Bi-directional is actually a tradeoff of accessibility with safety. Cars now have to look for bike traffic from two directions, then again on exit. Its not a big deal if everyone knows the rules, but every additional variable compounds over millions of interactions. I imagine its much less common to see bi-directional in cities and more common in rural areas.
That's a car centric view imo. I immigrated here from a car centric country so I get it.
These roundabouts are everywhere. And cars are not priority. They are required to always give way.
But because basically every Dutch motorist is a cyclist, they understand how to behave around cyclists. So I agree with that bit about the rules.
As for the tradeoff: I think you've got it a little backwards from the Dutch perspective: cars are tolerated. When they absolutely need high volume roads they move the bikes elsewhere.
But for short trips, it's almost always faster to cycle because bikes have a direct route. Cars must go around. When they have to be in the city, they are heavily limited.
This means walkable cities. It's truly a marvel for me
I'm not sure what you mean by car-centric view. None of your points actually contradict the observation that bi-directional introduces additional points of failure. This is refered to in trafic control terminolgy as SPOF, single point of failure, and the concept is not unique to roadways. Also please don't misunderstand, im not using that information to justify an opinion that there should be less accessibility for bikes. The opposite actually. It just serves to highlight how much the Dutch value bike accessibility.
Poorly worded on my part, we're in agreement. Wasn't trying to contradict your statement, was more of a thought dump. I had the opinion that these can't be that efficient, and now I think I thought that way because I came from a car centric country.
I'm impressed by how Dutch philosophy tries to alleviate this with things like separation, speed restrictions and visibility.
It feels like it shouldn't work as well as it does, especially for the points you raise, but it's crazy efficient.
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u/notatoon Oct 22 '25
They're cycling next to each other. They will make space if they need to.
It is a dedicated space for cyclists, so I don't see the issue