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chatting infrastructure
This is a little insight into the kinds of conversation we had along the Cycling Dutch Style Tour, during lunches, dinners, and coffee breaks. This one in particular was during a tour of Houten, a model town for great urban planning. It was an informal and insightful conversation between Marc van Woudenberg, Mark Wagenbuur, David Hembrow, and Paul Martin.
Hey, we actually made sense! Must have been the fresh juice & sun
. Thanks for filming & putting that up, Paulo!
Hey Marc I thought the same thing!
Maybe you should correct our names Paulo; Marc van Woudenberg, Mark Wagenbuur and David Hembrow.
He he…I fixed it Mark…thanks!
Thanks Paul
Paulo: Thanks for making the film. I’ve included it on my blog along with a bit of text and a few photos hopefully giving a little more context. I’m sure you also have more to come about Houten.
Thanks David for helping with a little more context. We have accumulated more material than we could process on the road…
Awesome! Mark Wagenbuur, Marc van Woudenberg, David Hembrow– the dream team of my favorite Dutch bicycling bloggers!
That’s what we thought Severin!
Awesome film work, nicely representing Oz Paul! Interesting point at the end about having paths away from the roads. I am now often fantasising about this on the Gore Hill Freeway/Epping Rd path. There seems to be a bad taste in the back of my throat sometimes, and the 4-10 lanes certainly stink it up. Another project to connect North Sydney will put an elevated path above and beside the Cahill Expressway. We badly need a connector, but this must be one of the highest concentration of cars anywhere in a 50km radius.
Thanks Edward. I really hope we can turn this ship around. There is so much inaction and when we see any ‘improvements’ for cycling they are meagre at best and dangerous a worst – which only reinforces to everyone that nobody takes bicycle transportation seriously in our cities. Very sad.
Are we past the point of no return in Australia? I hope not but just being back for a few days in Brisbane makes me wonder… What would take the Dutch about a week to complete (cycleways) seems to take us MONTHS. It’s probably because all the labour is either on the mines or digging more road tunnels… meanwhile our rail network is a joke and if you want to walk or cycle you have to make do with scraps.
Chin up Paul! We may be 10 years behind the US and 40 behind the Dutch, but once people see New York, San Francisco, London etc etc, and they notice the strange things with 2 wheels going everywhere, then (and maybe only then) we’ll start to see something here. I was watching a show on Seoul, South Korea, where they took down the main elevated freeway over a river in the city, and restored it to parklands. The car traffic disappeared, and it was so popular, they are having more “road diets”, where they reduce the number of lanes in other parts of the city.
The multi lane stupidity of Oz can only go on for so long, and the price of a barrel of oil is already US$100. We’ll campaign, but other things will bring change too. We can’t be past the point of no return, as there’s only so much stuff in the ground you can dig up, before the alternatives become the only possible way forward! PS, I’ve finally flip flopped on helmet law; that oughtta cheer you up.
Haha
Good stuff, Edward!
We’re in serious need of some road dieting here! As I type this, work begins on digging another massive tunnel for cars underneath Brisbane… madness!
Cheers!
I had a lovely ride home from work today. While watching the road ahead I was using my imagination to overlay Dutch road markings and/or infrastructure in front of me. It made me smile