We Need More Places Like Pijnacker!

For today's Netherlands adventure, the class I am in took a trip out to Pijnacker. Pijnacker is a recently developed neighborhood east of Delft about 6 km (or 3.75 miles). In the morning meeting before taking off, Dr. Furth gave a brief history of the town, explaining how the main road through the area followed the canal. A problem arose when businesses began to develop along the main road, which is not a normal situation the Dutch design for. Shopping is best located away from main roads so that the foot traffic that is visiting the stores does not conflict with the heavy vehicle traffic that is traveling through the center. In order to fix this issue, Pijnacker "demoted" their main street and built a bypass around the south of the city. The class was to tour Pijnacker and observe how they are changing what use to be their main street into bicycle friendly access to shops at Pijnacker's center. Another thing of note from the morning speech was when Dr. Furth spoke of Pijnacker being a town of roundabouts, some of which are a new style dubbed the "turbo-roundabout". A few traffic engineers, myself included, showed a little excitement on getting to see one of these roundabouts first hand.

Bridge under the highway A13.

After the morning orientation of the class, we set off towards Pijnacker. One of our first stops was to observe how the bike highway from Delft to Pijnacker worked around highway A13. Since the Dutch knew bikes couldn't safely cross such a busy vehicle route, a tunnel was built underneath. In the interest of cyclists, the bridge was designed to feel safe by allowing a rider to see the other side of the underpass as he/she enters. This idea of a safe tunnel would be seen in designs further along in the day.

Stop signs along the bike highway.

One of our next stops was an intersection between the bike highway and Zuidpoldersingel Rd. Stop signs are not a common sight in the Netherlands, but they were used at this intersection to make sure bicycle traffic received priority over automobiles. The sign under the warning sign reminds auto traffic to make eye contact with the bikes at the intersection for an additional measure of safety. Another interesting feature of this intersection that isn't as visible in the picture is the chicane located on each side of the bike highway. The purpose of these curves in the bike lane are to slow down the motorbikes that are traveling along the route so an incident with an automobile is less likely.

TURBO!! Roundabout

Our next stop which was just a little bit further south than the bike highway intersection. We were able to see first hand a smaller turbo roundabout. It was difficult to get a decent picture of the roundabout that shows what makes it "turbo", but there exists a separated lane on the inside that corkscrews towards the outside. The traffic approaching the roundabout much choose which direction they are going to go before actually entering the intersection (much like a signalized intersection). The lane that is chosen then guides them through the roundabout and they exit without many conflicts with other traffic (traffic is not allowed to switch lanes within the roundabout). For turbo roundabouts, bicycle and pedestrian traffic is restricted due to safety concerns. But the Dutch won't leave bikes and pedestrians without means to getting where they need to go, so instead they make tunnels nearby that bypass the vehicular traffic.

Happy bike riders bypassing the turbo roundabout.

Continuing on our journey of the bike highway, we stopped next at another intersection. This time we observed the two different styles of information signs designed to give a cyclist his/her location. The first style is the easy-to-understand pointing sign. The sign uses a red-on-white text to point out how far the city line is from the location. From the sign we saw, Rotterdam would have been left for 11 km. A nice feature of the signs is that once you see a destination, every other direction sign along the way will have the same destination until you actually reach the city line, which Dr. Furth accurately explained as "taking your hand and guiding you there".

Bike directional sign. The red-on-white gives distances to destinations, the blue circle designates bike path (vehicles not allowed).

Another method of determining where you are that recently became popular in Europe is the node signs. These signs assigns a number to each location or node and provides a map of other nodes in the area. There are then posts that show which direction a nearby node is.

We were at node #5, a map was provided to locate other nodes in the area.

Post showing which direction local nodes were in.

We continued along the bike highway until we ran into the road that was built to bypass Pijnacker, N470. Dr. Furth gave some background on the road explaining how the lanes were only about 10 feet wide, but since there as a 4 foot wide median, the road seemed more spacious and traffic felt safer. Traffic didn't seem to mind as they still traveled the speed limit of 80 km/h. It was also pointed out that in the case of a breakdown, even though a shoulder was not visible, there was concrete on the side of the road that allowed grass to grow through that could be used to pull off the thorough-way.

Bike highway along N470. Notice where the street lighting is located.

One lane of N470 and the hidden shoulder. The stripings on the road made the lane seem even smaller.

Next we stopped on a residential street within Pijnacker and observed how it was altered from an asphalt road to a brick road (brick roads are more related to the 30 km/h zones whereas asphalt roads are thought of as having faster speeds by the driver).

Two-way residential street.

The residential street had a speed limit of 30 km/h (19 mph) and allowed traffic in both directions. However, the vehicle lane was only 9'4" so only one vehicle could fit between the suggested bike lanes. If two vehicles were to meet traveling opposite directions, both would have to move into the bike lanes (4' wide) in order to pass, but not before yielding to any cyclists. The long and short lines signal a speed hump, which helped calm traffic down on this street.

Moving on towards our scheduled meeting with the city officials from Pijnacker, we were able to see a few more nicely designed bike tunnels allowing for traffic to bypass what may be dangerous traffic areas. The class then arrived at De Soete Suikerbol which was an old farmhouse that was converted into a restaurant when the area obtained the permission to develop. When we arrived, we received a warm welcome from the city officials of Pijnacker, who greeted everyone of us as we entered the building. After sitting down and being treated to coffee and a treat, the officials went into presentations.

Mr. van Hagen speaking inside the De Soete Suikerbol.

First up was Jan Paul Woudstra who gave an overview of the planned activities as well as some statistics of community, some overview of the strategic vision of the area, and some breakdown of the spending budget. One thing I noted in the presentation was that 56% of the 2010 budget of €209 million was reserved for building, which is hard to imagine when most budgets I've seen in the U.S. are reserved mostly towards education.

The next presentation was by Mr. van Hagen who explained how the land use of the area was planned as well as the methods involved behind the new developments in the area. He touched on the different plans involved (spatial vision for the area, master plan, and destination plan, in order of the size of scope), the role of the private developer, and how the city worked with the private developer to build new areas of the city. An interesting note from Mr. van Hagen's presentation was about how 1.55 parking spaces were given towards each home, but these parking areas were in a public area so to still promote cycling for short trips.

The last presentation that was given before setting out on more of a tour came from Albert Taco Molenaar, who went into depth on bicycle policy and safety in the area. Mr. Molenaar touched on the existing bicycle network, explained design standards of the bicycle infrastructure, and talked about how to stimulate cycling. The later part of the presentation also went into roundabouts and turbo roundabouts to give us a better idea of how they worked.

The presentation then wrapped up and we headed out on the "Tour du Pijnacker" along with a few city officials. Along this part of the tour, we were able to view another turbo roundabout, but this one was signalized!

Signalized turbo roundabout!! Notice the bike tunnel in front so bikes and pedestrians can bypass.

The class then moved on to an area that was still under development. The area had some residential areas already constructed, but more were planned in the near future, as well as some retail shopping. Since the Netherlands is mostly peaty soil, building practices had to be adapted to remove the water and consolidate the soil so taller buildings could be supported. At this construction site, it was explained how 3 meters of sand was used to consolidate the soil while water was pumped into the canals. Once the land was sufficiently drained, 2 meters of sand was removed so construction could begin on the remaining 1 meter of sand. Keep in mind that the Dutch must transport the sand from the sea (since that is the only area it can be found naturally) and that it is done by pipeline and special methods developed by the Dutch. Those methods would be best saved for another blog.

Residential construction next to a transit station.

We continued on our tour of Pijnacker by next observing the traffic calming methods along the main street that had been demoted with the construction of the new bypass. One such device was a regular roundabout that had a two-way bike path circulating it as well.

Cycle roundabout!

From here, we rode our bikes through the downtown area of Pijnacker and to the central transit stop on the other side. The Dutch try to place major shopping near transit so people can bike to their nearest station and chain a transit trip in order to reach the stores. From the transit stop, we returned to the De Soete Suikerbol where we were given the choice of an apple, bacon, cheese, or plain pancake for lunch (I chose apple, but the bacon was great too).

Pancakes for lunch!!

After the delicious lunch, we parted ways with the city officials of Pijnacker and headed back to campus. For the afternoon session of the class, we had a presentation given by Hans Voerknecht, the International Coordinator for the Fietsberaad. Mr. Voerknecht is the gentleman cities turn to for advice on how to be as bicycle centric as the Dutch. Several valid points were given in the presentation including how cycling leads to happier and healthier people as well as how cycling helps the economy. One personal experience that was shared by Mr. Voerknecht was that if he wanted to visit his doctor, he could ride 200 meters by bike, or drive 3.5 km by car. This thought helped drive home how the Dutch see the automobile compared to the bike in being used for longer trips.