Amsterdam Just Closed their Busiest Road

Amsterdam is trialing its most ambitious traffic project yet. They are cutting off car traffic on a major 4-lane arterial road through the city. This has got the right-wingers panties in a bunch, but the trial is still underway. Will this lead to a utopian city or carmageddon?

Historic photos of Weesperstraat

Weesperstraat-Valkenburgerstraat en omgeving: minder auto’s en groener

Een week vol chaos, boze automobilisten én positieve effecten in de Weesperstraat: ‘Dit is véél beter voor de stad’

Twitteraars steken de draak met verkeersleed na knip Weesperstraat

Museumplein road:

This video makes use of some footage from Getty Images

[wowshiii]

Meanwhile in America we're fighting to get protected bicycle lanes instead of painted bicycle gutters. Still amazes me how my city thinks it ok to build a painted bicycle lane along a 50mph stroad.

[nickchambers]

“Inviting American traffic planners as consultants” is an absolutely horrific phrase

[NotJustBikes]

I'd like to be crystal clear that (obviously) not all people against the knip are right-wingers, and that's not what I'm saying in this video. However it was right wing parties (primarily the VVD and FvD) that were demanding an _immediate_ stop to a 6-week project on the first day. Why aren't they willing to see it through? What are they afraid of?

I can understand someone saying, "I don't like something about this project", and then having a reasonable response like "... let's tweak the light timings at Piet Hienkade", or "let's also block off another street." or "... let's change the signage" or "... "let's collect this data differently."

But to say "THERE'S MORE TRAFFIC ON DAY ONE!! CANCEL EVERYTHING!!!" is simply not an acceptable response to this project.

As usual, the biggest problems are being caused by too many motor vehicles, but ultimately that's what this project is trying to solve. Is this the right solution? We don't know. But we sure as hell won't find out by cancelling it before we get any data. And I applaud the municipality for taking the bold move to collect that important information and for performing this trial.

Objections are fine; that's how we improve. But if you just want to cancel everything and aren't interested in data, then I have no patience for you. We learn nothing from that.

Meten is weten.

Edit: if you are a right-wing urbanist then you need to start speaking up, because your representatives are destroying cities in your name; from the VVD in the Netherlands to the new mayor of Berlin, it is the right wing in Europe that is overwhelming pushing anti-urbanist initiatives. You need to let them (and your fellow conservatives) know you're not ok with it.

[OntarioTrafficMan]

A note on drivers' perception of the parallel traffic jam: if the road is packed half the time and empty half the time, all of the drivers experience it being packed, because by definition no drivers were there to experience it being empty.

[alanthefisher]

Suburban car owners being mad at a city that they don't live in because it's making changes?
That never happens, ever, anywhere else around the world 😅😅😅

[jamestaylor]

"in order to even get here, all of these drivers needed to ignore several signs telling them to turn around" There's some construction going on at an intersection down the street from me. I straight up saw a car go over the curb onto the sidewalk to get around the warning sign that was blocking the road.

[flofferdeur]

Hey NJB, as a busdriver in and around Amsterdam, the first week was a horrendous time for public transport. So many people didn't believe that it happened, I guess, so driving from Centraal to anywhere to the IJ-tunnel took over 30 minutes (which would normally take us about 3 to 5 minutes). Nobody gave way, and just parked their big crossover/suv on the middle of the crossing.
When finally through the tunnel you would get in the second traffic jam of everyone going to the A10 to drive around. Considering a few thousand of cars needing to go through a single lane road to get on the A10, there were a lot of cars. This traffic jam also causes busses that depart from Station Noord to get stuck while leaving the station. Oh, you're upset an 18 meter long bus is standing on the middle of a busy crossing because of a traffic jam that shouldn't exist in the first place? Sure, I guess.
I see so many people sitting alone in their way too big cars, driving like spoiled 10 year olds.
A few weeks in and there are still traffic jams, and still people that think that they can drive to Amsterdam Centraal via the Prins Hendrikkade while it has been blocked off for LITERAL MONTHS just blows my mind. UGH. I hope the knip stays and people stop taking the car.

[neyrhu]

I would love to hear stories from the municipal workers at the Knip gates, and some SURELY civilized talks they had with drivers..

[dcgamer]

Imagine a government that spends a delberate amount of time to study the effects of a potential policy change before actually going through with it, mind blowing stuff... sadly

[seacaptken]

I ride Amsterdam everyday as a fietskoerier/bike messenger, and I'd like to add some other road closures I think are effecting the perception of traffic during this Mega Knip: there's serious construction on Van Wout and Stadhouderskade in De Pijp pushing traffic onto Sarphatistraat, which crosses Weesperstraat, and smaller construction on other streets that ring the center (Weteringschans and Marnixstraat, Rapenburg, etc) are slowing down rerouted traffic. It's a little bit of bad timing, but there is always maintenance going here so there would never be a perfect time.

[lipschitzlyapunov]

Note that once Paris implemented more bike paths, emergency response times there dropped significantly and for the first time, since 2000.

[Seelingfahne]

I live in a neighborhood of Montréal, a city on the east coast of Canada. Our mayor has been greenlighting and promoting a lot more cycling and pedestrian spaces, including turning the main street of my mixed-use distict into a pedestrian street during the summer months. It has totally changed the feeling of the neighborhood, since we are no longer insulated by the constant hustle and bustle of traffic. I am getting to meet my neighbors and walking my dog is a pleasure instead of bee-lining to the nearest park while trying to avoid getting flattened by impatient drivers. You wouldnt wear a tuxedo to the beach, cars dont belong everywhere.

[wouldntyaliktono]

I live in this neighborhood and I can confirm it's totally transformed the atmosphere of the area. It's SO much quieter now, especially now that there aren't people racing between the stoplights at night. And the intersection at Weesperplein is much calmer now because there's fewer motorist jockeying for position on their way into the city center. I'm no longer worried about getting mowed down by a distracted driver when I cross the street (something I've seen happen several times in the years living here).

[manghariz]

I live in Bandung
Pretty much the best "Anti-Car" City in Indonesia.
There is this one road that is filled with commercial activity, used as a main road to a lot of residence, used as a main road to a monument, campuses, and etc. Not only that, the road is small, very very small, and have the reputation of being "The most congested road in northern Bandung" or something along the line of that. One day I was working on a project about it's supposed congestion. What we found after we ask people there, and actually watch the road, we found that, there is practically no congestion outside rush hour and the weekend (mainly because there is an influx of rider from Jakartans). This blew my mind. We are expecting to write "there is a serious case of congestion, and the road needed to be widened" but no, instead we wrote "there needs to be some policy to limit an inflow of new riders in the weekend".
This is where Iam convinced that, small roads dont cause congestion.
Iam writing this, because Iam now very very sure, that these politicians and people that wanted wider road, dont actually live near those roads (surprised surprised). Because every single person that I asked that live near a small road says, there are no congestion most of the time.

[jiix]

Everytime I open a new NJB video, and see the streets of Amsterdam. I experience new levels of pain everytime as an American suburbanite

[pascaldeijs]

As a resident of this neighbourhood, thank you for your support in this matter !

[deldarel]

That shot at 8:05 breaks my heart a little. They had to extend the car barrier into the fietspad just so cars wouldn't drive onto the fietspad to avoid the car barrier. Car entitlement is wild, even here.

[ProfessorDiz]

This channel along with a few others have inspired me to go back to university to retrain for a career in City planning and Public infrastructure.

Thank you

[ThomasLaCroix]

People complain about your tone. But it's just that Dutch blunt truthfulness. Motorists *are* entitled when they want places rich with opportunity to bulldoze their buildings and shrink space for people, just to increase through-traffic. I appreciate that you don't cater to the feelings of wildly uninformed and unrealistic people.

I envy that you made it out and live in a country where just by living, you show how stupidly North America has structured their infrastructure.

[Lukiul]

A similar project has come under fire n Berlin in the last weeks. The Friedrichstraße used to be a busy steet full of cars. It was blocked of as a test a couple of years ago and was somewhat well recieved and used by pedestrians, shoppers and bicyclists. However the new CDU/SPD government of the city decided to immediately halt all (!) new bicycle infrastructure projects, where any parking space would be compromised. And the reopened the Friedrichstraße for cars again. This weekend, there was a bicycle protest with over 10 000 demonstrators against the new plans. In Germany, we can only look with envy on dutch infrastructure imho.