Amsterdam just had its biggest summer storm in history, which was almost like a hurricane with high winds and rain, so it was interesting to see how this impacted the bike and public transit infrastructure.
Directly after the worst parts of the storm when we were supposed to stay inside, there were trees down everywhere, some in the bike lanes and some in the sidewalks, and a lot of debris and large puddles. There weren't many people out biking, but as the day went on there were more and more, even when it started raining again. Most people here seem to continue to bike even in the rain with little to know rain gear, which is pretty interesting. They don't mind being uncomfortable for a bit because they know they will dry if they get wet.
Because there were so many trees down and some issues with power, the trams and trains were not running, so there were trams stopped all around the city, sometimes with cars backed up behind them (an instance when it would just be best to cycle). These trams were being towed away from the busy streets, and after they were towed, a cleaning vehicle would come up to clean the tracks behind them.
The cycle tracks were cleared pretty quickly, and by the evening there was not much debris at all. In the parks there were still some fallen trees, but people were able to create paths where it was possible to swerve around them so that nobody fell off of their bike going over large sticks. It is very refreshing to see bike infrastructure being cleaned so quickly coming from a place that always has debris in the bike lanes. Two days later, most of the infrastructure is back to normal and everything is running again, so Amsterdam was able to bounce back from this pretty well with a fast cleanup and priority for bike and public transportation infrastructure.
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