Ride in Utrecht

In this week’s post you can ride along with me in Utrecht. I used my Utrecht bicycle, which is parked in the world’s largest bicycle parking at the station, to cycle to the north of the city. I made this trip to visit my mother on her birthday last week. I chose a route that I haven’t shown before, but which passes several locations featured in earlier blog posts. I will link to those posts in the captions of the pictures in this post. Because there are always a lot of questions about how you get your bicycle out of (and back into) the upper racks, I made sure I included the former in this video. Despite the drab weather we’ve been having most of this winter, I do hope you enjoy the ride!

Retrieving my bicycle from the upper rack is not very hard. These racks are spring loaded so the lifting is very easy. This bicycle parking garage was the topic of two of my posts. First when the first part opened and then when it was finished, two years later.

This street was a building site since about 2010 until last year, when it was finally finished. The street may be redesigned now, the area to the left of the street is still to be developed.

The Utrecht Vredenburg is the busiest cycle way in the country, but not on a January morning during another lockdown. This was filmed on Friday 14 January at 10:45 in the morning, while all the shops were closed. Later that night it turned out to be the final day of the total lockdown. Shops have reopened. Restaurants, theaters and museums have not.

On the brick surface of the cycle way you can see that an arrow points to the newest underground parking garage in the restored building of House Modernes, openend last October.

The Potterstraat is a street in the city centre that was widened in the 1920s. 100 years later it is only for public transport and walking and cycling, not for private motor traffic. I made a video about this city centre corridor in 2011.

This bridge over the former city moat was widened in 1940, but for today’s use it has become too wide. Only half of it is used now for traffic on wheels. The rest of the bridge has become for walking only. I filmed this location in 2010.

To cycle north from the city centre I used this very successful cycle street. A main route for cycling but only a minor street for motor traffic. Through motor traffic uses a parallel main road.

Every single person on this still from my video is going through a red light. When that is the case there is something wrong with the acceptance of these lights. People then have the idea they are waiting for no good reason. Indeed, there wasn’t a single motor vehicle approaching at this moment. The light in the foreground is relatively new. It is in the middle of the crossing. I have used this crossing for decades. Starting in the 1970s, on my way home from school. There never used to be a light in the middle. You could always make the full crossing at once. It is clear that people don’t appreciate that extra light and choose to ignore the lights here when possible.

I don’t usually take this road, normally I turn right just before I get here. But when I approached that turn I saw in the distance that this part had been finished recently. I decided not to turn and keep going straight-on, onto this new cycle way. On the right hand side used to be a zone with warehouses for as long as I can remember. The area has been redeveloped into housing. The original one-way cycle path here has become a bi-directional path. There is another one at the other side of the street.

Another street that I do not often use. You can see here that at one point the cycle way was narrower. The blocks of the crossing have not been changed after the path was widened. They are in the wrong location now. It should become a continuous cycle way someday. Possibly when the street is up for reconstruction.

This is a street that I do use often. It was designed in the 1960s, but reconstructed in this century. I documented that change in a post in 2013.

The route on a map. I mention all the street names in the video, so you could follow the ride.

This week’s video; a ride in Utrecht.

“But how do you get your bicycle into one of those upper racks?” It’s not so hard. This video shows how I get my bike out and then back in again. pic.twitter.com/NsdUHwRr4n

— Mark Wagenbuur (@BicycleDutch) January 17, 2022

In this tweet I show how I parked my bicycle in the upper rack when I returned (in the second half of the video).