Though I would've liked to spend more time in Nijmegen and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, I was only able to spend 2 days there. But, as always, I have some thoughts about the infrastructure and activities I did while I was there.
Bike Infrastructure
The bike infrastructure in Nijmegen is a lot more connected than I thought it would be for such a small city, especially navigating our way into the city center while staying somewhat on the outskirts. Most of the bike infrastructure here is either a fietsstraat (a red road where bikes have priority and cars are guests), protected lanes (smooth surface or cobblestones, one-way or two way), or bridges/tunnels. The bridges and tunnels here are really interesting because they provide a safe connection to many places with fully separated bike infrastructure, either going through a tunnel under an important road or train pathway, or a bridge over bodies of water.
Another thing that surprised me was the amount of people using all of this infrastructure. For some reason I thought that because it's smaller than Amsterdam there would be a lot more people in cars, but the cycle tracks were always full of people, even in the middle of a week day. There were people using the infrastructure outside of the city and within the city, which was super cool to see (if you build it they will come!).
During our time in Nijmegen, we were able to go on two tours of the city and surrounding area from planners with two different perspectives, and we were able to see a lot of the infrastructure that makes this city great, as well as some of the failures.
The good news from the tours is that Nijmegen has some of the little infrastructure amenities that Amsterdam was lacking in places, like bike trash cans. Another super cool thing was the bike stair ramps that have bristles on the way down so that your heavy bike doesn't force you to run down the stairs, and power on the way up so that you don't have the push your bike up the stairs.
The bad news from the tours were some of the infrastructure and policy failures of Nijmegen. One of the more sad failures was a ghost bike at one intersection where someone was struck and killed by a truck driver. In that intersection, there is not a separated or protected bike lane for cyclists going straight and cars turning right, so they share a lane. In this instance, a truck driver was turning right, and they struck the woman going straight, causing her death. This, and lack of change that is happening because of it, is a reminder that even the Netherlands isn't a perfect utopia, and that every person living anywhere deserves to have infrastructure safe enough that they can get where they're going without risking their life.
Nijmegen has some similar failures to the US, specifically in designing roads to be car-centric. However, many of these roads have now been redesigned to make them safer for the people on bikes and for people walking, instead of more convenient for the cars at the expense of the people. One example was a wide road with black asphalt and narrow sidewalks being turned into a red fietsstraat, narrowed with brick strips on the side (that are small enough so that cyclists don't think they're a bike lane) with continuous and wider sidewalks, permeable street parking, and many speed bumps that have small sections of flat road on either side for cyclists to easily pass through. The street before the redesign looked a lot like a typical American neighborhood street, so this is super valuable in showing us what we can do to make our streets safer back home and a reminder that we can fix what we've done wrong.
Biking to Germany
Though we took some wrong turns, the bike infrastructure was so connected that we were able to ride all the way to the Germany-Netherlands border (10 miles there, 10 miles back), despite taking a wrong turn and accidentally going on a gravel walking path.
This was a really cool experience, and we were riding along old train tracks for most of the way. It was super interesting to see the culture and language shift as we interacted and said good morning to everyone we passed, going from Dutch to German.
On our way, even as we got closer to Kranenburg, Germany, there was clearly a focus on keeping connected infrastructure for cyclists. When there was construction that caused the cycle path to end, there was a clear sign with directions on the safest way to get to the next section of the separated cycle path.
Biking outside of Nijmegen
Our last activity in Nijmegen was riding to a barbeque at a house in the Dutch suburbs (which happened to be the same day as the Germany ride, so we ended up riding 45 miles that day).
The infrastructure on the way there and back was connected, straight, and protected in places with high traffic levels. There were some places with lower quality bike paths that hadn't been maintained as well, but the majority of the journey was smooth and easy to follow, with signs pointing towards Nijmegen and the fastest route possible having bike infrastructure on it.
The suburban infrastructure was still very connected as well; it was somewhere between the classic Dutch rural design with one lane for cars and two lanes for bikes on either side, some protected/separated lanes, and a fietsstraat, but it definitely works for this level of traffic and there are many people who were using it. The grocery stores and other markets were still very close, unlike in American suburbs, so people use their bikes to run errands, and kids use them to do recreational activities and go to friends' houses. Many people still have cars, but they use the infrastructure there when they can.
Another thing that was interesting about the Dutch suburbs was the amount of recreational activities to do. One main summer activity in this neighborhood was swimming, because it is near a lake, and it always surprises me how well the space is used here so that people feel like they are allowed to use it. The lake had bike access, bathrooms, and tree cover for people to sit under. While swimming, we asked some locals if they commuted places on bikes and they said they didn't bike a lot, and mostly their parents drove them places (they weren't 18 yet, so they couldn't drive). They did say they biked when they could for short distances, and they biked to the lake to swim, so that's better than getting to most American lakes.
Overall, Nijmegen surprised me with its infrastructure and the use of it by so many people, and I could definitely see it as a goal for US cities at some point when it comes to street redesign. I really wish I could've spent more time there to explore more of the city and see some more infrastructure!