How Dutch Cities Restored the “Freedom to Roam”
Editor’s Note: Melissa and Chris Bruntlett are Canadian authors and urban mobility advocates who strive to communicate the benefits of sustainable transport and inspire happier, healthier, more human-scale cities. Their first book, Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality, explored the urban and transport planning decisions that established the Netherlands as a bicycle paradise, and how North American communities are translating these ideas to build their own cycling cities.
In 2019, Melissa and Chris, along with their children Coralie and Etienne, relocated from Vancouver, Canada, to Delft, the Netherlands. Their new book, Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives (which releases today) chronicles their experience living in the Netherlands, and the benefits that result from treating cars as visitors rather than owners of the road. In the excerpt below, Melissa and Chris describe some of the urban planning decisions Delft made that gave young people—now including Etienne and Coralie—the “freedom to roam.”
For more Strong Towns content featuring the Bruntletts, check out this interview, this podcast, and this article.
While much of Etienne and Coralie’s newfound freedom could be attributed to the glorious red cycle tracks that crisscross Delft in every direction, we soon began to discover that even greater “invisible” forces were at play—forces that didn’t just separate vulnerable road users from motorized vehicles but also removed as many of those vehicles from the urban environment as possible. In their daily travels, they were enjoying the fruits of a policy decision made five decades earlier, with the City of Delft’s 1970 Vervoersen Verkeersplan (Transport and Traffic Plan).
Authored by Delft University of Technology (then Technische Hogeschool Delft) professor Jacques Volmuller, in response to a mounting safety crisis caused by the growing volumes and speeds of cars on urban streets, this traffic circulation plan began with the fundamental idea that every child should be able to walk safely to school, a shop, or a friend’s house without crossing a busy (and dangerous) arterial road.
Like many other global cities in the 1960s, Delft came under immense pressure from engineers and economists to quickly “modernize” itself, with proposals to build intensive road networks with broad thoroughfares, expansive intersections, oversized bridges, and acres of parking. This required the demolition of large parts of the inner city and its surrounding neighborhoods, some of which actually began to take place in the Oude Stad (Old City), before protests by local students and residents successfully urged the City to take a different approach.
The spatial demands of a car-centric city were glaringly irreconcilable with Delft’s small, compact nature, so Volmuller’s top-down, wholistic plan was embraced as a substitute. Critically, it dealt with the management of car traffic, public transport, and cycling as separate—but interconnected—mobility networks.
Recognizing that the most effective way to control a hazard is to physically eliminate it, this policy—and subsequent circulation plans implemented on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis—purposely prevented drivers from cutting through living areas by pushing them to an outer ring road the moment they left their front door. Not only did removing these sluiproutes (sneaky routes) create streets more welcoming for people of all ages to walk and cycle, but it also made those more desirable modes more direct and convenient. This was accomplished through the concept of “filtered permeability,” which prevented through traffic on most streets, while people on foot and bike were permitted to trickle through (and even travel the wrong way on one-way streets). As Dutch planners have discovered over the years, the most important part of an effective walking and cycling plan is the car plan. But this car management plan must be implemented in parallel with a viable alternative to driving short distances—in this case a dense, well-connected cycling network.
We felt these invisible forces within a week of arriving, having overestimated the size of Etienne’s bedroom and finding ourselves faced with the task of taking the bed we had ordered back to IKEA. Located just outside the ring road on Delft’s east side, on the A13 motorway, the warehouse was a 2.9-kilometer (1.8-mile) “straight shot” on foot, bike, or bus from our westside apartment. When we loaded the flatpack into our rental car and punched in the GPS coordinates, we were looking at a circuitous, 10.5-kilometer (6.5-mile) journey around the perimeter of the city.
By making a clear distinction between circulating traffic, through traffic, and destination traffic, the policy served as a precursor to the classifications adopted in the Netherlands in 1992 with Duurzaam Veilig (Sustainable Safety). It dictated that all roads should fall into one of three categories:
Stroomwegen (Flow Roads)—motorways limited to 100 km/h or 60 mph
Gebiedsontsluitingswegen (Distributor Roads)—arterials limited to 50 km/h or 30 mph within built-up areas
Erftoegangswegen (Access Roads)—30 km/h or 20 mph residential streets
This system did not recognize roads with the dual functions of through traffic and destination traffic, such as arterial roads that doubled as busy retail corridors. This can generally be seen as a positive move, but it failed to acknowledge Delft’s existing street pattern and structure, with a number of dense residential and commercial developments built hastily along key routes after the Second World War. To square that circle, the City of Delft retained its own fourth category of road, which it had called the Wijkontsluitingsweg (District Access Road).
In an attempt to satisfy their dual and conflicting purposes, District Access Roads are calmed to 40 km/h (25 mph) and incorporate important pedestrian safety elements and segregated cycle tracks, with careful attention to the design of side streets, crossings, and intersections. The desired speed is achieved not by passively posting a sign (the police can’t be everywhere, and drivers will travel as fast as they feel comfortable), but by actively engineering means that force drivers to slow down and pay attention, such as brick medians, narrow lanes, and textured paving. Dutch police actually do very little traffic enforcement. If too many drivers speed on a street, it is deemed a design failure and sent back to the drawing board.
Image via Modacity.
Another critical detail seen on these streets is the raised and continuous foot and cycle path. At each point where the parallel sidewalk and cycle track cross a side street, rather than disappear and drop into the driving zone (as is common in most cities), cars are ramped up a few centimeters into the walking and cycling area—and treated as a trespasser—before going back down again. By keeping the vulnerable road users in a prioritized, elevated, seamless space, drivers must reduce their speed and increase their vigilance, reducing any sense of entitlement.
Early versions of Wijkontsluitingswegen failed to include this detail, giving the impression that drivers had priority when entering side streets. Signage that implored them to yield was generally ignored, causing a number of collisions. In response, the raised and continuous path was introduced to physically manage the serious clash between cars turning to cross and pedestrians and cyclists traveling straight ahead in the walking and cycling area.
This hierarchy of streets is administered carefully to direct cars out of the local neighborhoods at slow speeds, onto arterial roads where they can accelerate slightly, and then onto regional motorways where they no longer impact urban life. The Distributor and District Access Roads form a loose grid with a mesh of about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles), but often deviate, directing cars away from sensitive areas, such as canals, rivers, churches, and plazas. This means that on the vast majority of Delft streets, the car traffic moves around the same speed as the bicycle traffic.
Significantly, within built-up areas, these arterial roads are rarely more than one lane of traffic in each direction (often with a row of street trees, a grass median, or a dedicated bus lane and tramway running down the middle). This means that, with a requisite midblock island, vulnerable pedestrians—especially children and the elderly—are seldom exposed to risk for more than 2.5 meters (8 feet) while crossing the street. Multilane roads may have served a purpose decades ago, when not every internal combustion engine was created equal, but Dutch engineers are gradually removing them from urban environments, since they encourage drivers to exceed the desired (and safe) speed. As they have discovered over years of such “road diets,” a street’s capacity is not determined by its width but by the design of its intersections. By getting the junction design right, usually with unsignalized treatments (like a roundabout), a single-lane road can handle as much traffic as a two-lane road, while maintaining flow and minimizing wait times for all users.
Sending car drivers on extended detours around the city seems frustrating and time intensive, but as transport planners stress, the opposite often turns out to be true. By moving traffic from slower access streets to faster distributor roads, and reducing congestion by offering viable alternatives for short-distance trips, driving times often end up being less than had drivers taken the direct route. Ultimately, the stated goal is accomplished—children are allowed to wander freely and safely around their city, the textbook definition of a win–win scenario.
Restoring the Freedom to Roam
Image via Modacity.
Within a short period of time, Etienne and Coralie have completely and successfully integrated into Dutch life. They navigate the city as well as—if not better than—their parents do. The very things we had hoped for them have become normal parts of their everyday life: getting out of the house regularly to meet with friends, enjoying a walk or bike ride through their neighborhood, or heading out for ice cream in the city center. As parents, we are far less worried about their safety, and we see their confidence so clearly written on their faces. Delft is now their home. They know the places they want to go and exactly how to get there, and they can do it all by themselves.
Of course, they will experience minor hiccups along the way, as Etienne did with his little spill. And yes, Coralie has still gotten lost on more than one occasion. But we are safe in the knowledge that we live in a city that provides countless opportunities for our children to assess and take calculated risks, and through that process, prove their resiliency on a near-daily basis. In such a place, a tumble off a bicycle into a grass median will likely end in a slight injury. But without that lenient infrastructure, such a small mistake could result in something much worse—if not deadly. Shouldn’t all children get to grow up in such a forgiving environment?
In recent months, Coralie has gotten into the delightful habit of cooking dinner one night per week. Bringing home a recipe from her high school class, she cycles to the local Albert Heijn (a grocery store chain), purchases everything she needs, and prepares a delicious meal from scratch. Other nights, if Mom or Dad is cooking and is missing a key ingredient, Etienne can go to the store to pick it up. It is a reminder that such early independence—in both transport and dayto-day life—benefits the parents as much as it does the children. In a culture where the majority of supervision and housework still falls on the mother’s shoulders, this presents a disproportionate advantage to the matriarch of the family.
In November 2020, the Bruntletts bought a 130-year-old grachtenpand (canal house) on the silent (i.e., totally car-free) side of a Delft canal. Image via Modacity.
One Sunday toward the end of July 2019, it suddenly came into focus exactly what these decades-old traffic policy decisions meant to our little family. Coralie had made plans to meet friends at a swimming pool in The Hague, while her brother cycled to the nearby Drievliet amusement park, leaving the pair of us (part-time) empty nesters to play tourists in our new hometown. We enjoyed a wonderful day hopping between the centuries-old historic sites of Delft, using our newly acquired Museumkaart—including the birthplace of Johannes Vermeer and the burial place of William van Oranje—while the kids entertained themselves many miles away.
In between stops, we toasted Belgian beers in the Beestenmarkt and reflected on how much our lives had changed in a few short months. In a different context, those journeys to the pool and theme park would demand four additional car trips by Mom or Dad. Extrapolate that daily travel to sport activities, music classes, and friends’ houses across a typical week, and you suddenly realize how the backseat generation creates additional strain on our streets, our wallets, and our lives.
This is not to say that Dutch parents don’t experience the stresses of childrearing and the commitments that go with it. But there is much to be said about the fact that in this environment, we no longer dedicate much of our time outside work—time that should be spent recharging for the next day—worried about which child has which activity when, and who is going to get them there. The additional mental and emotional energy we used to spend choreographing the lives of four people has certainly lessened with our children’s newly discovered autonomy, and we are savoring those effects every day. The results are confident, more independent children and much more chilled out parents. Building autonomous cities doesn’t just lead to happier kids, it leads to happier parents too!
From Curbing Traffic by Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett. Copyright © 2021 Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.
Chris and Melissa Bruntlett are the co-founders of Modacity, a multi-service communications and marketing firm focused on inspiring healthier, happier, simpler forms of urban mobility through words, photography, and film. Reach them at chris@modacitylife.com and melissa@modacitylife.com.
Bike Talk is a Los Angeles-based radio show dedicated to the idea that we need to prioritize bikes as a form of public transportation, and they recently invited Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn to appear on an episode.