As I've been researching for my video about the knip, I've found that the worst traffic is on Kattenburgerstraat (which was already a busy road before the knip), so that's where next week's livestream destination will be! 👍 Edit: the Kattenburgerstraat livestream is now up: th-cam.com/users/liveF7X7g4KPsFc Spoiler: there was no carmageddon that would justify cancelling this 6-week project, and I'm now even more angry at the lying right-wingers than I was before visiting it.
It's hilarious how for Americans their only experience with a pedestrian friendly areas are theme parks so they comment things like "it looks like disneyworld!!!!"
I hate to burst your bubble as a fellow Dutchman but I’ve been to Denver, CO two times and they have an excellent “pedestrian promenade” there which is quite nice. Us Dutch don’t know it all either…
Man, I consider myself orange pilled but I just discovered your streaming channel. Amsterdam is my favourite place on earth so watching an hour long video of the city while listening about urbanism is just pure joy to me. Thank you ❤
As a kid living by the Amstel Hotel in mid50's ('54-'57). I remember Weesperstraat for we use to play streetsoccer in the 'stadstimmertuin' where the 'Brandweer' was located which intersected the' Weesperstraat'. Weesperstraat was a street like Utrechtsestraat, narrow but with lots of stores. I came back in '69 to find the Weesperstraat totally gone and widened-out , enlarged. I also remembered, living in the Tulpstraat next to the water(gracht) where all the boats, a jachthaven, were , was filled in and became a tunnel or a rather an extension of the "Stadhouderskade" going east.
This is really sad. I, an American, am watching someone in another country bike around, imagining how nice it must be and dreaming about how much fun it would be to walk around my own cities and towns if they were made this way. What a world we live in. Thanks for the content man! :)
Some rural college towns with the walkable college campus are small enough to give this feeling. I live in one where it's pretty nice to walk from campus to downtown and some bike paths to actually get places. Obviously nothing here compares to the Netherlands, but it's well worth the trip! You can just bike from city to city if you really wanted and not even think of the train.
@@AssBlasster My local community college has an amazing campus and I spent a good portion of my time there just walking around. It was fun to just observe the art and explore to see what I could find.
I really really adored Ray's episode on Urbanist Agenda. It's very relevant because the fucking traffic engineers are having an open house this coming Monday on widening a road, and I'm planning on using every link in your videos printed out to as a talking point.
Just had that "more pollution" discussion… "They just should build more transit and bike infrastructure instead of punishing drivers!". And then gave an example, where the bike is already faster (that's normal in my city) and even transit is faster (which is pretty rare here). Not to mention the whole point wasn't "punishing drivers" but finding space to widen a crappy bike lane.
I used to go every weekend to Amsterdam, to shop, to go to a movie, theater, restaurant, cafe, but not anymore. I live in a small town 20km outside of Amsterdam and public transport is a nightmare. Our town is in a different province and a different public transit concession area, so no direct bus to Amsterdam anymore. The nearest train station is 20min away, but so is Amsterdam by car. So I used to go by car to Amsterdam park my car and continue by public transit, until they made it almost impossible and I hated it, my travel into the city took so much more time and money. It stopped me from going into Amsterdam anymore, so I think everybody is happy now, at least I am. I haven’t missed Amsterdam in over 10years. I stay local or go to Gouda or Rotterdam and occasionally to Utrecht and The Hague.
@@njblive when I stopped going to Amsterdam, more than 10 years ago, the only P+R was Transferium in the Arena, at least on the south side, and that was constantly closed for events happening in the Arena and Ziggo Dome. I’m now used to going to other cities and as said, I don’t miss Amsterdam. But it is good to know things have changed for the car user. But most of all I would have liked to get my bus and night bus connection to Amsterdam back. Nothing is more fun than dozing off in the bus back to town after a night out (with a little bit too much to drink) and the refreshing 15min walk home from the busstop. Something that can’t be done driving the car back home.
@13:45 Oh so people on phones while riding is not just a Paris thing :D I thought the Dutch were safer riders than us! @22:35 I'd have done the same if I wasn't shooting @27:29 Uncanny how the hedges and trees cut down the sound @48:00 This looks absolutely awesome, it reminds me of what was done in NY in some very broad avenues @1:00:26 This is what every street should look like. @1:06:20 Same in Paris, the majority of people either walk or use public transport, and a loud and unavoidable minority owns and uses their car everyday, yet we only hear them talk about urban planning and pollution when their commute is concerned by a traffic calming measure, and we never hear or see residents or business owners talk about the positive impact. It's the same everywhere
15:25 They didn't build the metro in the Nieuwmarkt buurt (and beyond) 'cut and cover' at that time, though it had the same effect of having to remove everything on top of it. They built the concrete tunnel segments in place, but above ground, and then removed the soil below it using high pressure water. It was an odd sight when every day I would see less and less of the huge concrete blocks sinking passing by the works on my way from A'dam CS to Roeterstraat as a student.
21:39 Nope. This area was constructed in the 1920s and 1930s. It's why there's so many great "Amsterdam School" architecture around. In fact, Anne Frank used to live right around the corner at Merwedeplein before they went into hiding. These were the O.G. suburbs and the city just ended into farms and fields at what now is President Kennedylaan. The street names of Amstellaan, Noorder Amstellaan, Zuider Amstellaan and Daniël Willinkplein were changed into Stalinlaan, Churchill-laan and Rooseveltlaan and Victorieplein, to honour the allied forces. After the Soviet actions in the Hungarian Uprising Stalinlaan was renamed Vrijheidslaan. 40:40 "Look at how shit this is" he said as he is looking towards Torontobrug. Lol.
1:19:30 On the left, across the street, there used to be a café called 'Ruimzicht' looking out over where they had dug up the old Waterloo plein, before they built the Stopera. The right down stroke of the R, and the second bow of the m where in a different colour, changing the name to Puinzicht. Amsterdam humour :)
Yeah they are not going to make the IJ-tunnel for bikes only, they just build that big new busstation at Centraal. Plus it wouldnt feel very pleasent to bike through there, they have to make all the busses that pass through electic only to get rid of the fumes, then it could work I suppose as a combination of transportation and cycling.
1:31:00 When you talk about the 'Rijksmuseum Passage' you're refering to the sixties, but this passage was a demand of the Amsterdam municipality and is there since the opening of the Rijksmuseum in 1885. And since 1931 cars were not aloud anymore, because of possible damage to the building.
On a few occasions, I've taken the car through the city to go from east to west, and I regretted it almost every time. Because if you take the center ring, you end up on the Overtoom which is always a gigantic traffic jam for cars. (I never noticed that when I was there on bike.) There's also the new tunnel under Centraal Station of course. I wonder if they're going to do a knip there too, after all the money spent on that tunnel. It's a bit weird to have a road to and under the central station without a way to park there. It's rather pointless to have cars there at all.
So kind of like the traffic circulation plan that they introduced in Groningen in the 70s(!). Everyone hated it at first, now it’s okay. Took 3 to 5 years, btw.
It can work well if you plan it well. But the Knip is a rather poorly thought-out pilot, not taking traffic flow and overflow into other streets into account, nor public transport (buses and taxis are complaining), or special transport for disabled people. They closed off the Weesperstraat to traffic to see if it would be nicer with no traffic. Yes, of course the street itself is nicer, and people there are enthusiastic. I would be too if they removed all traffic from my street... but not if they'd do it for all neighboring streets as well. Seriously, this is not how you do city planning.
Having done that traffic control job for a few months in Amsterdam I pity those people, not a fun time at all. Though they have the benefits of the barriers so people have no choice, but to listen. Without those barriers you could put a dozen there and people still drive on, yeah the fine is technically speaking 400 EUR, but in Amsterdam police do not give a fuck to put it simple (Den Haag is much better, if you ignore a stop sign from a traffic warden they will get you) and if no police are around it would require at least two of them to go to a police station to file a report. Anyhow I am all for getting cars out of the damn city, even more now with ebikes being readily available you can do nearly anything within the city and close surroundings with one of those. I commute 25Km to and from work (so 50 total) a day easily without being exactly the most fit person around.
Hey! Thanks for the video! I rode my tandem in R'dam and A'dam and met a local dutch-american couple who had their own tandem. None of us are disabled, but I was there as a tourist, while they lived there. Tandems are good for couples, especially if one of them is insecure, slow or rather together on bicycles. My partner loves our tandem a lot for those reasons. You were talking about tandems here: th-cam.com/video/d08ICqIKjwc/w-d-xo.html
Would be nice to have fewer cars on the roads at times. I would at this point settle for cars to slow down. City street speed limits are way to high. Should be 20mph-30/35mph max in town vs 40mph-50mph. Which people are driving faster than that.
Amsterdam is rolling out a 30km/h city wide speed limit. You really should not need to drive faster than that in the city anyway. People that need to travel faster can take the highway.
20mph is plenty fast in town. Looking at Amsterdam on Google maps, I don't see why if someone is trying to get from the south to the north that they wouldn't just take the A10. That would be the most efficient route, even if the traffic is heavy. I can understand your frustration. I'm looking at getting a folding bike for my semi to do a little exploring and shopping when the grocery stores are a bit too far for walking.
@@toddjohnson6809 _"I don't see why if someone is trying to get from the south to the north that they wouldn't just take the A10"_ Not that I agree with them, but for these people it feels like they're taking a detour. They believe they are wasting time and/or fuel going the longer route. More fundamentally though they just don't believe that society or (local) government should be allowed to tell them which way to go. While expecting to be fully facilitated in going wherever they want. You know, right-wing liberals.
It's "He is a pirate", the theme song of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer - so, not really classical, but kinda adjacent :)
I don't think drivers who complain about pollution when they're inconvenienced by some traffic measure do so because they pretend to suddenly care, but because that's what the "other side" cares about. So it's more like saying: "He look you care about pollution but you do this which causes more pollution you hypocrites"
Thinking about cars trying to drive through the centre... maybe their navis (gps? routplanner? dont know what you call it?) aren't up to date yet and still propose a now impossible route. ... the last time I drove, I basically always drove according to the navi. I mostly drove as as a service engineer in foreign cities. anyway... don't always assume the worst. They are not Drivers, they are stupid and of the species homo ;) like most of you how read this. (greetings to our future overlords ai ;) )
What about them? Nobody is cut off from travelling to or from here, only through here, and 70% of households in this area do not have a car. The real question is, what about the number of people just driving through this neighbourhood each day who are risking the health, safety, and comfort of all the people who live there? Again, 70% of households don't have a car, so they're just being negatively affected by people driving through; people who aren't even providing any benefit to their neighbourhood. And for what? So that drivers can save a few minutes' drive over going via the highway?
As I've been researching for my video about the knip, I've found that the worst traffic is on Kattenburgerstraat (which was already a busy road before the knip), so that's where next week's livestream destination will be! 👍
Edit: the Kattenburgerstraat livestream is now up:
th-cam.com/users/liveF7X7g4KPsFc
Spoiler: there was no carmageddon that would justify cancelling this 6-week project, and I'm now even more angry at the lying right-wingers than I was before visiting it.
It's hilarious how for Americans their only experience with a pedestrian friendly areas are theme parks so they comment things like "it looks like disneyworld!!!!"
College campuses are the more common car-free areas in the states, but indeed no one complains about the college towns here.
I hate to burst your bubble as a fellow Dutchman but I’ve been to Denver, CO two times and they have an excellent “pedestrian promenade” there which is quite nice. Us Dutch don’t know it all either…
Man, I consider myself orange pilled but I just discovered your streaming channel. Amsterdam is my favourite place on earth so watching an hour long video of the city while listening about urbanism is just pure joy to me. Thank you ❤
As a kid living by the Amstel Hotel in mid50's ('54-'57). I remember Weesperstraat for we use to play streetsoccer in the 'stadstimmertuin' where the 'Brandweer' was located which intersected the' Weesperstraat'. Weesperstraat was a street like Utrechtsestraat, narrow but with lots of stores. I came back in '69 to find the Weesperstraat totally gone and widened-out , enlarged. I also remembered, living in the Tulpstraat next to the water(gracht) where all the boats, a jachthaven, were , was filled in and became a tunnel or a rather an extension of the "Stadhouderskade" going east.
This is really sad. I, an American, am watching someone in another country bike around, imagining how nice it must be and dreaming about how much fun it would be to walk around my own cities and towns if they were made this way. What a world we live in.
Thanks for the content man! :)
i came to visit this past week, leased a bike, and let me tell you it is as good as it seems. you will not be disappointed
Some rural college towns with the walkable college campus are small enough to give this feeling. I live in one where it's pretty nice to walk from campus to downtown and some bike paths to actually get places. Obviously nothing here compares to the Netherlands, but it's well worth the trip! You can just bike from city to city if you really wanted and not even think of the train.
@@AssBlasster My local community college has an amazing campus and I spent a good portion of my time there just walking around. It was fun to just observe the art and explore to see what I could find.
I really really adored Ray's episode on Urbanist Agenda. It's very relevant because the fucking traffic engineers are having an open house this coming Monday on widening a road, and I'm planning on using every link in your videos printed out to as a talking point.
50:04 me passing you from your left, thinking .. should I yell "NOT JUST BIKES ROCKS" or will I ruin his shot?😂
Lol, that was hilarious
Just had that "more pollution" discussion… "They just should build more transit and bike infrastructure instead of punishing drivers!". And then gave an example, where the bike is already faster (that's normal in my city) and even transit is faster (which is pretty rare here). Not to mention the whole point wasn't "punishing drivers" but finding space to widen a crappy bike lane.
I used to go every weekend to Amsterdam, to shop, to go to a movie, theater, restaurant, cafe, but not anymore. I live in a small town 20km outside of Amsterdam and public transport is a nightmare. Our town is in a different province and a different public transit concession area, so no direct bus to Amsterdam anymore. The nearest train station is 20min away, but so is Amsterdam by car. So I used to go by car to Amsterdam park my car and continue by public transit, until they made it almost impossible and I hated it, my travel into the city took so much more time and money. It stopped me from going into Amsterdam anymore, so I think everybody is happy now, at least I am. I haven’t missed Amsterdam in over 10years. I stay local or go to Gouda or Rotterdam and occasionally to Utrecht and The Hague.
Why wouldn't you take Park and Ride? That's what it's there for.
www.amsterdam.nl/en/parking/park-ride/
@@njblive when I stopped going to Amsterdam, more than 10 years ago, the only P+R was Transferium in the Arena, at least on the south side, and that was constantly closed for events happening in the Arena and Ziggo Dome. I’m now used to going to other cities and as said, I don’t miss Amsterdam. But it is good to know things have changed for the car user. But most of all I would have liked to get my bus and night bus connection to Amsterdam back. Nothing is more fun than dozing off in the bus back to town after a night out (with a little bit too much to drink) and the refreshing 15min walk home from the busstop. Something that can’t be done driving the car back home.
@13:45 Oh so people on phones while riding is not just a Paris thing :D I thought the Dutch were safer riders than us!
@22:35 I'd have done the same if I wasn't shooting
@27:29 Uncanny how the hedges and trees cut down the sound
@48:00 This looks absolutely awesome, it reminds me of what was done in NY in some very broad avenues
@1:00:26 This is what every street should look like.
@1:06:20 Same in Paris, the majority of people either walk or use public transport, and a loud and unavoidable minority owns and uses their car everyday, yet we only hear them talk about urban planning and pollution when their commute is concerned by a traffic calming measure, and we never hear or see residents or business owners talk about the positive impact. It's the same everywhere
It's illegal though in NL to hold a phone while cycling. You can get a 140 euro fine.
@@kempo_95 Oh! It's €135 in France! What do you do with the extra €5?
@@EKsUrbanTracks buy a phone holder? 🤣
i came to visit amsterdam because of NJB and my hotel was on weesperstraat… wish i could’ve met him while he was biking by lol
The main discussion about the knip starts at 42:00.
45:25 is when we go check it out.
15:25 They didn't build the metro in the Nieuwmarkt buurt (and beyond) 'cut and cover' at that time, though it had the same effect of having to remove everything on top of it. They built the concrete tunnel segments in place, but above ground, and then removed the soil below it using high pressure water.
It was an odd sight when every day I would see less and less of the huge concrete blocks sinking passing by the works on my way from A'dam CS to Roeterstraat as a student.
21:39 Nope. This area was constructed in the 1920s and 1930s. It's why there's so many great "Amsterdam School" architecture around. In fact, Anne Frank used to live right around the corner at Merwedeplein before they went into hiding. These were the O.G. suburbs and the city just ended into farms and fields at what now is President Kennedylaan. The street names of Amstellaan, Noorder Amstellaan, Zuider Amstellaan and Daniël Willinkplein were changed into Stalinlaan, Churchill-laan and Rooseveltlaan and Victorieplein, to honour the allied forces. After the Soviet actions in the Hungarian Uprising Stalinlaan was renamed Vrijheidslaan.
40:40 "Look at how shit this is" he said as he is looking towards Torontobrug. Lol.
Yes! I knew that actually. I was getting confused with Buitenveldert. Thanks for the correction!
1:19:30 On the left, across the street, there used to be a café called 'Ruimzicht' looking out over where they had dug up the old Waterloo plein, before they built the Stopera.
The right down stroke of the R, and the second bow of the m where in a different colour, changing the name to Puinzicht. Amsterdam humour :)
Pollution is real only when drivers are inconvenienced. The rest of the time they don't believe in bad air or climate change.
Yeah they are not going to make the IJ-tunnel for bikes only, they just build that big new busstation at Centraal. Plus it wouldnt feel very pleasent to bike through there, they have to make all the busses that pass through electic only to get rid of the fumes, then it could work I suppose as a combination of transportation and cycling.
1:31:00 When you talk about the 'Rijksmuseum Passage' you're refering to the sixties, but this passage was a demand of the Amsterdam municipality and is there since the opening of the Rijksmuseum in 1885. And since 1931 cars were not aloud anymore, because of possible damage to the building.
On a few occasions, I've taken the car through the city to go from east to west, and I regretted it almost every time. Because if you take the center ring, you end up on the Overtoom which is always a gigantic traffic jam for cars. (I never noticed that when I was there on bike.) There's also the new tunnel under Centraal Station of course. I wonder if they're going to do a knip there too, after all the money spent on that tunnel. It's a bit weird to have a road to and under the central station without a way to park there. It's rather pointless to have cars there at all.
Nothing says to the world "I have more money than I know how to spend, and I want you to notice that" than a yellow Lamborghini SUV
So kind of like the traffic circulation plan that they introduced in Groningen in the 70s(!). Everyone hated it at first, now it’s okay. Took 3 to 5 years, btw.
It can work well if you plan it well. But the Knip is a rather poorly thought-out pilot, not taking traffic flow and overflow into other streets into account, nor public transport (buses and taxis are complaining), or special transport for disabled people. They closed off the Weesperstraat to traffic to see if it would be nicer with no traffic. Yes, of course the street itself is nicer, and people there are enthusiastic. I would be too if they removed all traffic from my street... but not if they'd do it for all neighboring streets as well. Seriously, this is not how you do city planning.
Audio 6:47
Video 7:57
Having done that traffic control job for a few months in Amsterdam I pity those people, not a fun time at all. Though they have the benefits of the barriers so people have no choice, but to listen. Without those barriers you could put a dozen there and people still drive on, yeah the fine is technically speaking 400 EUR, but in Amsterdam police do not give a fuck to put it simple (Den Haag is much better, if you ignore a stop sign from a traffic warden they will get you) and if no police are around it would require at least two of them to go to a police station to file a report.
Anyhow I am all for getting cars out of the damn city, even more now with ebikes being readily available you can do nearly anything within the city and close surroundings with one of those. I commute 25Km to and from work (so 50 total) a day easily without being exactly the most fit person around.
The mic picks up your bike rattling a lot. It makes it seem like everything's more bumpy than it likely is.
It's unreal how noisy those mopeds are. Not just the volume, but the pitch! Would be awesome if they banned the gas ones and only allowed electric.
Not sure how its now but lil bit older mopeds are often 2 stroke combustion engines which could explain the pitch.
Is it possible to include a local timestamp for future streams?
Like a clock? I suppose so I was thinking the screen is already pretty cluttered though. 🤔
@@njblive yeah something small next to temperature, like "66:66"
@@mikhaildavidenko3841 Only the Dutch language is 6:66.
I normally bike along the Amstel, but I might try it next week
Hey! Thanks for the video! I rode my tandem in R'dam and A'dam and met a local dutch-american couple who had their own tandem. None of us are disabled, but I was there as a tourist, while they lived there. Tandems are good for couples, especially if one of them is insecure, slow or rather together on bicycles. My partner loves our tandem a lot for those reasons.
You were talking about tandems here: th-cam.com/video/d08ICqIKjwc/w-d-xo.html
You will be glad to know that Olivia Chow won the Toronto Mayoral Election
Would be nice to have fewer cars on the roads at times. I would at this point settle for cars to slow down. City street speed limits are way to high. Should be 20mph-30/35mph max in town vs 40mph-50mph. Which people are driving faster than that.
Amsterdam is rolling out a 30km/h city wide speed limit. You really should not need to drive faster than that in the city anyway. People that need to travel faster can take the highway.
Mostly in Europe you have 50 km/h base and 30 km/h on proper streets. Occasionally 20 on shared zones
Or even 10. Some countries have 40 or 60 like Switzerland
20mph is plenty fast in town. Looking at Amsterdam on Google maps, I don't see why if someone is trying to get from the south to the north that they wouldn't just take the A10. That would be the most efficient route, even if the traffic is heavy.
I can understand your frustration.
I'm looking at getting a folding bike for my semi to do a little exploring and shopping when the grocery stores are a bit too far for walking.
@@toddjohnson6809 _"I don't see why if someone is trying to get from the south to the north that they wouldn't just take the A10"_
Not that I agree with them, but for these people it feels like they're taking a detour. They believe they are wasting time and/or fuel going the longer route. More fundamentally though they just don't believe that society or (local) government should be allowed to tell them which way to go. While expecting to be fully facilitated in going wherever they want.
You know, right-wing liberals.
Current setup of the knip looks like a funeral with these big planters full of flowers :-p
Does anyone know the classical piece being played under the Rijksmuseum? At 1:31:10
It's "He is a pirate", the theme song of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer - so, not really classical, but kinda adjacent :)
I can understand why you love Plantage Middenlan so much
How did you do the map animation that follows your route?
Check the description for the links to the software
Ik vind dit echt goed. Eindelijk rationeel beleid in Amsterdam. Super trots op mijn stad.
I don't think drivers who complain about pollution when they're inconvenienced by some traffic measure do so because they pretend to suddenly care, but because that's what the "other side" cares about. So it's more like saying: "He look you care about pollution but you do this which causes more pollution you hypocrites"
Jonas Bergkemper really wanted to know if you ever had a bike accident
* Oh he got an answer!
Comparing the busy month of " SEPTEMBER " with the vacation month of JULY ? 🤨🤨🤨
Bloody noisy birds !
Thinking about cars trying to drive through the centre... maybe their navis (gps? routplanner? dont know what you call it?) aren't up to date yet and still propose a now impossible route.
... the last time I drove, I basically always drove according to the navi. I mostly drove as as a service engineer in foreign cities.
anyway... don't always assume the worst. They are not Drivers, they are stupid and of the species homo ;) like most of you how read this. (greetings to our future overlords ai ;) )
Cars are actually quiet, it’s road surfaces which are loud.
That's wrong, but ok. I have a video about noise on my main channel.
It's one thing to be strong and believe in your convictions and it's another to be a sarcastic asshole. - The Tone Police
lol
What about the people who actually live here who actually want to get from a to b?
What about them? Nobody is cut off from travelling to or from here, only through here, and 70% of households in this area do not have a car.
The real question is, what about the number of people just driving through this neighbourhood each day who are risking the health, safety, and comfort of all the people who live there? Again, 70% of households don't have a car, so they're just being negatively affected by people driving through; people who aren't even providing any benefit to their neighbourhood. And for what? So that drivers can save a few minutes' drive over going via the highway?