Last week we met Gerrit Faber, a policy officer from the Fietsersbond. He provided us with some interesting insights.
Contemporary architects design beautiful buildings, but they forget to take the bicycle into account. Steven Fleming also formulated an opinion about this current development. Architects who design Vinex districts nearby large cities often design a car-friendly area. Density and heterogeneity are two key concepts when thinking about a bikeable city, which are mostly not contemplated when a new city is designed.
We should take the bicycle into our homes according to Fleming. What if stores would be more (cargo)bike friendly? Lets stop treating bicycles as if they are horses, leaving them hooked onto a pole outside the supermarket. It would be more convenient to take the bicycle inside and to load the groceries into the bicycle as you are shopping. Mothers (and fathers, of course) can leave their kid in the bicycle seat, so that they don’t have to carry them all the time.
Fleming also proposed a bicycle path where cyclists can field protection from rain and sun. He likes to play with hilly paths; slowing cyclists down by making the path going uphill, encouraging cyclists to go faster when the path is going downhill. Pedestrians would walk up, while cyclists have their own bicycle path under the pedestrian lane. Gerrit actually did not agree with this view. In Amsterdam Zuid-Oost, this has already been tried; separating the fast traffic from slower traffic. It resulted in unsafe situations, not necessarily on the level of road safety, but more on a social level.
His view on the bicycle as the ultimate design which can be brought inside stores and houses may seem a bit utopian, and certainly not within reach for a crammed city like Amsterdam. Most parents are not going to carry their cargobike three stories up on small, high stairs. But for cities that are newly build, like Vinex districts in the Netherlands, this would be an option!