What are the Dutch doing right?
Le Devoir’s weekend special is a sheaf of stories about the Netherlands, and what their cities have been doing right in terms of transit and livability.
It seems to me it’s not the cities themselves that make the difference, it’s that the surrounding country is small and densely settled so you can actually get from town to town comfortably by bicycle or train: you don’t “need” a car to be mobile when you can cross the whole country by train in a couple of hours.
Emily Gray 11:58 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
I wonder if it could also be that I think large parts quite a few European cities were not designed with cars in mind (were designed before cars existed.)
DeWolf 11:59 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
The reason Dutch cities excel at active transport is because of policies, not circumstance. Belgium is just as densely settled but its cities are nowhere near their Dutch counterparts in terms of active transport. The Rhine-Rhur part of Germany is basically one big metropolis, just like Holland, and it’s much more car-oriented in comparison.
It’s become a cliché in active transport circles but it’s still true: Amsterdam wasn’t Amsterdam 30 years ago. It was overrun by cars, polluted, congested, devoid of greenery. You can see photos of neighbourhoods like De Pijp and although the buildings are the same, it’s completely unrecognizable because the public realm was so decayed. Amsterdam made a deliberate effort to refashion its streets around people rather than cars, and it’s still refining things today.
Pretty much everything Dutch cities are doing can be implemented here. They aren’t that much denser than Montreal. And you can already see how a Dutch-style approach has had an impact. The things Luc Ferrandez started on the Plateau are similar to what Dutch cities have been doing for the past few decades. There’s the bike infrastructure, of course, but also stuff like the new plaza on Fairmount East, which creates public space while also physically preventing cars from using residential streets as thoroughfares.
There’s a good YouTube channel called Not Just Bikes that talks about all of these different elements and how they could be translated to a North American context.
DeWolf 12:01 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
I should also point out that most of Montreal wasn’t designed for cars, either. This city already had 1.5 million people by the time the average household could afford a car. And the average Dutch city consists mainly of places built after World War II – the bulk of Amsterdam is decidedly modern in style and scale. Take a look on Google Street View.
Uatu 12:53 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
I’ll also recommend Not Just Bikes on YouTube. It’s a great channel that shows that the bike infrastructure in Amsterdam was built because of activism borne out by the deaths of kids hit by cars. Amsterdam was heading the way of North America intending on razing neighborhoods for freeways, but was stopped because of determined activists. Something we should emulate IMHO.
I’d also like to recommend Oh The Urbanity YouTube Channel. The couple that makes the videos used to live in Montreal and also have an interesting take on urban planning.
ant6n 15:15 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
Most of the interesting country-side around Montreal is _at most_ 150km away from Montreal. That area is actually relatively densely settled. Not like the Netherlands, but like other European places. It’s just that since the 50s, Montreal built American-style suburbia, scuttled all its railroads and/or privatized them, and also made a lot of land inaccessible for recreational use.
In Europe, you could do a day trip to Mt-St-Hilaire by train, or go to St-Jerome. Or do a weekend Trip to Mt Tremblant — all by train. Those things used to exist here, and they are not impossible if the conditions were changed a bit.
The argument that “Canada is so huge and empty” that keeps getting repeated is utter BS. When it comes to livability, walkability and near-urban recreation, what matters is what’s nearby. All the far away places that are not settled are utterly irrelevant in this sort of discussion.
Kate 15:40 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
ant6n, that’s as may be. My mother used to talk about taking the train up north to ski. The train was long gone by the time she told me about this, and I’ve never learned to ski. Yes, if I took the metro and buses and maybe an Exo train I could sort of reach the edge of suburbia (but would I be able to get back the same day, given the limited schedules of Exo trains?). Basically, though, most of what’s readily reachable outside central Montreal without a car is not its own place, it’s a suburb, and there’s no reason to go to Laval or Brossard unless I want to shop in a mall, which I don’t want to do. Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec City, even Trois-Rivières, are too far for a jaunt.
carswell 17:00 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
@Kate I used to take the P’tit Train du Nord from Jean Talon Station usually to Val Morin or Val David to go cross-country skiing. Don’t know the last time I was on the train but it was probably in 1980 or 1981.
Tried this fall to get to some of the Monteregian Hills by public transit. Aside from Mount Royal and Mont St-Bruno, it ain’t easy. Even hills you’d think would be easily accessible, like Mont St-Hillaire and Mont Oka aren’t really. Coming from Montreal and taking the commuter train, the earliest you can be at the MSH station is early afternoon. Gems like Mont St-Grégoire? Forget about it if you don’t have a car. But, hey, you’ll soon be able to take the REM to DIX30 and that’s what really matters, right?
ant6n 18:21 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
That’s the thing. The problem isn’t structural, it’s the implementation of transit. For commuter trains may not be so hard. But imagine trying to revive the train to Tremblant or Sherbrooke: while the right of way is mostly the, it would just be completely alien for people here to even consider such endeavors.
mare 19:29 on 2021-11-28 Permalink
(Dutch transplant here, riding bikes from age 6.)
Fact is that I know a lot of Dutch people who don’t have a bike and never use one. And the traffic jams on Dutch highways during rush hour are epic, even though the trains and bike paths are also chock full. Too many people, and a lot of them commute 50, or even 100 km or more, because finding a house close to your work is extremely hard. But with the popularity of electric bikes that might change since one of people’s reasons not to bike, the strong winds, becomes less of an issue. All my brothers and sisters and their spouses have an electrical bike now, and some of them never cycled before.
For Montreal and surroundings, electric bikes might also become a game changer. A distance of 10 km to Montreal (even up a steep bridge) or to a train/REM station is suddenly doable, even for average bodied people. The winter is still a huge problem though, more than the rain and wind in the Netherlands, so people here (and especially in the burbs) will still ‘need’ a car for the winter. Or two cars. And when you have a car, you’re going to use it, even in the summer.