I love how people tend to have this impulse to reduce reality to a single variable: Bikes = human power = exercise = good.
Reality is a complex multivariate problem. When you look at more variables you often discover something quite different than the assumption borne out of that single variable fantasy.
Looking at the modal split for Amsterdam and Rotterdam, people still drive cars as much as in other European cities, it's just that cycling has replaced walking and public transport.
I live in Rotterdam and don’t drive my car in the city anymore, only to go out of the city.
We’ve had quite a few changes with reduction in lanes (2 to 1) to allow less traffic in to reduce the air pollution and by doing that bike lanes got bigger which I think is a good thing.
It makes driving a car in the city less attractive and while I have no idea if more people ride bikes now, from my limited perspective it does seem to be the case
Same where I live, and now we have 1 empty bike lane and traffic jam in the remaining with sirens all the time because emergency vehicles can't pass anymore. It seems completely useless, convert a fully functional lane of a road, to an empty lane that's not used, why? And that reasoning is also really strange, just remove roads to force people to drive less? Well you also just removed mobility? Remove busses, subways, remove everything so nobody ever travels anymore, best solution?
There will be as much traffic on a road as there are people willing to put up with it. Urban planners can reduce traffic by introducing alternative transportation methods and either raising costs for cars (congestion pricing, dynamic parking pricing, etc) or making them less convenient (reduce parking, fewer cars lanes, etc). Some transportation options, like buses and bikes, become more attractive when infrastructure prioritizes them over cars (dedicated rights-of-way to avoid getting stuck, separation from cars for safety, bicycle parking, etc).
Infrastructure rightly prioritises the most useful and most efficient modes of transportation, and gives less priority to that which is less useful and efficient. That's rational and correct, no need to change that.
Make society less efficient and less convenient? Why? We already have electric cars, and electric 2 wheel mopeds/motorcycles too if you want to complain about "space"
The lane closure (or rather: repurposing) now provides fast access for emergency vehicles. Given that most of the roads they’ve made these changes on are the direct route to the university hospital it’s a good outcome.
From the article:
"VeiligheidNL estimates that there were actually some 80,000 injuries of which 50,000 were serious."
And, of course, the idea of biking and the reality of it are quite different things:
https://www.bikelaw.com/2019/05/amsterdam-not-cycling-paradi...
I love how people tend to have this impulse to reduce reality to a single variable: Bikes = human power = exercise = good.
Reality is a complex multivariate problem. When you look at more variables you often discover something quite different than the assumption borne out of that single variable fantasy.