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Native Floridian, New to the Netherlands: Initial Impressions

From above, the Netherlands is checkered with neat multicolored squares. The land itself is incredibly structured and aesthetically pleasing. Much of what I saw below was rural, with large structures concentrated in cities. This was my very first impression, but in fact, I would describe my overall experiences thus far with the infrastructure and way of life of these folks the same way: highly structured, and absolutely beautiful.

Image result for the netherlands birds eye view
This photo is a placeholder - I want to take a pic from the plane on my flight out. But yeah, that's about what it looks like.

Hours after landing, I walked with my classmates towards TU Delft which is where we'll be staying for the next 15 days. We quipped about our initial observations - all of them positive; even envious. Staring in awe at the lovely dedicated bicycle infrastructure, one student said, "It's settled. I'm definitely moving to Europe." We had only been off the train a few minutes! I looked up at her and said, "You know, we have cities in the United States that have very similar features!" She nodded in agreement and responded, "Like Portland, D.C., and Seattle." I said, "So you don't have to leave! Europe is different, not better." She liked that.

After taking our first bike tour of TU Delft campus and the small city of Delft, I was left with some strong first impressions. The sheer amount of infrastructure is mind-blowing. All of the road paint, the colored stones, the boundaries, the planters, sculptures and art used for traffic calming, the signage, and more. There doesn't seem to be significantly less right-of-way (ROW) utilized for these things, it's just that instead of plopping down eight lanes dedicated to car traffic, the ROW is far more efficiently utilized.

Here is an intersection where cars, buses, bicyclists and pedestrians all cross. The crosswalk for bikes and pedestrians are huge. Stripes on poles are attractive and make them highly visible.

Bicycles have their own green/yellow/red traffic lights.

Everything that a car has in the United States, bicycles and pedestrians have - including parking garages, traffic signals, rules and regulations, and more. In fact, the vast majority of intersections are designed to give bicycles priority, followed by pedestrians with cars having the lowest priority. Picture this: bicycle after bicycle flows freely through an intersection for minutes at a time. Every so often a single car will pull up to a red light, triggering a sensor. The sensor gives the bikes a red light, but just long enough for one or two cars to go through the intersection before changing back to red. 

The larger lanes in this photo are actually bike lanes. Every once in a while a car approaches a bicycle track intersection and has to wait its turn.

What's so inspiring about the Netherlands is that, although the city is super old and it feels like things have been this good for hundreds of years, it actually hasn't always been this way. They only relatively recently dialed back their car-focused infrastructure development and laboriously redeveloped their ROW throughout the country to discourage driving and encourage walking and biking. They took steps, some small and some big, to create a steady infrastructure evolution which was embraced by residents, commuters, businesses and visitors alike over time as they each experienced an improvement in their quality of life and experiences.

The results of those choices are absolutely stunning. The city of Delft is so quiet; you can hear the breeze rustling the trees as you walk or bike to your destination, and at any given moment you can hear at least three different species of birds. The air feels fresher and cleaner in your lungs. You take a deep breath and feel like you're detoxing. There are bicycles stacked on top of bicycles surrounded by bicycles, and bicyclists flowing about in all directions. It looks and feels like a dream.

A redesigned residential street in Amsterdam that prioritizes bicycles and light rail, August 4, 2019

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