A Portland Civil Engineeer Marvels at Dutch Design
THE AMSTERDAM DISPATCH
By Leah Nagely Robbins
I glimpsed another way in Amsterdam. The chaos of motion on the busy Amsterdam streets belies an organized calculus. People are alert, alive, in the present tense. They must be since there are fewer traffic signals to control who moves when. As one of my traffic engineer colleagues described, it is possible to design a system that is ‘so dangerous it is safe’ where the guardrails of signalization controlling every movement are removed. I laughed, naïve, thinking it was a joke. But here in Amsterdam, everyone is making decisions for themselves while connecting to others, remotely, safely, with fewer controls. Why does no one wear helmets, asks the lady with multiple concussions from bike accidents?!
Standing on an Amsterdam corner, alert, I cannot let my guard down, but I’m swept into the visual dance, part ballet, part square dance. The players know their roles, the steps, and I am an interloper. But I’m learning. I stand on the corner calculating trajectories of cyclists, vehicles, who may be going straight or turning.
The herringbone brick sidewalks, red asphalt bikeways, asphalt drive lanes and steel tramways each have equal footing. Egalitarian sounds philosophical, maybe it is. The streets are filled with people comfortably using any mode of travel that works for them, feet, scooters, trams, occasional cars, and many, many bicycles.
I find frogger-sized gaps to cross to reach a tram station on Kinkerstraat at Bilderdijkstraat. We use our OV-chipkaart to tap on to a tram, contactless entry, quick, organized. The trains arrive frequently so there’s no need to consult a schedule. Standing in the articulated section of the tram is like being inside an accordion with the pleated panels that expand and contract with each turn. There’s a familiar comfort in the sound of a tram in motion. With my eyes closed, using my train legs for balance, I could be traveling from Holladay Street to Oak Street, crossing the Willamette River instead of Da Costagracht, Singelgracht, Lijnbaansgracht, Prinsengracht, and Keizersgracht canals we cross on the way to the Museum of the Canals. The steel wheels roll with a rumble and chatter through girder rail, ribbons in the street in discrete lines and curves orienting me to which turns I’ll be taking. The route of the 7, 17, 19. A little like home.
But at home there’s division, alliances, sects: cyclists vs. single occupancy vehicles; or pedestrians vs. cyclists. Who gets to claim space? What are we? I thought we were beyond being colonialists, the last fight over who controls the public space. Space colonialists.
At home, space is allotted, segregated. People travel in their individual bubbles, separated. As practitioners, we transportation engineers and planners focus on discrete spaces divvying up public space in two dimensions, drawing lines that separate modes. Should that multi-use path be 14ft wide? Maybe 18ft? More? Is that split evenly between people cycling and people walking? Or do cyclists get 2/3 of it so the lycra-shorted cycle warriors can pass the leisurely paced riders? We’re divided, siloed, and fighting for pole position.
But people experience these spaces in motion. While we’ve come a long way from divisive highway projects of the 20th century, still a measure of success is how many vehicles and people get through a space using traffic signals and separated structures, with little emphasis on how people experience it.
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I glimpsed another way in Amsterdam. The chaos of motion on the busy Amsterdam streets belies an organized calculus. People are alert, alive, in the present tense. They must be since there are fewer traffic signals to control who moves when. As one of my traffic engineer colleagues described, it is possible to design a system that is ‘so dangerous it is safe’ where the guardrails of signalization controlling every movement are removed. I laughed, naïve, thinking it was a joke. But here in Amsterdam, everyone is making decisions for themselves while connecting to others, remotely, safely, with fewer controls. Why does no one wear helmets, asks the lady with multiple concussions from bike accidents?!
Watching these real time negotiations feels like I’m seeing mutual respect, not a clamor for supremacy. The people here may be in bubbles too, but they float and weave around each other like blown bubbles do in a breeze. As our canal tour boat captain Tommy described, Amsterdammers came here for the freedoms of the market city and with it an expectation to respect the freedom of others.
The guided tour through the Museum of Canals brought us around a table of empty chairs, each named for the roles of the central planners who envisioned and implemented the city’s canal system: the Burgermeister, the Architect, the Militarist, the Surveyor. Their disembodied narration an eerily familiar conversation of a holistic planning process. The ring of canals served multiple purposes, defense, development, transportation. They knowingly planned for where rich, middle income and poor would live, keeping the dirtiest of industries farthest away from the rich merchants.
The cynic in me softens though, seeing Amsterdam as a model for tolerance. Because the good idea here centuries ago, to be a place open to all, thrives. Its success brought more people and with them adaptation. That may be Amsterdam’s mythic story, like Portland’s mythic defeat of the Mt Hood freeway and the renaissance enabled by her own burgermeisters like Senator Hatfield and Governor Tom McCall. Portland’s undeniable renaissance brought throngs of people to the city and with it change. The success of Amsterdam and its adaptation over time is a lesson: Adapt or Die.
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Infrastructure, it’s not just about space, making space, for every mode of transportation. How we plan for vehicles, bicycles, trams, people rolling or walking to coexist, is a reflection of how we value each other, all ages, all races, all religions. Tolerance. Acceptance. Equal space. An egalitarianism, freedom, missing in America.
Even in infrastructure there are extremists of all sides in the US. “Cars are freedom!” says the suburban commuter. “Everyone should be on bikes!” says the urban fit. Everyone shouts to be heard or to shout others down. I’m skeptical of any proselytizer, even if I agree with them. So, it’s refreshing to be in a place where no one shouts at a cyclist too close to a car, or honks at a pedestrian to get out of the way. Everyone is alert, making decisions for themselves, that’s freedom.
Leah Nagely Robbins is a writer, civil engineer, musician and mom. She spends her days imagining a livable future and implementing public infrastructure projects and peppering friends and colleagues with ’80s pop culture references.
