Having lived in Copenhagen I can only attest the surge in living quality when a city adopts a no-compromise bicycle strategy. Back in car-loving Munich I feel set back a century. With city council members putting forward arguments like that bike lanes will “destroy retail businesses”. It’s frustrating.<p>Ps: here’s the short film the article talks about. Shows the fantastic transformation of Utrecht. <a href="https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E</a>
Living in Utrecht I can say: it's amazing, going to work? 10 minutes, going to the station? 10 minutes. Basically anything is within maximum 20 minutes cycling distance. In the rare occasion I do take the car, the city is still surprisingly accessible.<p>The only thing I hope they will change in the future is removing motorised vehicles from the bicycle lanes, scooters/e-bikes are just too fast and break the whole flow of traffic. Seeing that scooters are already banned from the cycling lanes in Amsterdam I think it will happen soon in Utrecht.
I live in Utrecht. During peak hours there are so many bikes on the street that small traffic jams form near traffic lights. I cannot imagine the disaster if all these people would have taken their car instead. It simply wouldn't fit.<p>I also love the fact that in most parts you could still take your car. But most people don't, as taking the bike is the faster and more convenient option.
I've commuted by bike in both San Francisco and Amsterdam. In Amsterdam it's a lovely (and safe) experience, whereas in San Fransisco it was positively hazardous. The key difference being the thoughtful lane designs in The Netherlands where you have dedicated bike lanes physically separated from the car traffic. In San Francisco you are often mixed with or adjacent to car traffic or parked cars - leaving you susceptible to parked car doors suddenly opening, or being caught in a moving car's blind spot.
I love Utrecht. It's a college town with the cultural and intellectual vibe that always engenders. It's a very modern town but you can turn a corner and walk half a block and suddenly it feels as though you just took a time machine to the 16th century. Best of all worlds.
I cycle commuted in London in the late 90s and 2000's and we pushed then for two items - to be seen by other road users as real road users (ie not something just to be brushed aside) and for dedicated cycle lanes that would improve safety.<p>I started cycle commuting again about a year ago (Boris Bikes) and guess what we have dedicated "cycle superhighways"<p>And the problem it turns out is <i>us</i> cyclists<p>There is always a traffic jam on the dedicated pathway - the blue cycle lane. And so some (usually but not always male) cyclists jump on and off the lane and engage in dangerous overtaking manoeuvres.<p>Worst, is that the blue lane runs along normal roads and so has traffic lights at the same positions - and that I guess 25% of cyclists ignore completely a red light and plough through - and twice I have seen these idiots hit pedestrians and two weeks ago came across the fire brigade washing the blood away<p>We campaigned and rode to be taken as real roads users - and when we got real roads with real traffic light we ignore the real
rules of the road<p>Cyclists need to have number plates and fines for breaching traffic laws.<p>sorry.
Though this article is true, there's nothing exceptional about the Utrecht bicycle infrastructure. The great thing is that the bicycle infrastructure throughout the entirety of The Netherlands is of extremely high quality. In the suburbs the bicycle experience is actually much more pleasant than in cities: the lanes are wide, there hardly is any congestion and you can really go anywhere on bicycle lanes without being forced to do some weird manouvering (which is very common outside of The Netherlands). Utrecht is just a good example of the incredible bicycle infrastructure in The Netherlands as a whole.
It can be a bit overwhelming during rush hour though, two way bicycle traffic of multiple cycles next to each other going at different speeds. Makes crossing Vredenburg almost like a real life game of Frogger on foot.
This documentary about Utrecth is p0rn for bike lovers <a href="https://vimeo.com/344373585" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/344373585</a>
> have brought on much-larger windfall of social benefit<p>One of the things I love about Amsterdam is how the city changes in the evening. It gets quieter because there are less cars. People can go to pubs without driving (cycling under the influence is illegal but tolerated). And almost the entire city is accessible within 20 minutes.
I love cycling, but I live in a very hilly environment, which is why I don't think it will really take off here, unfortunately.<p>I always try and think about designs for a "ski lift" for bikes, just as a thought exercise. Is anything like that being actually made?
At first I thought this was about the much-admired discount art supply store chain.<p>But there is a city with that name, that clearly must court cyclists more ardently than the most devoted retailer of paints and brushes.