Cycling Facilities 1

The Netherlands is a very bicycle-centric country, but there are still a large number of cars occupying the roads and they both need a place to park and can provide a very real danger to cyclists under the wrong circumstances. As such, there is a lot of roadway infrastructure to allow both of these requirements to coexist. In this post are two examples: the first is a fietsstraat and the second is a dedicated bike route.

This is an example of a Dutch fietsstraat, literally a "bicycle street". This particular road runs for about 0.4 km next to Lessenaar along the NW-SE direction. The defining characteristic of a fietsstraat is that although cars are allowed to drive along it, cyclists have the right of way along the whole thing, and the design of the roadway is typically such that it is undesirable and difficult to drive a car through in the first place, typically having only just enough room for one-way traffic and little to no curbside parking.

These images depict a dedicated bike route passing near the Kattenhotel in Delft, and they are fairly representative of such routes in general. Cars are explicitly disallowed on these roads, generally being about 3m (9ft) wide to allow two-way bike traffic with a decent buffer. They are typically paved in red as that is the standard "bike priority" color here (black is for cars and grey is for pedestrians), but in some cases they are also paved in black asphalt, generally only when they can't be mistaken for car paths. These are also present in America, albeit not with as much frequency and generally without any actual traffic markings. Notably, unlike their American equivalent the bike paths here do often allow motorized scooters so long as they are only able to attain a maximum speed of (if I recall correctly) 30kph (18.6mph). These routes tend to be fairly long and straight, and can be differentiated by those designed for maximum utility and those that are more scenic (this one seems to be among the latter). 

These are only a few of the facilities available to cyclists here. There are many more that are integrated into the infrastructure to allow for effective, safe transportation of both people and goods by bike! I'm looking forward to seeing and learning about even more before my time here ends...

At the End of Day 2

Photo by Dr. Bertini (2023)

We began the day with a guest lecture from Professor Gonçalo Homem de Almeida Correia, an instructor at the Technical University of Delft, about some of the things the school is working on, and a great deal of information about its Master's program. Apparently it's relatively similar to what we have in the US, but he said it would typically cost around €1000 per year! That's practically nothing in comparison! Additionally, the student's thesis project is sponsored by a company or public entity with a vested interest in the subject, which in the US would probably mean something like Boeing hiring a graduate student to do research on

Photo by Anna
Trohimovich (2023)

what additives make jet fuel more efficient, cleaner burning, or something like that. And yes, I do mean hired: In the Netherlands, graduate students are paid a salary by whatever company is supporting their project, and they are functionally a full employee at that location for the duration of whatever contract they were given! Completely different from the US, where we have to compete for a handful of grants and scholarships, take loans, and oftentimes work a part-time job just to be able to afford to live in the area! The main downside is that housing in the area seems to be in rather limited supply, and with high demand that means prices are through the roof! Apparently, a single bedroom apartment can run you upwards of €1100 per month, putting it pretty much on par with many places in the US right now. Even still, the cost would be less than what I currently pay for my undergrad tuition!

We then went over the schedule for the next two weeks before setting off to explore the open-air market between the Old Church and the New Church. One interesting aspect of the city that we noticed were all of the canals running between streets. They were fairly varied in some ways, largely the height of the embanking walls and the amount of plantlife on the surface of the water, but generally speaking, these canals were quite uniform where it counts: the depth of the water, width of the channel, and clearance under bridges. Notably, there is easily enough clearance below the bridges to allow a relatively shallow boat to pass through, meaning that they can still be used to transport people and goods throughout the city,

which several people take advantage of in offering tours of the city via the canals by boat. There are also several businesses (none of which I thought to take pictures of) with doors and small landings opening directly onto the canals, raised a few feet to account for the height of the boat deck. They don't seem to be primarily used for transport of goods anymore though, as while I didn't see any boats moving along them with shipments I did see a single large box truck driving through the city center to make deliveries during the open market. Notably, it was one of the only large vehicles I have seen in motion while here, a point I'll discuss later in more detail.

One more point of mention is that several of the canals running through Delft seem to have some level of litter cluttering their waterways, which is unfortunate to see. It typically isn't much, granted, but it is still rather disappointing to see these things in any capacity. Notably, most of what I've seen is plastic soda bottles, and in the photo here they seem to be very American in their shape, which makes me wonder if perhaps it's mostly tourists creating this problem. I will make a point of including a photo in my next post, but there are several waste repositories along any road here, including fully separate containers for recyclables. The idea that you should be as environmentally friendly as possible here is very strong, and just looking out my hotel window, most of the roofs on the horizon (especially the flat ones) are covered in solar panels, and the one nearest in the photo below is also covered in some type of plant life, most likely a moss of some kind, which will help with both temperature in the building by absorbing some of the sun's heat, and it will absorb a decent bit of carbon dioxide, helping reduce the levels of the gas in the atmosphere.

Jumping back to the open market, as I said before the whole thing took place between the Old and New churches, and it's hard to explain in words the sheer scale of those buildings. Especially the Old church, with its bell tower that chimes every 15 minutes and tolls out the hour when it changes over. The front door alone is probably about twice as tall as I am, and the actual tower, well, towers over every other building in the area! I think the only structure that can rival its height, which is surely well in the hundreds of feet, is a building on the TU Delft campus which I believe Professor Correia said was occupied by the software engineering students, but I may be misremembering that. Regardless, the tower is very much an engineering marvel, as is the rest of the building stretching out behind it. For a fee, you can also go into the Old Church and climb to the top of the bell tower or explore the museum! It's open every day of the week except Sundays, which seems to be a fairly common theme around here.

After spending some time at the market, we went and explored the downtown on foot for a while. Here there were several cafes, restaurants, and shops, some of which were chains that also exist in the US, many of which weren't. The downtown experience is vastly different here compared to the US as well, with locations not only being so close together that they share a wall when not across the street from one another, but also seemingly not permitting businesses to use giant, brightly-colored signs and billboards for advertisement, making for a much calmer, more compact, and altogether person-friendly experience. Again, I failed to actually get any pictures, but you can see some of the buildings in the first canal photo above. We did stop at a bookstore, which had prices much lower than you would see in the US and in which I was able to pick up a Dutch-English dictionary that I am hopeful will help me in learning the language.

During a sort of "extension" to our tour, we also happened upon the bike seen in this photo here. The whole thing is covered in moss, and the spokes in the front wheel are almost all completely gone, leading our group to suspect that at some point it was abandoned here, though it's unclear why exactly this was done. Bikes are a primary means of transportation here, so it doesn't exactly make sense that someone would simply abandon their vehicle on the side of the road without reason.

Finally, we arrive near the end of the day, when we had a few hours of free time to muck about before we came together for a group dinner. I elected to take this time to get (mildly) lost in Delft on my own bike, and this happened to place me directly next to what I can only assume to be a highway: cars were flying past to my right, there were several lanes going by, and I couldn't have felt much safer thanks to the massive blockade between me and them. It happens that the bike route brings cyclists all to the same side of the road, meaning that I was not only next to rather fast-moving motorists, but I was also going in the opposite direction to those drivers nearest me. Not exactly what you would want to be doing in the US, but here such things seem to be the norm! And again, if anything were to have happened there was this railing made complete with bracing trusses I have never seen anywhere else, which would have stopped the car before it made it far into the bike lane. 

Until tomorrow!

At the End of Day 1

 Hello! As I begin writing this, it is about 9:30pm here in Delft, and we have just concluded our first day here in the country! For today, we largely just biked around a bit to become familiar with the area and our bikes. In doing so though, we saw some really interesting things!

One of the first things we encountered was a large windmill, spinning slowly next to a canal. It's made of masonry and wood, and it seems to be quite old based on just looks. 

We continued along the canal for a while, and the ride was both gorgeous and an easy ride. On several occasions, we would pass by people in long boats rowing in tandem. I assume they were preparing for some kind of competitive sport, but I can't say for certain. Also in the canals, we saw children playing in the water (I didn't take any photos of this for hopefully obvious reasons), and at least one instance of a larger ship passing through, which it did quite effortlessly, I would like to point out.

                                                              

We later got to a bridge designed to rapidly swivel on a single column that spans the canal. Its design allows it to move so that larger vessels can pass, while being faster and perhaps more usable than a traditional drawbridge. The system seems to work somewhat like a construction crane, with one side being significantly longer than the other. Also notable is that the bridge itself only carries the weight of bikes and pedestrians, meaning that it is routinely subjected to less damage than would be the case with more typical roadways.

The next place we went was the Dutch Parliament building, where among other things there was litter in the waterway nearby, and a dragonfly that perched on my bike's brake cables for a while before taking off again when we left. 
 

The building itself was gorgeous too! It looks like a proper castle, and that's because it is! This structure was built largely during the 13th century, and is currently one of the oldest parliament buildings still in use. 

We then went and got dinner at a place called the "Little Pancake House" when translated to English. They had great pancakes (they're more or less a mix between crepes and tortillas in the US) that they served with or without toppings, depending on the order. They were gluten- and egg-free, and I believe we were told that they were in fact fully vegan, but I might be wrong about that one. 

I also ordered a limonade, which although it does translate exactly as expected means something completely different here! According to the internet, this was most likely a fruit syrup drink, but it tasted exactly like the caramel used to make caramel apples! It was pretty good but suuuper sweet, so I probably won't be getting it again anytime soon.

After getting dinner, we went to the beach and got ice cream, neither of which I took photos during, although I considered it at the beach. I decided against it though because I figured it would probably be rude to photograph people in their bathing suits to put them on the internet, niche area or otherwise. As for the ice cream, I just didn't think to! It was pretty good though.

We then went back to our hotel, and on the way we stopped to look at the eternal flame world peace monument. Each stone placed around the base of the monolith (which has a small flame burning inside) represents a country. There are almost 200 of them there including the USA. You can't see it because it seems to have mostly broken away, but the US rock is just below that bright blue one on the bottom left.

In addition to the monument, there was also a large building nearby intended as a place for nations to diplomatically settle disputes. Apparently it was originally built by the Romans during an invasion, but it was since torn down and replaced with the current version, funded by some wealthy person several decades ago.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel for the night. Along the way, I was able to appreciate the cycling infrastructure and the area around us pretty thoroughly. One area we passed through had graffiti painted all along one wall, for instance, which while not really directly related to the infrastructure still shows that there are some things that stay constant wherever you may go. Many of the bike routes follow along the same path as car routes, and in some cases the two directly overlap, sometimes even with trams on rails! Additionally, the vast majority of both roads and paths seemed to be paved with brickwork masonry rather than asphalt, which is very much the standard in places like the USA. Although this is certainly not always the case (especially for pedestrian walkways), it is still quite interesting to me that this is how the Dutch decided to develop their infrastructure. Additionally, although there are many signals dictating how cyclists are expected to behave, they appear to operate much more akin to pedestrian crossings in the US, which is to say that they are used when convenient and generally ignored when not, which can certainly cause some confusion for the foreign cyclist if they had no insight prior to entering the country. Similarly concerning if found without prior knowledge (much as was the case for myself) is the fact that moto-scooters seem to be permitted onto many if not all bike routes! Being by far both the loudest and fastest vehicles on these routes, it is a point of personal curiosity what happened to allow this phenomenon, especially because the American counterpart is very strict, stating that "No Motor Vehicles" may enter bike path territory. 

Many of these questions I expect will be answered tomorrow, when we will be exploring the Delft University campus, or at some later time. If I prove to be wrong, I will likely elect to perform some personal research into the matter to see what I can find.

Until tomorrow!

First Impressions

 I have just arrived in the Netherlands, and had the delightful experience of making my way from Amsterdam to Delft, largely on my own (I got in late, I have nobody to blame but myself) with some very helpful advice from Dr. Bertini. So far, the Netherlands seems like an altogether lovely place!

On the train ride, I noticed among other things that the traffic lights here are much the same as they are in the US, albeit perhaps with a larger overhang. Similarly, cars drive on the right-hand side of the road, but the central dividing line is white instead of yellow. The weather is warm but not unbearably so, and as expected, I've seen far more bikes in motion than cars! 

Already, I begin to notice things pointed out in Pete Jordan's In the City of Bikes, having seen both a pair on one bike with one riding sidesaddle and the delight of hearing and seeing a bike go past that surely isn't much longer for this world if nothing is done (although I can relate - my car is in very much the same position!)

I expect to meet with the rest of the group shortly, but in the meanwhile I intend to continue watching what there is to watch and hearing what there is to hear.

First Blog Post

 Hello! Welcome to my blog

My name is Zachary, and I will be joining OSU for a summer class in the Netherlands on sustainable mobility. I am originally from a small town in Eastern Oregon called Baker City, and have just finished my third year of the civil engineering program at Oregon Tech. I've been greatly enjoying it here, and it's been great fun working with the professors, but I've wanted for some time to get some experience travelling abroad, and there's not much of that available directly through the school. So when I saw that OSU was offering a study abroad program (thank you Dr. Lindgren!), and especially considering it's one I have a personal interest in as well as academic, I practically jumped at the opportunity to apply! 

See, I don't enjoy driving and I never really have for a number of reasons. It's loud, expensive, stressful, and contributes to a lot of environmental issues. Unfortunately, in the places that I've lived there isn't much in the way of alternative options, and it's very much an "either/or" situation: in my hometown, public transit is nonexistent but there is some cycling/walking infrastructure, and in Klamath Falls there's a basic bus system (which has a lot of its own issues, but I digress), but almost no cycling/walking infrastructure outside of downtown, and even then it tends to be fairly basic in its implementation. I want to take this class in the hopes that I can walk away from it with ideas that could help improve the ability for people like myself to choose alternate means of getting where we need to go, when we need to get there.