For most of our time in Amsterdam, we participated in an infrastructure scavenger hunt made by the Urban Cycling Institute to better understand how the cycling infrastructure here works. It included different "missions" to different places to learn about the history of the place and how the present cycling infrastructure is efficient.
Highlights of the Scavenger Hunt
Community Input
The most valuable parts of the scavenger hunt were when we were able to talk to residents of Amsterdam about how they're feeling about certain projects.
First, we talked to people about the new underground bike parking garage at Central Station. All of them said that they like it and use it as often as possible, or whenever they're using public transit. Everyone is able to park their bike in the same place and easily know where it is, and it is inside so their bikes won't get wet while parked.
Next, we talked to a business owner on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal about the street redesign process there. That street used to be a road for cars with car parking on the sides, but its median was turned into a park with vegetation and tram tracks where cars can't get through, but people can walk across. We talked to the owner of a small cafe that was on this median and she said she was very happy with the changes that had been made. She said that the old road was very chaotic with cars, but now she's much happier because it's more quiet and she has more seating available for customers.
Lastly, we talked to people about the controversial street pilot project on Weesperstraat, where the usually busy road is closed to cars from 6 am to 11 pm every day. Most of the people we talked to really loved it. One woman who lives nearby didn't have a car and she thought it was better for her pedestrian experience, and even her boyfriend, who has a car and has to take a longer, less direct route home, loves it and wants it to be permanent. Another person loved it because of the lower noise levels, and she thinks the city should be more car-free so that people can get around safely and easily. There were also construction workers that liked it because it gave them a job, but they also thought it was visually pleasing. The person who didn't like it as much was a delivery man, and he said it's hard for those who deliver things. He thinks that the concept is a good idea but he thinks they should've picked a street that was less important.
Other Interesting Highlights
One cool thing I got to observe was Alexanderplein, an intersection without any stop signs or street lights. There are yield triangles on the ground and crosswalks, but other than that, traffic flows and people crossing, cars, trams, and bikes figure out when to move forward. When I first saw this, it blew my mind and it was really interesting to watch the flow happen for a couple of minutes. I didn't see a single accident, and the closest it got was cars not yielding when they were supposed to, but not close enough to hit anyone.
Another cool thing was that we were able to get a tour of Huis de Pinto. We walked in to try to find the hidden bike in the artwork, but a nice man gave us a tour because he thought it was cool that we were Americans. This was the house in the neighborhood where "urban renewal" (not like American urban renewal; in the Netherlands that is what they describe as the period where they retrofitted and preserved historic buildings) began. We got to walk through the house, see the courtyard, and look at old structures hanging on the walls. It was also very cool that the street it was on was the end of an old planned highway that was never built there, and that it is now a car-free street with only trams and bikes on it.
Reflection
Debriefing at UvA after the scavenger hunt, the main thing that my group took away was that if you cater towards what people want in their community, you'll have a more efficient, lively, and activated use of space. Through our interviews with many of the residents, we realized that the places we went that the majority of people said they liked were the places where you could see lots of people, community plants around, etc. creating a lively and used space.
To wrap everything up, we made a map connecting the Environmental/Spatial and Political/Social aspects for the causes of a high level of cycling in the Netherlands and the consequences (positive and negative) of it. Our main conclusion from this was that community and bike infrastructure are very intertwined through community input into the planning process to provide access for all people including kids, lower-income people, and those with disabilities. This provides positive consequences to that community in the form of air quality effects, less car crashes, and better cardiovascular health.
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