It’s hard to keep up with all the recent infrastructural changes in Utrecht. The changes are also increasingly harder to explain to a foreign audience. One of the latest street re-designs involves the removal of protected cycleways from a shopping … Continue reading When does a street no longer require protected cycleways?
Utrecht has redesigned yet another public space in its city centre to make it much more attractive for walking and cycling. Almost all of the streets on the east side of the canal ring surrounding the historic city centre had … Continue reading Less and less space for cars in the Utrecht city centre
Happy birthday Utrecht! Today the city celebrates that it was granted city rights on 2 June 1122 by Holy Roman Emperor Henry V when he visited Utrecht, exactly 899 years ago. Next year Utrecht will celebrate its 900th anniversary in … Continue reading How much did Utrecht change in a decade?
Exactly ten years ago, in March 2011, I visited the Maastunnel in Rotterdam to film it. The historic tunnel complex has separate tunnels for motor traffic, for cycling and for walking. Together they allow people to cross the river Nieuwe … Continue reading The Rotterdam Maastunnel has been renovated
Last Saturday Utrecht’s restored canal ring was officially opened. Unannounced and early in the morning the crew of the replica Roman ship “Per Mare ad Laurium” (some even dressed in period costumes) pulled a rope to tilt a gigantic bucket. … Continue reading Utrecht corrects a historic urban design mistake
The Utrecht Maliebaan is a beautiful tree-lined avenue – over 60 metres wide – that was built almost 400 years ago as a sports track for a game that was also an ancestor of golf. A century ago, in the … Continue reading When you design streets for people, not for machines
Billet en français The Ferdinand Bolstraat is an interesting street in Amsterdam. Part of it is car-free now, another part is almost car-free. In the 1970s it was still considered a main arterial by some, but residents fought a fierce … Continue reading The battle for the Ferdinand Bolstraat
A record number of people on high-wheelers gathered last weekend in Zaltbommel in the Netherlands. People from 10 different countries had travelled to this town to attend the first Open Dutch Penny-Farthing Championships. With a tour on Saturday and races … Continue reading Open Dutch Penny-Farthing Championships
The Sint Annatunnel in Antwerp (Belgium) is an 86 year-old pedestrian and cycling tunnel under the Scheldt river, connecting the city centre to the west-bank, called left bank in Antwerp. The tunnel is simply referred to as the Voetgangerstunnel, (the … Continue reading The Scheldt tunnel in Antwerp
Billet en français Delft was the third city in The Netherlands to experiment with modern cycling infrastructure, aided by the national government. After the experiments in Tilburg and The Hague in the 1970s, where they built one very good (but … Continue reading The 1979 Delft Cycle Plan
A video in French, that is the not so usual treat I have for you in this week’s blog post. In March 2018, a professional film team was working in Amsterdam. They were creating a documentary for French TV and … Continue reading Cycling in Amsterdam through French eyes
Utrecht is reconstructing the streets directly around the historic city centre. These streets, alongside the former city wall and moat, were once supposed to become a four lane main road. For that the water would have disappeared. That never happened … Continue reading From main road to attractive people’s space
