Saarland which everyone always forgets about, even in Germany😅). However I would argue that it's exactly due to a rapid privatization of the East that so many things are still not up to speed there. Had the German government subsidized and invested heavily like the Dutch gov did in the 60s and 70s to update the region's industry and provide well-paid jobs, then the eastern states would already be on pace with the west. Living in Heerlen, it is hard to imagine that this place was once an industrial city like many places in the Ruhr region nowadays. But if you're in the Ruhrpott, you can immediately tell that it's still suffering from deindustrialization and that shows that the Dutch policy approach worked better in my opinion. In the end Heerlen is just a nicer place to live than most Ruhrpott cities.
@@lesand5484 Ive been in the Ruhr area some times and the highways and cities are pretty good. Maybe the smaller towns arent. I would still chalk that up to the heavy reliance on industry for the region. Even Limburg in the Netherlands was never a highly industrialized region, it just had coal mines and the coal was sold te Belgium, France or Germany. There were a few steel mills and boatyards in the Netherlands, one car factory and one airplane manufactury, but that was about it. Nothing on the scale you Germans had right across the border.
This looks amazing! I wish more countries would use klinkers for their streets... I was in Denmark, where some streets looked very similar to yours and it was so nice to just walk around, even in freezing temperatures
Added bonus: they're a traffic calming measure as well. Because of the noise of the tires on these, it feels like you're going faster, and drivers slow down to compensate without even realizing it...
I am impressed, I loved seeing the redesign and I live far away from Haarlem (but still in the Netherlands). It reminds me of how my gemeente expanded a bycle path on one side of a road and now it is a two lane path that is pleasant to share even with mopeds riding along. I love this video, the project in it and Dutch infrastructure overall.
Honestly love your videos! It's nice to see people so interested in my field of work. And it's great that these type of videos can also spread that interest to others. I wanted to add a bit of a fun fact about water infiltration and klinkers. We do have certain types of betonstraatstenen that can be waterdoorlatend or waterpasserend. Waterdoorlatend means the bricks are porous enough to let water go through them. And waterpasserend means the bricks have little bumps on the sides which act like space holders, creating gaps between the stones to let the water pass inbetween the stones. Using these types of klinkers means we can greatly reduce the amount of rainwater drainage utilities and therefore maintenance costs, while also increasing the local infiltration of rainwater.
I am a Civil Engineering student (3rd year now) and I've really enjoyed watching you being so enthusiastic about this topic. Did you btw know that the 'klinkers' are mostly on a 45* angle on the streets, to minimalize the shifting of them (since the friction of the cars will be equally distributed into both directions (45* right and 45* left)). That's also the reason why they use the 'keperverband', to basically lock the klinkers in place.
I was thinking of taking a bike ride to Haarlem today (I live in The Hague), but it was raining (and snowing) a little too much for my liking, so I might go tomorrow. It seems your street is right besides the Haarlem station, so I'll probably pass by to take a look, because why not. There was a lot of work done to an intersection around the corner from my street, and it was indeed quite interesting to be able to see them go through the steps of reconstructing an interchange, working around all the pipes and cables, rebuilding the tram tracks etc.
Those bicycle parking racks are actually subpar. When you park your front wheel in them, it's very easy for the wheels to get bent. Most of the time dutch folks don't actually park their bicycle in the forks, but instead, next to them. It is also a lot harder to secure a chain lock onto them and on to the frame of the bicycle. It's easier to have U bent shaped ones, upside down, and park against those. It prevents them from falling over, makes locking easier, and you can often park up to 3 bicycles between them. However, not all municipalities have seen the light yet...
short note: Klinker have a side effect of making alot more noice then asphalt making ppl sub-conciusly drive slower hence the amount of klinkers in residential areas is the primary choice (30-zones)
@@therealdutchidiot I'm fairly certain tho is that that name is from before cars were around. The name is because if you tap 2 together after they are baked, you can hear from the sound if they are good. If they don't make a sound, they weren't baked properly.
Awesome to see the transformation. Meanwhile in Japan, the rare brick street got asphalt every time a service company big. It is cut with a circular saw … yeah, they don’t even try to reuse anything.
I LOVE the documentation of the entire build process. Thanks for the valuable insight and all the information you provided. And thanks for giving that construction worker cola for their hard work haha (and as thanks for permission)
Cool that they did it properly. I live in Groningen and they started working on the pipes in fall. Unfortunately, winter came and they took a long break until spring. Only to come back the next fall to do the electric part...
Groningen really is its own kind of suck in these cases. Just 20km south in Assen they've finished doing a lot of wiring work in a matter of weeks, and since about 2 years ago pretty much all traffic lights have good and functional sensors. Driving in Groningen is a mess because they're so far behind when it comes down to traffic light design.
Another pro of using klinkers in the netherlands is that a big part of the country is swampland. If youre ever in amsterdam look if you can see the difference in elevation between the sidewalk and the road. Roads in the netherlands tend to sink over time. When using klinkers you can just take them out, dump some more sand and re use the klinkers again. Asphalt is way more complicated and very expensive so youll often see the aspalt roads sinking.
Exactly, you even see it used to patch or smooth out concrete sidewalks. If they used klinkers/bricks or pavers we could just do the sand method that Dutch do but in Canada and the USA.
Thanks for sharing this! I wonder why the city didn’t consider underground garbage bins instead of the giant exterior garbage bins when reconstructing the street. They’re pretty common throughout the country and it makes a meaningful improvement not just aesthetically but also accessibility as the large bins reduce some sidewalk space.
The underground bins are really deep, there might be problems with either the ground water level in that area being too high for them, or the utility lines might have precluded a dig that deep
there was a lot of pushback from residents who wanted to keep as much parking as possible. Thats the hard thing about pushing forward a new policy but not irritating everyone so much that it produces a political backlash.
@@J0k394 The ground water levels shouldn't be a problem. I used to live in the Haarlemmermeer (one of the lowest points in the country, below sealevel) and we had underground containers....so Haarlem should be okay to use them :) But perhaps, like you said, something else might have been in the ground there.
1: The underground containers are large and wide (3m) so the street is too narrow. 2: The trucks that empty those underground containers are larger than regular garbage trucks and therefore heavier. The street then suffers damage due to the excessive weight.
@@martinhemme7890 those containers come in different sizes, both large and small. The ones in my Street are something like 2x2, but I've seen narrowed ones too
Leuke video :) Never got this perpective before so it's a great view to see something that's normally so invisible and taken for granted. Also forgot to mention but the result is great!
Yea! Our street too in Utrecht. The gemeente told us it would take only 30 -52 weeks. Nw they are working on it for over 2 years and its far from done.
@nobody_story129 Haverstraat is also in Utrecht ;) city centre, connecting Oude Gracht to Springweg. Or it _should_ be connecting those two streets. The street has been broken up for ages and it doesn't look like they'll finish any time soon.
@7:30 they hardly damage but we do have a lot of sinking ground and with klinkers you can fill up and repair smaller portions easier, they also generally indicate low vehicle speeds and are designed to cause more tire noise to alert peds and bicyclists
I recognized this street immediately! My uncle used to live here. Few houses from the hells Angels haha. I used to visit him and play retro games on his laptop. Funny to see it appear in a randomly recommended youtube video.
It's so fascinating how I can still learn new things about my home city until this very day. In hindsight it should have been obvious but I never connected the dots to realize the Grote Markt has reused klinkers to create the more old-timey look.
Is reusing klinkers or cobbles something unusual? My own city (not in NL) is reusing paving stone all the time, with most of the material used today during new street construction and rebuilding dates back to early 1900s. There are designated plots of land outside the city were the old cobbles are stored and whenever the material is needed they just take it from there. New stone is only really needed for curbs and larger pieces which tend to break more often or need to be of specific dimentions. A great advantage of using these cobbles is that if an underground cable or a pipe needs to be accessed it only takes two workers with a shovel and a crowbar to open up a hole in the pavement and after the work is done they can fix it themselves.
2 years seems kind of long. Here in Munich they redid the street in 2-3 weeks and later when the asphalt was due repaved it in one night. Also main roads are repaved within a weekend usually
Don't think the actual reconstruction took 2 years. It's 2 years for planning, consulting the people who live in the street, redoing the cables, sewage systems and the real work. But stil longer than one night 😊.
The love for using 'second hand' klinkers has resulted in them being more expensive than new ones. If streets are drastically redesigned causing leftover klinkers, they are often stored by the municipality for upcoming projects.
so much nicer to have klinkers, and old klinkers are also nicer than new ones! of course this is not good for high traffic road,but man is so pretty for residential areas!
Fascinating video. I’ve never followed a full street redesign and construction from start to finish. I’m glad you supplied them with coca cola in exchange for filming their work. I’m sure they felt appreciated. They are doing great work.
Well there are 2 things need to be considered. It's a dead end street, so not much of pedestrians (beside residents). It's a style frequently used in older cities like Haarlem. Doesn't mean we don't know them, wide sidewalks are only used in busy areas or next to dangerous roads. Like the bus lane that 'Build the lanes' street is connected to.
It looks like it's quiet enough you can just walk or roll in the street instead, if you need a bit more room (e.g. to walk side by side), as the filmer himself did :) Thay's what people do in a lot of traffic-calmed narrow inner city streets.
Exactly what I thought. I mean, it's fine for most people considering the low traffic volume, but it would be a nightmare for any wheelchair user. I guess that doesn't matter if the houses along that street are not wheelchair accessible either.
If you look at 10:11 you see that the sidewalk near the garage boxes is only as wide as how far the garage door swings out, then the road seems to be the minimum size of a one lane road, and the parking spots seem to be minimum size too. The street lights in the foreground where the road is wider - the space between the houses and the NS access road is triangle shaped - are as close to the curb as they always are, which is probably to prevent street lamp - car side mirror collisions. Why they weren't moved closer to the new curb but left in their old location (the sidewalk across from the garages is already widened compared to the old situation) in the background I don't know. Maybe because of other utilities competing for space? What impedes the sidewalk is the residents outside benches. Those are common in streets like this though, as the sidewalk is only really used for stepping onto when a car wants to pass, usually people walk on the road on streets like this.
Thank you for pointing out something I've always taken for granted 😊 Just a shame that the street lights ended up in the middle of the sidewalk, but I guess that's a result of them not being straight up against a house, or the danger of slamming your car door against them when they're on the edge of the sidewalk. 🤔
damned, thats a lovely street, also, the curve in the border between the road and the space before the parking boxes is also very useful if you have to overtake say a street parked car (due to moving or smth) while on a bike, and ofcourse they're great for anyone in a wheel chair
A guy from California with a Engineering degree who comes and live here in The Netherlands? A bit weird but with the speed you got your bike up that rack, i'm pretty sure you've always been a Dutchman. New sub, en de groeten uit Brabant
0:15 is incorrect. Clockwise starting at the top left are: gefrituurd, gebakken, gebakken and geroerbakt. In conclusion: deep-frying and stir frying have their own words in Dutch as well. The only homonyms are baking (in an oven) and frying (in a regular pan), both of which are called 'bakken'
It’s very interesting to see how the gutter system is done in a place that doesn’t get nearly as cold or gutter systems go down 4 to 8 feet. so it’s kind of interesting to see gutters put in kind of similar to tile line
Working at the road consturction has been my summer job here in the NL for 4 years. It payed ok for under 18 years old. Always good times in the hot sun.
My (Dutch) street will look somewhat similar in the upcoming time. Hats off however to the municipality, very comprehensive communication, and home visit to write up details per house.
Very interesting , many thanks. I’ve here for many years and amazed how carefully civil engineering projects both large and small are so carefully executed. They can overrun spectacularly but the finished product is invariably first class
Walking, running, bicycles, escooters, green open spaces, electric buses, electric commuter trains and trams are all parts of a good transportation system. Speak up for improved transportation options in your city. Every train station needs safe, protected places to park and lock bicycles. Children and older adults should be able to ride bicycles to work, school or for fun safely.
Not sure if it’s true for all block pavings / clinkers but I was just on a project where the clinkers absorbed and let water run thru them into the ground. So in certain cases they are very useful for water absorption :)
Actually, Klinkers can be a permeable surface without the honeycomb pattern. It just depends on the spacing between Klinkers and the material used to fill the gaps. If small gaps and fine sand is used (like 0-1mm sorting), only little water will be able to seep through and most of it will go to the gutters. If a 5mm gap is used and this is filled with gravel 1-3mm, normal rain will just seep through and only very strong rain will go to the gutters. However, this is a less durable when heavy vehicle traffic like trucks are to be expected. It is fine for low volume car traffic like in driveways and many residential streets.
this is the third video i see from you. and the third time i really enjoyed it. content, presentation and pace are great! so it is time for an abo. keep up the good work and enjoy yor study and stay in NL
Small point of heraldic pedantry here: there are only four stars on the crest of Haarlem, the star-like thing above the sword is a cross. Interesting video though! Even though I am Dutch, it's been a while since street nearby me has been repaved, so it was cool to look along with yours.
It's interesting to see the way the "nature inclusive" requirements are taken in account when implementing more greens in these kinds of projects. Which is a lot of behind the scenes work from the ecological advisor bureaus. (They are also the reason why projects may take a while to actually start in some cases. Since they are also tasked with investigating if any of the laws will be broken.) Also, I love how the street just looks more spacious with the divisions between the lanes. Even though the width of the street didn't change at all.
this is so nostalgic for me. my family moved away from the netherlands when i was 9 and i remember lots of replacement projects like these happening all the time. it's so easy to forget that the netherlands used to be very car-centric.
One thing I'm wondering, is there any reason for why the city didn't install underground waste containers instead of the ones seen at 10:44? Would definitely make the street even better than it already was.
I love how the streed turned out to be. As a born and raised Haarlemmer for over 30 years, this used to be a street to avoid. seeing these projects really makes you proud to be a Haarlemse Mug
Imagine being the Bricklayer. "Cool, there is a guy from America here filming me doing my job and documenting everything. But it's ok, I guess he brings us Coca-Cola." 😄
Thats what Britain does. Lays a rd then the utility company comes an digsit up again. Then another utility co comes along an digs that up. Finally they r finished an the once nice, clean, smooth rd, is left looking like a patchwork quilt! It's the british way!
Electric power line, water pipes, gas pipes, telephone internet tv cables, street drainage, and house drainage and roof rain cutters , so quite a underground stuff to take care about
As a roadworker myself. I find it nice to see people have such intrest in what seems to be something very ordinary. Also i have to be picky as you made a mistake in the naming of the klinkers. As the Waalformaat is 5cm wide. infront the garages are the dikformaat (7cm wide) and the road is made of keiformaat or 10 duimers (10cm wide).
I assume he asked the roadworkers, perhaps they got it wrong.
Als ik soms zie in wat voor omstandigheden jullie bezig zijn buiten.. petje af. Verbaast me altijd weer een beetje hoe van een schijnbare zandbak toch weer wat moois gemaakt wordt :)
damn. Will keep in mind for next time
I find it helpful to remind myself that a lot of work may appear ordinary, but is in its own right very special. Makes you respect people their skills. I for one would be absolutely horrible at roadwork as I would have no idea about good practices. I'd probably take at least ten times as long to make something a hundred times worse!
I was just about to say the same thing! But I work at a paver plant 😂
(The main rival of Van der Sanden 😂)
As a road constructor, this makes me proud. It's hard but honest work, and the experience you gain from the older people is worth more than what you read in the books.
With the removal of early retirement for jobs like this, I do worry about the sustainability of the literally back braking work of paving streets by hand.
@@matthijszeeman5351 Yeah, it's a disgrace tbh.
@@matthijszeeman5351 There is a machine in use (Dutch) for laying klinkers with some width.(look it up)
@@matthijszeeman5351 well we're also one of the biggest innovators whilst using machines, most new roads that are being laid are with the bricklaying machine that slowly paves the entire road, ofc you still need to fill in and check manually afterwards but it saves the backs of our people. Atleast they get a siginificant pay here, construction workers will exist here forever especially if we need them because we can just up their pay and with the rising of the sea I expect an new deltawerken in the coming 10 years since most places of our country aren't fit for 2/3m rise over 60 years and with the current drought killing the roots in our dunes we have a lot of upgrading to do.
@@matthijszeeman5351 th-cam.com/video/ihuw8TRcwJ8/w-d-xo.html
I had a chat with a city council traffic engineer here in The Hague and he mentioned that the permeable honeycomb pavers only really work if they're not parked on all the time. Grass tends to wilt if the parking space is occupied most of the time, which is why they're good for event/overflow/visitor parking, but not so good for residential use.
yup, its better just to try to minimize pavement to begin with and then make the leftover space green.
Similar paving can be used without grass. Plants are in general difficult to keep in good condition in such pavement. But even without the green, it's good for water retention. I have a driveway built like this, mostly because the ground is clay and it's difficult to get rid of all the water during heavy rain. It works great.
@@jankoodziej877 I expect that the primary function of the grass is to keep the sand together, in sandy areas, and keep it from becoming a pool of mud and eventually just pavers with holes.
As a traffic engineer myself i heard from a colleague of mine that we are currently about to use a new type of permeable surface on which grass will grow through it. Even if there are cars parked on it. Don't know if it will work but we already have a section under use so hopefully it will be a good usercase.
@@crytocc no, not really, you don't need grass to do that, and you don't put sand in there, but gravel. For grass you need soil and you need to make sure it will have enough water.
Another option for grass is a heavy plastic mesh, which is placed on gravel (same as paving) and filled with soil. But it has much more space for soil, so the end result looks almost like a regular lawn, yet it can support the weight of cars.
I'm always so impressed with the dutch ability to build with bricks like this. Here in north america we just seem to lack the skill base to do this properly and so many projects I see that try to make surfaces like this end up with serious deformation issues within a year or two. I guess it's mostly all about site prep.
Could also be because there's a larger amount of cars driving over the street.
@@dangboor4277 And those cars are heavier and driving faster.
In The Netherlands they also deform slowly, but it’s not that bad. Cars have suspension and bikes don’t go that fast so bumpy paver roads aren’t as bad as bumpy asphalt roads.
In some places they can also be laid from a drum. A big truck comes up, and lays down a entire mat that is 25-50 meters long. The bricks are laid and glued on a plastic mat in the factory, rolled up on the drum and just require the sides to be finished once laid. This only works for straight roads of specific widths and lengths, but it can make it go very fast, and the uniformity is very nice.
Brick roads are typically used for slow traffic residential roads and can get quite non flat. But that's only a plus connecting nicely to the speedbumbs there to calm traffic. A bigger deal i find that the sidewalk tiles in my neighborhood (the dutch typically use square, i guess 25 by 25cm or so, tiles for that) regularly deform or get loose and can sometimes create a tripping hazzard. But also that is an issue of not to big importance. Interestingly though in my city people are kind of responsible for the walkability of the sidewalk in front of their house and should inform the municipality about loose tiles which the municipality will fix free of charge.
7:18 another very important upside of klinkers, and one of the main reasons a lot of dutch cities are switching back to em for road surfaces now, is that if you _do_ need to service some utilities along the way, it's a lot easier to rip up just a small bit of street and then repave it seamlessly. I recently moved to Germany, and I am shocked by the insanely patchworky asphalt here (although that is probably also partially due to the fact that they put the asphalt straight over the klinkers, allowing for cavities to form which can freeze)
Thank you for the information, I never thought about that!
IF you want patchwork roads, visit the UK :P
I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany and witnessed some work being done. In Munich they use a lot of pavers that are a little larger, but seeing the utility company pull them up, do work, and replace them with ease was amazing. The first time I witnessed it my mind exploded and I wonder why we use so much concrete and asphalt in the USA.
@@sonarun Yeah but it is very very regional
Another important reason is that drivers drive slower on them without thinking about it or watching the speedometer.
Also a cool fact of the reason loads of dutch streets with a 30km/h speed limit use klinkers, is that you can hear the speed you're doing while driving. Asphalt gets quieter, and so do cars themselves, making people drive too fast too quickly when not looking at their speedo since one of the biggest senses of speed, sound, is taken away. Have you ever driven over 30km/h on a klinkered road? You'll definitely notice, so there is a safety benefit too :)
North American road engineers wouldn't dare. Every road around here has to be 24 metres wide with the smooshest black top possible only to set the speed limit to 30... wonder why people speed...
What's also nice about the gutters having a different color, is that the street seems narrower than it is, which motivates drivers to slow down, while they still have room to maneuvering when necessary.
Awesome. I remember when I first moved to Tha Hague, they changed multiple full width roads into bike only, giving the classic red klinkers. Was faacinating watching a very busy car road turn into something so relaxed and quiet.
At the moment Ive been watching a canal project by the central station. All sorts of very foreign machinary.
This is so fascinating! I just moved to the Netherlands from the west coast of the US as well, and it's so interesting how many roads and sidewalks here are brick, I had no idea the thought that went into it was so detailed!
When my (Dutch) street got redone, they used a road printer to lay down those “dikformaat klinkers”, this meant that the brick layers didn’t have to work on their knees, but could lay the keperverband standing up and by slowly moving the cart they were standing on, the bricks were laid down gently. Later in the day they’d use a “trilplaat” to secure the klinkers and to level the street.
I thought 'dikformaat' has to do with being sturdy enough to handle motorized traffic, in contrast to just for pedastrian use.
working smarter, not harder
I grew up in a region in Germany that borders the Netherlands and it pains me that we can't seem to get it right while our neighbours are doing it splendidly just a couple minutes away. Everybody I know loves going to the Netherlands but nobody understands what makes it pleasant to be there
You can ask your local government to talk to their neighbours, we're always happy to help other countries build a road like a normal person would :P
It is not cheap.
@@jos_t_band3912but it is cheaper in the long run
Don't worry my friend. If you go to our border with Belgium you won't feel so bad about Germany xD
I still think that the Dutch should send missionaries to the far/four corners of the ( known ) world and spread the word.
I engineer such streets for work, awesome to see that you’ve followed the construction process in such detail! I’m very proud of the level of detail and neat solutions that we apply here in the Netherlands ❤
Great video! I wish I had documented when the street I used to live in got redone. It was a massive upgrade! They literally raised the whole street (and adjacent streets) by about a meter, because that's how far the street had sunk relative to the houses. The street became smooth once again and they also introduced sidewalk level parking which I'm a big fan of.
Sooo, you live in Gouda (biggest example of this I'd ever seen with some house having 3 steps going up to the front door, which a few decades earlier had been ground level).
When my street got repaved they created a bunch of new speedbumps that are really really steep to drive over, like uncomfortably so
@@roderickvannoorloos1967
Not just Gouda, but that whole region. Everywhere were they lower the groundwater table in areas with peat soil; the peat degrades, oxidizes (releases a huge amount of CO2 too) and subsides. Then farmers with their ever bigger tractors complain their equipment sinks into the fields, their buddies at the water authority lower the ground water table... and repeat.
There are 90 year old houses with original sewers while the 30 year old houses in peat-soil areas all had their sewer lines broken off where they enter the home. Because the home on piles doesn't sink... yet the soil around does.
I’m not a big fan of sidewalk level parking. My 30km/u street exits on a 50km/u street with this kind of parking with a cycle lane right beside it on street level. Even with just a few centimeters extra height the parked cars block the view of the upcoming cyclists (and cars) which can create dangerous situations. You can only see them coming when the nose of the car is on the cycle lane. When I cycle on that lane, I always have to be extra aware of cars exiting the side streets. One street over they’ve also raised the cycle lane which eliminates this visibility problem.
Do you by any chance live at Sveadal in Schiedam?
I'm a Civil Engineering student at the Hogeschool Rotterdam, and we had to do a project about that neighbourhood, which I for that reason visited about 1,5 years ago.
It was crazy to see those streets being sunk by at least a meter at some parts.
Frankly this sums up why I moved to the netherlands as well. The dutch ability to build extremely liveable and cosy living spaces will never cease to amaze me.
I mean, its out of necessity, we dont have any space left to waste. Every square centimeter has a designation. If we wasted space on inefficient living space for people, there would be less space for farming, for water, and for recreation. We dont have the luxury of having lots of abandoned buildings, unused plots of land, and widely spaced cities. Its not just something we do for fun.
This is amazing! It's so cool to see how a road can look when it's actually been thought out and designed. Here in the UK every road just gets a fresh layer of badly installed tarmac when it becomes too damaged. Here the only thing that matters is doing the job as cheaply as possible (while probably still costing 20x what your road did). It's so cool to see how roads can look when they're designed and planned out for the better.
It’s the same in Ireland 😢
Her in Bergen (Norway), we have an interesting system in the city for all road works. What we have is something that have received the nick name "grave klubben" (Digging club).
What this "digging club" does is coordinating between everyone that have something in the street (utility, internett, road, municipality, etc.).
For example the local garbage company can come and inform the "digging club" that they want to install on of their Vacuum garbage system in that street and connect it to rest of it's grid. The Club inform all the other companies and municipality about this and ask if they also need something done. And they will all come together and do everything together. The idea is that the road only need to be open up once.
In the Netherlands they have a job-creating system which means that the street is first broken open to renew the water pipes. Then the street is closed again. 2 weeks later the street reopens to renew the power lines and then the street is closed again. 3 weeks later, the cable for internet is renewed. Then the street is closed again. After 5 months, when it is winter and it is certain that work will have to be stopped due to frost, the street is opened up again to lay the final paving. Most likely the pavings will be of inferior quality so the entire work will have to be redone in 3 months.
Great video! But as a fellow Haarlemmer, I’d like to correct you on 1 minor mistake. The city coat of arms. There are not 5 stars on the emblem, but 4. The top element is the cross of Jeruzalem. Given to Haarlem by the patriarch of Jeruzalem during the crusades. The full and official coast of arms is as follows: The coat of arms of Haarlem consists of a red shield with a silver sword with golden handle under a white Jerusalem cross and flanked by 4 white six-pointed stars. Above the shield is the Imperial Crown of Austria under barren branches holding two Damiate bells, all held up by two golden lions standing on the motto of Haarlem. The motto of Haarlem is Vicit vim virtus (Latin for virtue conquered violence).
I'm proud you're so invested in Dutch infrastructure and add so much value to our well-being in the Netherlands. Thanks :)
I recently moved to Liechtenstein, one of the smaller European countries. what's interesting about Liechtenstein is that within the last 2 years all the streets have been completely rebuilt to install district heating. No side street has been spared. At the same time, sidewalks were widened and trees were planted.
I really love the video here. As someone from Central Texas who has never traveled to Europe, I'd certainly imagine that such projects would be a delight to watch come into fruition. My city's atitude around biking is changing for the better, though I certainly hope that the urbanism and street design in the video will be popularised here.
I have cycled past that street countless times while I lived in Haarlem before I moved away to Ede. Never knew I was so close to one of my favourite TH-camrs.
i never knew i was so close to one of my favorite subscribers
The nice thing about the old waalformaat klinkers, because it is a baked product they last very long and hold their colors. The concrete klinkers become grey over time. It is possible that the baked klinkers can be several centuries old.
impressive build quality and I love how they take a friendlier approach to "townhall meetings" to engage community feedback. Happy Biking once more!
I love seeing the day-to-day operations in depth like this, great video! Nice of the crew there to let you film so much.
This is very interesting to see! For someone who's studying sustainability science in the Netherlands but grew up in Germany, to me it is so surprising how Dutch street "repavings" are almost always actual updates, whereas in Germany this only happens in selected well-off municipalities or in municipalities with a lot of active citizen or aware politicians.
Living in Heerlen, I noticed how this may be a reason for the Netherlands being way better at handling the post-industrial transitions. In Germany, former mining towns still look miserable in many cases, while Heerlen - I'd argue - has actually become a nice city. Maybe a future video could look into how the different approaches to city planning result in better transitions/transformations of formerly industrial cities or areas compared to Germany or the Rust Belt in the US.
Germany is a unique case because of the reunification happening only roughly 30 years ago and development in the east still being behind to this day. Another difference Germany has compared to the Netherlands, which the USA also has, is lower population density and more space. You dont have to upgrade every road in every small town. Sure it would look nice but its not critical. Over here, if we have one bad road, that results directly in a lot more accidents because there is so much traffic even in small towns.
And dont forget that the Netherlands for the most part has always been focused on trade, and agriculture, not on industry. Yes we had a few mines, but most of the industry historically was located in the southern Netherlands, now Belgium, and just across the border in the Ruhr. Thats where the coal mines were, and thats where the industry was built.
Nowadays our biggest industrial area is in the harbor at Rotterdam where oil, gas and hydrogen are processed. There are still some chemical plants and manufacturing plants in the south, they were built there specifically when the mines were closed, to provide jobs in the area, and construction was heavily subsidized by the government. Billions of euros of tax payer money were put into in the 60s and 70s these projects, and the companies that now own these facilities such as DSM, VDL Nedcar and Chemelot, are still operational. Most of the time at least.
Overall the transition to a service economy was much easier here because we never relied on heavy industry, which was the case in the US and Germany.
@@TheSuperappelflap Good points and I generally agree. I just briefly want to point out a few things: population density may be higher across the entire country, and that would explain why roads on the countryside would be neglected. However it does not explain why particularly dense areas in Germany (i.e. the Ruhr region up to Cologne) are still lacking behind in updating their street designs and assuring high quality upkeep.
Additionally, you make a great point about the reunification in the 90s (there were actually 2 reunifications if you also consider the reunification with the Saarland which everyone always forgets about, even in Germany😅). However I would argue that it's exactly due to a rapid privatization of the East that so many things are still not up to speed there. Had the German government subsidized and invested heavily like the Dutch gov did in the 60s and 70s to update the region's industry and provide well-paid jobs, then the eastern states would already be on pace with the west.
Living in Heerlen, it is hard to imagine that this place was once an industrial city like many places in the Ruhr region nowadays. But if you're in the Ruhrpott, you can immediately tell that it's still suffering from deindustrialization and that shows that the Dutch policy approach worked better in my opinion. In the end Heerlen is just a nicer place to live than most Ruhrpott cities.
@@lesand5484 Ive been in the Ruhr area some times and the highways and cities are pretty good. Maybe the smaller towns arent. I would still chalk that up to the heavy reliance on industry for the region. Even Limburg in the Netherlands was never a highly industrialized region, it just had coal mines and the coal was sold te Belgium, France or Germany. There were a few steel mills and boatyards in the Netherlands, one car factory and one airplane manufactury, but that was about it. Nothing on the scale you Germans had right across the border.
This looks amazing! I wish more countries would use klinkers for their streets... I was in Denmark, where some streets looked very similar to yours and it was so nice to just walk around, even in freezing temperatures
Added bonus: repairing the surface is as easy as taking out some bricks, redo the base layer and put the bricks back.
In Belgium we also use them
Added bonus: they're a traffic calming measure as well. Because of the noise of the tires on these, it feels like you're going faster, and drivers slow down to compensate without even realizing it...
@@therealdutchidiot Which you need to do constantly because the street deforms faster than asfalted roads
In Poland we use something called "Kostka brukowa" for residential streets.
I am impressed, I loved seeing the redesign and I live far away from Haarlem (but still in the Netherlands).
It reminds me of how my gemeente expanded a bycle path on one side of a road and now it is a two lane path that is pleasant to share even with mopeds riding along. I love this video, the project in it and Dutch infrastructure overall.
Honestly love your videos! It's nice to see people so interested in my field of work. And it's great that these type of videos can also spread that interest to others.
I wanted to add a bit of a fun fact about water infiltration and klinkers.
We do have certain types of betonstraatstenen that can be waterdoorlatend or waterpasserend.
Waterdoorlatend means the bricks are porous enough to let water go through them. And waterpasserend means the bricks have little bumps on the sides which act like space holders, creating gaps between the stones to let the water pass inbetween the stones.
Using these types of klinkers means we can greatly reduce the amount of rainwater drainage utilities and therefore maintenance costs, while also increasing the local infiltration of rainwater.
I am a Civil Engineering student (3rd year now) and I've really enjoyed watching you being so enthusiastic about this topic.
Did you btw know that the 'klinkers' are mostly on a 45* angle on the streets, to minimalize the shifting of them (since the friction of the cars will be equally distributed into both directions (45* right and 45* left)). That's also the reason why they use the 'keperverband', to basically lock the klinkers in place.
I love this style of road. hope to see it spread more in the us
So neat, organized and colourful. Subtle, but with some colours. I like it.
I was thinking of taking a bike ride to Haarlem today (I live in The Hague), but it was raining (and snowing) a little too much for my liking, so I might go tomorrow. It seems your street is right besides the Haarlem station, so I'll probably pass by to take a look, because why not. There was a lot of work done to an intersection around the corner from my street, and it was indeed quite interesting to be able to see them go through the steps of reconstructing an interchange, working around all the pipes and cables, rebuilding the tram tracks etc.
Those bicycle parking racks are actually subpar. When you park your front wheel in them, it's very easy for the wheels to get bent. Most of the time dutch folks don't actually park their bicycle in the forks, but instead, next to them. It is also a lot harder to secure a chain lock onto them and on to the frame of the bicycle. It's easier to have U bent shaped ones, upside down, and park against those. It prevents them from falling over, makes locking easier, and you can often park up to 3 bicycles between them. However, not all municipalities have seen the light yet...
unfortunately tulip bike racks are standardized in city's HIOR.
Fietsnietje aka nietje (staple bike rack)
short note: Klinker have a side effect of making alot more noice then asphalt making ppl sub-conciusly drive slower hence the amount of klinkers in residential areas is the primary choice (30-zones)
It's literally the meaning of the word "klinker". A rough translation is "sounder".
@@therealdutchidiot I'm fairly certain tho is that that name is from before cars were around. The name is because if you tap 2 together after they are baked, you can hear from the sound if they are good. If they don't make a sound, they weren't baked properly.
@@therealdutchidiotits an onomatopoeia, its spelled like how it sounds! *klink klink klink*
And "klinker" also means "vowel"
@@dylanseroo Yup, because it makes just a single sound, like "a" "e" "o" "u"
The way those driveways are implemented into the chicane is so clever. I love to see optimizations like that for unique spaces.
Awesome to see the transformation.
Meanwhile in Japan, the rare brick street got asphalt every time a service company big. It is cut with a circular saw … yeah, they don’t even try to reuse anything.
Can we just pause and take in how friggi'n cute this street is! 😍
A beautiful product. The street looks much better. It takes some time, but the result is there.
Love to see a foreigner be in awe of something that seems so normal to us. Keep it up
You forgot to mention that klinkers are less hot in the summer, instead of asphalt.
I LOVE the documentation of the entire build process. Thanks for the valuable insight and all the information you provided. And thanks for giving that construction worker cola for their hard work haha (and as thanks for permission)
Cool that they did it properly. I live in Groningen and they started working on the pipes in fall. Unfortunately, winter came and they took a long break until spring. Only to come back the next fall to do the electric part...
Groningen really is its own kind of suck in these cases. Just 20km south in Assen they've finished doing a lot of wiring work in a matter of weeks, and since about 2 years ago pretty much all traffic lights have good and functional sensors. Driving in Groningen is a mess because they're so far behind when it comes down to traffic light design.
Another pro of using klinkers in the netherlands is that a big part of the country is swampland. If youre ever in amsterdam look if you can see the difference in elevation between the sidewalk and the road. Roads in the netherlands tend to sink over time. When using klinkers you can just take them out, dump some more sand and re use the klinkers again. Asphalt is way more complicated and very expensive so youll often see the aspalt roads sinking.
Exactly, you even see it used to patch or smooth out concrete sidewalks. If they used klinkers/bricks or pavers we could just do the sand method that Dutch do but in Canada and the USA.
Thanks for sharing this! I wonder why the city didn’t consider underground garbage bins instead of the giant exterior garbage bins when reconstructing the street. They’re pretty common throughout the country and it makes a meaningful improvement not just aesthetically but also accessibility as the large bins reduce some sidewalk space.
The underground bins are really deep, there might be problems with either the ground water level in that area being too high for them, or the utility lines might have precluded a dig that deep
there was a lot of pushback from residents who wanted to keep as much parking as possible. Thats the hard thing about pushing forward a new policy but not irritating everyone so much that it produces a political backlash.
@@J0k394 The ground water levels shouldn't be a problem. I used to live in the Haarlemmermeer (one of the lowest points in the country, below sealevel) and we had underground containers....so Haarlem should be okay to use them :)
But perhaps, like you said, something else might have been in the ground there.
1: The underground containers are large and wide (3m) so the street is too narrow.
2: The trucks that empty those underground containers are larger than regular garbage trucks and therefore heavier. The street then suffers damage due to the excessive weight.
@@martinhemme7890 those containers come in different sizes, both large and small. The ones in my Street are something like 2x2, but I've seen narrowed ones too
Leuke video :) Never got this perpective before so it's a great view to see something that's normally so invisible and taken for granted. Also forgot to mention but the result is great!
Yea! Our street too in Utrecht. The gemeente told us it would take only 30 -52 weeks. Nw they are working on it for over 2 years and its far from done.
Oops....
Haverstraat by any chance?
Nope, somewhere in Utrecht.
@nobody_story129 Haverstraat is also in Utrecht ;) city centre, connecting Oude Gracht to Springweg. Or it _should_ be connecting those two streets. The street has been broken up for ages and it doesn't look like they'll finish any time soon.
@@rvdb7363 Oh, I live closer to Leidsche Rijn.
@7:30 they hardly damage but we do have a lot of sinking ground and with klinkers you can fill up and repair smaller portions easier, they also generally indicate low vehicle speeds and are designed to cause more tire noise to alert peds and bicyclists
I recognized this street immediately! My uncle used to live here. Few houses from the hells Angels haha. I used to visit him and play retro games on his laptop. Funny to see it appear in a randomly recommended youtube video.
Same here. A friend of mine used to live there.
Well done! You live in a beautiful street in Haarlem❤
Cool that the meeting was on your street itself. And included snacks!
this looks so much better, so pretty
Oh lawd! " We didn't have tornaders here until we started puttin' in traffic circles"
It's so fascinating how I can still learn new things about my home city until this very day. In hindsight it should have been obvious but I never connected the dots to realize the Grote Markt has reused klinkers to create the more old-timey look.
I swear Netherlands really is a little heaven here on Earth. Someday I must come to visit.
Is reusing klinkers or cobbles something unusual? My own city (not in NL) is reusing paving stone all the time, with most of the material used today during new street construction and rebuilding dates back to early 1900s. There are designated plots of land outside the city were the old cobbles are stored and whenever the material is needed they just take it from there. New stone is only really needed for curbs and larger pieces which tend to break more often or need to be of specific dimentions.
A great advantage of using these cobbles is that if an underground cable or a pipe needs to be accessed it only takes two workers with a shovel and a crowbar to open up a hole in the pavement and after the work is done they can fix it themselves.
2 years seems kind of long.
Here in Munich they redid the street in 2-3 weeks and later when the asphalt was due repaved it in one night.
Also main roads are repaved within a weekend usually
Don't think the actual reconstruction took 2 years. It's 2 years for planning, consulting the people who live in the street, redoing the cables, sewage systems and the real work. But stil longer than one night 😊.
2 years from the first letter he recieved.
The love for using 'second hand' klinkers has resulted in them being more expensive than new ones. If streets are drastically redesigned causing leftover klinkers, they are often stored by the municipality for upcoming projects.
And if you have some left over after repaving your driveway you stack them in the backyard or throw them in the cellar and save them for later.
so much nicer to have klinkers, and old klinkers are also nicer than new ones! of course this is not good for high traffic road,but man is so pretty for residential areas!
Fascinating video. I’ve never followed a full street redesign and construction from start to finish. I’m glad you supplied them with coca cola in exchange for filming their work. I’m sure they felt appreciated. They are doing great work.
That looks really nice! The left footpath could be wider though, those street lights make it especially narrow.
Well there are 2 things need to be considered. It's a dead end street, so not much of pedestrians (beside residents). It's a style frequently used in older cities like Haarlem. Doesn't mean we don't know them, wide sidewalks are only used in busy areas or next to dangerous roads. Like the bus lane that 'Build the lanes' street is connected to.
It looks like it's quiet enough you can just walk or roll in the street instead, if you need a bit more room (e.g. to walk side by side), as the filmer himself did :)
Thay's what people do in a lot of traffic-calmed narrow inner city streets.
Exactly what I thought. I mean, it's fine for most people considering the low traffic volume, but it would be a nightmare for any wheelchair user. I guess that doesn't matter if the houses along that street are not wheelchair accessible either.
If you look at 10:11 you see that the sidewalk near the garage boxes is only as wide as how far the garage door swings out, then the road seems to be the minimum size of a one lane road, and the parking spots seem to be minimum size too. The street lights in the foreground where the road is wider - the space between the houses and the NS access road is triangle shaped - are as close to the curb as they always are, which is probably to prevent street lamp - car side mirror collisions. Why they weren't moved closer to the new curb but left in their old location (the sidewalk across from the garages is already widened compared to the old situation) in the background I don't know. Maybe because of other utilities competing for space?
What impedes the sidewalk is the residents outside benches. Those are common in streets like this though, as the sidewalk is only really used for stepping onto when a car wants to pass, usually people walk on the road on streets like this.
personally i woult have preferred a woonerf design with everything on one level since it is a dead end street
Thank you for pointing out something I've always taken for granted 😊
Just a shame that the street lights ended up in the middle of the sidewalk, but I guess that's a result of them not being straight up against a house, or the danger of slamming your car door against them when they're on the edge of the sidewalk. 🤔
Hey fellow Haarlemmer that works in land use planning, i thoroughly enjoy your video's. Thanks!
damned, thats a lovely street, also, the curve in the border between the road and the space before the parking boxes is also very useful if you have to overtake say a street parked car (due to moving or smth) while on a bike, and ofcourse they're great for anyone in a wheel chair
That's a whole lotta effort, kudos to those workers!
Ai! Missed opportunity in the final view very visible: those containers should probably have been replaced with underground versions.
5:34 that's incorrect. That's dikformaat. As 3 vertical bricks are the same width as 1 horizontal one. Waalformaat has a 4:1 and keiformaat 2:1
Really informative. I am learning a lot.
I like it, think it will be even prettier in the summer when the green had a chance to grow
My US small town redid the streets recently and I sure wish that they would have thought about resurfacing with beautiful pavers.
A guy from California with a Engineering degree who comes and live here in The Netherlands?
A bit weird but with the speed you got your bike up that rack, i'm pretty sure you've always been a Dutchman.
New sub, en de groeten uit Brabant
Thank you for this beautiful video. Well done. 👍👍
0:15 is incorrect. Clockwise starting at the top left are: gefrituurd, gebakken, gebakken and geroerbakt. In conclusion: deep-frying and stir frying have their own words in Dutch as well. The only homonyms are baking (in an oven) and frying (in a regular pan), both of which are called 'bakken'
thanks for being so impressed by my country
so cool to see the process! it's golden !
Gooda love the passion you have for this stuff
It’s very interesting to see how the gutter system is done in a place that doesn’t get nearly as cold or gutter systems go down 4 to 8 feet. so it’s kind of interesting to see gutters put in kind of similar to tile line
Thanks, now I'm going to constantly look down and think about the klinker pattern 😂
Working at the road consturction has been my summer job here in the NL for 4 years. It payed ok for under 18 years old. Always good times in the hot sun.
My (Dutch) street will look somewhat similar in the upcoming time. Hats off however to the municipality, very comprehensive communication, and home visit to write up details per house.
Very interesting , many thanks. I’ve here for many years and amazed how carefully civil engineering projects both large and small are so carefully executed. They can overrun spectacularly but the finished product is invariably first class
Walking, running, bicycles, escooters, green open spaces, electric buses, electric commuter trains and trams are all parts of a good transportation system. Speak up for improved transportation options in your city. Every train station needs safe, protected places to park and lock bicycles. Children and older adults should be able to ride bicycles to work, school or for fun safely.
Not sure if it’s true for all block pavings / clinkers but I was just on a project where the clinkers absorbed and let water run thru them into the ground. So in certain cases they are very useful for water absorption :)
Actually, Klinkers can be a permeable surface without the honeycomb pattern. It just depends on the spacing between Klinkers and the material used to fill the gaps. If small gaps and fine sand is used (like 0-1mm sorting), only little water will be able to seep through and most of it will go to the gutters. If a 5mm gap is used and this is filled with gravel 1-3mm, normal rain will just seep through and only very strong rain will go to the gutters. However, this is a less durable when heavy vehicle traffic like trucks are to be expected. It is fine for low volume car traffic like in driveways and many residential streets.
this is the third video i see from you. and the third time i really enjoyed it. content, presentation and pace are great!
so it is time for an abo. keep up the good work and enjoy yor study and stay in NL
Just subbed after being referred by NotJustBikes
I work in road maintenance (data side) and i am convinced that in the Netherlands we have the best road infrastructure
These klinkers are not to be confused with klinkers & medeklinkers, vowels & consonants.
It is so good. Avoiding plastics and reuse! ❤
Small point of heraldic pedantry here: there are only four stars on the crest of Haarlem, the star-like thing above the sword is a cross. Interesting video though! Even though I am Dutch, it's been a while since street nearby me has been repaved, so it was cool to look along with yours.
Het kruis is een kruisvaarderskruis en verleend door de patriarch van Jeruzalem na de Vijfde Kruistocht, samen met het zwaard.
It's interesting to see the way the "nature inclusive" requirements are taken in account when implementing more greens in these kinds of projects. Which is a lot of behind the scenes work from the ecological advisor bureaus. (They are also the reason why projects may take a while to actually start in some cases. Since they are also tasked with investigating if any of the laws will be broken.)
Also, I love how the street just looks more spacious with the divisions between the lanes. Even though the width of the street didn't change at all.
I’m Italian and I can’t imagine a country where stuff actually happens and works, it’s crazy 😂😂😂
*laughs in uk at the part about lining up utilities and resurfacing* *jumps, bumps, jostles, and trips over every patch in the tarmac*
this is so nostalgic for me. my family moved away from the netherlands when i was 9 and i remember lots of replacement projects like these happening all the time. it's so easy to forget that the netherlands used to be very car-centric.
Yeah, it used to be so much better.
One thing I'm wondering, is there any reason for why the city didn't install underground waste containers instead of the ones seen at 10:44? Would definitely make the street even better than it already was.
Maybe it just was not possible due to house foundation or cables, pipes etc. Where possible, they will be in the ground.
Probably not possible because of sewers running below it. Those underground containers are pretty big and go rather deep.
I love how the streed turned out to be. As a born and raised Haarlemmer for over 30 years, this used to be a street to avoid. seeing these projects really makes you proud to be a Haarlemse Mug
Leg 'm effe uit waar het woord Mug vandaan komt.
Imagine being the Bricklayer. "Cool, there is a guy from America here filming me doing my job and documenting everything. But it's ok, I guess he brings us Coca-Cola." 😄
Coca cola and hamburgers, America's main cultural export.
Tha ls for including the post planting shots.
What species of trees were chosen, and why were they chosen?
Thats what Britain does.
Lays a rd then the utility company comes an digsit up again. Then another utility co comes along an digs that up.
Finally they r finished an the once nice, clean, smooth rd, is left looking like a patchwork quilt!
It's the british way!
Electric power line, water pipes, gas pipes, telephone internet tv cables, street drainage, and house drainage and roof rain cutters , so quite a underground stuff to take care about
I'm curious to see how it will look in the summer when the grass and trees have grown