Travel Diaries: Amsterdam

So - after wending my way up through Spain, France and Belgium, I'd finally arrived in my new home in Amsterdam. It's taken me a while to get around to writing these blogs, so rather than just my first impressions, I can give my observations collected over the last several months.

The narrow streets of central Amsterdam

Amsterdam grew a lot in the 20th century, and there is - as you might expect - a bit of a distinction between the older parts of the city and the newer parts. The part that predates the invention of the car, the central area with concentric rings of canals, has mostly quite narrow streets, whereas out further in the suburbs built in the 20th century, roads were often originally built with cars in mind and tend to be much wider. Wherever you go, though, without fail, there is provision for cyclists. Where there's space, they will have large footpaths, wide cycle lanes, and lanes for general traffic.

Buitenveldertselaan in Amsterdam Zuid. Plenty of space for pedestrians, cyclists, cars and trams

A good example of this is Buitenveldertselaan, in Amsterdam Zuid, which I take to get to University every day. The carriageway is very wide, so it has wide footpaths on either side, generous cycle lanes, treed buffer zones, two lanes of traffic in each direction, and a fully segregated tram line in the middle. It is in many respects exactly the kind of wide arterial you'd expect to see in Australia - they haven't been shy about ensuring cars and trams can zoom along here at a considerable pace - but the difference is, there's wide footpaths and wide cycle lanes the whole way along. And, notably, no on-street car parking.

Where there's less space, for example on quiet residential streets, bikes and cars might be expected to share the road - but in those cases there is a very clear assumption that bikes belong there. They are entitled to use that road space, and if a car comes up behind a person cycling they will slow down, and go around them when it's safe to do so.

Where there's no segregated path, bikes share the road with cars

In some cases this is formally known as a "woonerf" - a street where bikes have the priority and cars are "guests" - and will clearly be marked as such. But even when there's no such markings, there's a pretty clear expectation - if a cyclist is on the road because there's no bike lane, then cars just have to put up with it. You don't get the sense that they particularly mind, either - there's no aggressive tailgating or tooting of horns. Maybe it's because the people driving also cycle regularly and can empathise - or maybe they're just used to cyclists being around, and it's just the done thing to drive this way. Whatever the reason, you don't feel in any way unsafe.

There is also bike parking everywhere. There's tons of formal bike parking at railway stations and other key destinations, plus more basic things like hoops, and just fences that people chain their bikes to. It's clear that there's pressure on this parking - even though there's heaps of it, demand is still outstripping supply - but that's a good problem to have. It's much cheaper and easier to provide parking for 500 bikes than 500 cars.

Part of the bike parking at Amsterdam Zuid station

That said, the cycling situation isn't perfect. Mopeds have historically been allowed to use the bike lanes, but were recently banned within the central parts of the city (within the A10 ring road). Unfortunately I live just outside the ring road, so it doesn't apply where I usually ride - and many of the moped riders drive like absolute dickheads. They can travel considerably faster than cyclists, have a lot more kinetic energy due to weighing a lot more, and they're often impatient and will try to cut through the smallest of gaps between cyclists. The goodwill you get from car drivers is much rarer amongst moped riders, and I honestly think they should be banned from cycle lanes entirely. Definitely something for Australian legislators to consider as we start to establish more of a cycling network.

Amsterdam's heavy and light rail network

The public transport is, generally, very good. The older metro lines kind of form a ring around the city centre, with the new underground M52 line cutting down the centre; for the most part, though, the centre is served by trams. To me it feels like the most comprehensive tram network I've come across outside of Melbourne; the network may be smaller in terms of track kilometres, but the city is smaller too. The bus network does a lot of good work too; all three modes run frequently, and run late at night. Coming back from international trips at 10-11pm, I would still have a frequent service on the M52 to get me to Zuid Station, and a reasonably frequent tram from there. Unsurprisingly, a network with these qualities attracts a lot of people, helping to reduce traffic congestion from driving.

Trams departing in 5, 9 and 9 minutes - clearly bunched up, but why?

Despite a pretty high proportion of the network being well-segregated from car traffic, the trams do still seem to suffer from bunching a bit. Route 5 trams are nominally on about an 8 minute frequency, with Route 6 supplementing it at peak times for higher frequencies, but it's fairly common to have a long wait till the next tram, then have several show up right after each other. They don't seem to wait long at traffic lights, so I think there's some form of priority. Overcrowding is definitely an issue, so perhaps it's because this is increasing dwell times at stops? I don't know. I'd be interested to better understand why this is, as there's no doubt implications for Melbourne's trams.

Tram on a balloon loop at the end of its route, out the front of VU Amsterdam

Lots of the older trams are, quite weirdly, unidirectional. Instead of having a driver's cab at both ends, and the driver changing ends at the end of the route, there'll be a balloon loop for the trams to actually turn around before heading back the other way - there's one out the front of the University.

There's not much space in the low-floor sections of the high-floor trams

There are still lots of older high-floor trams on the network. These do have small low-floor sections where the doors are, so theoretically a person in a wheelchair could use them, but the space is tiny and directly in front of the doors, so it's quite impractical for a person in a wheelchair to actually use. I noticed that the Rail Futures Institute recently proposed inserting low-floor sections into Melbourne's high-floor B2 trams, to achieve a similar effect - their low-floor sections seem to be more spacious, but the Amsterdam experience still makes me a bit skeptical of this.

Rail Futures Institute's proposal to add low-floor sections to high-floor B2 trams (source)

Fares are more expensive than what I'm used to from Ballarat, but generally cheaper than Melbourne. They're also more progressive - we have fairly flat fares in Victoria, whereas in Amsterdam short trips are noticeably cheaper than long trips. They're all integrated under the OV-chipkaart, their equivalent of myki, which either has the permanent smartcard or single/daily short-term options if you're just in town briefly. In addition to PT, OV-chipkaart is integrated with the train company's bikeshare program so you can hire a bike (and access bike parking) using your card.

The Dutch railway company's integrated bikeshare program (via Willem_90)

A lot of the good transport is supported by good urban form. Amsterdam went through its tower-in-a-garden phase in the 1960s like most other places, and the Bijlmermeer and Uilenstede reflect this; the newly-developed Zuidas is composed of tall steel-and-glass office and residential buildings that wouldn't be out of place in Melbourne's CBD. But much of Amsterdam - from the urban core to the suburbs, places developed decades apart - is composed of densely-packed, 2-5 storey mixed use developments. It's a very successful formula; on the main street, businesses on the ground floor with residences for 3-4 storeys above it, surrounded by quieter streets of 2-3 storey residences. It allows people to walk or cycle to the businesses, or to the public transport stops that are invariably out the front of them. You really do not need to own a car if you live in any of these neighbourhoods. The architectural styles changed through the decades (and some certainly look prettier than others) but they know the urban form works and they've stuck to it.

The architecture varies (and this era is not one I'm fond of) but the mixed-use formula works well

I could go on for several thousand words, but that pretty much sums up the main points. It is, of course, not perfect - but Amsterdam is very much what I thought and hoped it would be from a transport perspective. There is so much a large metropolis like Melbourne, and a growing regional city like Ballarat, can learn from Amsterdam - we can have cities that work this well too, if we fight for it.