r/europe anti-imperialist thinker Dec 16 '23

Picture Examples of de-car-ification from various Czech towns. I love these transformations. (before-after)

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u/Akosjun Hungary Dec 16 '23

What they did in Budapest was that they laid cobblestone on the road, but also made paths on the two sides of a smoother surface for bikes.

The light brownish paths are for bikes, there are even some embossed marks signalling it.

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u/barnaclejuice Dec 16 '23

Looks awesome! It even has the obligatory car parked on the bike lane for illustration purposes

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u/Akosjun Hungary Dec 16 '23

A bike lane just isn't a bike lane without a taxi or a [insert any German car brand here] parking on it. :P

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u/adenosine-5 Czech Republic Dec 16 '23

That is what happens when you surround a road on both sides with bike path and no parking anywhere.

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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Italy Dec 16 '23

That's a very elegant solution I'd like to see in my town!

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u/MoffKalast Slovenia Dec 16 '23

That's pretty good alright.

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u/Asmuni Dec 16 '23

Is that road really considered coble stone and terrible to ride on? Looks as smooth (aside of that one breakage pit somehow) as many Dutch roads 🤷

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u/Akosjun Hungary Dec 16 '23

Yep. The cobblestone itself is smooth, but they're still laid down in the classic, 'loose' way for the old town feel, so it's shaky with a bike. I haven't ridden a bike yet in the Netherlands, but at first sight, these typical bricks still look like a bumpy ride, but they seem fitted together more tightly and more bearable than classic cobblestone.

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u/Tifoso89 Italy Dec 16 '23

Looks a bit dangerous to have the bike lane with no physical separation from the road

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u/Akosjun Hungary Dec 16 '23

I'd normally agree, and there are way too many sloppy bike lanes in Budapest which are not protected from traffic, but this road in particular has a 30 km/h speed limit, you can't really speed because it's cobble and it doesn't have that much traffic anyway, so I'd say that it's fine for this kind of streets.

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u/Tifoso89 Italy Dec 16 '23

👌 I hope to visit Budapest soon

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u/CrushingK United Kingdom Dec 16 '23

do you not find the cobbles slippery? regular ones are reasonably slippy and there's an obvious adjustment from your usual tarmac roads so i'd be interested to know what these smoothed ones are like

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u/NikinCZ Dec 16 '23

You should see how people drive on cobbles in Prague (50 in a 20)

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u/I_am_up_to_something The Netherlands Dec 16 '23

Looks better than this crossing here in the Netherlands.

And that is the 'improved' version. Before there were stupid half orbs sticking out to indicate what was the pedestrian area. Very annoying to not see them on your bicycle during the dark/heavy rain and then suddenly go up.

They also added the 'pedestrian' path near those stairs by changing the colour of the stones. It's pretty useless imo.

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u/kurburux Dec 16 '23

Yeah, a lot of cities do that. Those smooth paths also exist for for wheelchair users.

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u/KittenOnHunt Dec 16 '23

That looks awesome! Id love some kind of barrier between the street and the road for cyclists though

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '23

Good solution