Another new "superhighway" for bikes

Published July 25, 2010 at 10:01 p.m.
Wilfred Ketelaar has been documenting the progress of work on the route between his home in a village west of Groningen and the city itself.

The first photo shows the previous situation. By the standards of many countries this would be a very good cycling facility. It's separated from the road, and fairly wide. However, it doesn't meet current Dutch guidelines. According to the provincial website this cycle path is narrow and too close to the road.

The first step was to start to prepare the new cycle path foundations alongside the old cycle path.

Note that there is to have a much greater separation from the road as it's positioned completely to the right of the old path, and the new cycle path will be somewhat wider than the old.

Another view of the works a little later when much of the concrete has been poured. The new surface is 3.5 m wide, and extremely smooth concrete. I have the same surface on a path of the same quality on my commute. It's smoother than the road. Smoother than some racing circuits I've been on - like a linear velodrome to your destination.

While works go on, it is necessary for cyclists travelling in this direction to cross the road and use the cycle path on the opposite side.

The speed limit on the road alongside the cycle path is temporarily limited to 50 km/h to avoid dangerous situations when cyclists have to cross.


And so it goes. Soon there will be yet another new "superhighway" for cyclists. This one being the green line between Z and G in the top right corner of the map (click on the map for more information).

This particular "fietssnelweg" is being marketed locally as merely a "fietsroute+". A list of what this entails is to be found in a previous blog post.

Also, I showed just how much separation from the road you get on another post about my local fietsroute+.

This sort of infrastructure makes longer cycle commutes far more practical. You can cycle quickly if you want to.

It's really an awful long way away from what Londoners are being fobbed off with

Back | Read more at David Hembrow's View from the Cyclepath