Disappearing traffic lights. Removal of motorized traffic from where cyclists and pedestrians needed to be made mass cycling possible in the Netherlands. A second transport revolution despite a rise in car use and ownership.

Assen's first traffic lights were at
this junction, once the most busy in
the city.

The first traffic lights in the world were installed in London in 1868. This gas operated signal exploded shortly after installation.

It wasn't until the 2nd decade of the 20th century that electric traffic lights were invented and after the first of those was installed on August 5th in Cleveland Ohio, they were swiftly adopted worldwide.

The Netherlands followed shortly afterwards, installing the first traffic light in 1928.

Traffic lights were invented for very a reason: The adoption of motor vehicles led to a growing number of deaths and injuries. Controlling motor traffic was essential to improve safety. There are far more cars now than there were a hundred years ago, so they are still needed - but only on streets used by motor vehicles.

Nowadays, the same junction looks
like this. It's still busy with bikes, not
so many cars. The result of deliberate
policy to improve city centres. Note
empty car parking bays. There aren't
many provided but they're rarely full

The first revolution
During the 20th century, not only were traffic lights installed in order to control the problems of motor vehicles, but other changes were made to streets in order to control pedestrians and cyclists.

The transformation of city streets to favour car drivers over cyclists and pedestrians happened across the world. The Netherlands was just like other countries in this regard. Traffic lights were required to avoid motor problems caused by motor vehicles, but those same motor vehicles were still seen as the solution rather than the problem.

Not so long ago, Dutch children were educated about traffic
by "Bruintje Beer in het Verkeer". This junction is just like
the one shown above. Chains stop pedestrians crossing
the road, formal crossings show places where this is allowed,
cyclists are not kept apart from motor vehicles, which appear
to be going rather quickly compared with everyone else.
The text specifically tells children not to cross diagonally,
It's now encouraged by the most modern Dutch traffic light
junction design which make diagonals safe & convenient

Into the 1960s, Dutch towns were actually removing cycle-paths built earlier in order to make more space for cars and in other places the building of cycle-paths was opposed on the grounds of causing delays. For example, in Heerlen, "The head of the traffic police division has declared that the city's traffic situation is leading increasingly to the use of traffic signals at intersections. Should bicycle paths appear at these intersections, this would require separate traffic signals, which would be too costly. Moreover, it would cause too great a delay for 'fast' traffic".

By the 1970s, the streets of Dutch cities had been redesigned with many features associated priotizing motor vehicles:

1. Pedestrian barriers to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road where they want to.
2. Pedestrian crossings to enforce crossing only at places situated for the maximum convenience of drivers
3. Narrow pavements (sidewalks) to make more space available for wide lanes for motor vehicles.
4. Asphalt road surfaces replaced the older tiles to enable higher speeds of driving with lower noise within the car.
5. Traffic lights were required to control mass driving and make it safer, but they were mostly built without much thought to how they could be used to make convenient and safe journeys by foot or by bike,

Another view of how grim Assen had
become by the early 1970s. This street
is no longer open to cars at all. Watch
a video showing how it is now.

The second revolution
Starting in the 1970s, the Netherlands began to transform towns to reduce the problems caused by cars. This resulted in taking a step back from many of the "improvements" made in the mid 20th century, and  returning city centre streets to a similar condition to which they had in the early 20th century. Because cars are either completely banished or have been reduced to mere guests on streets which are dominated by cyclists and pedestrians, the problems that they create have been largely removed from most city centre streets.

Assen in the 1970s. Waiting for a
traffic light which no longer exists

The result of removing motor vehicles from these streets is that the traffic lights and other street features once required to control those vehicles are no longer required and that has made walking and cycling both pleasant and convenient.

Having got rid of the motorized through traffic, the traffic lights could go too. But it couldn't be done without first getting rid of those cars.

City centre streets can be made more civilized, quieter, less fume-filled and more pleasant spaces to be in if motor vehicle access is restricted. Such streets are referred to as Autoluwe or Nearly Car Free. This should not be confused with the far less successful "Shared Space" which seeks to keep motor vehicles in the same spaces.

Another junction in Assen in the 1970s vs. now. Apart from the traffic, note that the photo on the left features the same chains to prevent crossings and narrow pavement (sidewalk) as Bruintje Beer used to educate children about. There is far less traffic and far more space and freedom for pedestrians in the new situation as shown on the right. It's also a lot quieter and the air is cleaner than in the 1960s. Note that the old photo shows a petrol station in the city centre. They were removed from such locations decades ago and can now only be found around the edge of the city.

This is a very small junction
View Larger Map
The junction shown in the video and photos above, the site of the first traffic lights installed in Assen, is very small. With 1950s and 60s methodology (which took hold just as well here in the Netherlands as elsewhere), it made sense to dedicate a small junction like this, with streets barely more than 10 metres wide, to motor vehicles. This was the wrong solution for such a street. The "second revolution" took away that mistake and other places should not seek to replicate the mistake.

Nowadays, if you go looking in the Netherlands for traffic light solutions for streets of these small sizes, you're likely to be disappointed. This blog post shows you the current situation. i.e, it's no longer a traffic light junction. On a map which shows all of the traffic lights of Assen, this junction now shows up as a white space.

Not only in the city centre
With modern infrastructure, you do not usually have to stop for traffic lights with anything like the frequency in the Netherlands that you would do in other countries which still resemble the mid 20th century in this country. This is enormously beneficial for cyclists as you'll see from this video, showing a complete journey from a village outside Assen to the city centre.

At the end of the video there's another glimpse of how the city centre looked in the 1970s

Why stopping matters to cyclists
Stopping a motor vehicle and re-starting it consumes a great deal of energy. However, it's not especially wearing on the driver, who merely has to move their feet between the brake and accelerator pedals. Stopping is much more serious for a cyclist because the cyclist is not merely the "driver" of their vehicle but also the engine. Stopping not only costs a cyclist time but also energy. It greatly reduces average speeds to have to stop, making all journeys take longer and thereby also making an acceptable journey time cover a much smaller area.

For a cyclist, each stop can easily be the equivalent of riding several hundred extra metres. Cycling becomes a far more attractive mode of transport, even over longer distances, once it is made into a much quicker and more convenient mode of transport. This is why Dutch people not only cycle more of their short journeys than people of other nations, but also cover far more of their middle distance and longer journeys by bike than do people of other nations.

When I visited London in November, I expressed my annoyance not only with the danger of cycling in that city but also that cycling is dreadfully slow on the streets of a city which is still designed very much around the motor vehicle (the video that I shot in London shows many of the problems with that city, others are discussed in blog posts). London is by no means unique. Many other cities also combine dreadful cycling provision with time-consuming stop-start journeys. In such an environment we can never expect to see cycling grow beyond a 5% modal share. Even convincing people to make a low proportion of their journeys by bike will be difficult so long as cycling remains both dangerous and inconvenient.

Not only is cycling infrastructure required to removes cyclists from the danger of 'sharing' streets with motor vehicles, but it is also necessary to unravel routes sufficiently that cyclists can reach their destinations without having to continuously stop and restart. Stop-start cycling is also an artifact of motor dominance because it comes from streets being designed around motor vehicles. The solution is not to put cyclists onto back-roads which don't go to their destinations, but to give them direct routes which do take them to their destinations.

Every country followed the first revolution, however most haven't yet begun to catch up with the second revolution which started 40 years ago.

What can we learn?

Study Tours can be organised for groups on
almost any date. The next open tour is in April.
Read more about what we cover.

It is possible to make city centres more attractive for cycling and walking by making these modes more pleasant and more convenient. Removing traffic lights achieves these aims if the traffic is also removed. To see this in real life, book a place on a study tour.

"Nearly Car Free" areas

The Dutch term "autoluwe" refers to any place with few cars. There is no translation in regular use in English but I think we need one. I propose "Nearly Car Free" or NCF or a way of describing these areas. It's perhaps a little cumbersome, but it's descriptive and difficult to distort its meaning.

This "winkelerf" uses the same sign
as a woonerf, but the character of the
street is not like a woonerf. Children
don't play in the streets here. In
practice this works the same as
any autoluwe shopping street.

Woonerven (Home Zones) are Nearly Car Free but woonerven are residential areas. Shopping streets do not have the same character. While woonerven are not through routes by either car or bicycle and serve only those who live in the area, shopping streets have to allow access by the public.  Shopping streets should not have the same form as a residential area. The idea of Autoluwte goes back to the 1970s and it is common in very many town centres and smaller shopping areas across the entire country. Every town and city has areas like this and the centres of Assen and Groningen are not exceptions.

The video shows how this works on a fairly cold February afternoon (min -3 C, max +2 C) in Assen. There are a lot of cyclists and pedestrians but you won't see many moving cars. Many of the pedestrians have reached the centre of the city by bicycle. You can see their bikes parked everywhere in the video. Because there are very few moving cars there are also very few interactions with cars. This results in a high degree of subjective safety and makes it possible for everyone to feel safe when walking or cycling:


In the centre of Assen everyone cycles in safety. If you don't watch this video then you will probably not understand the blog post.
Nearly car-free streets like this feature all across the Netherlands. They're a great success.

Removal of railings

Note that anti-pedestrian chain railings were once installed on streets like this in the Netherlands in order to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road where it was most convenient to do so. They're gone now. Pedestrians can now cross at any point on a street which is no longer designed for the maximum convenience of motor vehicles.

A very common type of street
Almost all city centres in The Netherlands work in this way. Some streets are only for pedestrians, many allow cycling for access, those where automobiles are allowed are usually not useful as through routes.


Groningen also has nearly car free streets. As in Assen, this means that even small children can ride, and crash, their own bikes in the centre of the city, safely isolated from the danger of cars.
This is not "Shared Space"
Unfortunately, foreign observers often confuse NCF with the much newer, but much less successful idea called "Shared Space". This is unfortunate as they are actually diametrically opposed ideas.

"Shared Space" in Haren. Much through
traffic by car, conflict is promoted,
Cycling feels uncomfortable and
is discouraged.

While NCF removes motor vehicles in order to make cycling and walking more pleasant (an example of unravelling of routes), "Shared Space" seeks to achieve the same ends while keeping motor vehicle through traffic and forcing motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to "share" the streets on an equal footing. Simply because architectural features of the space have been changed, drivers are expected to behave in an unusually friendly manner towards pedestrians and cyclists for eternity. Those same architectural features are also supposed to give pedestrians and cyclists more confidence to make their way as vulnerable road users amongst a large volume of motorized traffic.

"Shared Space" in Haren.
It's really all about cars,
not about pedestrians and
cyclists.

This is of course ludicrous and it does not work. The Netherlands was the first to come up with the idea of Shared Space, but it is not popular here now. "Shared Spaces" in this country date from the early 2000s when the idea had its brief popularity and before people had seen the problems with it. They have been retrofitted with features such as pedestrian crossings, railings and signs because of course it turned out they were necessary in order that people would be able to do such things as cross the road.

In "Shared Space" areas, pedestrians run across the road and cyclists cycle amongst the pedestrians. Such areas do not have relaxing and pleasant streets as seen above in Assen and the many other places which have excluded cars.

The most effective way of civilizing town centres is to remove cars from them
Removing cars from streets is a very effective way of encouraging cyclists. However, this removal has to be almost total in order to make cycling attractive to the whole population.

Note also that "pedestrianized" areas in the Netherlands usually make it clear that they do not exclude bicycles.

We are running an open Cycling Study Tour in May 2013. Book a place if you wish to see how what we describe on this blog works in real life.

Well before it was applied to streets in the Netherlands, the underlying principle of Shared Space was laid out very clearly by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.

Transformation of a city centre street

Drivers' access to these city centre
streets are controlled by a one-way
system. Bicycles are excepted.

There are many things about streets in the Netherlands which are misunderstood. For instance, many people write that Dutch cyclists "still share with drivers" on many streets. It's true in the literal sense, but streets here are not the same as streets in other countries such as the UK. This can be difficult to understand, as the difference is not so obvious as when there is a segregated cycle-path. However, even on streets like this, cyclists benefit from a form of segregation of modes without cycle-paths. It's not "sharing the road" as many people think of it because routes for drivers and cyclists have been unraveled from one another.

The direction of the one-way street
varies for drivers. Always a through
route by bicycle.

In this post I show a few streets in the centre of Assen and show how they work for cyclists and drivers such that despite their appearance, they are optimized for cyclists. After watching the video, read further to see a map showing the layout and  towards the bottom of the post for photos of what the same streets looked like in the 1960s when they were optimized for drivers.

Note that this video has many captions which explain what you are looking at. They are only visible on a computer and not on a mobile device.

This video shows the route for bikes directly through the city centre along Noordersingel, Nieuwe Huizen and the most Southern part of Groningerstraat. It's shown on this map in red:

Click for Google Maps. The video follows the red line from bottom to  top. Drivers are directed by the one way system along Javastraat, Jan Fabriciusstraat and Het Kanaal. This removes them from the route through the centre taken by cyclists.

These used to be the busiest streets in Assen for motor vehicles. However, they were redesigned, using a one-way system which prevents motor vehicles using it as a through route. Drivers now have to take the streets in yellow, which are optimized for driving and which have traffic lights on them.

The one-way system for drivers. Cyclists can use any of these streets in any direction.

Note how the The cycle route is more direct and doesn't have delays caused by traffic lights, but drivers can't use it because for them it is no longer a through route. By these means, the streets are calmed and cyclists are given priority in the central area. This has been so successful that very few moving cars are encountered by cyclists on these streets now - a huge contrast with the older situation. Note that in many places, this street is less than 12 m in width. That figure includes all available width including pavement (sidewalk), parking, cycle lane and road.

Read more about this street, watch a more up-to-date video.

Here are some photos of how it used to look:

In the video we ride from right to top/left from approximately 0:45 until 2:02. This photo shows how the same streets looked in the 1960s.

This is how the junction at 1:15 in the video looked in the 1960s. Note how pedestrians had to walk on narrow sidewalks behind barriers which prevented them from crossing the road wherever they wanted to and how there was "not enough space" for cycle-paths on these streets. This is similar to many current British road layouts.

This junction appears at 1:38 in the video. In 1965, this was the busiest junction in Assen and traffic lights were needed in this location. There is a blog post and video specifically about this junction.

There are shops on these streets which sell items such as washing machines and televisions. These are the types of goods which many people would rather transport by car than by bike. They can do so. You don't need any special permission to drive along here, these are still streets which are open to all users including drivers. However, the way in which they have been developed prevents their use for through traffic.

This is an example of segregation of modes without cycle-paths. It works. Even in the city centre. Due to their central location, and that they remain a through route for bikes even though not for cars, these streets are very popular with cyclists. A count here showed nearly 9000 cyclists per day using these streets: a very impressive figure in a small city of just 67000 people.

Nearly 9000 cyclists a day use this route now. They use the entire space. Encounters with moving motor vehicles are rare.

Streets which some commentators from outside the country think are "shared equally" with motorists are in my experience never anything of the sort. This is not a rare arrangement, but a very common one in streets like this - optimized for cycling, but allowing access to drivers. Where there is significant through traffic, cycle-paths are required to preserve an acceptable level of subjective safety. That includes just North of where the video in this post ends.

Access to this road by car is possible, but it's not a through route by car any more so people drive here only for access.

While cycling always benefits from segregation from motor vehicles, that does not mean that all cycling is on cycle-paths. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for all streets. Sometimes segregation is achieved by moving cars elsewhere. It is very easy to get an incorrect impression and to miss things like this. Unfortunately, some people visit the Netherlands and go home again still with the wrong impression. This is why we offer study tours and encourage campaigners and planners to come on them. They are a means to explain how details like this work, and to show people actual working examples.

The photos come from the book "Assen Verandert" which we reviewed. There are a number of other posts about Groningerstraat, showing more about the road North from the end of the video in this post. You'll note that where the road is busier, there are cycle-paths because you can't achieve a high enough level of subjective safety for mass cycling on roads with a large number of motor vehicles.

Transformation in the centre of Hoogeveen

After the second world war, Hoogeveen (current population 54000), a town which was growing rapidly due to being the centre for many industries, became more and more car oriented. Space was made for wide roads on "American" lines. This happened in several places in the Netherlands.

These old photos show how Hoogeveen's main street, Hoofdstraat, changed over the years, and demonstrate the progression towards car orientation:

1945: Canal is still in use as a canal

1951: Canal filled in to provide for a future with more motor traffic.

1960: More cars have appeared, but there are still trees in the centre of the road.

1965: The centre has been converted into car parking.

2010: It's no longer all about cars. The water is back. A second revolution has taken place on the streets of the Netherlands.

Here's a video showing how the centre of Hoogeveen looked in 2010:

Note: This video has explanatory captions which are not visible on mobile devices. Please view on a computer for the explanation. See update below: While cycling was allowed when this video and original blog post was made, cyclists are now banned at busy times.

Not only are people and bikes back, but water has come back to the centre of the road as well in an echo of the situation 60 years ago - though of course it is not navigable as it was back then.

This space, like in the centre of Assen, is primarily for pedestrians and cyclists. Motorists are not central as they would be in shared space. The area allows cars for access, but doesn't encourage through journeys.

The best thing about wide roads like this is that they offer lots of opportunities to change them. Hoogeveen's centre no longer looks at all like it used to. You can also look at it yourself by using Google's Streetview:


Bigger picture

2016 update
The situation in Hoogeveen is not completely a success. Unfortunately, though the council claims to want to encourage cycling, and though a high proportion of trips to the centre of Hoogeveen occur by bike, Hoogeveen has "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" by no longer permitting cyclists to use the central shopping street on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This enormously wide space has been filled with decorative features leaving only a narrow space at either side for walking. Cyclists are required to either take detours around the centre (largely on roads either shared with cars or with inferior cycling infrastructure) or get off and walk through the centre. You can't legally cycle to any point closer to the centre than you can drive. This is not a good way to encourage cycling.

The centre of Hoogeveen on a sunny Saturday in spring. All kinds of people cycle to the town centre - but unfortunately they're not allowed to cycle in the street but must walk

Infrastructure which is as accessible as this gives freedom to everyone, including people with disabilities. This recumbent tricycle has electric assist and gives its rider far greater freedom than would be possible if she lived outside of an accessible city. But is she actually allowed to cycle here ? Unsurprisingly, here is a high rate of law breaking by people who cycle within the pedestrian area.

Much shopping in Hoogeveen takes place by bike, but Hoogeveen's enormously wide central street doesn't cater well for cycling because a large proportion of the total space has been given over to water features and pavement restaurants leaving relatively narrow spaces at the sides in which conflict occurs.

A few km further North, Beilen demonstrates a far better layout. A much narrower street copes well with both cyclists and pedestrians because the space for use by pedestrians is made obviously different from that intended for pedestrians. When people know what they should be doing and where, conflicts are far less common.

There are other before and after posts on this blog.

Before and after in 's-Hertogenbosch

Another of Mark's videos, this time showing before and after views of the centre of 's-Hertogenbosch. Note how the city was once peaceful, how it became clogged with motor vehicles in the mid twentieth century, but how a second revolution returned the city to its people.

This type of transformation has been seen in cities all across the Netherlands. The car dominated spaces of the 1960s and 1970s are now pleasant places to be. Assen had a similar transformation, and perhaps most famously, so did Groningen.

Click here for more videos and photos showing how the Netherlands changed its streets twice in the 20th century.

How Groningen grew to be the world's number one cycling city

Groningen in the North of the Netherlands, just 30 km north from where we live, has the highest rate of cycling in the world. Nearly 60% of all journeys are made by bicycle in the city. These three slides from a presentation given on the 2008 study tours and previously at the 2006 European conference on Mobility Management by Mr Cor van der Klaauw.

In 1964 the city was small. There were no restrictions on cars being driven through the centre of the city and there were few main cycle routes. The motorist was king at this time. In some locations in the Netherlands in the 1950s and 1960s, cycle paths were removed in order to make more space for cars.

Urban motorway in Groningen. Some
were built before policy changed.

In Groningen, just as in other cities across the world, the 1960s brought planning and building of motorways right into the city itself (west to east and to the south in the next map).

A few of these large roads were built in Groningen. Notably the motorway which leads from the South and also access to the North, West and East.

However, in 1972 a new local government changed the emphasis of planning in Groningen. The centre of the city was to be considered as the "living room" and town planning was integrated with transport policy. The city was to be designed to be compact.

By 1980 the city had grown considerably with a lot of new housing around the outskirts. There was a ring road around the centre of the city, but access to the centre by car had been reduced. Many more high quality cycle routes had been created.

In 2006 the city has grown rather more, and cars pushed out further from the city centre. The city is now split into four segments between which it is impossible to drive without going out to the ring-road and back in again. There are many more cycle routes than before.

I should note that there is nothing stopping you cycling through the centre these days. The last few minutes of one of my videos shows the centre by bike. However, it isn't designated as a main cycling route. It is impossible to drive through, though, as the only way out by car is the way you came in, and many streets are entirely closed to private cars.

Groningen has 84000 homes, 38% of which were built after 1970. 180000 people live in those homes, and they own 71000 cars and 300000 bicycles. There are 0.4 cars and 1.7 bikes per person.

Seventy eight percent of residents now live within 3 km of the city centre. 90% of employees live within 3 km of the city centre. These short distances of course help to make cycling a viable mode of transport for most journeys,  but we should note that Groningen is actually not particularly densely populated by world standards. In fact, Groningen is far less densely populated than many cities in other countries with less cycling.




There are an average of 1.4 bicycle trips per person per day in the city, making up 59% of the total journeys, vs. under 37% by car. The average speed for driving within the city is 9.6 km/h, the average speed for cycling is 14.2 km/h. The cycling figure may seem slow, but note that it refers to whole journey average speed, not peak speed sprinting between lights. It also reflects the wide demographics of the cyclists. Fast Groningen cyclists travel appreciably quicker than this, but drivers can do little to increase their speed.

It isn't only Groningen which has followed such policies. Most, if not all, Dutch cities have done this to an extent. For instance, Assen also has a car free town centre, as does Nijmegen.

In summary, it is quite possible to grow cycling so that it accounts for more journeys than any other mode within a city. However, it does take a helping hand. Groningen's achievement came from policy to exclude cars from the centre of the city (a form of segregation without cycle paths), and to provide high quality and mostly traffic free cycling routes from the outskirts to the centre.

Also bear in mind that Groningen has the lowest average age of any city in the Netherlands and a high population of students (approximately 50000 in a city of 180000 people). This factor of course also boosts the level of cycling. However, due to the design of the city, even students in Groningen tend to cycle more than students anywhere else.

There are quite a few other posts about Groningen, including the huge railway station cycle park, an extraordinary bridge, how congestion on busy cycle-paths is avoided by providing other routes and how despite all this, the city still didn't manage to win the "Cycling City of the Netherlands" competition in 2011.

See this for yourself and have what you are looking at put in context for you and explained by a native English speaker. Book a study tour.

Are these figures accurate?
Note that it is not entirely clear what the 59% figure for cycling actually means. Who was counted ? Only residents or also people who travel from outside the city ? What methodology led to this result ? Clearly some people are excluded as pedestrians do not appear to have been counted when walking could possibly account for anything up to a fifth of total journeys made in the city (as is the case in Amsterdam) then this would reduce the cycling percentage to around 50% and driving to around 30%. We should always be skeptical of figures which are presented in a promotional way as most figures presented all around the world on cycling are not reliable. Exaggeration of cycling modal shares is extremely common around the whole world. The lowest figure we've seen quoted for Groningen comes from the possibly more authoritative Fietsberaad Cycling in the Netherlands publication. This states that the cycling modal share for Groningen is 38%, though they also don't tell us exactly how they came to that figure.

Read more about Groningen
Groningen's cycling infrastructure isn't always good. In fact, it's often quite inferior to the road infrastructure. Groningen hasn't done enough to enhance the experience of cyclists. Read more about it here.

Assen is 750 years old

750 years ago, some time around 1258, a new location was needed for the Maria in Campis monastery. A village and then a town grew up around this location, which was named Assen.

200 years ago, in 1809, city rights were granted by Lodewijk Napoleon, brother of the more famous Boneparte, who was King of Holland at the time.

Why is this of interest in a cycling blog ? I have often heard British people excusing less than excellent accommodation for bicycles on the grounds that British cities are too old to have been designed for bicycles. I've even known Americans make similar excuses, somehow imagining that Dutch cities were all razed to the ground in the 1990s and rebuilt around cycle paths. They weren't. Dutch cities are every bit as old as British cities and generally much older than American cities, or indeed than the United States of America itself. Of course, some have been changed dramatically and others are amongst the newest cities in the world and have only existed since the latter half of the 20th century. However, either way, bicycles are part of the transport policy.

Assen is an example of an older city. The centre has existed since long before either bicycles or cars were invented and as the city continues to expand quickly, the planning style dates from every time between 750 years ago and "right now". The city centre was not designed around bicycles, nor around cars for that matter, but nevertheless it is now wonderful for cycling and also for walking. This could also be seen as a good example of how to accommodate cyclists well in a "pedestrianized" space.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, even the early 70s, motor vehicles were king. Streets in the centre of the city looked much as in the first photo, which was taken in the mid 1960s. Note the narrow pavements and lack of specific space for bicycles. The city had been given over to the motor vehicle.

Move along to 2007 and the same street looks like the second photo. This second view is of the city which was attractive enough that we decided to make it our home.

The street is only for use by motor vehicles at specific times of the day and then for access only. This is an example of the action that has been taken in Assen to transform it into a bicycle, and human, friendly space. It didn't happen by chance, but was deliberately engineered. As there has been some confusion about this, please note that this is (thankfully) not shared space. It's closed to motor vehicles except for access at particular times of the day. A second revolution on the streets made this possible.

If you live somewhere which is less pleasant to cycle around and would like to see it transformed as this city has been, come on one of our study tours, or send your elected representatives.

Another blog post shows what it is like to cycle to this city centre and another is about the type of policy which brought this about.

Elsewhere on this blog you'll find many more before and after photos showing what Assen used to look like and what it looks like now. The picture at the top is from an advert in the local paper giving details of the Burgemeester's new year presentation on the 5th of January.

Van der Valk

In the 1970s on British TV there was a series called "Van der Valk" which followed a Dutch policeman from week to week. The show was made in English and I understand that the actors were all English too. However, it was shot in Amsterdam.

The interesting thing about this video, which shows the opening credits, is that having been shot in the early 1970s, it shows a different Amsterdam to that which you'll see in the present day. There are fewer bikes, and lots of cars. Dutch cities just don't look like this any more.

See also some before and after photos of Assen in the 1970s vs. now.