Tag: Netherlands

Netherlands, day 2 (day 11 of the trip)

July 16, 2023 / Steven Vance / 0 Comments

My friend and I took an afternoon ride around Zoetermeer and Bleiswijk, two suburbs of The Hague with 125,000 and 10,000 people, respectively. Read other posts from this trip.

Day 11

Friday, May 12, 2023 – 195 photos taken – find more on Flickr

I don’t remember what I did in the morning – I probably worked.
My friend and I left his flat on our bikes at 15:00 and met my other friend to eat at Mecca, where Zu, a neighborhood cat, wandered in.
After this late lunch my friend and I started our bike ride along the Rotte River (how Rotterdam got its name) towards Bleiswijk.

The Netherlands has a signed water route network for people driving boats

We biked atop a lot of dikes, through several rural neighborhoods, and past the Willem-Alexander Baan (a rowing course in an artificial lake).
We also biked under a temporary bridge. As I’ve written before I believe the Dutch are very good at building infrastructure, and that extends to temporary infrastructure as well including modular and prefabricated pieces like a bridge!
At one point it was time for a McFlurry. We turned off of the intercity bike path, through a comfortably large bike tunnel under a motorway, and into the McDonald’s parking lot, where was plenty of bike parking and e-bike charging points (I suspect that many of the bikes parked here belonged to the employees).
The McDonald’s was in a commercial area full of fast food restaurants and logistics and distribution centers nestled in one corner of a motorway interchange but throughout all of this was well-designed, separated bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

Electric bike charging at a highway-side McDonald’s

After the ice cream break we headed over to an odd new transit interchange station called Lansingerland-Zoetermeer. Here people can change between a small park and ride, a kiss and ride, buses, sidewalks, and bike paths, to a ground-level intercity train station (to The Hague or Gouda) or to an elevated light rail station to The Hague. Service to Rotterdam is also possible via two bus routes to a nearby Rotterdam Metro station but I’m not sure why you would have gotten into a situation where you would need that connection.
(I’m calling it light rail for simplicity, but if you’re looking at how the street and sub-street rail transit networks overlap in Rotterdam-The Hague-Delft you could get easily confused. For example, there is a Rotterdam Metro [light rail] line to The Hague but which is also called RandstadRail, a RandstadRail line from The Hague to Zoetermeer, trams in The Hague, and different trams in Rotterdam, as well as a single tram line from The Hague to Delft but no Rotterdam Metro and no Rotterdam tram to Delft – there are Sprinter and Intercity services instead.)
I think something that is really neat about the station’s design: if you arrived there for the first time via the light rail then it would be very hard to tell that you would be standing on a bridge over an intercity track and a motorway after disembarking. The station looks very typical and uses vegetation and a wall to block the sound of high-speed vehicles below.

Southern entrance to the station (ground level)

Next we arrived into Zoetermeer, greeted by two cats. (There are a lot of cats roaming the traffic calmed neighborhood streets in the Netherlands.)
Zoetermeer is a “new town”, in that its prime development period was in the second half of the 20th century after many urban planning principles had changed, the automobile was a major factor in city design, and European countries were still rebuilding many cities after World War II – growth started in earnest in the 1960s when new housing was needed.
The population growth, in typical modern Dutch fashion, happened in a way that planned residential, commercial, and retail land uses, transportation, and green space, in concert with each other. These compact and mixed-use patterns – where most of what one needs is accommodated for or provided nearby – are repeated easy to discern even if you only visit a few towns, including Zoetermeer, Almere, Houten, Diemen, and the newer, outer parts of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Utrecht.

Cat walking in the middle of the street in Zoetermeer

At this time we had been cycling for less than three hours but it felt like longer because of the seemingly large gaps between stops (in fact, they’re not that large, it’s that they’re separated by wide expanses of open space or industrial areas rather than continuous low-density built up area like you would see in the United States).
We turned around to go home, via another way (see the Strava map below). The return route took us on a path that paralleled the bus-only road that carries two routes between the Lansingerland station and the nearest Rotterdam Metro station at Berkel en Rodenrijs, adjacent to where I was trainspotting yesterday (as well as some intermediate stops to reach the greenhouses).
The bus-only road has a self-enforcing design. There is a “bus sluis”, or “bus sluice”, or “bus gate” (see my photo), which is a dip in the road where car wheels go but a height increase in the road between the wheel area. This means that if you’re driving a vehicle that is not high off the ground like a bus or a farm equipment you will severely damage the underside of the vehicle.
Oh, yeah, this area is the greenhouse zone of the country where lettuce and tomatoes and other vegetables are grown for the country and for export, propelling the Netherlands to have one of the highest agricultural GDP in the world.

A new housing development at the edge of Zoetermeer

Amidst the greenhouses is the HSL (the high-speed line between Amsterdam Schiphol airport and Rotterdam Centraal). I stopped at least once to take some photos and videos of the Thalys, Intercity Direct, and Eurostar trains that ply this route.
Along the route I saw what looked like an amazing playground called Tuin van Floddertje. Floddertje is a children’s book character, a girl who gets into all kinds of dirty messes immediately after washing up.

Tuin van Floddertje (adventure playground) #1

We rolled back into the neighborhood where my friend lives and said hi to “Loofje”, the yellow tabby cat that I named “Little Loaf” using a fake Dutch word I invented that’s pronounced “loaf-juh”.
This is also when I saw the neighborhood square that helps make this a complete neighborhood, since it’s 20 minutes away from the city center.

Château-inspired high-rise residential building

Ferry #1: UK to Netherlands (day 9)

May 27, 2023 / Steven Vance / 0 Comments

This is titled Ferry #1 because there is a second major ferry that I rode during this trip, from Den Helder to Texel island in the Netherlands, that I will write about later. Read other posts from this trip. This is day 9.

Two Wednesdays ago, on May 10, I spent about eight hours on a ferry from Harwich, England, to Hoek van Holland, Netherlands. (That’s pronounced “hook fawn holland”, by the way.)

I had an exciting time…so exciting that I captured 429 photos and videos that day. I also published an accompanying short video showing some of the unique parts of the ship and the voyage.

It started with a picture of an empty street during my early morning walk to the bus stop in Covent Garden, London, and ended with a picture of a long-awaited “döner box” for dinner in Rotterdam.

Months ago while planning my trip to Europe I decided that I would take one of the ferries from England to the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands (as my destination after the ferry was Rotterdam). At some point I decided upon taking the Stena Line from Harwich. P&O also operates a ferry, from Hull.

Other modes of getting across the English Channel are Eurostar, a train, and flying, which I’ve already done, in 1998 and 2014, respectively. (There was once a hovercraft service from Dover, England, to Calais, France, which ended in 2000.)

Stena’s ferries leave twice daily, at 9 AM and 11 PM. I was originally going to take a night ferry, but I booked a day ferry because I wanted to see the departure and arrival ports in the daytime, I didn’t want to have to stay up late to travel to the port and settle into the cabin, the day cabin is half price, and I wanted to work a little. The ticket was around $120, which included the crossing fare and the cabin fare for a private room with en suite shower and a window to the sea.

Getting to the port

I woke up at my friend’s friend’s flat – the one in Covent Garden – at 4:45 AM and walked over to Strand to catch a night bus to Liverpool Street Station. Taking the tube would be longer because of changes and there was approximately zero traffic ahead of the bus for the 18-minute ride. Plus, I remember that the journey planner indicated the Elizabeth Line – the most direct route – wouldn’t start running until a little after 5:30 AM, putting at risk meeting my scheduled train departure of 6 AM.

I hopped onto a Greater Anglia train that departed on time toward Norwich. I changed at Manningtree for a train that left for Harwich Town, calling at Harwich International, the name of the port. I took the train at this time because if I missed it there was only one more train that would get me to the port on time before check-in closed. If I missed the boat then I would have had to go back to London and buy an expensive same-day Eurostar ticket to get to Rotterdam. Needless to say, I made the train I wanted, and I got to the departure terminal 30 minutes ahead of check-in.

Walking through Covent Garden at 5 AM to catch a bus to Liverpool Street Station

Boarding the ferry

The smallest group of ferry travelers, it seemed, were “foot passengers”, those who walk on from the terminal waiting room like I did. The larger groups are those driving their personal vehicles onto the boat, and freight truck drivers. Bicyclists must use the same lanes as those driving on, but I don’t know how many of them there were.

There’s an airport-style security screening (although a bit simpler, as shoes can stay on) after which I presented my passport to a Stena Line staffer who gave me my boarding card. The paper boarding card has a barcode that doubles as the room key. The staffer told me to head down the gangway and off I went, onto the ship. I was the first foot passenger to board.

The Stena Britannica, as seen on approach of the train to Harwich International station

What I found funny when boarding is that I encountered no other workers between the check-in desk and the cafeteria. I didn’t see anyone to guide me to my room; I didn’t even know my room number until I reviewed the boarding card for some kind of indication and saw “10384”; this meant deck 10 room 384.

I found my room alright – there are maps and signs everywhere – and dropped off my luggage and headed to buy some breakfast in the cafeteria, as the ferry would leave in about 45 minutes and I wanted to be outside to witness the departure. Breakfast consisted of oats porridge (oatmeal made with milk) for £5.

The vehicle boarding pier, as seen from the passenger bridge.

Leaving Harwich

Outside there was still a lot of action. Dock and ship workers were still moving semi-trailers onto the ferry. They had special tugs with very tight turning radiuses, and the drivers could turn their seats 180° so they could drive backwards. After the driver got the semi-trailer into place, workers on the deck would place a stand under the semi-trailer, the tug would drop it onto the stand and leave.

Deck workers would then tie the semi-trailer to the deck. Two adjacent semi-trailers could be tied simultaneously and there was enough room on the aft deck for two drivers to maneuver around each other. (This is shown in the video.)

Port workers shoved off the boat’s many ties and the ship slowly moved laterally away from the dock, and then the ship gradually made its way forward. I didn’t measure it but it felt like it took 10 minutes for the ship to finally slip past the Felixstore fortress and leave the harbor.

The ship passed two docked container ships, for Evergreen and MSC, being unloaded, and a couple of boats working to dredge the port. The port also had two lightships, a ship acting as a lighthouse. When leaving the port we passed an inbound MSC container ship, the MSC Sariska V (which I took 22 photos of…thank you brand new phone with three camera lenses).

On board the Stena Britannica

Since I awoke so early I skipped taking a shower at the flat, and I took one on board the ship instead. This was the largest ship I’d traveled on, by an order of magnitude. Prior to this the largest ship I’d traveled on is either the Staten Island Ferry or the Washington State Ferry to Bainbridge Island. I was wondering how I’d sleep.

The ship is incredibly stable. The minimal rocking was helpful or at least nonintrusive for my two-hour nap.

I took my laptop over to the cafeteria-lounge to work for a couple of hours. The ship has wifi and free internet access. Passengers can pay for higher-speed access, but I was only visiting webpages and I tolerated the standard speed.

The journey was nearly over pretty quickly, but I can’t account for all of the time. There was about an hour watching the departure, a slow hour showering and checking messages on my phone, two hours of napping, two hours of napping, and another hour of watching the arrival.

The hallways on the amenity deck are well-appointed

Arrival

Rotterdam is one of my favorite cities in the world. There are a few reasons for my affinity. A primary reason is that a friend of mine lived there for many years so I visited a couple of times –2014 and 2015 – and got more than a shallow introduction. I also lived there for three months in 2016, and revisited in 2017 and 2022. After many years away, my friend lives there again (with his now spouse) so I am visiting again!

The ferry arrives to the Port of Rotterdam, which is the largest port in Europe, and at 41 square miles it’s larger than many cities. (See my other photos of the port during past visits, including a long bike ride.)

Stena asks that passengers in cabins pack out and wait in the lounges an hour prior to arrival so I gather my luggage and go outside to watch the mooring process. When it seems we’re docked I go inside to wait for the foot bridge to open so I can get out fast – I had to get into the city center to get my friend’s house key before he headed out to a show.

Once I’m off the ship there’s a long walk down to the terminal. Along the way I spot what’s being offloaded: a few manufactured houses were transported from the UK to the Netherlands. Huh.

The first wind turbines, at the westernmost edge of the Port of Rotterdam.

I entered the country and walked right up to the Hoek van Holland Metro station. To pay for transit, I have a personal OV-chipkaart (public transport smart card) that bills a bank account for usage on any transit service in the country – save for most ferry crossings – at the end of the month. However, Metro now accepts contactless bank cards and mobile phone wallets.

A manufactured house was transported on the ferry

Rotterdam Centraal

I took the Metro to Rotterdam Centraal Station, which also happens to be my favorite train station as I love its dramatic roof, wide open plaza (Stationsplein and Kruisplein), and beautiful boulevard approaches from all four directions. It’s designed well for passenger experience inside, too.

After getting the house key I checked out an OV-fiets, a “public transport bike” (literal translation), using my OV-chipkaart, and biked to my friends’ house. (OV-fiets are available only to those with a personal OV-chipkaart, which must be tied to a Dutch bank account and thus it is generally not available to tourists. It is rented on a 24-hour basis for €4.45, and must be checked in to a train station at least once every 72 hours.)

I quickly dropped off my luggage and biked back to the station so I could get a döner box from The Döner Company for dinner. Turkish fast food in the Netherlands is like Mexican fast food in Chicago: pretty good no matter where you get it, inexpensive, and ubiquitous.

The döner box – comprising salad, sliced beef, fries, and chili and garlic sauces – was as delicious as I remembered it being.

Metro station at Rotterdam Centraal station

Animals of the Netherlands

May 16, 2023 / Steven Vance / 0 Comments

If you bike or walk around the Netherlands you’ll become a bird watcher, a sheep farmer, or a cattle herder, whether or not you intend to. There are animals everywhere – they’re mostly just outside the city centers but sometimes in the center, too! Need a better vantage point? Find a nature tower.

You’ll see swans, geese, ducks, magpies, herons, coots, pheasants, and meadow birds. Two cities have deer parks. Sheep – and lambs in the spring – are grazing along the bike paths. Texel island has two breeds of cattle and in Rotterdam there’s a group of Scottish Highland cows freely roaming in a small section of natural area without a fence that you can bike through.

Oh, there are also a lot of outdoor cats. And a campaign to keep them inside at night.

A heron flies from its perch on a bridge railing.

This post shows a selection of the animals I saw over six days exploring Rotterdam, Delft, and Zoetermeer, and the surrounding areas.

Wherever there’s water in the Netherlands there are birds — Geese at Kralingse Bos in Rotterdam

Speaking of that nature tower…it’s in the Ackerijkse Plassen nature reserve and you can see the skyscrapers of Rotterdam, 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) away.

Rotterdam in the distance, seen through the enclosed viewing area on the tower

A short list of features of the Netherlands that I still try to wrap my head around

January 18, 2023 / Steven Vance / 0 Comments

The Netherlands is the country I’ve visited the most, going there eight times between 2011 and 2022. I’ve obsessively visited 31 cities, the Hoge Veluwe national park, and plenty of other places outside cities.

Here are three land use and infrastructure characteristics that continue to fascinate me.

Transportation systems, obviously

Learning about how the Dutch created the safest network of streets for cycling is what started my near-obsession 15 years ago.

Then I went there in 2011 and I got to experience it for myself (photos from that trip).

I think the quality, capacity, likability, and integration of their transportation systems can be summarized best, for Americans who haven’t been there, by learning the results of a Waze survey: People who primarily drive in the Netherlands are more satisfied with the driving in their country than people in other countries are with driving in theirs.

In other words…if you like driving, then you should also care about what the Netherlands because they happened to also create the most driver-friendly transportation system.

Creating land & living with flooded land

As a novice, it’s probably easier to notice and understand how the Dutch create, move, and live with flooded land from above. There have been moments while I was cycling in the country where I’ve ridden past “polders” and former lakes and seas only to realize it later that I had biked through a massively transformed area that appeared entirely natural.

When I lived in Rotterdam for three months in 2016 I tried to visit as many places across the country as I could. I especially wanted to visit Flevopolder, the larger part of the Flevoland province, built from of the sea in 1986 where 317,000 people live.

I visited both major cities on the Flevopolder in the same day, Almere and Lelystad, the capital. I cycled from Almere (photos) to the seafront of Markermeer, and…get this…had to ride uphill because the land is below sea level.

Reaching the edge of Flevopolder, where it borders the sea called Markermeer — Cycling uphill to meet the sea north of the city of Almere, in the Flevoland province of the Netherlands.

Most Dutchies live below sea level, and the country has massive land and metal engineering works to keep the water in check.

The Dutch, especially in and around Rotterdam, come up with new ways to deal with water and export this knowledge abroad.

While the existing and planned measures should be sufficient until at least 2070, too much uncertainty over the progress of climate change remains afterwards to assess whether the city will truly stay liveable.

Some assessments suggest that if the sea rises by 5m – an estimate in sight within a century, considering the unpredictability of the rate that Greenland and Antarctica’s glacier will melt – Rotterdam will have no other choice but to relocate.
“Rotterdam: A bastion against rising sea, for now”
By Zuza Nazaruk

The country may rely on electricity to survive more than most: it’s needed to keep the pumps working, to keep the water in the sea instead of in and over the land.

How productive their agriculture industry is

By land area, the Netherlands is a very small country; it would be the tenth smallest state in the United States. By population, it would be the fifth largest state (17.6 million, greater than Pennsylvania’s 13 million).

Given that, how is it that the Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value, after the United States?

Simple answer: High-quality, high-value, high-demand foodstuffs; space-efficient farming practices, including a significant amount of food grown vertically and in greenhouses. And, I don’t remember if this was in the article, very good transport connections to trading partners through seaports, canals, railways, and motorways.

I was surprised to see that both brands of canned cold brew coffee sold at the convenience store in my apartment building are produced in the Netherlands.

Chicago has too many traffic signals

June 21, 2016 / Steven Vance / 7 Comments

People wait at a stop light on the first major ring road in the city center of Amsterdam. Photo: Northeastern University, Boston

I was flabbergasted to learn today that there are only 5,500 signalized intersections in all of the Netherlands. I was reading Mark’s blog “Bicycle Dutch” and he interviewed a city traffic signal engineer in Den Bosch, who described how different road users are prioritized at different times based on the complex programming. (Watch the video below.)

In Chicago there are more than 3,000 signalized intersections. And I believe this is way more than we need.

I understand more than the average person how traffic moves in each place and how it “works”. There is such a thing as too many traffic signals because at some point the signals (their proximity and their programming) start causing delays and conflicts.

Saying that traffic – of all kinds, bikes, trucks, buses, delivery vans, and personal vehicles – moves better in cities in the Netherlands than in Chicago is an understatement.

Aside from their impacts on traffic (which can be good in some situations, but aggravating existing problems in other places), signals are very expensive to purchase, install, and maintain.

In Chicago, an alderman (city councilor) can use part of their $1.3 million “menu” money annual allocation to purchase a traffic signal for $300,000. That’s money that won’t be used for transportation investments that reduce the number of severe traffic crashes as well as reduce congestion like bus lanes and protected bike lanes.

Let’s review

I compared their populations (about 17 million in the Netherlands and 2.7 million in Chicago) and saw that Chicago has a lot more traffic signals per person.

On Twitter, however, I was challenged to find the number of traffic signals per mile driven, not per capita.

So, I did, and I was surprised by the result.

This assumes I collected the right statistics, and converted the driving figures correctly.

The surprise: There are more passenger miles driven (known as VMT) in the Netherlands, per capita, than in Chicago. I actually can’t even get passenger miles driving in Chicago – I can only find “all miles” driven. And that includes trips on interstates that pass through Chicago but where the driver or passengers don’t stop in Chicago.

Here’s the analysis, though.

Driving

According to the OECD, there were 145,400 million kilometers driven on roads, for passenger transport, excluding bus coaches, in the Netherlands in 2013 (the latest year for which data was available in the Netherlands). That’s 145.4 billion kilometers. (Source, no permalink.)
According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, there were 11,150,109 thousand miles for all kinds of road transport, in Chicago in 2013. That’s 11.2 billion miles, which converts to 17.9 billion kilometers. (Source)

Population

In 2013, the Netherlands had 16,804,430 inhabitants (they had declared reaching 17,000,000 this year), according to the OECD.
In 2013, the City of Chicago had 2,706,101 inhabitants, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2009-2013 ACS 5-year estimate.

Signals

The Netherlands has over 5,500 signalized intersections.
Chicago has over 3,000 signalized intersections.

Results!

The Netherlands has over 39 signalized intersections per billion kilometers traveled.
Chicago has over 167 signalized intersections per billion kilometers traveled.

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Tag: Netherlands

Ferry #1: UK to Netherlands (day 9)

Getting to the port

Boarding the ferry

Leaving Harwich

On board the Stena Britannica

Arrival

Rotterdam Centraal

Animals of the Netherlands

A short list of features of the Netherlands that I still try to wrap my head around

Transportation systems, obviously

Creating land & living with flooded land

How productive their agriculture industry is

Chicago has too many traffic signals

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Getting to the port

Boarding the ferry

Leaving Harwich

On board the Stena Britannica

Arrival

Rotterdam Centraal

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Transportation systems, obviously

Creating land & living with flooded land

How productive their agriculture industry is

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