It sometimes not clear to people whether cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands is a new phenomena or something which has been around decades ago. Sometimes new infrastructure looks "old" or old infrastructure looks "new".
Old infrastructure which looks "new"
Here's an example of a cycle-path and road junction which look right up to date, but which have actually existed for over 60 years.
Parcels containing bike parts beginning their journey to customers. I use this cycle-path several times a week to transport goods like this because it's a main route from the suburb where we live and work into the centre of the city. Note the re-surfacing work being carried out on the other side of the road.
A photo of the same location from 2007 shows an older cycle-path surface and everything looked a bit worn out back then. Tiled surfaces were once quite common on Dutch cycle-paths, this one having survived well past when others had already been replaced. The asphalt came soon after this photo was taken. The cycle-path is in exactly the same location and has the same 2.5 m width, a width which is perfectly fine in most situations for a unidirectional cycle-path, though it would be too narrow if this was intended for bidirectional use.
In this aerial shot (courtesy of Bing Maps), the red arrow shows where my bike was when I took the photo above. You can clearly see the road layout here in which motorists give way to the cycle-path as well as pedestrians crossing the road. You can also see the crossings from left to right for cyclists and pedestrians. In that direction, across the main flow, cyclists do not have priority. I've no explanation for the strangely parked vans.
An aerial photo from 1961 shows almost exactly the same layout. The cycle-path is unchanged apart from the surface but the road from left to right has been reduced from a dual carriageway type arrangement to a normal road. When this photo was taken this was not part of a direct route into the city centre because a bridge a few hundred metres further along would not be built for a few more years. Both the bridge for access to the centre and the dual carriageway road arrangement were influenced by a 1913 plan to make a "harmonious" city. The bridge (the current version of which is visible in a recent video) is useful, but it's a very good thing that the idea of building a ring-road this close to the centre was abandoned.
New infrastructure which required considerable work to look much as it used to
Someone who was transported through time from the 1940s might not initially notice, but it actually took a lot of work to give this road layout a similar appearance to 80 years ago:
This photo from 2022 shows what looks like a new cycle-path, and indeed it is relatively new, dating from 2008. To the right of the cycle-path is a separate pedestrian path, to the left there's space for car parking, then the road and a canal. Referring to older photos this initially looks like not much has changed. See the next photo.
This photo from the 1940s already showed the canal, the road, the cycle-path and the pedestrian path. But note that at that time the cycle-path and pedestrian path were both narrower, there was no car parking space and there was no substantive buffer between the road (which had a higher speed limit back then) and the cycle-path. When I took my photo I stood in almost the same position as this photographer stood in when he took his photo, but I'm on the cycle-path and he was on the road. The very similar appearance hides major work to create more space alongside a canal in order to enable us to have better cycling provision as well as car parking spaces required with the considerably higher car ownership rate of the present day.
This photo from 2007 facing in the opposite direction (note the same lit up bright red sign on the left) shows where the extra space for the wider cycle-path and car parking came from. The first 1.5 km of the canal running from the city centre to the East was shifted sideways, to the North, by about two metres. Everything was reconstructed from scratch, but the pedestrian and cycle-paths were replaced first and at this point we're cycling on a subsurface (note different colour asphalt from the finished cycle-path).
So in this case the infrastructure looks like nothing much has changed, but actually it took a lot of work to create a situation where the route looks much like it did in the 1940s while actually offering more to modern cyclists, pedestrians and drivers than was the case before.
New Infrastructure which looks "old"
One of the things which sometimes makes people think that something new is "old" is the road surface, or that streets seem to be very narrow. While tiles on cycle-paths along through routes have often been swapped out for asphalt, as shown above, in city centres the opposite has happened: asphalt is swapped for tiles.
A city centre street in Assen. Drivers can access this road, but for them this is now a one-way detour to nowhere. No-one drives a car here unless they need to pick something up from one of the shops. This road surface is used by more cyclists than drivers and by bike this is a two way road which provides direct routes to many locations
This is what the same place used to look like in the 1970s. At that time the street looked very wide and it was used as a major through route for cars, as you can see from the signage. Drivers were served by filling stations on both sides of the street. Pedestrians crossing the road had to walk a remarkably long walk to travel between the narrow sidewalks on either side. Asphalt in the middle of the street provided a good surface for driving cars and narrow cycle lanes as the edge provided an inferior surface for cycling. The photo isn't quite wide enough to show the traffic lights which were needed in this location, but which no longer exist. Absolutely no space could be found for trees. If this was still a main route by car in the 21st century it would have become an extremely unpleasant place.
Go back a little further in history and we find that the same street once looked like this. The current layout resembles an attempt to return to how this street looked before it was temporarily taken over by completely car oriented thinking. But what we see now is all completely new and accommodates customers visiting the shops by car, while also excluding the through traffic. Also notice that from the first photo right down to this one people are using similar designs of practical everyday bicycles. This near perfect design has never gone out of date because it works so well.
What can we learn from this
Initial impressions can be misleading. Sometimes what looks new is old, or what looks old is new.
The Netherlands had cycling infrastructure early in the 20th century, but this was not always valued and there are many examples of early cycling infrastructure being removed in the mid 20th century in order to provide more space for cars. There are also many historical examples of lacklustre infrastructure with inferior surfaces or which took longer routes than driving. It was not until the mid 1970s that the value of cycling infrastructure was recognised again after a series of protests, and it took until the 1980s until the necessity of a full grid of efficient go-everywhere infrastructure was acknowledged, after which quick progress was made.
Click for more information about the railway station including the excellent convenient access between the platform, the extensive cycle parking and these cycle-paths.
Imagine if sidewalks (pavements in the UK) for pedestrians were unidirectional. If you wanted to visit your neighbour who lived on the right side of your home then you could walk there directly, but to come back home again in a legal manner you'd be expected to cross the road, walk until you were opposite your home and then cross back again. Does that make sense ? Of course not. The inconvenience of expecting people to cross the road simply to walk in the opposite direction is absurd. All sidewalks are therefore bidirectional.
Bidirectional cycle-paths, well implemented, provide cyclists with a similar level of utility as do bidirectional sidewalks. Instead of having to cross a road to travel a short distance in the "wrong" direction, cyclists can stay on the same side of a road. This makes short journeys significantly faster. It also improves their safety because they don't have to cross the road twice. Crossing the road is a significant risk: I noted in a previous blog that the most dangerous locations for cyclists in many Dutch cities are often simple uncontrolled crossings (at least where more dangerous examples of infrastructure have been eliminated)
Directness of routes is important for cycling to succeed. The more efficient that we can make cycling, the more journeys there are for which people will find it a convenient mode of transport. Bidirectional cycle-paths allow for this convenience.
It is, of course, possible to create a poor version of almost anything. That includes bidirectional cycle-paths. Where they are criticised, look for other issues. For example, poor junction design which may create conflict or make cyclists less visible to drivers.
Here are some examples of where bidirectional cycle-paths make sense. Click on the links in the descriptions of the photos to see more examples:
In a city centre
In the city centre, where a cycle-path replaced a busy road, only a bidirectional cycle-path makes sense
In the countryside
Cycle-paths through recreational areas are almost always bidirectional. There would be no sense in making them otherwise.
Alongside a busy road
This bidirectional cycle-path is alongside a busy road through an industrial area which has four lanes of motor traffic, a central reservation and destinations on both sides. It is not desirable to require people to cross the road than is absolutely necessary. Bidirectional cycling is possible on both sides of the road.
in residential areas
This bidirectional cycle-path is in a residential suburb. In this case there is a canal on the other side of the road so it would make no sense at all to require cyclists to cross the road in order to ride next to the canal instead of next to the homes which are destinations for cyclists.
Brand new infrastructure linking a residential area to the centre of the city. There is a road behind the bushes on the right, but after the road there is nothing but the railway track. Here also it makes sense for cyclists to ride on one side of the road in both directions.
Where all destinations are on one side of the road
All destinations along this road, including shops and cafes, are on this side of road while on the other side of the road there is a canal. It would make no sense here to make cyclists cross in order to ride towards the camera. On the other side of the canal there is a bidirectional bicycle road which does not offer a through route to drivers. Note also how the road junction design reduces the danger of collision with motor vehicles. The turning radius is small and the black "cannonballs" prevent drivers from cutting the corner.
Roundabout design
One of several features which defines the safest urban roundabout design for cyclists is a design which allows safe use of bidirectional cycle-paths. These also increase convenience by allowing so few crossings to be made as possible (you are never required to ride across three arms of a roundabout to turn across traffic).
Traffic light design
Simultaneous Green traffic light junction. Cyclists can go in all directions at once when the lights are green for bikes. All motor vehicles are held behind red lights and all possibility of conflict with them is removed. A very useful design for use with bidirectional cycle-paths. Also note the width of the cycle-path, which can cope with large flows of cyclists. Also see a different traffic light design which feeds into a bidirectional cycle-path without conflict.
This bicycle road is on the other side of the canal from the last photo. Bicycle roads are of course always bidirectional for cyclists, though they are sometimes one-way for drivers.
Where a bicycle road ends and cycle traffic is led onto a cycle-path it would be absurd to use anything other than a bidirectional cycle-path such as is shown here. In this case there are some recreational destinations on the right of the road, but the vast majority of destinations (homes and shops) are on the left, and are served well by this cycle-path.
Adequate width for tidal flow or at junctions between cycle-paths
Just short of four metres wide, this cycle-path copes well with considerable cycling volumes, especially tidal traffic at school times (the low building behind the cyclists to the right is a secondary school). Behind the camera there is a busy road junction.
Junctions between cycle-paths require even more width. At this point, the cycle-path exceeds six metres in width. The bridges cross a canal.
Conclusion
We sometimes hear blanket criticism of the idea of bidirectional cycle-paths, but it is not justified. In many cases they improve both safety and convenience for cyclists. To a first approximation a bidirectional cycle-path is always more useful than a single-direction path for the simple reason that cyclists can use it in both directions.
Assen's first railway station was built in 1870. It was completely demolished and replaced in 1989 by a modern design of station. That station has now also been demolished and replaced with another entirely new design. The new station opened a few months ago. There are still a few details of the work to be completed, but everything is in place now. As was promised, the cycle-parking has again been expanded and improved again. This video shows the excellent access from the platforms to the indoor guarded cycle-park:
The work started in 2015 with building of a temporary station, after which the old station was demolished and the new one built. Occasionally it has been chaotic around the station as all the roads were also rebuilt, two new tunnels were made (one for pedestrians, one for cars) and one tunnel was reconstructed (the bike tunnel). The result is really very good. Through motor traffic has been sent underground which makes the entire area more pleasant (apart from buses and taxis) and as a result, the outdated traffic light junction was removed and there are fewer delays for cyclists to cross the road. In particular, cyclists who headed south from the station used to have to stop twice for traffic lights before riding on an on-road cycle-lane along a relatively busy road so it feels as if we are rather spoiled now with the choice of two very high quality bidirectional cycle-paths on both sides of the road which can be reached without any stopping at all.
Assen's population is about 68000. There are now 3500 bicycle parking spaces, 2500 of which are in the underground guarded parking while the other one thousands are on the surface near the pedestrian entrance on the eastern side of the station. This isn't the largest cycle park at a Dutch railway station, but Assen also isn't the largest city and this isn't the busiest railway station. 3500 spaces for a population of 68000 means we have better than once space for every twenty people in the city which compares well as a proportion with other Dutch cities.
There are now a total of 3500 bicycle parking spaces at the railway station. Assen's population is around 68000 so we now have slightly better than one place at the railway station cycle-park for every 20 citizens.
What it used to look like
When we moved to Assen in 2007 there was a small number of indoor parking spaces and approximately 750 outdoor cycle-parking spaces split between the two sides of the tracks. They looked like this:
In 2009, car parking spaces were removed so that the the outdoor cycle-parking could be doubled in size and it was announced that the total was to be increased to about 2300 spaces.
The 2010 upgrade: A building to accommodate 1000 bicycles which seemed quite impressive at the time. This was demolished to make space for the new station.
In 2010 there was a big upgrade to the indoor cycle-parking, taking the total number of spaces to about 2550, reaching
Because the busy road past the station has been buried in a tunnel, the irritating traffic lights which were required to control motor traffic have also been removed (read more about them in a blog post from 2014) so Assen now has one fewer traffic light junction for cyclists.
Cars now travel past the station using this tunnel, built on a huge scale using a vast amount of concrete (the photo was taken on the opening day)
The temporary station
While the old station was out of action but before the new one had been completed, Assen had a temporary railway station. This included temporary lifts to take passengers over the lines to the platforms, temporary shops for flowers and snacks, a temporary full service bike shop (the new one can be seen in the video above), and a few thousand places in a temporary cycle-park:
This photo of a group from Washington University who came for a Study Tour in 2016 and not quite ready for their photo to be taken, taken outside the temporary bike shop also happens to show the temporary steps and lifts in the background and the orange post box. Everything was provided at the temporary station.
What has been built is an impressive new railway station and it has impressive cycling facilities. I'm also impressed with how well the temporary station worked. But what is its purpose ?
The sole purpose of these particular bicycles, OV-Fietsen, is to enable and encourage people to make more and longer journeys by means of a polluting motorized mode of transport - the train.
Bicycles are the most efficient transport mode on earth but not when used like this
The problem with these huge and attractive bicycle parking facilities at railway stations is that the station isn't really a destination. The destination of the people who cycle to the station is tens or hundreds of kilometres away and it is likely that 90% or more of the distance covered by any given passenger will be in a powered vehicle, the train, and not using their own power on a bike.
Huge bicycle parks at railway stations serve the same purpose as motorways - they encourage people to make more and longer journeys by polluting means of transport.
Bicycles are the most efficient transport mode on earth. It seems rather a shame to limit the scope of that most efficient mode of transport to that of providing a link to a far less efficient transport mode. But that is what we are building.
To truly to reduce the impact that we make on this planet we need to stop making journeys that are beyond the distance that we can cover by our own power. We can't travel ever more and achieve a reduction in energy usage. It requires something other than building lots of infrastructure to support more journeys - it requires redesigning both our cities and our lives so that what we need is close by.
Calling for less flying is a good thing for the environment.
However calling for more use of trains (or more of anything
actually) isn't "green" at all. I have supported the Dutch
Groenlinks political party in the past, but can't support this.
Even the greens are encouraging more travel, not less
There is a disturbing tendency for people to assume that travelling by train instead of by air or by car is automatically a win for the environment. Unfortunately, there's just not a huge difference in energy consumption per passenger kilometre between different powered transport modes. Making the same or a similar journey by a slightly less polluting mode doesn't make for a non polluting journey. That can only be achieved by making that journey by a genuinely non-polluting mode (walking, cycling, sail-boat) or by not making the journey at all. i.e. by not commuting, by not taking holidays, by not taking that tempting 'weekend break', whether by air, sea or rail.
Claims for trains
The Dutch railway company makes rather large claims which I think have to be looked at more closely. Claiming to use "100% green electricity" because you've signed up for a green tariff does not mean that all the electricity that you use comes from wind turbines. Just like everything else which runs from Dutch electricity, the trains are connected to a grid on which 80% of the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. When the wind isn't blowing the trains run on fossil fuels. The stated ambition of becoming "carbon neutral" by 2020 is a start but it actually falls a long way short of the already existing claim to use "100% green electricity", which has been made since 2017.
Even if the trains really did have no emissions when running, only around a quarter to a half of the emissions of even diesel powered trains come from the exhaust pipes. The rest comes from other factors including the infrastructure on which they run. This will be a more significant source than average for Dutch railways because the infrastructure has such a short life span. They may be slightly or even quite a lot more efficient than the least efficient modes we can imagine but that's not good enough. We can't pretend that trains don't have emissions so that we can continue to make journeys.
The impact of infrastructure
Railway stations in the Netherlands are demolished and rebuilt over remarkably short time-scales. Assen's "old"station lasted only 26 years, from 1989 until 2015, before it was demolished and a complete new station built in its place.
Even during the 26 years of its existence the old station didn't stand still. For instance, the indoor cycle-park built in 2010 which lasted only five years was itself a substantial structure. The temporary structures had a huge cost as well. Elements of them may be able to be re-used, but requirements won't be the same in other locations, some parts will have been damaged and of course there is transport and construction to account for.
Much concrete was poured to build the old station, to build new structures around the old station, to build the temporary station and vastly more has been poured to build the new one. Concrete production and use is one of the major sources of CO2 emissions. Replacing buildings so frequently as we saw here is definitely not a win for the environment.
Update summer 2019
Since the station opened it has been much criticized for the lack of safety of cycling facilities around the station.
There is indeed a problem. While the majority of motor traffic which used to be around the station now travels underground through the tunnel, the traffic which remains is large buses, taxis and people dropping off or collecting passengers. There are three cycle priority crossings which are supposed to give cyclists priority over the motor vehicles, but as I've explained before, it's very difficult to design a cycle priority crossing so that it is actually safe for cyclists and there are few places where it works well. Giving cyclists priority in the law does not mean that all drivers actually give way as they should. The other area criticized in the article to the right is a temporary roundabout in Assen on which it was attempted to give cyclists priority. Priority for cyclists on roundabouts is also dangerous. There are better ways to design cycling infrastructure than this. It is best to remove the threat posed by motor vehicles by, to the greatest extent possible, removing interactions between cyclists and drivers. Merely giving "priority" does not lead to safety or convenience.
Thus far we have not had any serious cycling injuries around the station, but there have been many near misses and it is probably only a matter of time before this happens.
My last blog post included the photo above, which no-one commented on. Many places have of course installed rainbow crossings before Assen, but some careful thought went into this which I think is noteworthy.
Bear in mind that rainbow crossings have two purposes, which are not related to one another:
The political purpose: A rainbow crossing indicates that the city within which it appears supports the rights of LGBT people.
A practical purpose: It must function as a crossing.
Unfortunately, many examples of rainbow crossings do a good job of looking like a rainbow but have a form which is such that they are no longer legal zebra crossings. It is important to get this right for several reasons:
Drivers may not stop for a crossing which doesn't look like they were taught
It may be difficult to prosecute a driver who does not stop and who injures a pedestrian if the crossing is in fact not a legal crossing.
Unusual colours may not be visible at night or in poor weather
If a non legal crossing is installed without the intention of giving pedestrians priority, pedestrians may still think that they have priority and this could cause dangerous situations.
The solution
In the Netherlands, road surfaces can be made of many materials with different colours. These include black, red or green asphalt, grey concrete and red or grey tiles. Regardless of the colour of the road surface, a legal zebra crossing is made of a particularly sized sequence of white stripes which contrast with the colour of the road surface.
A noteworthy design
Assen's rainbow crossing, though it has arrived later those in some other cities, is noteworthy because this design is legally a zebra and difficult for anyone to confuse as anything other than a zebra. At the same time, it's also obviously a rainbow so it fulfills both objectives successfully.
The rules in your country may be different. Whatever they are, please make sure that you build rainbow crossings, and all other pedestrians crossings, so that they have the force of law behind them and so that they are obvious in intent to all their users, pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.
A further note on zebra crossings in the Netherlands
White stripes on a zebra crossing make it very obvious where pedestrians should be able to cross safely. They usually indicate that pedestrians have priority at this point and that cyclists and drivers of motor vehicles must stop for pedestrians crossing the road. In Assen this is the case. A zebra indicates pedestrian priority. Other pedestrian crossings where motorists have priority do not have zebra markings painted on the road.
Unfortunately, there is an inconsistency in the Netherlands. Groningen and Utrecht are amongst the cities which use zebra markings even on traffic light controlled crossings. This mean that drivers must get used to stopping for a zebra only sometimes - The rule is that a driver must stop for pedestrians on a zebra if they don't see a traffic light. Similarly, a pedestrian must stop at the side of the road next to a zebra and expect drivers to stop for them if they cannot see a traffic light. There is a potential for confusion.
I find it a far better rule to install the zebra markings only where we wish to make it obvious that pedestrians have priority.
A lot of the cycle-paths in this area are made of concrete rather than asphalt. When I first moved here it seemed a slightly odd choice because concrete is a more expensive material. I was surprised that we were getting the premium product while drivers on roads alongside those cycle-paths had the "cut-price" asphalt (immaculately laid, mind you).
The advantages of concrete have become more clear with time and were reinforced by a representative of a company which builds cycle-paths who I met a few days ago at the opening of a new path in Assen. The main advantage is that once laid, concrete cycle-paths generally require no maintenance for 30 years (see example below). We've only lived here for 11 years, but while the city has been diligent about fixing problems which occur on the asphalt paths, sometimes before they're really problems at all, and in some cases three times while we've lived here, none of the concrete paths have required any work at all so far as I can tell. For this reason I'm inclined to believe 30 year claim (see example below). Another advantage is that relatively little preparation of the ground underneath the cycle-path is required, making these paths less labour-intensive to install than would otherwise be the case. Obviously the ground underneath should be flat, but that can be sand and a 20 cm thick layer of concrete is then enough to spread the load and withstand damage without the same multiple layers of support as asphalt paths require.
There are concrete cycle-paths in this area dating from when we moved to this area which still look exactly as they did when we first saw them except that the bright colour has faded a bit. Others which already looked faded when we first came to live here also remain perfectly smooth and pleasant to cycle over. Even when there are trees nearby, these paths appear to be so completely immune to the problem of root damage.
Cycle-path which is at least ten years old. Next to trees. Perfect.
A brand new cycle-path in Assen, to be covered in the next blog post
A cycle-path in Assen which is around ten years old - surface is still perfect
Another older path, next to trees. Perfect surface The gap was cut into the path after it was laid in order to allow for expansion. There is difference in height and you can't feel this as you cycle over it.
Even where paths are also used by occasional motor vehicles (this one is only a golf kart, but tractors are quite common on rural paths) they're very resilient.
There are many hundreds of kilometres of paths like this in this area now and they're all delight to ride on. This one is in a rural area for recreational use, hence less width than a busy urban path. Note also the unsurfaced road alongside for motor vehicles. This is how routes in the countryside are unravelled.
Paths like this in the countryside are extremely popular with all cyclists who like to ride a bit further and faster.
Rural but a main route alongside a fairly busy road. No damage here even at the entrance coming up where motorists have to drive across the concrete cycle-path.
By comparison, even with good asphalt cycle-paths, root damage is a constant threat. This path was resurfaced less than ten years ago but already has been marked for repair. The repair happened very soon after the photo was taken and before the path became unpleasant to use, but it simply wouldn't have been necessary with concrete which is more expensive in the first place, but cheaper in the long term.
How these paths are constructed
The good concrete cycle-paths are poured on site and made in one long continuous pieces, usually 300 m in length. Where they join after each 300 m, there are a few cm of slightly soft asphalt to fill the gap and allow for a little movement. Every 3-10 metres (this seems quite variable) the concrete is cut after it has cured to allow for some movement. The surface is textured so that it provides grip for your tyres even when icy.
The concrete is 20 cm thick
Ground preparation is nothing more than making a level surface and applying a layer of soft sand. You can also see in this photo where the path was cut every few metres. Note that the zoom lens makes the distance between cuts seem far less than in reality. Note that when the cycle-path was completed the vertical sides were covered up. The second photo from the top shows the same cycle-path a few weeks after it was completed. There is now no vertical drop at the side.
This textured surface provides grip for bicycle tyres in any weather.
An alternative type of concrete cycle-path
Recently, the first stretch of a new fietssnelweg (cycling motorway) came into use between Haren and Groningen. It's a boon for commuting cyclists because it provides a decently wide path taking a very direct route along the canal which avoids traffic lights and junctions so is faster than any other route over its 3.5 km length. However, while this is a concrete path it's not built to the same quality as those illustrated above so unfortunately the new "fietssnelweg" is actually a bit unpleasant to cycle over.
Instead of using the successful method of construction shown above, where a path kilometres in length is made of one piece of concrete poured on site, the Haren-Groningen path is made of two metre long pre-fabricated sections from a company called Easypath Nederland B.V. These pre-fabricated sections are designed to interlock. It is supposed to be stable over time. But even newly laid these paths are already a huge step backwards in comparison with continuous concrete paths, and while those are stable over decades we can only expect the bumps between these separate sections to get worse with time. I rode over the path when it first opened and it was already possible to see nearly a centimetre difference in height between successive concrete sections.
This new method of constructing paths presumably has some advantage or it would not have been used. Perhaps it is cheap. Hopefully no-one would pay extra for an obviously lower quality. But why should cyclists put up with a cheap solution ? If this is good enough then why is it not also used for cars ? Groningen is spending many millions to upgrade the motorway into the city which runs in parallel with this cycle-path. Why doesn't the "city of cyclists" provide the same quality of experience for cyclists as they provide for drivers (in this case miraculously smooth asphalt) ? I have fears that this path simply won't prove to be both durable and of high quality.
We're stuck with this section now. I hope not to see any more of this low quality construction for cyclists.
In the worst case the gaps between sections have almost a centimetre difference in height
The sections are four metres wide and two metres in length. Running over the gaps every two metres means that you will notice them quite often if some of them are less than perfect. It's certainly not unpleasant at the moment, but I'm concerned that it will get worse and then anything which rattles on your bicycle will rattle annoyingly.
There are 3.5 km of this and it does make a very efficient cycle-path. In any other country in the world, a direct cycle-path like this would be seen as a miracle - especially when this new high quality route is parallel with four other very good, safe and convenient routes into Groningen from the South within a few kms, all of which we've taken with study tour particpants in the past: a very pretty and pleasant countryside route on the other side of the canal (the pleasantness of which excuses this more direct route being tainted by motorway noise - we're given a choice), another route a bit further to the right of this photo which passes the airport and a third which isn't all that far away from the motorway on the left but which has a few too many traffic lights for my liking and finally another route even further to the left which I used to take to reach my work in the SE of Groningen.
This video shows a short part of the Groningen-Haren path:
Good paths are good. Not all concrete is the same.
Note that the good examples above are of concrete paths which are laid in one piece, are wide, have thick concrete which is resistant to damage, they're textured for grip and they do not have vertical drops at the side of the path. All of these aspects are important. Cycle-paths should not be constructed out of separate tiles between which there is always a bump or with thin surface layers which are guaranteed to crack. They should not have vertical drops at the sides, should not be too narrow for people to ride side by side. Corner radii should be generous, care should be taken to keep cyclists out of the "door zone", sight lines need to be long so that collisions can be avoided and priority at junctions must be obvious so that all parties know what they should do. Please read other cycle-path blog posts for other details of good design.
Longevity - update April 2019
When I ride to the west from Assen I often use an excellent concrete cycle-path between Huis-ter-Heide and Veenhuizen. This cycle-path existed when we first came to live here and featured in one of my videos from 2008. Just a few days ago I realised that what I had thought was a manhole cover was actually a commemorative plate:
This commemorative plate was laid when the cycle-path between Huis-ter-Heide and Veenhuizen came into use on the 13th of December 1990.
It's nearly 30 years old but this cycle-path still has an almost completely perfect surface. The white lines are new. Everything else is original. In theory, a freshly laid asphalt cycle-path can offer a slightly lower rolling resistance. But an asphalt cycle-path degrades very quickly by comparison so that for much of its life it will offer an inferior surface to cyclists.
The surface is also perfect on the section which runs between trees. No tree root damage is detectable here.
The quality of such cycle-paths is impressive. Their life-span is also impressive. While concrete has a significant environmental impact, this must be weighed against the impact of repeatedly repairing and rebuilding paths built of lesser materials. This long lasting cycle-path was of course constructed with the continuous poured concrete method as described at the top of this blog, not the sectional method which creates irregularities even from new.
Update August 2019
The Assen-Groningen fast cycle route is continuing to be developed. This video shows a new section, this time surfaced with the good quality continuously laid concrete:
A few days later with Judy on another section of the same newly laid cycle-path. This is really excellent.
