Transitions cycleways

How the Dutch do the 'impossible' and transition from on road bike lanes to segregated trails

Over ten years ago now, I remember attending a regional council meeting discussing the reconstruction of a regional road. That regional road had a painted bike lane, but like most regional roads, it was a busy four lane road, carrying fast moving traffic (the speed limit was 60km/h but traffic routinely moved at 75 km/h), and included a bus route. An entirely inappropriate place for a painted bike lane.

Several of the politicians on council wanted staff to consider adding protection to the bike lane, but staff were adamant–they could not add a protected cycle-track, because it was impossible to transition between the on-street bike lane and the cycle track.

Of course, even at the time this was a transparently weak excuse–staff simply didn’t want to do a protected cycle track, they themselves were avid cyclists who preferred on street bike lanes, and simply needed to provide a justification to quiet those pesky cycling advocates. The transition needed was frankly, laughably easy. To transition from a painted bike lanes to two unidirectional cycle tracks on each side of the road is about the easiest case, a mere curb cut is sufficient.

But after arriving in the Netherlands I began to notice that the country makes no excuses when transitioning between infrastructure. On road lanes to protected lanes is trivially easy, but even here, they do a great job, providing a smooth, clear, and safe transition.

Here, you can see just before the traffic circle on the right, the on-street painted bike lanes transition to a protected cycle track. First the lane diverges from the roadway, and the dotted line demarking the lane splits. Then a solid painted median begins. Finally the median turns to a curb. This is incredibly simple and obvious, but it is something that Ontario’s engineers still struggle with to this day. Often they will force the cyclists to go over curbs or other obstacles to transition to the cycleway.

But not all transitions are so easy. That does not deter Dutch engineers. The most common challenge is transitioning from one side of the road to the other. This often happens when you have a bi-directional facility on one side, that transitions to two unidirectional facilities on each side.

Even here, the Dutch engineers have a lot of tools to make it very safe and clear.

Give Drivers Priority

The simplest way to handle a transition from one side to another is to give drivers priority. This is almost certainly what would occur in Canada, but it is done sometimes in the Netherlands. It is less of an issue here because crossings are generally more safely designed, but it is still a prioritization of cars over cyclists. In some contexts this might be, if not good from a climate or health perspective, then at least contextually rational.

What is usually done, the bike path will swerve away from the road, and hook into a 90° crossing. The path for cyclists will still be clearly marked and smooth. Other treatments may be used to improve the crossing, but it is like any normal crossing.

Use colour to demark the crossing

Colour will often be used to demark the crossing. In the Netherlands areas where bicycles are to be expected are marked in red. Sometimes this means the entire road will be marked in red, or sometimes simply the crossing area.

For example, this transition is near my home in Amersfoort.

The path cyclists take is in green. The entire intersection is coloured red to signal to drivers that they must be cautious of cyclists in this area.

Here is the experience using the transition:

Reroute traffic to a different route

Another feature that many transitions have in the Netherlands is in fact, often the reason for the transition in the first place. Transitioning from a bi-directional separated facility to uni-directional on street bike lanes only makes sense when the context of the road has changed. A roadway with on street bike lanes is qualitatively different in terms of traffic and speeds from a roadway with separated cycleways.

Therefore, a transition often occurs at the point of change in the context of the road. This often can mean the car traffic is also being diverted. Let’s look back at the example above and look at it in a fuller context:

In this map, you can see that cars are diverted away from the cycle route, along the new main highway. There is a modal filter in the old roadway which permits only people on bicycles and buses to proceed through. Cars can continue to access local businesses but cannot drive through. They are forced to take the main route. As a result the transition crossing has extremely low traffic and feels very safe.

This video depicts the experience of riding through the crossing at the bottom of the map. You can see travelling through the traffic circle, where all the cars are diverted away from the route, followed by the actual transition, where cyclists are smoothly directed into the on-street bike lane, with a well marked and coloured, raised crossing of the roadway.

Since the transition is located after the diversion, there is little traffic to contend with. This does require a larger plan of traffic diversion and modal routing that is beyond the scope of this article.

Physically configure the roads to force drivers to defer to cyclists

The final feature of transitions I will look at today is re-configuring the actual roadway.  Here, the roadway is configured in such a way that drivers must turn across into cycle space while cyclists proceed straight. This very clearly indicates to drivers who has the right of way, as well as restricting speeds because drivers must turn to proceed. Colour is also used to reinforce this message.

In this example, you can see the bike route in red, the area preceding the transition is a shared area, with bicycles receiving priority. You can see that the roadway narrows and turns into a marked bike path with a median preventing cars from proceeding straight. Drivers must instead turn right out of the bicycle area. Here is an overhead view of the same area with the paths people biking and people driving are required to take.

Finally, in a final location, the roadway is actually shifted laterally. Cars are require

d to take a jog to the side to continue in the same direction (they can also turn onto a perpendicular road), while cyclists are transitioned smoothly between the on-road bike lanes and the trail adjacent the roadway. See how this is experienced by cyclists each way.

Conclusion

Transitions like these are difficult because they are inherently a point of conflict between different people biking and people driving cars. They must be done well to be safe. But Dutch engineers have many tools in their toolbox to achieve this.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is signage. Some of the crossings do have some signs, but they are minimal and typical. The intention is that the design of the intersection communicates the way it should function. This ensures that users (on bikes or in cars) all understand the road. Signs are a crutch for bad design.

North American engineers over-reliance on signage is a result of their inability to build clear and coherent designs and is why North American engineers struggle to create good transitions. Fortunately, there is a lot to learn from Dutch engineers.