It still blows my mind when I look at Dutch intersections in Google’s street view. They managed to fit cars, bike lanes, and even commuter trains into their intersections without any issue.
In the US, you can only choose 2 of those things. Add a third, someone is going to die.
I have a buddy that went to Amsterdam. He’s a bigger dude and the FIRST thing he told me about his trip was “you have to fucking bike everywhere”. Sounded wonderful to me but his tone of voice suggested otherwise.
I even don’t know what he’s getting at - I’ve never had access to a bike the many times I have been there. Transit and walking are also perfectly viable options and there are still cars outside the center
Every time I visit Amsterdam, first thing I do is take a ferry to Overhoeks, grab a patatje with saté sauce and then proceed to walk through Amsterdam for 8 hours straight. Every time I take different routes. What I’m trying to say here is, it’s a damn fine walkable city.
It’s almost like it’s not black and white. Like I work in a major city. I can walk and bus everywhere I want. But I live in the “countryside”, as far as The Netherlands still has “countryside”, and there’s nothing in walking distance, a few local commodities in biking distance, but I have to take the car for anything serious (like a decent supermarket).
These kinds of posts are ignorant at best and elitist at worst. The reality is that mass transit is great for specific living conditions and locations. If you don’t fit into that then it’s worthless and you will need a car. Either these people somehow aren’t aware, or they think that everyone should live like they do.
I have a similar situation here in a German village. There are a few supermarkets in 5km distance and more supermarkets + a train station in 10km. But I’m already on the denser country side with having 12 villages in a 5km radius.
I think our bus service is okay as long as it’s not night, weekend or a holiday. With something coming every hour and for 3h half-hourly during afternoon rush hour. How is your bus service?
We don’t have a bus, but busses in my area are not fantastic. The coverage is very sparse, with few direct lines. So if you want to go one town over (5km), it might take you an hour or more, because you always have to go through the regional centre (small city).
My town does have a train station, which takes me to the closest big city in 30 minutes (20km). That train departs every 15 minutes, except for weekends and nights. I can’t conplain too much about the train service, except that it m’s not very fast. But there’s plans to run a fast line as well, an “intercity”
We have people that live in a state called Rhode Island, which is 16x smaller than the Netherlands. It’s insane to hear them bitch about not having a car.
*I’m only comparing the Netherlands to a US state (not country) because Texas is 20x larger than the Netherlands.
They made a new tram lane in Germany, right at the border, and the tram crosses the pretty busy border. I was like: well that’s neat and solves a lot of problems. They put the tram lane on the road and now the tram sits in traffic too
It still blows my mind when I look at Dutch intersections in Google’s street view. They managed to fit cars, bike lanes, and even commuter trains into their intersections without any issue.
In the US, you can only choose 2 of those things. Add a third, someone is going to die.
I have a buddy that went to Amsterdam. He’s a bigger dude and the FIRST thing he told me about his trip was “you have to fucking bike everywhere”. Sounded wonderful to me but his tone of voice suggested otherwise.
I even don’t know what he’s getting at - I’ve never had access to a bike the many times I have been there. Transit and walking are also perfectly viable options and there are still cars outside the center
Every time I visit Amsterdam, first thing I do is take a ferry to Overhoeks, grab a patatje with saté sauce and then proceed to walk through Amsterdam for 8 hours straight. Every time I take different routes. What I’m trying to say here is, it’s a damn fine walkable city.
It’s almost like it’s not black and white. Like I work in a major city. I can walk and bus everywhere I want. But I live in the “countryside”, as far as The Netherlands still has “countryside”, and there’s nothing in walking distance, a few local commodities in biking distance, but I have to take the car for anything serious (like a decent supermarket).
These kinds of posts are ignorant at best and elitist at worst. The reality is that mass transit is great for specific living conditions and locations. If you don’t fit into that then it’s worthless and you will need a car. Either these people somehow aren’t aware, or they think that everyone should live like they do.
I have a similar situation here in a German village. There are a few supermarkets in 5km distance and more supermarkets + a train station in 10km. But I’m already on the denser country side with having 12 villages in a 5km radius.
I think our bus service is okay as long as it’s not night, weekend or a holiday. With something coming every hour and for 3h half-hourly during afternoon rush hour. How is your bus service?
We don’t have a bus, but busses in my area are not fantastic. The coverage is very sparse, with few direct lines. So if you want to go one town over (5km), it might take you an hour or more, because you always have to go through the regional centre (small city).
My town does have a train station, which takes me to the closest big city in 30 minutes (20km). That train departs every 15 minutes, except for weekends and nights. I can’t conplain too much about the train service, except that it m’s not very fast. But there’s plans to run a fast line as well, an “intercity”
We have people that live in a state called Rhode Island, which is 16x smaller than the Netherlands. It’s insane to hear them bitch about not having a car.
*I’m only comparing the Netherlands to a US state (not country) because Texas is 20x larger than the Netherlands.
Yeah… We’re struggling for some reason.
You’re getting to choose more than one?!
They made a new tram lane in Germany, right at the border, and the tram crosses the pretty busy border. I was like: well that’s neat and solves a lot of problems. They put the tram lane on the road and now the tram sits in traffic too