Agreed! If we didn’t want the pauses we could watch this exact video on NJB instead. Not reacting simply means reuploading a smaller version of the video with your head edited in. I’m here to see an American react to a Canadian perspective on Dutch urban planning. I like seeing people coming out of a bubble and following their journey to learn about them, but also to see our world from an outside perspective. That’s also why I like NJB, his channel is basically exactly that.
In Norway, there is no law against jaywalking. I had a Canadian visitor, and we crossed the street on a red light (actually a few metres away from the marked crossing as well), and there happened to be a police car approaching. For me, it wasn't even something I would think twice about. The visitor, though, exclaimed "WOW, jaywalking in front of the police!"
Jaywalking is, as far as I know, when you cross the road *not* at a pedestrian signal. Not a law against it in Germany either, AFAIK. Oh, and we don't even have a word for it (contrary to the belief that German has a word for everything :D). Though it is illegal to cross a red light, even as a pedestrian… if you get seen/caught by police, you can get a 5-10 Euro fine.
@ I'm not a native English speaker, but I have always understood jaywalking to refer to both behaviours. In any case, I think Germany is a bit special in Europe in that it has laws against walking against a red light. A red light for pedestrians is just "advisory" in most other European countries, although there can be separate laws against being irresponsible or laws about giving cars the right of way when you see a red light.
Correct, and you do that because lanes might not be even, a 2-3 lane setup would be a 5 lane road (one of which he mentions when the little girl waiting) and so on.
Correct! 11:59 is a 6 lane (3 each way) stroad with a turn lane at the intersections. Notably, that shot of Overland Park (a portion of the KC metro) is facing south, just south of 93rd St & Metcalf Ave. It's very representative of that area, full of stroads, businesses, corporate offices, & strip malls, with sections of houses wedged in-between. All of those business oriented suburbs are ridiculously pedestrian & bicycle unfriendly.
I live in Central Stockholm. I have four grocery stores within five minutes walking distance, and probably a few tens of restaurants within those same five minutes. Hairdressers, various other kinds of stores, schools, and lots of other things. The nearest freeway is perhaps 10 minutes walk from where I live, but I almost never go there. You can definitely say freeways aren't very important to how I live my life. Right now I don't even have a car, I donated mine to Ukraine.
Yes!Its the same here in the Netherlands,i dont have to mention a city or town.If you want to buy your weekly groceries it can be done in your neighborhood..Even walking or on a bike.
I've been to ~30 or so major European cities and not a single one of them has had a highway going through the city downtown; many of them have highways leading into the city, but they're at least scaled down to roads and streets in the city centre. Downtowns are the most valuable plots of land in a city and they should serve people and businesses; a highway serves neither, takes up huge amounts of space and the required infrastructure is incredibly expensive instead of being profitable, as it would be if the land was used for housing and businesses. Not to mention they're incredibly loud, ugly and just make the city less pleasant to be in.
ปีที่แล้ว +4
You haven't been to Karlsruhe then. :D We have a high-ish road through the center, the Kriegsstrasse. Parts of it are 70 kph max, while the standard for all other streets is 50 kph (and most residential areas are of course 30 kph). That said, there are now a two bypasses, north and south, but the Kriegsstrasse still gets heavy traffic in rush hour. Though it's nothing like a "stroad", because for one it's not really *high* speed (just higher than a normal inner city street) and for another it has access streets running in parallel with normal speed limits for the high-speed parts.
@ Yeah, I'd count those as roads. Athens also has a bunch of 8-lane roads going through the city, and while it's annoying and loud for a pedestrian, it doesn't even begin to compare to something like Dallas, TX where it feels like half of the downtown has been torn down for freeways.
Thats one of the most astonishing things about it, due to how obvious it is even for laymen. If you look at said map of Cincinatti it becomes painfully obvious that they basically bulldozed 25% of the core city for the freeway. Imagine having many friends who like visiting you very often, because you have such a great garden to relax in. So you destroy half your garden to make space for the parking lots so all of those friends have enough parking space. You don't need to be a civil engineer to understand how stupid this is.
Actually, Berlin has motorways. There is even one that is currently being extended (based on plans from the 90s, with federal money allocated, which the local government is unwilling to give back). However: The concept is widely regarded as a failure, but during the 60s and 70s, in the years of separation (the Wall), money got poured into both parts of the city to showcase the superiority of each system and this unfortunately included the concept of creating a car centred city which was by then considered to be "modern". In many heads, this mentality persists, so change is slow, especially now, when money is scarce, but it is underway, just slower than in other places.
You should come to Athens, we have many 6 lane highways that go through the city, even have one on the 'Athenian Riviera' on the seafront. A couple of these are genuine highways that have to even be crossed by bridges if you are on foot.
24:30 In Europe, "jaywalking" isn't a thing (we don't shame people for that). However, there are some countries that have laws that obligate pedestrians to use the crosswalk if there's one within a certain distance (in my country Luxembourg, that distance is 30m). In other countries (like the Netherlands) these laws either don't exist or were repealed. NotJustBikes has made another brilliant video about this topic, highly recommended.
Yes, for example here in Sweden if the crossing has lights for pedestrians, you could potentially get fined for walking "a red light", much like you can get fined for driving through a red light. But we more or less only have those kinds of lights on streets where there is a lot of traffic. On a small street with stores and houses on the side with low traffic, you see people crossing where ever they like mostly.
In Germany it is a huge negative for your apartment if it is next to a freeway. You can basically deduct 200 euros rent for the same apartment if it is next to a freeway.
yeah, no one really want to live next to a highway in europe, there's one a bit over 2km from where I live and even then I can hear it through an open window, so living right next to one is a big nope.
What you were saying about living close to the freeway - yes, it's weird here in Europe and a lot of cities that have that are trying to push larger roads out by building more roads around the city. Because if you live in a city here, for a lot of people, getting around is not limited to a car, so a lot of people don't consider whether they're close to a freeway, but rather if they're close to a public transport station. I live in Prague and my family would usually decide how nice to live a place was based on, among many other things, whether it was close to a subway station.
I live in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). My house is quite close to a highway. But the trainstation (with trams, metro, busses, trains, taxi and bikes) is just a 7 minute walk. Here, that takes you somewhere far faster, since highways tend to get very crowded around working hours.
The reason WHY she wants to live near a freeway is that stores, schools and jobs are SPREAD OUT in the US. That way you have to have a freeway to get to them. When you build freeways everywhere, businesses (and homes) MOVE FURTHER APART from each other, leading to more people HAVING TO BE on the road. This dynamic is called: "the tragedy of the commons" where everybody THINKS they know what they want (lots of highways to get places quickly), and then, when businesses move further apart and more people are forced to drive, the "quick" highways become bottlenecks that end up stealing your time!
Jaywalking situation from Poland: If you have a crossing within 100 m(109 yards) you must use it. Otherwise you can cross anywhere but you must give way to cars. On a crossing you always have the right of way
It used to be similar in the Netherlands, except the distance was 30 meters instead of 100 meters. But this was abolished in 1995 to simplify the traffic code (how do you estimate these distances?).
holy! 100m! that's like an entire block, or as we would say in North America, an entire football field! Might as well just walk to the intersection, cant be that much further than 100m
Finn here, I've always seen living close to a highway as a bad thing and a problem. You want to live near where the stuff is, not a road leading to where the stuff is. Often this corresponds with places with good public transport. Highway on the other hand is seen as a wasteland more or less, you go there by car if you need to, but if you end up near it by walking, you feel like you don't belong. Also, you can't cross the road outside crosswalk if there's a crosswalk 50m in either direction. If there's no crosswalk, then you're free to cross "reasonably", the law is a bit vague about what does that mean but I take it to mean, don't dive under oncoming traffic.
It's worth remembering, and you did a video about it a while ago which you mentioned later on in the vid, that noise pollution from highways is really damaging. they're incredibly loud, disruptive and stress inducing for those living close to them.
A little adding information about the highways here in The Netherlands. The government is slowly exchanging the normal asphalt highways with 'extra open asphalt' (I think it's called this). It's super quiet and when it rains, there isn't any water splashing up. I drive an electric car and driving on these highways is so extremely quiet, you can whisper and still hear each other in the car. Love it! ❤️
The downside to ZOAB (as it's acronym is in Dutch) is that is wears down much faster than the regular asphalt, so it's more maintenance heavy. Of course it drives much nicer and clears water much beter, which s the reason that it is preferred these days (for safety reasons as it cuts down on the risk of aquaplaning).
As a German: Yes it's super weird to have highways (or Autobahns) go THROUGH cities, that's just... loud and horrible. Plus it has no upside whatsoever. I can go off the Autobahn and be in a town, village or city in two or three minutes, and while there I won't be BLASTED by the Autobahn soundscape
@@S_Black Other Examples are the A562 in Bonn (Ends at the left rhine river side but goes through Bonn-Holzem / Beuel on the right side. Also the A565 goes through Bonn from West to East (not the city center but "cuts" some districts (Dransdorf, Endenich, Poppelsdorf, Auerberg, Graurheindorf, Plittersdorf) from the city center. But: The A565 is first digged 5-6m (15-18ft) below ground (but not a tunnel) and at ground level are a lot of pedestrian or Street bridges to re-connect the city parts. Closer to the Rhine river the A565 becomes literally a High-Way and is build as a Bridge that allowews the city on Ground level to be still connected (The Bridge is called "Tausendfüssler" -or centipede in english because it is build with "a lot of " stilts and reminds of a worm with a lot of legs aka centipede). Here the problem is that - when the Autobahn was build - there was mostla only farmland around but later the Villages and Cities massivly expanded until they surrounded the Autobahn completly.
20:41 theres actually a road that does this in Brigantine, New Jersey But its only on the main road coming into the island, Its only on the side thats coming in, and the speed limit is still 50mph.
I’ve been a fan of Not Just Bikes for about a year. It was great to hear a fresh perspective. My family is planning a move within the next year to a city offering better public transportation within the U.S.
"Trust me, it sucks to walk down this stroad" so true. One time me and my brother missed our bus to school and we tried to go to another location to catch it, but that didn't work and we were on the other side of our neighborhood so we had walk along a rather big stroad to get to our side. Not our finest moments
17:10 Of cause, if most of the trafffic within a city happens on slow going stroads, the only way to get around is a freeway. And if the existing freeways go through the city and not around them, that alternative does not exist either. Your perspective is not unreasonable, but it does only fit for cities with the particular design, which you are used to. If you have a propper network of roads within a city (which consists of streets for the most part) you usually get around at a reasonable speed everywhere and for the longer trips, you have rather quick access to faster roads and freeways around the city or to the next one. Biking and pedestrian options are of cause improving all traffic systems, because they reduce the car traffic. But the principle of propper roadway-hirarchy is functioning mostly independent. Of cause, if cities get extremely big, the maximum speed on roads within the city can also become a limiting factor. In that case, some true high speed connections can become beneficial (if it is not replaced by great public transport + functional park&ride). But usually, you are much better of with a bit less maximum speeds which you can constantly keep up from most starting points within the city to most destinations. 24:30 In Germany, pedestrians may not cross barriers to cross a street or road and whenever a crossing is close by, it is mandatory to use that. And if it is a signalised crossing, walking across the street or road when your light is red, is allways illegal (and frowned upon as well). Unsignalised crossings allways mean, that cars have to give way to pedestrians. But firstly, there are usually plenty of crossings and secondly it is not illegal to cross roads and streets if there is no dedicated crossing (unless, there is a physical barrier, a sign, which forbids it or if it is a freeway). Also: If pedestrians cross a road, where no crosswalk is available, the cars technically have priority and the pedestrians must do their best not to get in their way unnecessarily. But even if a pedestrian completely ignores the rules, drivers are allways held responsible, if they hit a pedestrian and could have avoided it. There is no philosophy of "jaywalking is a kind of suicide" here, neither customarily, nor in the law.
As a resident of Switzerland, I'd love to see you reacting to NotJustBikes' video "Why Swiss Trains are the Best in Europe", because this really amazed me when I moved here. Having previously lived in Germany, Argentina and the UK, I truly admire the Swiss for how well they are doing public transport, namely trains.
The clear zone of freeways in Denmark is for emergencies. That could be for your car breaking down and emergency vehicles that need to get to an accident.
In Denmark you can be (although, I've never heard of anyone who was) fined for jaywalking if you cross a road less than 50 metres from a pedestrian crossing, or if you spend an unnatural amount of time crossing, intentionally obstructing traffic. If the crossing is further away, you are okay to cross.
Funny story, in september we had a city orienteering tournament in my town, it was made for PI (Politiets Idrætsforening) so there was a lot of police men and women. I joined them as the organizer is the brother of a friend (I'm not police). We were talking about what to do about crossing the streets, but it seemed that no one knew exactly what the rules were. I decided to be cautious and only use crossings, and of course only walk on green. But I observed the police runners doing whatever they felt was the quickest, and several crossed the road at red lights (when there was no cars but not green), so I felt quite silly waiting for green, when they just went past me.
This rule is a common sense knowledge in all of Europe. Except it's not a knowledge and not a rule. Since the 90ties, it has been widely abolished. Restricting pedestrians to zebra crossings just puts more cars on the roads, especially of people who would much rather bike, or walk.
24:39 in most EU countries you can cross a street where ever you want if you are aware of the traffic. But bigger roads in cities you only cross on crosswalks/lights.
Haha, love that Futon reference. Most useless furniture. About entering or exiting cars on Stroads! You might be safer to do it from passenger side. That way your driver side door won't fly away because someone running to it.
That was one of the reasons for keeping driving on the left in Sweden: we drove on the left, in cars with the driver's seat on the left; the driver entered/exited the car from the sidewalk, without having to walk around the car out into the traffic. Much safer! I like your idea of entering/exiting from the passenger side. Unfortunately carmakers today tend to design cars with a huge center console, forming a plastic Berlin wall between driver and passenger side, making crossing over into a olympics level gymnastic endeavour.
I've never heard of Jay walking anywhere in the world other than the US, I've lived in New Zealand, Australia and UK, as well as travelling extensively in other countries. In general if a car hits a pedestrian its the car drivers fault unless it's completely unavoidable but it's always incumbent on drivers to look out for vulnerable road users.
Vehicles are much much easier to see than pedestrians. Do you drive? Unless at a crossing, pedestrian area, on the sidewalk etc. any fault of the driver would have to be proven in court. Pedestrians are not road users until they step off the kerb, and they should only do that when it is safe to do so.
@@strangelyjamesly4078 I'm a truck driver for over 20 years. If I come round a corner to find a pedestrian crossing my lane, it's down to me to slow or stop and allow them to cross. I think there's a different mentality in the US, the car is king and fuck everyone else. The rest of the world gives the most vulnerable road users more rights over drivers. Of course pedestrians have to cross responsibly, but we are all human and mistakes are made. But crossing a road anywhere other than a motorway is just a human right, a road should be no impediment to a pedestrian.
@@brandondavis7777 kids? I'm fucken near retired lol. What do you think people did before cars came along? Of course its a right to walk where you like on public property, unless you live in the land of the fee, where those rights appear to have been lost. That's why jay walking isn't a thing in the rest of the world, because it IS our right.
@@DomingoDeSantaClara If you acted older, I might acknowledge that, with how you act, you're clearly 12. Mentally, at least. It's pretty irrelevant to bring up before cars. Cars exist, and roads are designed for them. Sidewalks are for pedestrians. You've no right to the roads unless in a vehicle.
Great video, thank you Heidi As a curious Danish guy, it's really interesting to learn about the different subjects you bring up in your videos Here in Denmark, high/freeways are almost always going around the outside the cities like in the Netherlands, having good and functioning public transport (most of the time ^^) really helps All in all the way things are done here, is pretty much like the Netherlands Keep up the good work 👍🏻
From standing at the bus station in the middle of my city till getting off in the middle of my GF's city 60km(37mi) away, it takes 1 hour. There are city/regional and then intercity busses. Intercity busses like the one I take is between cities. Regional is to all small towns in a surrounding area and city busses are within the city itself.
26:55 It also was done relatively cheaply. Roads need to be resurfaced every 30 years or so. So whenever a road came up for resurfacing they just spend a little more to change it.
24:34 Here in Germany it's more about the circumstances than the crossing itself. Crossing the Autobahn or a "Kraftfahrtstraße" (one level below AUtobahn) is always prohibited. But in most other cases, if you're not creating a risk (like forcing cars to slow down/stop/swerve) you'll be fine. The "endangering"-part can get a bit costly though if you do create a dangerous situation.
16:23 the idea is to have every necessary services within your walking distance or at the very least have a robust transit system that you won't need freeways running through valuable land to get city folks to their destination. Freeways that cut through cities essentially cuts neighborhoods from doing business with one another
Around 12:00 there are six lanes. Inbound and outbound lanes. Same road. If you took Rt. XYZ North, then there would be South bound lanes on the other side of it. Rt. ABC East and the other side Rt. ABC West.
Around 17:00 it reminds me of Tokyo a bit where you measure the value of a property by how close it is to a subway station. I guess same idea applies only that Americans primary way of transportation is a car which has impacts.
So the type of highways he's talking about are the inter-regional type, not the type that connects parts of a city. In the US, I think this is mainly the realm of the Interstate highways. You definitely want to have access to these from cities, but they're such a massive and dedicated infrastructure project that they split cities up if they go through them similarly to how a river does. The story of how they got built in the US is really tragic too, because they were deliberately routed through primarily black communities, which tanked land value and led to a general decline in the wealth of the folks who lived in those areas. (There's more detail to go into, but I am by no means qualified to explain further.) The role of city spanning highways in the Dutch system is filled by the distributor roads. In principle it's the same kind of thing as the big city freeway systems - a high speed connector between parts of the city, but it's less bloated because it's not also handling all the through traffic from people who are trying to get from city A to city B and don't care about the city they're driving through in order to get there. Notably, that speed limit he mentioned for the neighbourhood streets was 30 km/h, which is about 18 mph. I assume (since you didn't seem to find that slow) the 30 sounded intuitive to you because 30mph is the standard in much of the US (also up here in Canada where it's 50km/h), but it's closer to parking lot speeds. Which is fine because when you're driving in that kind of walkable environment, you don't *want* to go faster than that. I remember on my driving test being asked what the speed limit was in one such area and answering "theoretically 50" and then having to explain my reasoning - there's no posted speed limit, which in my hometown defaults to 50km/h, but with stop signs every 50 meters and crosswalks every 25, wall to wall parking along the sides of the street and all, you'd have to be a madman to drive anywhere close to 50km/h in that area. As for the frontage road idea (where you have a main road, but with streets built either side of it that do access to the houses/businesses on the side of the road) - it's an excellent idea, but one reliant on design consistency - it's not quite as efficient as designing the road and street networks semi-independently, but it's a very easy starting point...and it only really works if the people planning road/street design keep up with the idea. One frustrating thing I've noticed driving around my own community since seeing these videos is that there's several places that are pretty close to following these principles. The arterial roads as we call them are long and straight and high speed and all that good stuff and then suddenly you hit part of the city that's newer or older and it's a classic stroad setup. Which says that we do have designers who understand this, at least locally. We just also have ones who don't...and we often listen to that group instead.
Agree with all of that, but one nitpick: 30mph/18kph is a _scary_ “parking lot speed”, and I hope you’re not actually doing that or encountering many people going that fast in parking lots. Yikes! Also, I don’t know how common 30mph inside cities is in the US? I’ve spent most of my life in WI, where 25mph is the standard in towns and cities, and I’m always caught a bit off guard when I’m in a state where 30mph or 35mph is the default. And as a cyclist the difference between 25mph streets and 30mph streets is significant. Especially since speed enforcement tends to be so lax in the US, so that’s really the difference between 30mph traffic and 35mph traffic.
I actually got stopped by police for jaywalking (Croatia). It was rain and I crossed road like 20m away from the crossing, and I've seen the police waiting there, but didn't think they'd come after me. They asked me why I done it because crossing was just nearby and why I done it in front of them which was kinda funny. Anyways they checked ID and pretended like they are checking in system if I have any previous tickets and just let me go (we were all standing in rain and one guy seemed like he was learning still, so the older guy probably saw the chance for some 'action'). I guess differs country to country whether there are laws, but 99% of cases police will not care much, maybe only if you do it in dangerous situation.
16:25 If freeways do approach a city centre, they will be reduced to a lower grade road and you will see the road design change to basically request from the user without signs like "Hey, you are entering a different type of road." For instance, the S116 (not a freeway, but not a "Gebiedsontsluitingsweg" either) leading into Amsterdam through the IJTunnel, after the IJTunnel becomes a different type of road (maximum speed on the S116 is 70 kilometer first, and then becomes 50 kilometers. Yes, there's still a sign denoting you are leaving a "Gebiedsontsluitingsweg" and there's a sign stating the new maximum speed, but the road design will also immediately change, becomes narrower and looses the guard rail meant to keep the different directions separated (which looks a bit more like a freeway type of design, but OK). Not long after this you will start to see the first pedestrian crossings and sidewalks, and traffic lights. In theory we have jaywalking rules, you are supposed to cross the road at either a zebra crossing or traffic lights if you are within 30 or 50 meters of one. That said, police might actually make a problem out of it if you do it right in front of them, while seemingly trying to make sure getting hit by a car because you just decided to cross with the attitude: "People need to watch out for me, I'm crossing here!" Other than that, police has different things on their mind to worry about :P . During a big event in Amsterdam cycling was prohibited in an area behind the Central Station with multiple signs stating this, and while police was standing on some of the temporary signs stands to look over the crowd, some people decided to drive their bicycle anyway, they did very slow, and they definitely took the many pedestrians into account, but police was completely ignoring them because they made sure not to hit people, whereas if someone decided to blast into the crowd expecting people to make way, that would probably draw attention and have a team on the other side stop the cyclist.
17:07 I live within walking distance of a freeway in Europe. I don't consider it a good thing at all. When the wind direction is"right", you can hear the cars in the entire town, even though they're two kilometers away. Also, a freeway is like a giant wall. I can only cross it at some designated tunnels and bridges, making hiking into that direction not fun. To be fair, the rail near me does act like a barrier too, but because it's much smaller (two tracks compared to the six lane freeway), there are many more bridges, as they are less expensive to build.
in germany our autobahn (freeways) are outside the inner cinty centers, sometimes the city grew into them over the decades but i think its never intended, in big cities like Köln you will a freewayring completelyaround the city which will provide access to other freeways in all directions
11:50 - In road design, you count both directions when determining the number of lanes. So that road actually has 6 lanes. I know lay people count them differently, but there you have it.
About jay walking clip - they crossed a road but they were riding their bikes. It was a crossroad for them. They weren't crossing as pedestrians but as vehicles of the road.
The main counterpoint for highways going through a city is the destruction that has to happen to do it. Count how many buildings (residential w/families and business potentially owned by those people) disappear from the map on 16:05 to the one at 16:10 around that ugly interchange in the lower left area. The people that were there originally didn't have a choice. They were told to shut up and get out or else go to prison due to the Eminent Domain law. Really ****ed up thing to do to them if you ask me.
8:31 It depends, in Europe, in many places taking a car still is faster. But the difference, is that public transport is actually often a viable alternative, because it's way cheaper than using cars, and that the time difference between the two is very minimal in most cities. Also very many people still need a car despite infrastructures being a lot better.
Netherland is1,316 people per mi2 for a population of around 17 millions, USA is 94 people per mi2 for a population of 330 millions, Canada 10 people per mi2 for a population of around 40 millions. City that are very dense like New York, Boston, Toronto, Montreal and compare to European cities, North American ones are barely beginning that change and it will take more time to achieve what Amsterdam was able to do in 30 years.
I loved this video because this is the opinion that took me off of my urbanist, “take cars away!” mindset, and really consider how the American public is feeling about roads and what exactly a car means to us and being more realistic in the change, I expect cities in the American public to make in terms of shifting our reliance from cars so that we do not have to make these stroads. I saw this same opinion come from my best friend who is my roommate he feels less urbanist, instead more how the American mindset is, and you basically summed up how he feels.
I love the infrastructure we have in The Netherlands. Roads and streets are constantly being reshaped to suit the needs of the city, instead of building the city based on the roads available. p.s. About the jaywalking thing: You are always allowed to cross a street, but roads and highways only on designated areas like crossings.
@@SirHeinzbond As I understood the situation (with the bikes crossing the street in front of a crosswalk) This is a intersection and the Bikes where on the street to drive over the intersection. Maybe the woman didn't jump on her bike while crossing the intersection because on the right side she wanted to turn left 90° to drive on the bikepath and has to stop and jump off her bike again to let the other bikes pass first.
@@dirkspatz3692 i don't think any person has a problem here whatever her reason was... by pushing the bike she could also use the crossing five meters back in the video, but as i said no one would ever think it's wrong what she did albeit strict legal it's not okay.... but anyhow, no one was harmed...
Because the US is so car centric, even a trip to the grocery store will be done by car. And then, of course it is nice to have a highway nearby, to go to the grocery store a few miles further, and park your car there. There is a big cultural difference here as well, which can be one of the reasons why you will never find a highway through a city. Here in The Netherlands, I would take my bike to go to the store, or walk there. There are so many small grocery stores here in Utrecht (NL), instead of just a few big ones at the edge of town. There will always be a store near where you live, so you can walk or bike there. I am talking about less than a mile from almost every home, there will be some kind of grocery store. Or, as an alternative, I can order my weekly groceries online and get them delivered for free. If I want to go to the city centre by car, the 11 km (7 miles) trip will take 17 minutes according to Google Maps. The route takes me from my home street, via some roads to the highway going around the city. Then, I can take an exit on a few other roads, and reach my destination on a street. If I do the same trip by bike, it will also take me 17 minutes, but that trip is only 5,5 km (3,5 miles) and goes straight through town. That is half the distance in the same time. Utrecht doesn't want you to go by car, and it shows.
Your comment about freeways in cities is fascinating to me- (this video is a year old so someone has probably pointed this out already but forgive me-) because it really reveals how car-pilled our brains still tend to be. We want all the benefits of pedestrianized and bike-friendly infrastructure, but when it comes to giving up the immediate convenience of having high-speed car-infrastructure everywhere well... then it suddenly gets difficult. Alas, if we want high-density, profitable, and pleasant city-design then the highways -must- be banished to the outer rings of the city. Otherwise everything would just spread out and require parking lots all over again. Which brings me to one concession; generally speaking freeways through cities are completely unheard of where I'm from, (Dutchie here) but our cities are rarely the kind of super-sized metropolis that other nations deal with. It's mostly the city-centers that warrant this rule however. Even out here it might occur that a subsurb grows beyond the boundary of a 'ringweg' (literally ring-road, most cities will have a high-speed road that circles around the city, Im sure these are common internationally?) and I can't say I really love existing around ring-roads either even if they seem like somewhat of a necessary evil u_u,
16:34 it's pretty weird. Even in the UK, the America of Europe, we don't really have that. They tried it in London but basically put a stop to it. Major highways go above and around the city suburbs but not through the centre.
Hmm here in Norway we usually dont have highways(motorveier) going through our citys. We usually have roads off the highways, into the citys. And here in Oslo, they actually have laid most of those accesroads into tunnels under the city ❤️ We actually have made parts of Oslo a carfree zone 😁 But as you said Heidi, youll need a well developed public transportation system to do that 🙂 And no, i dont think we have jaywalking, you might get a fine if your bicycling dangerously towards pedestrians on sidewalks though 🙂 And lol the stroads to hell, are paved with good intentions 😛😛
Highways cutting through a city is always related to segregation people from other people. America layout is built on segregation and racism. Gentrification is a way to beauty streets, but it also raise the price of homes beside house flipping. The thing in Europe, cities are built for the working class, middle class and upper class!
the one thing i thought about while Heidi reacted to the topic of highways ideally being out of the City is how do you determine the edge of a city? If a city grows it usually sprawls outward in growth and development. Eventually highways get extended and developed around it does it not? And Norway I imagine isn't quite the largest of places in terms of population and population density but maybe I am wrong about that.
5:15 Yes, it does suck. We had buyer's remorse almost immediately and are now trying to upscale the property as much as possible to sell it quickly and get out of there.
In the netherlands you are allowed to cross roads everywhere unless you aren’t allowed to go on to the road (like highways). There used to be a law that said you needed to use designated crosswalks when they were within a certain distance. We don’t have that law anymore but using the designated crosswalks might still be benificial depending on the situation, like when there is a zebra crossing. On the zebra crossing vehicles and bikes need to give way to you, however when you walk next to the zebra crossing this rule doesn’t apply and you have to give way to them. I hope this clears things up for you, i also reccomend you watch more of his content as it is really interresting.
Correct, people on the zebra crossing have right of way and everybody else should stop. But not if you are cycling on a zebra crossing, officially you have to get off the bike and walk across to have the right of way. The crossing at the end of the video with a person crossing a street with bikes, cars and trams is very rare. I would expect traffic lights for pedestrians in that situation. You cannot expect a tram to stop for pedestrians. If there are no traffic lights she does have priority over the rest.
Great reaction! Would love to see if America manages to catch up in the future, because I think it's sad for a continent with such beautiful environments to have cites that look like this
There are only a few major cities in the country outside of a few major New England towns where there is no highway that is present in downtown, with Chicago, New York and Lexington, KY being the main prominent examples. Originally there were plans for Interstate 64 and 75 to have a spur route that runs through downtown Lexington but that was canceled. Instead a circular beltway encircles it.
Finnish road design is definitely closer to the Dutch model. Bus+taxi lanes have existed for a long time, there are some highways where the lanes allow other traffic outside rush hour. I have never tthought about how close I live to a highway, that is a weird way of thinking! We rather think if we are close to a metro or train station. There are highways that end up in the city center, but they turn into roads usually. Some cities do have highways going through them, but most of the time they are at the outer edge or completely go around the city.
17:20 to the point of lack of freeways: I think that looking at many European cities, freeways near you are not necessary. Like sure, you wan't a freeway to get to the city, but you don't wan't that freeway to go through the city. Ultimately you will get a tight city center, so that walking/riding a bike/using public transport will get you anywhere easily, because everything is so close to the city center. This is emphasized by the lack of parking space in the city center, which makes it possible to pack the city closely together. Now you basically only need to have a freeway to reach the city, and once you reach it, you can easily move across the city with other ways of transportation. One good example from personal life is that I used to live close to a city, so I would just take a bus/train to the city centre, or I'd use car to get to the train and then use the train to go to city centre. And once in the city centre, everything was pretty much in a walking distance (like max 1-3km; 0-2 miles). So sure, if you don't live near the city centre, you probably wan't a freeway close to you, but then again in a well built transportation system then you most likely have a freeway close to you or good public transportation to the city centre, given that you don't live in the middle of nowhere :D And although this is already such a sprawling message and I'm not sure if anyone will ever read this XD, I have to comment on 19:20 to the effectivity of slow speed limits, strong public transport and lot of people. I feel they are extremely effective, as driving in many European city centres is hellish, and probably (as it seems) by design. When you have lanes that are designed for busses only (making them illegal to drive with a normal car), trams crossing everywhere with a right to cross before cars, loads of people walking everywhere with a lot of traffic lights and slow speed limits... That really discourages driving in the city centre and makes it a much nicer option to walk or use public transportation.
Yes, in Europe we don't have freeways inside the city. Large cities typically have a ring, a special freeway that goes around the city, with turn-offs to get to centre. 24:25. In the Netherlands, there is no such thing as jaywalking. We used to have a law that forbade people from crossing within 10 meters of a zebra crossing, but that no longer exists. The same thing applies to most European countries. You are always allowed to cross a street or road (not a freeway, obviously) unless there is a specific sign that forbids you from crossing.
here in the Netherlands we don't have jay walking there are zebra crossings where the roads are wider for pedestreans to cross and on a zebra crossing the pedestrean has right of way when there is no zebra crossing you may cross the street as long you do it savely when there is no traffing coming or there is enough space between traffic to cross
An important reason why many European cities do not have motorways through the city center is that they were well developed long before car traffic became widespread. Since downtown has the highest land value, building freeways there would be expensive, in addition to problems with historic buildings and residents' reluctance.
Almost every US downtown predates the car and was therefore originally designed to be walkable. But unlike in Europe (for the most part), this didn't stop them from bulldozing right through many older neighborhoods in order to build freeways and parking lots. The comparison with old pictures can be shocking.
These stroads are really dangerous. My doctor's office is on one and I see seniors playing chicken with high speed traffic going to their appointments all the time.
in Germany and most of europe you dont really want either close to your home ... trains are the highway equivalent of public transport, loud and the rail infrastructure is disruptive in how it cuts through and off. What we want is to have a quiet neighbourhood, which also has essential things like your schools, bakeries, grocery and likor stores in short distance so that the need to travel anywhere further away is significantly reduced ... then all you want is a bus/tram/subway stop close which links up to the larger businesses/workplaces or trains (if you need to go further). Europe rarely has the restrictive zoning which keep essentials far away from homes, which means highways and their public transport equivalents dont have to be close to housing as they are needed far less. A large number of european people barely use highways or trains in their everyday life ... most needed in life can be reached without cars/trains thanks to how our cities are build.
@@diedampfbrasse98 What I meant with "train station" was a good public transport hub. Reachable by foot, or bike. But if you want to continue this conversation, I think we both would be better of speaking German.
Too answer 2 questions you have, the reason why you prefer highways through cities is because you need a car to get everywhere. In the Netherlands the highway tends to go around and within the city there are enough options to get where you want fast and safely wether it is in a car or by bike or Public transport. 2. No there isn't such a thing a jaywalking over here, the crossings are usually only really used to make it more clar and safer to cross but you're allowed to cross anywhere.
Japan have highway in the city, and yes they have better public transport than Netherlands by a big margin, and they dont have alot of dedicated bike line. funny Channel like not just bike think Netherlands is a benchmark.
@@anubizz3 Great, we were talking about dutch infrastructure but you're shoehorning Japan in here. Lets be honest, neither is the be-all-end-all of infrastructure and having good infrastructure should not be a pissing contest (as it seems like it is to you) but rather an opportunity to learn. The Netherlands is quite a benchmark for cylcing infrasture, I know of no other country where you can litterally get everywhere by either dedicated cycling lane or low speed and low use street as one of the most efficient ways of travel. (maybe Denmark) Japan is very good in terms of public transport but not more than bad to meh in terms of cycling infrastructure. To be better Japan should add good dedicated and separated cycling lanes and cycling routes so that you can litterally get everywhere without being forced on a longer route or being forced on a road where you have to deal with cars. For the Netherlands there could be higher frequency and bigger coverage for public transport to make it way better.
@@anubizz3 well in terms of Bike infrastructure, the Netherlands is the benchmark. In Japan people do bike a lot thanks to a lot of interesting quirks and features, but they can't be easily replicated to other places.
@@polyliker8065 Well the video talking about stroads but in the end just praising Netherland and pissing on USA and North America in general , go watch cycling in tokyo and cycling in Oulu they prefer wide share path or low speed share road, yeah so everybody can use the not only one mode of transport. why Japan need more dedicated bikeline where the people there discipline enough so the can share with cars , motorcycle , pedestrian ,dog , small children (alone) , scooter and so on? and yeah they can go anywhere 50km away with their public transport faster than riding a bike in dedicated bike lane? I wonder if you ride bike from Utrecht to armsterdam everyday for work, yeah thats how big Tokyo metropolitan are. Everything its about option, Japan like any other Asia great city prefer option, you could drive, ride a bike , motorbike , or public transport. why priorities on one form of transport, you clearly hate cars get priority but in forcing other to accept only bike get priority. Improving public transport is a key, there will be little opposition , fluidly reducing a car, then we can do whatever we want with that stroads , destroying stroads and make protected bikeline without public transport its not work.
@@edipires15 It replicated by alot big city, While Netherlands way not even widely replicated by tiny city of Europe . I hope they don't replicate Netherlands pathetic public transport as well.
24:33 Denmark, if there is a crosswalk within 30 meters, you can get fined if you cross the street, I don't recall ever hearing of someone getting fine for that. My guess would be, if you do it on a busy day, you could get fined.
11:52 that's 6 lanes, not 3 lanes. The only reason to have 3 lanes is to prioritize a movement in a certain direction, like a large country road, where there are 2 lanes going into a city, but only one lane going away from the city.
rule of thumb, (Poland) you can walk thro wherever you want, on roads, you can get a ticket, usualy not, but with higher traffic you can get pulled, expecialy when road has light signalisation, also, technicaly you could legaly walk thro freeway since law says if there is no zebra(we call here those stripes on the streets here) in 20m from you, you can legaly walk to the other side if you do not disrupt traffic
Where I'm from a pedestrian is required to use the pedestrian's crossing in case the traffic situation requires it. And has only to adhere to the lights as long as the lights are active, that is since there are some only active when requested by pressing the button. But in case the points above are met, you have to use the lights / pedestrian crossing or you could be fined a hefty fine, even risking your driver's license.
FYI, the houses that have driveways that let out onto Stroads existed before the stroad. at some point in time, there was a country road there that wasn't as heavily traveled. Eventually, the city grew and didn't plan properly, leaving the only efficient means for passthrough traffic to get to the other side of town was that road with the houses on it. If the town had planned ahead, they would have left some space for a road to passthrough, or rather funded a road with plenty of space to expand right outside of town before the town grew too big. AKA, stroads exist because of poor city planning.
What a coincidence, I was just about to send you a link to "not just bikes", considering your interest in city design and such, but I see now that you're already acquainted with the channel. Now that I've copied the link, I'll send it to you anyway though. Anyway, thank you for your charming channel. All the best from a chilly, dark Stockholm, Maja's Dad
So in France freeways / highways almost never go through a city, as they are supposed to connect cities together, not inner city parts, it’s for long distance. You will usually only have one or 2 exists around a city (city north & city south) and from time to time around the countryside (maybe every 10 / 20 km.
Keep in mind that North America (USA & Canada) is not as dense as Europe countries are. Most city can, still, expand at ground level, which is not the case for European countries. So urban designers are not encourage to densify urban zone because of the amount of land waiting to be exploited.
Where I live in PA, we had a long 2-lane road that was a by-pass from the West suburbs to the East suburbs, it by-passed driving through the city form East to West, in the late 60's this stretch of road was expanded to 4 lanes and in turn, many businesses located along it's length over time, today it is 6 lanes. It was NEVER intended to be 'pedestrian-friendly' and it would be small-minded to criticize it for being motor vehicle-friendly. If a person wants to walk and shop, drive to the city, park and have at it, I'm sure many shops would appreciate the business.
In the netherlands there is no law about Jaywalking. But then again you never have to cross lots of lanes because of the clear differentiation between streets, roads and highways. It is so much easier to get around by foot, especially on streets if you can just cross wherever needed (as long as it's safe).
Hey there, i saw a couple of videos from you and i like the idea that you want to learn more about the world and how other countries make it different than the us. I recommend the videos from the Black Forest Family ;-)
Those guys on the video where not jaywalking since a bicycle even if pushed by hand is considered a veicule without an auxiliary motor (not a pedestrian). But there are some nuances ... she could have used the pedestrian passage since she was pushing the bicycle but the kids mounted and pedaling couldn't. E-bykes fall in the same category.
24:31 In the Netherlands it's okay to cross a street like that. However, normal rules apply since they're not on the crosswalk. The street they are exiting is elevated at the exit point, so the cars coming from the left have priority. Should they have been on the crosswalk, then they would have priority.
Thart is one of the disadvantages of North America. You have too much open space, so urban design doesn't have to be efficient (as in continental Europe). Things are just built wherever and however they can.
You can also move parking INSIDE the buildings. In Europe we have parking buildings, so that the cars take less space. It looks for some reason like it's a novelty concept in the US.
In Helsinki we have a few ring roads and then several highways leading to the rest of the country. When the highways go towards the city center they turn into regular roads.
so, I don't drive, I'm 61 and never learned, mainly because I had no money early on and so learnt to get around by either public transport or by cycling (I'm from the UK). My first job was only 8 miles from home, so I'd cycle that (it's not a big distance really). When I worked overseas (6 countries and counting) I would either be close enough to the office or be working with others who would rive to the office. The place I had the most difficulty was when I worked in Dallas. We were in an outer suburb, but as there were ZERO cycle routes and very few pavements/sidewalks I had to have one of the secretaries take me shopping when I needed it. The nearest shops were only 5 miles away but there was ZERO public transport and ZERO pedestrian access to even get there.
As much as I agree about stroads I would like to point out that the comparison between USA and the Netherlands is a bit extreme because the Netherlands is one of the most populated countries on earth. Only few other places have a similar population density like the Netherlands. In contrast the USA has an extreme abundance of space for roads which is probably the reason for its extensive usage of land for roads and parking space. Even Germany which is significantly larger than the Netherlands couldn't afford such large parking lots which have been shown to exist in the USA and Canada. By and large I would say that Germany is taking a similar approach to traffic infrastructure like the Netherlands.
We had a highway going through our town. But it was so bad for the lungs for people that they built a Bridge for the highway going above a small bay just to pull the traffic away from the town.
Because the street is (by purpose) structured with islands and different heights it is not pleasant to "jaywalk" although it is not forbidden. Street builders have a lot of tricks to manipulate the people to behave more savely, like street bumps and special lining and striping, chicanes or small turns in an otherwise strait street etc.
I used to live in Salt Lake City... I had a friend who lived on 700 East... he had to back out of his driveway onto a road with 4 lanes each direction, plus center turn lane, with traffic moving at 45 miles per hour (if people were going the speed limit, which they almost never were). I refused to ever visit his house because I was too afraid to try to exit his driveway.
I'm Croatian, and when I was a teenager police stopped me for jaywalking, put me in the car and drove me home, and then they had a talk with my parents since it was my first criminal offense. I got stopped twice afterwards for jaywalking (last time they stopped me was in my 20s, about 10 years ago) and they wrote me up and told me I'd have to pay a fine if I get caught one more time (which would be the 3rd time, and on your 3rd offense in Croatia you either have to pay a fine or go to jail depending on the severity and the crime committed. At least it used to be that way; I'm not sure how it works nowadays due to our chaotic judicial system). Since then we have entered the EU, changed some of those laws and today if there is no crosswalk within 50 meters you can cross the street without fear of having police stopping you. We are also allowed to cross the street on a red light if there are no cars anywhere. I am currently learning to drive and on the way of getting a drivers' license, and we are taught to always look in front of us and be ready for anything, so drivers know a pedestrian can pop up at any time especially in residential areas. And no, a highway doesn't go through the city. There are roads classified as state roads that go into cities but when you enter a city you are required to slow down, obey the speed limits set by law for all cities and town (40-60 km/h in all cities). Residential areas, nearness of schools and hospitals, any area with heavy foot traffic and you gotta drive 30km/h.
I live car-free in Boston Massachusetts, with three urban freeways (I-93, I-90, and Storrow Drive), and I live within a mile of I-93. I absolutely detest cycling or walking thru the interchange area, as the streets get a little stroady, and traffic volumes are very high. I-93 south of downtown also takes up so much valuable real estate, and divides our communities. Cycling underneath the I-93 overpass is scary and uninviting, so I rarely find myself going to South Boston that way, even tho its the shortest path. Crossing I-90 to get to Kenmore Square is less bad because that freeway is below grade, but it still creates choke points. Storrow Drive absolutely ruined the riverfront view of the people living in the north parts of Back Bay and Kenmore Square, and it created a barrier to pedestrians being able to access the riverfront (and Cambridge did the exact same thing on their side of the River Charles). While I'm not totally against urban freeways, I do think that they should be put underground. Boston has been fixing its mistake over the past 30 years, via the Prudential lid and the infamous Big Dig, where the former built a shopping mall on top of I-90, and the latter moved all of the downtown section of I-93 into an underground tunnel and turned the place where the freeway used to run into a nice park.
Don't worry about pausing to add something, this is a reaction video after all!
Pausing to react is far superior to not pausing.
@@roguebanshee I hate when someone speaks over the video they are reacting to. Its exactly like speaking over someone in a conversation. Very rude.
Exactly, if someone wants to see this non stop, they can go see it tapping that link
Agreed! If we didn’t want the pauses we could watch this exact video on NJB instead. Not reacting simply means reuploading a smaller version of the video with your head edited in.
I’m here to see an American react to a Canadian perspective on Dutch urban planning. I like seeing people coming out of a bubble and following their journey to learn about them, but also to see our world from an outside perspective. That’s also why I like NJB, his channel is basically exactly that.
I prefer pausing. I hate it when people talk over and during a video.
In Norway, there is no law against jaywalking. I had a Canadian visitor, and we crossed the street on a red light (actually a few metres away from the marked crossing as well), and there happened to be a police car approaching. For me, it wasn't even something I would think twice about. The visitor, though, exclaimed "WOW, jaywalking in front of the police!"
what an anarchist 🤣
Jaywalking is, as far as I know, when you cross the road *not* at a pedestrian signal.
Not a law against it in Germany either, AFAIK. Oh, and we don't even have a word for it (contrary to the belief that German has a word for everything :D).
Though it is illegal to cross a red light, even as a pedestrian… if you get seen/caught by police, you can get a 5-10 Euro fine.
@ 5-10EUR is nothing... a friend of mine for crossing red light in Germany got hit by an old lady with an umbrella ;)
@ I'm not a native English speaker, but I have always understood jaywalking to refer to both behaviours. In any case, I think Germany is a bit special in Europe in that it has laws against walking against a red light. A red light for pedestrians is just "advisory" in most other European countries, although there can be separate laws against being irresponsible or laws about giving cars the right of way when you see a red light.
Oh. I do it all the time. I don't know if there's a law against it in Spain or not. Never thought about it.
Regarding the 3 / 4 lane thing.
In technical terms, u always count the lanes going in both directions, ao that would be a 6 lane strode
Correct, and you do that because lanes might not be even, a 2-3 lane setup would be a 5 lane road (one of which he mentions when the little girl waiting) and so on.
Correct! 11:59 is a 6 lane (3 each way) stroad with a turn lane at the intersections. Notably, that shot of Overland Park (a portion of the KC metro) is facing south, just south of 93rd St & Metcalf Ave. It's very representative of that area, full of stroads, businesses, corporate offices, & strip malls, with sections of houses wedged in-between. All of those business oriented suburbs are ridiculously pedestrian & bicycle unfriendly.
I live in Central Stockholm. I have four grocery stores within five minutes walking distance, and probably a few tens of restaurants within those same five minutes. Hairdressers, various other kinds of stores, schools, and lots of other things. The nearest freeway is perhaps 10 minutes walk from where I live, but I almost never go there. You can definitely say freeways aren't very important to how I live my life. Right now I don't even have a car, I donated mine to Ukraine.
thank you!
Yes!Its the same here in the Netherlands,i dont have to mention a city or town.If you want to buy your weekly groceries it can be done in your neighborhood..Even walking or on a bike.
I've been to ~30 or so major European cities and not a single one of them has had a highway going through the city downtown; many of them have highways leading into the city, but they're at least scaled down to roads and streets in the city centre. Downtowns are the most valuable plots of land in a city and they should serve people and businesses; a highway serves neither, takes up huge amounts of space and the required infrastructure is incredibly expensive instead of being profitable, as it would be if the land was used for housing and businesses. Not to mention they're incredibly loud, ugly and just make the city less pleasant to be in.
You haven't been to Karlsruhe then. :D We have a high-ish road through the center, the Kriegsstrasse. Parts of it are 70 kph max, while the standard for all other streets is 50 kph (and most residential areas are of course 30 kph). That said, there are now a two bypasses, north and south, but the Kriegsstrasse still gets heavy traffic in rush hour. Though it's nothing like a "stroad", because for one it's not really *high* speed (just higher than a normal inner city street) and for another it has access streets running in parallel with normal speed limits for the high-speed parts.
@ Yeah, I'd count those as roads. Athens also has a bunch of 8-lane roads going through the city, and while it's annoying and loud for a pedestrian, it doesn't even begin to compare to something like Dallas, TX where it feels like half of the downtown has been torn down for freeways.
Thats one of the most astonishing things about it, due to how obvious it is even for laymen.
If you look at said map of Cincinatti it becomes painfully obvious that they basically bulldozed 25% of the core city for the freeway.
Imagine having many friends who like visiting you very often, because you have such a great garden to relax in. So you destroy half your garden to make space for the parking lots so all of those friends have enough parking space. You don't need to be a civil engineer to understand how stupid this is.
Actually, Berlin has motorways. There is even one that is currently being extended (based on plans from the 90s, with federal money allocated, which the local government is unwilling to give back). However: The concept is widely regarded as a failure, but during the 60s and 70s, in the years of separation (the Wall), money got poured into both parts of the city to showcase the superiority of each system and this unfortunately included the concept of creating a car centred city which was by then considered to be "modern".
In many heads, this mentality persists, so change is slow, especially now, when money is scarce, but it is underway, just slower than in other places.
You should come to Athens, we have many 6 lane highways that go through the city, even have one on the 'Athenian Riviera' on the seafront. A couple of these are genuine highways that have to even be crossed by bridges if you are on foot.
24:30 In Europe, "jaywalking" isn't a thing (we don't shame people for that). However, there are some countries that have laws that obligate pedestrians to use the crosswalk if there's one within a certain distance (in my country Luxembourg, that distance is 30m). In other countries (like the Netherlands) these laws either don't exist or were repealed. NotJustBikes has made another brilliant video about this topic, highly recommended.
Yes, for example here in Sweden if the crossing has lights for pedestrians, you could potentially get fined for walking "a red light", much like you can get fined for driving through a red light. But we more or less only have those kinds of lights on streets where there is a lot of traffic. On a small street with stores and houses on the side with low traffic, you see people crossing where ever they like mostly.
Here in Austria we have the same law - if a cross walk is 30 Meters or less away, you are required to use it
In the UK you aren't required to use a crossing.
It was required here in The Netherlands in the past, but not anymore. You can just cross wherever you like.
Here in Portugal it's still 50m.
In Germany it is a huge negative for your apartment if it is next to a freeway. You can basically deduct 200 euros rent for the same apartment if it is next to a freeway.
yeah, no one really want to live next to a highway in europe, there's one a bit over 2km from where I live and even then I can hear it through an open window, so living right next to one is a big nope.
What you were saying about living close to the freeway - yes, it's weird here in Europe and a lot of cities that have that are trying to push larger roads out by building more roads around the city. Because if you live in a city here, for a lot of people, getting around is not limited to a car, so a lot of people don't consider whether they're close to a freeway, but rather if they're close to a public transport station. I live in Prague and my family would usually decide how nice to live a place was based on, among many other things, whether it was close to a subway station.
I live in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). My house is quite close to a highway. But the trainstation (with trams, metro, busses, trains, taxi and bikes) is just a 7 minute walk. Here, that takes you somewhere far faster, since highways tend to get very crowded around working hours.
Prague is also very car-centric in it's government
@@michalandrejmolnar3715 very true. but still it is an European country not comparable to the US car-centric mayham....
The reason WHY she wants to live near a freeway is that stores, schools and jobs are SPREAD OUT in the US. That way you have to have a freeway to get to them.
When you build freeways everywhere, businesses (and homes) MOVE FURTHER APART from each other, leading to more people HAVING TO BE on the road.
This dynamic is called: "the tragedy of the commons" where everybody THINKS they know what they want (lots of highways to get places quickly), and then, when businesses move further apart and more people are forced to drive, the "quick" highways become bottlenecks that end up stealing your time!
Jaywalking situation from Poland: If you have a crossing within 100 m(109 yards) you must use it. Otherwise you can cross anywhere but you must give way to cars. On a crossing you always have the right of way
It used to be similar in the Netherlands, except the distance was 30 meters instead of 100 meters. But this was abolished in 1995 to simplify the traffic code (how do you estimate these distances?).
Same here in Luxembourg, except the distance is 50M here
Same in Serbia, if you have a crossing within 100m you have to cross there, otherwise you're good to go.
holy! 100m! that's like an entire block, or as we would say in North America, an entire football field! Might as well just walk to the intersection, cant be that much further than 100m
Finn here, I've always seen living close to a highway as a bad thing and a problem. You want to live near where the stuff is, not a road leading to where the stuff is. Often this corresponds with places with good public transport. Highway on the other hand is seen as a wasteland more or less, you go there by car if you need to, but if you end up near it by walking, you feel like you don't belong.
Also, you can't cross the road outside crosswalk if there's a crosswalk 50m in either direction. If there's no crosswalk, then you're free to cross "reasonably", the law is a bit vague about what does that mean but I take it to mean, don't dive under oncoming traffic.
It's worth remembering, and you did a video about it a while ago which you mentioned later on in the vid, that noise pollution from highways is really damaging. they're incredibly loud, disruptive and stress inducing for those living close to them.
A little adding information about the highways here in The Netherlands. The government is slowly exchanging the normal asphalt highways with 'extra open asphalt' (I think it's called this). It's super quiet and when it rains, there isn't any water splashing up. I drive an electric car and driving on these highways is so extremely quiet, you can whisper and still hear each other in the car. Love it! ❤️
The downside to ZOAB (as it's acronym is in Dutch) is that is wears down much faster than the regular asphalt, so it's more maintenance heavy. Of course it drives much nicer and clears water much beter, which s the reason that it is preferred these days (for safety reasons as it cuts down on the risk of aquaplaning).
As a German: Yes it's super weird to have highways (or Autobahns) go THROUGH cities, that's just... loud and horrible. Plus it has no upside whatsoever. I can go off the Autobahn and be in a town, village or city in two or three minutes, and while there I won't be BLASTED by the Autobahn soundscape
It happens. But it's an exception. For example the A100 in Berlin or the A40 through the Ruhr area
@@S_Black Other Examples are the A562 in Bonn (Ends at the left rhine river side but goes through Bonn-Holzem / Beuel on the right side.
Also the A565 goes through Bonn from West to East (not the city center but "cuts" some districts (Dransdorf, Endenich, Poppelsdorf, Auerberg, Graurheindorf, Plittersdorf) from the city center.
But: The A565 is first digged 5-6m (15-18ft) below ground (but not a tunnel) and at ground level are a lot of pedestrian or Street bridges to re-connect the city parts. Closer to the Rhine river the A565 becomes literally a High-Way and is build as a Bridge that allowews the city on Ground level to be still connected (The Bridge is called "Tausendfüssler" -or centipede in english because it is build with "a lot of " stilts and reminds of a worm with a lot of legs aka centipede).
Here the problem is that - when the Autobahn was build - there was mostla only farmland around but later the Villages and Cities massivly expanded until they surrounded the Autobahn completly.
20:41 theres actually a road that does this in Brigantine, New Jersey
But its only on the main road coming into the island, Its only on the side thats coming in, and the speed limit is still 50mph.
I’ve been a fan of Not Just Bikes for about a year. It was great to hear a fresh perspective. My family is planning a move within the next year to a city offering better public transportation within the U.S.
"Trust me, it sucks to walk down this stroad" so true. One time me and my brother missed our bus to school and we tried to go to another location to catch it, but that didn't work and we were on the other side of our neighborhood so we had walk along a rather big stroad to get to our side. Not our finest moments
17:10 Of cause, if most of the trafffic within a city happens on slow going stroads, the only way to get around is a freeway. And if the existing freeways go through the city and not around them, that alternative does not exist either. Your perspective is not unreasonable, but it does only fit for cities with the particular design, which you are used to.
If you have a propper network of roads within a city (which consists of streets for the most part) you usually get around at a reasonable speed everywhere and for the longer trips, you have rather quick access to faster roads and freeways around the city or to the next one. Biking and pedestrian options are of cause improving all traffic systems, because they reduce the car traffic. But the principle of propper roadway-hirarchy is functioning mostly independent.
Of cause, if cities get extremely big, the maximum speed on roads within the city can also become a limiting factor. In that case, some true high speed connections can become beneficial (if it is not replaced by great public transport + functional park&ride). But usually, you are much better of with a bit less maximum speeds which you can constantly keep up from most starting points within the city to most destinations.
24:30 In Germany, pedestrians may not cross barriers to cross a street or road and whenever a crossing is close by, it is mandatory to use that. And if it is a signalised crossing, walking across the street or road when your light is red, is allways illegal (and frowned upon as well). Unsignalised crossings allways mean, that cars have to give way to pedestrians.
But firstly, there are usually plenty of crossings and secondly it is not illegal to cross roads and streets if there is no dedicated crossing (unless, there is a physical barrier, a sign, which forbids it or if it is a freeway). Also: If pedestrians cross a road, where no crosswalk is available, the cars technically have priority and the pedestrians must do their best not to get in their way unnecessarily. But even if a pedestrian completely ignores the rules, drivers are allways held responsible, if they hit a pedestrian and could have avoided it.
There is no philosophy of "jaywalking is a kind of suicide" here, neither customarily, nor in the law.
14:00 "The Stroad fails at every metric"
americans: "but we use the IMPERIAL system here ... gotcha!"
As a resident of Switzerland, I'd love to see you reacting to NotJustBikes' video "Why Swiss Trains are the Best in Europe", because this really amazed me when I moved here. Having previously lived in Germany, Argentina and the UK, I truly admire the Swiss for how well they are doing public transport, namely trains.
The clear zone of freeways in Denmark is for emergencies. That could be for your car breaking down and emergency vehicles that need to get to an accident.
In Denmark you can be (although, I've never heard of anyone who was) fined for jaywalking if you cross a road less than 50 metres from a pedestrian crossing, or if you spend an unnatural amount of time crossing, intentionally obstructing traffic. If the crossing is further away, you are okay to cross.
Funny story, in september we had a city orienteering tournament in my town, it was made for PI (Politiets Idrætsforening) so there was a lot of police men and women.
I joined them as the organizer is the brother of a friend (I'm not police). We were talking about what to do about crossing the streets, but it seemed that no one knew exactly what the rules were. I decided to be cautious and only use crossings, and of course only walk on green. But I observed the police runners doing whatever they felt was the quickest, and several crossed the road at red lights (when there was no cars but not green), so I felt quite silly waiting for green, when they just went past me.
This rule is a common sense knowledge in all of Europe.
Except it's not a knowledge and not a rule.
Since the 90ties, it has been widely abolished.
Restricting pedestrians to zebra crossings just puts more cars on the roads, especially of people who would much rather bike, or walk.
24:39 in most EU countries you can cross a street where ever you want if you are aware of the traffic. But bigger roads in cities you only cross on crosswalks/lights.
Haha, love that Futon reference. Most useless furniture. About entering or exiting cars on Stroads! You might be safer to do it from passenger side. That way your driver side door won't fly away because someone running to it.
That's true! Little bit of a pain, but MUCH safer! :)
Isn't a futon just the japanese word for "bed"? Seems to be not useless considering a "futon" is used so widely in Japan.
@@MrProthall Google says yes: the word futon is Japanese in origin for bed.
That was one of the reasons for keeping driving on the left in Sweden: we drove on the left, in cars with the driver's seat on the left; the driver entered/exited the car from the sidewalk, without having to walk around the car out into the traffic. Much safer!
I like your idea of entering/exiting from the passenger side. Unfortunately carmakers today tend to design cars with a huge center console, forming a plastic Berlin wall between driver and passenger side, making crossing over into a olympics level gymnastic endeavour.
@@dsludge8217 Great comment 🤣
I've never heard of Jay walking anywhere in the world other than the US, I've lived in New Zealand, Australia and UK, as well as travelling extensively in other countries. In general if a car hits a pedestrian its the car drivers fault unless it's completely unavoidable but it's always incumbent on drivers to look out for vulnerable road users.
Vehicles are much much easier to see than pedestrians. Do you drive? Unless at a crossing, pedestrian area, on the sidewalk etc. any fault of the driver would have to be proven in court. Pedestrians are not road users until they step off the kerb, and they should only do that when it is safe to do so.
@@strangelyjamesly4078 I'm a truck driver for over 20 years. If I come round a corner to find a pedestrian crossing my lane, it's down to me to slow or stop and allow them to cross. I think there's a different mentality in the US, the car is king and fuck everyone else. The rest of the world gives the most vulnerable road users more rights over drivers. Of course pedestrians have to cross responsibly, but we are all human and mistakes are made. But crossing a road anywhere other than a motorway is just a human right, a road should be no impediment to a pedestrian.
@@DomingoDeSantaClara Crossing a road is a not a right. No idea why you kids don't know what "Rights" are.
@@brandondavis7777 kids? I'm fucken near retired lol. What do you think people did before cars came along? Of course its a right to walk where you like on public property, unless you live in the land of the fee, where those rights appear to have been lost. That's why jay walking isn't a thing in the rest of the world, because it IS our right.
@@DomingoDeSantaClara If you acted older, I might acknowledge that, with how you act, you're clearly 12. Mentally, at least. It's pretty irrelevant to bring up before cars. Cars exist, and roads are designed for them. Sidewalks are for pedestrians. You've no right to the roads unless in a vehicle.
16:22 Yes, not sayings its not done, but its more of the city expanded around the freeway, than the freeway was build into the city.
Great video, thank you Heidi
As a curious Danish guy, it's really interesting to learn about the different subjects you bring up in your videos
Here in Denmark, high/freeways are almost always going around the outside the cities like in the Netherlands, having good and functioning public transport (most of the time ^^) really helps
All in all the way things are done here, is pretty much like the Netherlands
Keep up the good work 👍🏻
From standing at the bus station in the middle of my city till getting off in the middle of my GF's city 60km(37mi) away, it takes 1 hour. There are city/regional and then intercity busses.
Intercity busses like the one I take is between cities. Regional is to all small towns in a surrounding area and city busses are within the city itself.
26:55
It also was done relatively cheaply. Roads need to be resurfaced every 30 years or so. So whenever a road came up for resurfacing they just spend a little more to change it.
Here in the UK we are treated as adults and trusted to know how to cross a road safely..lol..so no such thing as jaywalking..😊
as an American i can assure you the average American should never be treated as an adult.
24:34
Here in Germany it's more about the circumstances than the crossing itself. Crossing the Autobahn or a "Kraftfahrtstraße" (one level below AUtobahn) is always prohibited. But in most other cases, if you're not creating a risk (like forcing cars to slow down/stop/swerve) you'll be fine. The "endangering"-part can get a bit costly though if you do create a dangerous situation.
16:23 the idea is to have every necessary services within your walking distance or at the very least have a robust transit system that you won't need freeways running through valuable land to get city folks to their destination. Freeways that cut through cities essentially cuts neighborhoods from doing business with one another
Around 12:00 there are six lanes. Inbound and outbound lanes. Same road. If you took Rt. XYZ North, then there would be South bound lanes on the other side of it. Rt. ABC East and the other side Rt. ABC West.
Around 17:00 it reminds me of Tokyo a bit where you measure the value of a property by how close it is to a subway station. I guess same idea applies only that Americans primary way of transportation is a car which has impacts.
So the type of highways he's talking about are the inter-regional type, not the type that connects parts of a city. In the US, I think this is mainly the realm of the Interstate highways. You definitely want to have access to these from cities, but they're such a massive and dedicated infrastructure project that they split cities up if they go through them similarly to how a river does. The story of how they got built in the US is really tragic too, because they were deliberately routed through primarily black communities, which tanked land value and led to a general decline in the wealth of the folks who lived in those areas. (There's more detail to go into, but I am by no means qualified to explain further.)
The role of city spanning highways in the Dutch system is filled by the distributor roads. In principle it's the same kind of thing as the big city freeway systems - a high speed connector between parts of the city, but it's less bloated because it's not also handling all the through traffic from people who are trying to get from city A to city B and don't care about the city they're driving through in order to get there.
Notably, that speed limit he mentioned for the neighbourhood streets was 30 km/h, which is about 18 mph. I assume (since you didn't seem to find that slow) the 30 sounded intuitive to you because 30mph is the standard in much of the US (also up here in Canada where it's 50km/h), but it's closer to parking lot speeds. Which is fine because when you're driving in that kind of walkable environment, you don't *want* to go faster than that. I remember on my driving test being asked what the speed limit was in one such area and answering "theoretically 50" and then having to explain my reasoning - there's no posted speed limit, which in my hometown defaults to 50km/h, but with stop signs every 50 meters and crosswalks every 25, wall to wall parking along the sides of the street and all, you'd have to be a madman to drive anywhere close to 50km/h in that area.
As for the frontage road idea (where you have a main road, but with streets built either side of it that do access to the houses/businesses on the side of the road) - it's an excellent idea, but one reliant on design consistency - it's not quite as efficient as designing the road and street networks semi-independently, but it's a very easy starting point...and it only really works if the people planning road/street design keep up with the idea. One frustrating thing I've noticed driving around my own community since seeing these videos is that there's several places that are pretty close to following these principles. The arterial roads as we call them are long and straight and high speed and all that good stuff and then suddenly you hit part of the city that's newer or older and it's a classic stroad setup. Which says that we do have designers who understand this, at least locally. We just also have ones who don't...and we often listen to that group instead.
Agree with all of that, but one nitpick: 30mph/18kph is a _scary_ “parking lot speed”, and I hope you’re not actually doing that or encountering many people going that fast in parking lots. Yikes!
Also, I don’t know how common 30mph inside cities is in the US? I’ve spent most of my life in WI, where 25mph is the standard in towns and cities, and I’m always caught a bit off guard when I’m in a state where 30mph or 35mph is the default.
And as a cyclist the difference between 25mph streets and 30mph streets is significant. Especially since speed enforcement tends to be so lax in the US, so that’s really the difference between 30mph traffic and 35mph traffic.
I actually got stopped by police for jaywalking (Croatia). It was rain and I crossed road like 20m away from the crossing, and I've seen the police waiting there, but didn't think they'd come after me. They asked me why I done it because crossing was just nearby and why I done it in front of them which was kinda funny. Anyways they checked ID and pretended like they are checking in system if I have any previous tickets and just let me go (we were all standing in rain and one guy seemed like he was learning still, so the older guy probably saw the chance for some 'action').
I guess differs country to country whether there are laws, but 99% of cases police will not care much, maybe only if you do it in dangerous situation.
16:25 If freeways do approach a city centre, they will be reduced to a lower grade road and you will see the road design change to basically request from the user without signs like "Hey, you are entering a different type of road."
For instance, the S116 (not a freeway, but not a "Gebiedsontsluitingsweg" either) leading into Amsterdam through the IJTunnel, after the IJTunnel becomes a different type of road (maximum speed on the S116 is 70 kilometer first, and then becomes 50 kilometers. Yes, there's still a sign denoting you are leaving a "Gebiedsontsluitingsweg" and there's a sign stating the new maximum speed, but the road design will also immediately change, becomes narrower and looses the guard rail meant to keep the different directions separated (which looks a bit more like a freeway type of design, but OK).
Not long after this you will start to see the first pedestrian crossings and sidewalks, and traffic lights.
In theory we have jaywalking rules, you are supposed to cross the road at either a zebra crossing or traffic lights if you are within 30 or 50 meters of one.
That said, police might actually make a problem out of it if you do it right in front of them, while seemingly trying to make sure getting hit by a car because you just decided to cross with the attitude: "People need to watch out for me, I'm crossing here!"
Other than that, police has different things on their mind to worry about :P .
During a big event in Amsterdam cycling was prohibited in an area behind the Central Station with multiple signs stating this, and while police was standing on some of the temporary signs stands to look over the crowd, some people decided to drive their bicycle anyway, they did very slow, and they definitely took the many pedestrians into account, but police was completely ignoring them because they made sure not to hit people, whereas if someone decided to blast into the crowd expecting people to make way, that would probably draw attention and have a team on the other side stop the cyclist.
In Italy, jaywalking is allowed only if there is no crosswalk within 50 meters.
17:07 I live within walking distance of a freeway in Europe. I don't consider it a good thing at all. When the wind direction is"right", you can hear the cars in the entire town, even though they're two kilometers away. Also, a freeway is like a giant wall. I can only cross it at some designated tunnels and bridges, making hiking into that direction not fun. To be fair, the rail near me does act like a barrier too, but because it's much smaller (two tracks compared to the six lane freeway), there are many more bridges, as they are less expensive to build.
in germany our autobahn (freeways) are outside the inner cinty centers, sometimes the city grew into them over the decades but i think its never intended, in big cities like Köln you will a freewayring completelyaround the city which will provide access to other freeways in all directions
11:50 - In road design, you count both directions when determining the number of lanes. So that road actually has 6 lanes. I know lay people count them differently, but there you have it.
About jay walking clip - they crossed a road but they were riding their bikes. It was a crossroad for them. They weren't crossing as pedestrians but as vehicles of the road.
The main counterpoint for highways going through a city is the destruction that has to happen to do it. Count how many buildings (residential w/families and business potentially owned by those people) disappear from the map on 16:05 to the one at 16:10 around that ugly interchange in the lower left area.
The people that were there originally didn't have a choice. They were told to shut up and get out or else go to prison due to the Eminent Domain law. Really ****ed up thing to do to them if you ask me.
8:31 It depends, in Europe, in many places taking a car still is faster.
But the difference, is that public transport is actually often a viable alternative, because it's way cheaper than using cars, and that the time difference between the two is very minimal in most cities.
Also very many people still need a car despite infrastructures being a lot better.
Really interesting to hear your perspective :) Greetings from the Netherlands!
Netherland is1,316 people per mi2 for a population of around 17 millions, USA is 94 people per mi2 for a population of 330 millions, Canada 10 people per mi2 for a population of around 40 millions. City that are very dense like New York, Boston, Toronto, Montreal and compare to European cities, North American ones are barely beginning that change and it will take more time to achieve what Amsterdam was able to do in 30 years.
17:00 As a pedestrian, you don't want to cross the highway in city.
And as a car, you don't want to be stopped by a traffic light.
I loved this video because this is the opinion that took me off of my urbanist, “take cars away!” mindset, and really consider how the American public is feeling about roads and what exactly a car means to us and being more realistic in the change, I expect cities in the American public to make in terms of shifting our reliance from cars so that we do not have to make these stroads. I saw this same opinion come from my best friend who is my roommate he feels less urbanist, instead more how the American mindset is, and you basically summed up how he feels.
12:00 - the minimum of four lanes is two in each direction, so the segment shown has 6.
I love the infrastructure we have in The Netherlands. Roads and streets are constantly being reshaped to suit the needs of the city, instead of building the city based on the roads available.
p.s. About the jaywalking thing: You are always allowed to cross a street, but roads and highways only on designated areas like crossings.
the jaywalking there in the video from the woman with the bike in front is technical not legal but i doubt this would be a problem...
@@SirHeinzbond As I understood the situation (with the bikes crossing the street in front of a crosswalk) This is a intersection and the Bikes where on the street to drive over the intersection. Maybe the woman didn't jump on her bike while crossing the intersection because on the right side she wanted to turn left 90° to drive on the bikepath and has to stop and jump off her bike again to let the other bikes pass first.
@@dirkspatz3692 i don't think any person has a problem here whatever her reason was... by pushing the bike she could also use the crossing five meters back in the video, but as i said no one would ever think it's wrong what she did albeit strict legal it's not okay.... but anyhow, no one was harmed...
Because the US is so car centric, even a trip to the grocery store will be done by car. And then, of course it is nice to have a highway nearby, to go to the grocery store a few miles further, and park your car there. There is a big cultural difference here as well, which can be one of the reasons why you will never find a highway through a city. Here in The Netherlands, I would take my bike to go to the store, or walk there. There are so many small grocery stores here in Utrecht (NL), instead of just a few big ones at the edge of town. There will always be a store near where you live, so you can walk or bike there. I am talking about less than a mile from almost every home, there will be some kind of grocery store. Or, as an alternative, I can order my weekly groceries online and get them delivered for free.
If I want to go to the city centre by car, the 11 km (7 miles) trip will take 17 minutes according to Google Maps. The route takes me from my home street, via some roads to the highway going around the city. Then, I can take an exit on a few other roads, and reach my destination on a street. If I do the same trip by bike, it will also take me 17 minutes, but that trip is only 5,5 km (3,5 miles) and goes straight through town. That is half the distance in the same time. Utrecht doesn't want you to go by car, and it shows.
Your comment about freeways in cities is fascinating to me-
(this video is a year old so someone has probably pointed this out already but forgive me-) because it really reveals how car-pilled our brains still tend to be. We want all the benefits of pedestrianized and bike-friendly infrastructure, but when it comes to giving up the immediate convenience of having high-speed car-infrastructure everywhere well... then it suddenly gets difficult. Alas, if we want high-density, profitable, and pleasant city-design then the highways -must- be banished to the outer rings of the city. Otherwise everything would just spread out and require parking lots all over again.
Which brings me to one concession; generally speaking freeways through cities are completely unheard of where I'm from, (Dutchie here) but our cities are rarely the kind of super-sized metropolis that other nations deal with. It's mostly the city-centers that warrant this rule however. Even out here it might occur that a subsurb grows beyond the boundary of a 'ringweg' (literally ring-road, most cities will have a high-speed road that circles around the city, Im sure these are common internationally?) and I can't say I really love existing around ring-roads either even if they seem like somewhat of a necessary evil u_u,
16:34 it's pretty weird. Even in the UK, the America of Europe, we don't really have that. They tried it in London but basically put a stop to it. Major highways go above and around the city suburbs but not through the centre.
4:38 That's where I live, London. We have a few of those. I recognize most of the roads. Lots of bikes are hit here.
Hmm here in Norway we usually dont have highways(motorveier) going through our citys.
We usually have roads off the highways, into the citys.
And here in Oslo, they actually have laid most of those accesroads into tunnels under the city ❤️
We actually have made parts of Oslo a carfree zone 😁
But as you said Heidi, youll need a well developed public transportation system to do that 🙂
And no, i dont think we have jaywalking, you might get a fine if your bicycling dangerously towards pedestrians on sidewalks though 🙂
And lol the stroads to hell, are paved with good intentions 😛😛
Er noen her og der i Norge også uheldigvis 😅
Highways cutting through a city is always related to segregation people from other people. America layout is built on segregation and racism. Gentrification is a way to beauty streets, but it also raise the price of homes beside house flipping. The thing in Europe, cities are built for the working class, middle class and upper class!
the one thing i thought about while Heidi reacted to the topic of highways ideally being out of the City is how do you determine the edge of a city? If a city grows it usually sprawls outward in growth and development. Eventually highways get extended and developed around it does it not? And Norway I imagine isn't quite the largest of places in terms of population and population density but maybe I am wrong about that.
@@onyxcitadel9759 Oslo has over 700 000 inhabitants on I believe around 450km². Therefore, while not being the largest, it is a big city.
5:15 Yes, it does suck. We had buyer's remorse almost immediately and are now trying to upscale the property as much as possible to sell it quickly and get out of there.
In the netherlands you are allowed to cross roads everywhere unless you aren’t allowed to go on to the road (like highways). There used to be a law that said you needed to use designated crosswalks when they were within a certain distance. We don’t have that law anymore but using the designated crosswalks might still be benificial depending on the situation, like when there is a zebra crossing. On the zebra crossing vehicles and bikes need to give way to you, however when you walk next to the zebra crossing this rule doesn’t apply and you have to give way to them.
I hope this clears things up for you, i also reccomend you watch more of his content as it is really interresting.
Correct, people on the zebra crossing have right of way and everybody else should stop. But not if you are cycling on a zebra crossing, officially you have to get off the bike and walk across to have the right of way.
The crossing at the end of the video with a person crossing a street with bikes, cars and trams is very rare. I would expect traffic lights for pedestrians in that situation. You cannot expect a tram to stop for pedestrians. If there are no traffic lights she does have priority over the rest.
Great reaction! Would love to see if America manages to catch up in the future, because I think it's sad for a continent with such beautiful environments to have cites that look like this
We're very close to a critical mass of public support for urbanism, but since it's physical infrastructure it'll take a while to catch up.
There are only a few major cities in the country outside of a few major New England towns where there is no highway that is present in downtown, with Chicago, New York and Lexington, KY being the main prominent examples. Originally there were plans for Interstate 64 and 75 to have a spur route that runs through downtown Lexington but that was canceled. Instead a circular beltway encircles it.
The only streets we are not aloud to cross are fast freeways with speeds higher then 80km/u
Finnish road design is definitely closer to the Dutch model. Bus+taxi lanes have existed for a long time, there are some highways where the lanes allow other traffic outside rush hour. I have never tthought about how close I live to a highway, that is a weird way of thinking! We rather think if we are close to a metro or train station. There are highways that end up in the city center, but they turn into roads usually. Some cities do have highways going through them, but most of the time they are at the outer edge or completely go around the city.
17:20 to the point of lack of freeways: I think that looking at many European cities, freeways near you are not necessary. Like sure, you wan't a freeway to get to the city, but you don't wan't that freeway to go through the city. Ultimately you will get a tight city center, so that walking/riding a bike/using public transport will get you anywhere easily, because everything is so close to the city center. This is emphasized by the lack of parking space in the city center, which makes it possible to pack the city closely together. Now you basically only need to have a freeway to reach the city, and once you reach it, you can easily move across the city with other ways of transportation. One good example from personal life is that I used to live close to a city, so I would just take a bus/train to the city centre, or I'd use car to get to the train and then use the train to go to city centre. And once in the city centre, everything was pretty much in a walking distance (like max 1-3km; 0-2 miles). So sure, if you don't live near the city centre, you probably wan't a freeway close to you, but then again in a well built transportation system then you most likely have a freeway close to you or good public transportation to the city centre, given that you don't live in the middle of nowhere :D
And although this is already such a sprawling message and I'm not sure if anyone will ever read this XD, I have to comment on 19:20 to the effectivity of slow speed limits, strong public transport and lot of people. I feel they are extremely effective, as driving in many European city centres is hellish, and probably (as it seems) by design. When you have lanes that are designed for busses only (making them illegal to drive with a normal car), trams crossing everywhere with a right to cross before cars, loads of people walking everywhere with a lot of traffic lights and slow speed limits... That really discourages driving in the city centre and makes it a much nicer option to walk or use public transportation.
Yes, in Europe we don't have freeways inside the city. Large cities typically have a ring, a special freeway that goes around the city, with turn-offs to get to centre.
24:25. In the Netherlands, there is no such thing as jaywalking. We used to have a law that forbade people from crossing within 10 meters of a zebra crossing, but that no longer exists. The same thing applies to most European countries. You are always allowed to cross a street or road (not a freeway, obviously) unless there is a specific sign that forbids you from crossing.
I'm new to the channel love your content so far greetings from the Netherlands.
here in the Netherlands we don't have jay walking there are zebra crossings where the roads are wider for pedestreans to cross and on a zebra crossing the pedestrean has right of way
when there is no zebra crossing you may cross the street as long you do it savely when there is no traffing coming or there is enough space between traffic to cross
Those 1 or 2 block sections with nice street/road design are usually found around campuses.
An important reason why many European cities do not have motorways through the city center is that they were well developed long before car traffic became widespread.
Since downtown has the highest land value, building freeways there would be expensive, in addition to problems with historic buildings and residents' reluctance.
Thge same is true for American cities though.
Almost every US downtown predates the car and was therefore originally designed to be walkable. But unlike in Europe (for the most part), this didn't stop them from bulldozing right through many older neighborhoods in order to build freeways and parking lots. The comparison with old pictures can be shocking.
These stroads are really dangerous. My doctor's office is on one and I see seniors playing chicken with high speed traffic going to their appointments all the time.
American: I want a high way entry as close as possible to my home. European: I want a train station as close as possible to my home.
in Germany and most of europe you dont really want either close to your home ... trains are the highway equivalent of public transport, loud and the rail infrastructure is disruptive in how it cuts through and off.
What we want is to have a quiet neighbourhood, which also has essential things like your schools, bakeries, grocery and likor stores in short distance so that the need to travel anywhere further away is significantly reduced ... then all you want is a bus/tram/subway stop close which links up to the larger businesses/workplaces or trains (if you need to go further).
Europe rarely has the restrictive zoning which keep essentials far away from homes, which means highways and their public transport equivalents dont have to be close to housing as they are needed far less. A large number of european people barely use highways or trains in their everyday life ... most needed in life can be reached without cars/trains thanks to how our cities are build.
@@diedampfbrasse98 What I meant with "train station" was a good public transport hub. Reachable by foot, or bike.
But if you want to continue this conversation, I think we both would be better of speaking German.
Too answer 2 questions you have, the reason why you prefer highways through cities is because you need a car to get everywhere. In the Netherlands the highway tends to go around and within the city there are enough options to get where you want fast and safely wether it is in a car or by bike or Public transport.
2. No there isn't such a thing a jaywalking over here, the crossings are usually only really used to make it more clar and safer to cross but you're allowed to cross anywhere.
Japan have highway in the city, and yes they have better public transport than Netherlands by a big margin, and they dont have alot of dedicated bike line. funny Channel like not just bike think Netherlands is a benchmark.
@@anubizz3 Great, we were talking about dutch infrastructure but you're shoehorning Japan in here. Lets be honest, neither is the be-all-end-all of infrastructure and having good infrastructure should not be a pissing contest (as it seems like it is to you) but rather an opportunity to learn.
The Netherlands is quite a benchmark for cylcing infrasture, I know of no other country where you can litterally get everywhere by either dedicated cycling lane or low speed and low use street as one of the most efficient ways of travel. (maybe Denmark) Japan is very good in terms of public transport but not more than bad to meh in terms of cycling infrastructure.
To be better Japan should add good dedicated and separated cycling lanes and cycling routes so that you can litterally get everywhere without being forced on a longer route or being forced on a road where you have to deal with cars.
For the Netherlands there could be higher frequency and bigger coverage for public transport to make it way better.
@@anubizz3 well in terms of Bike infrastructure, the Netherlands is the benchmark. In Japan people do bike a lot thanks to a lot of interesting quirks and features, but they can't be easily replicated to other places.
@@polyliker8065 Well the video talking about stroads but in the end just praising Netherland and pissing on USA and North America in general , go watch cycling in tokyo and cycling in Oulu they prefer wide share path or low speed share road, yeah so everybody can use the not only one mode of transport. why Japan need more dedicated bikeline where the people there discipline enough so the can share with cars , motorcycle , pedestrian ,dog , small children (alone) , scooter and so on? and yeah they can go anywhere 50km away with their public transport faster than riding a bike in dedicated bike lane? I wonder if you ride bike from Utrecht to armsterdam everyday for work, yeah thats how big Tokyo metropolitan are.
Everything its about option, Japan like any other Asia great city prefer option, you could drive, ride a bike , motorbike , or public transport. why priorities on one form of transport, you clearly hate cars get priority but in forcing other to accept only bike get priority.
Improving public transport is a key, there will be little opposition , fluidly reducing a car, then we can do whatever we want with that stroads , destroying stroads and make protected bikeline without public transport its not work.
@@edipires15 It replicated by alot big city, While Netherlands way not even widely replicated by tiny city of Europe . I hope they don't replicate Netherlands pathetic public transport as well.
24:33 Denmark, if there is a crosswalk within 30 meters, you can get fined if you cross the street, I don't recall ever hearing of someone getting fine for that. My guess would be, if you do it on a busy day, you could get fined.
Same here in the netherlands, also never heard of someone who got fined for not following this rule.
11:52 that's 6 lanes, not 3 lanes. The only reason to have 3 lanes is to prioritize a movement in a certain direction, like a large country road, where there are 2 lanes going into a city, but only one lane going away from the city.
Yes, it is actually straightforward 😂
stroomweg = "stream-way"
rule of thumb, (Poland) you can walk thro wherever you want, on roads, you can get a ticket, usualy not, but with higher traffic you can get pulled, expecialy when road has light signalisation, also, technicaly you could legaly walk thro freeway since law says if there is no zebra(we call here those stripes on the streets here) in 20m from you, you can legaly walk to the other side if you do not disrupt traffic
Where I'm from a pedestrian is required to use the pedestrian's crossing in case the traffic situation requires it. And has only to adhere to the lights as long as the lights are active, that is since there are some only active when requested by pressing the button. But in case the points above are met, you have to use the lights / pedestrian crossing or you could be fined a hefty fine, even risking your driver's license.
FYI, the houses that have driveways that let out onto Stroads existed before the stroad. at some point in time, there was a country road there that wasn't as heavily traveled. Eventually, the city grew and didn't plan properly, leaving the only efficient means for passthrough traffic to get to the other side of town was that road with the houses on it.
If the town had planned ahead, they would have left some space for a road to passthrough, or rather funded a road with plenty of space to expand right outside of town before the town grew too big.
AKA, stroads exist because of poor city planning.
What a coincidence, I was just about to send you a link to "not just bikes", considering your interest in city design and such, but I see now that you're already acquainted with the channel. Now that I've copied the link, I'll send it to you anyway though. Anyway, thank you for your charming channel.
All the best from a chilly, dark Stockholm, Maja's Dad
28:00 is the truth, great video. I’m looking forward to said improvements. 💫
I love you're reacting to his content. I love his channel. And I love yours. A great mix.
I'm pretty sure that jaywalking is a typical and exclusive American invention.
So in France freeways / highways almost never go through a city, as they are supposed to connect cities together, not inner city parts, it’s for long distance. You will usually only have one or 2 exists around a city (city north & city south) and from time to time around the countryside (maybe every 10 / 20 km.
Nope we cross the street wherever we please. Freedom!!! - Netherlands here
Keep in mind that North America (USA & Canada) is not as dense as Europe countries are. Most city can, still, expand at ground level, which is not the case for European countries. So urban designers are not encourage to densify urban zone because of the amount of land waiting to be exploited.
Where I live in PA, we had a long 2-lane road that was a by-pass from the West suburbs to the East suburbs, it by-passed driving through the city form East to West, in the late 60's this stretch of road was expanded to 4 lanes and in turn, many businesses located along it's length over time, today it is 6 lanes. It was NEVER intended to be 'pedestrian-friendly' and it would be small-minded to criticize it for being motor vehicle-friendly. If a person wants to walk and shop, drive to the city, park and have at it, I'm sure many shops would appreciate the business.
In the netherlands there is no law about Jaywalking. But then again you never have to cross lots of lanes because of the clear differentiation between streets, roads and highways. It is so much easier to get around by foot, especially on streets if you can just cross wherever needed (as long as it's safe).
Isn’t it the point of a reaction video to add your point of view? So don’t feel bad for hitting the space bar a lot. 👍🏼
Hey there, i saw a couple of videos from you and i like the idea that you want to learn more about the world and how other countries make it different than the us. I recommend the videos from the Black Forest Family ;-)
Another cool video Heidi, great job, respect, and best wishes from Serbia.🇷🇸🥰
Those guys on the video where not jaywalking since a bicycle even if pushed by hand is considered a veicule without an auxiliary motor (not a pedestrian). But there are some nuances ... she could have used the pedestrian passage since she was pushing the bicycle but the kids mounted and pedaling couldn't. E-bykes fall in the same category.
24:31 In the Netherlands it's okay to cross a street like that. However, normal rules apply since they're not on the crosswalk. The street they are exiting is elevated at the exit point, so the cars coming from the left have priority. Should they have been on the crosswalk, then they would have priority.
"Why cars don't crash into buildings.." is a great episode.
Thart is one of the disadvantages of North America. You have too much open space, so urban design doesn't have to be efficient (as in continental Europe). Things are just built wherever and however they can.
You can also move parking INSIDE the buildings. In Europe we have parking buildings, so that the cars take less space. It looks for some reason like it's a novelty concept in the US.
Here in Sweden I meet two cops on the crosswalk, we all walked on red.
In Helsinki we have a few ring roads and then several highways leading to the rest of the country. When the highways go towards the city center they turn into regular roads.
so, I don't drive, I'm 61 and never learned, mainly because I had no money early on and so learnt to get around by either public transport or by cycling (I'm from the UK). My first job was only 8 miles from home, so I'd cycle that (it's not a big distance really). When I worked overseas (6 countries and counting) I would either be close enough to the office or be working with others who would rive to the office. The place I had the most difficulty was when I worked in Dallas. We were in an outer suburb, but as there were ZERO cycle routes and very few pavements/sidewalks I had to have one of the secretaries take me shopping when I needed it. The nearest shops were only 5 miles away but there was ZERO public transport and ZERO pedestrian access to even get there.
As much as I agree about stroads I would like to point out that the comparison between USA and the Netherlands is a bit extreme because the Netherlands is one of the most populated countries on earth. Only few other places have a similar population density like the Netherlands. In contrast the USA has an extreme abundance of space for roads which is probably the reason for its extensive usage of land for roads and parking space. Even Germany which is significantly larger than the Netherlands couldn't afford such large parking lots which have been shown to exist in the USA and Canada.
By and large I would say that Germany is taking a similar approach to traffic infrastructure like the Netherlands.
We had a highway going through our town. But it was so bad for the lungs for people that they built a Bridge for the highway going above a small bay just to pull the traffic away from the town.
Because the street is (by purpose) structured with islands and different heights it is not pleasant to "jaywalk" although it is not forbidden. Street builders have a lot of tricks to manipulate the people to behave more savely, like street bumps and special lining and striping, chicanes or small turns in an otherwise strait street etc.
I used to live in Salt Lake City... I had a friend who lived on 700 East... he had to back out of his driveway onto a road with 4 lanes each direction, plus center turn lane, with traffic moving at 45 miles per hour (if people were going the speed limit, which they almost never were). I refused to ever visit his house because I was too afraid to try to exit his driveway.
I'm Croatian, and when I was a teenager police stopped me for jaywalking, put me in the car and drove me home, and then they had a talk with my parents since it was my first criminal offense. I got stopped twice afterwards for jaywalking (last time they stopped me was in my 20s, about 10 years ago) and they wrote me up and told me I'd have to pay a fine if I get caught one more time (which would be the 3rd time, and on your 3rd offense in Croatia you either have to pay a fine or go to jail depending on the severity and the crime committed. At least it used to be that way; I'm not sure how it works nowadays due to our chaotic judicial system). Since then we have entered the EU, changed some of those laws and today if there is no crosswalk within 50 meters you can cross the street without fear of having police stopping you. We are also allowed to cross the street on a red light if there are no cars anywhere. I am currently learning to drive and on the way of getting a drivers' license, and we are taught to always look in front of us and be ready for anything, so drivers know a pedestrian can pop up at any time especially in residential areas.
And no, a highway doesn't go through the city. There are roads classified as state roads that go into cities but when you enter a city you are required to slow down, obey the speed limits set by law for all cities and town (40-60 km/h in all cities). Residential areas, nearness of schools and hospitals, any area with heavy foot traffic and you gotta drive 30km/h.
I live car-free in Boston Massachusetts, with three urban freeways (I-93, I-90, and Storrow Drive), and I live within a mile of I-93. I absolutely detest cycling or walking thru the interchange area, as the streets get a little stroady, and traffic volumes are very high.
I-93 south of downtown also takes up so much valuable real estate, and divides our communities. Cycling underneath the I-93 overpass is scary and uninviting, so I rarely find myself going to South Boston that way, even tho its the shortest path. Crossing I-90 to get to Kenmore Square is less bad because that freeway is below grade, but it still creates choke points. Storrow Drive absolutely ruined the riverfront view of the people living in the north parts of Back Bay and Kenmore Square, and it created a barrier to pedestrians being able to access the riverfront (and Cambridge did the exact same thing on their side of the River Charles).
While I'm not totally against urban freeways, I do think that they should be put underground. Boston has been fixing its mistake over the past 30 years, via the Prudential lid and the infamous Big Dig, where the former built a shopping mall on top of I-90, and the latter moved all of the downtown section of I-93 into an underground tunnel and turned the place where the freeway used to run into a nice park.