Natural Handcrafted Artisanal ... Streets?!

Summary

"Not Just Bikes" delves into the unique infrastructure of Dutch streets, contrasting them with more common asphalt roads. The video highlights the prevalent use of 'clinkers' - specially baked street bricks - across the Netherlands. These bricks, made from durable river clay, contribute to a sustainable street design. They not only allow for easier maintenance and aesthetic appeal but also enhance safety by creating a textured driving surface that naturally slows traffic. The video underscores the long-term cost-effectiveness and eco-friendly nature of clinkers, demonstrating how the Dutch system of road design prioritizes pedestrian, cyclist, and environmental considerations. This thoughtful approach illustrates a broader philosophy geared towards sustainable and safe urban living.

Highlights

• Clinkers are used in Dutch streets to improve durability and aesthetic appeal 🌇
• These street bricks are made from sustainable materials like river clay 🌱
• Clinkers allow for easy maintenance and adaptability; they can be reused after road work 🔄
• Dutch streets are designed to naturally slow down traffic through their textured surface 🛣️
• Numerous patterns of clinkers denote specific areas for parking, biking, and walking 🚴‍♂️
• Strategic urban planning limits excessive vehicle traffic in residential areas 🏘️
• Roads are categorized to ensure efficient flow and safety, avoiding urban sprawl 🚗

Key Takeaways

• Dutch streets often use 'clinkers' instead of asphalt, offering durability and aesthetic appeal 🌍
• Clinkers are environmentally friendly, allowing for water infiltration and reuse after street work 🌧️
• Road design in the Netherlands focuses on safety and sustainability, reducing traffic flow in residential areas 🏡
• Different clinkers patterns denote various parts of the streets, effectively organizing traffic 🚦
• Streets with clinkers are cost-effective over time due to low maintenance requirements 💸
• The Dutch philosophy integrates urban living with greener and pedestrian-friendly spaces 🌿

Overview

In the Netherlands, streets are crafted not just for utility, but for sustainability and aesthetics. The use of 'clinkers'—durable, preconstructed street bricks—reflects this unique approach. Unlike asphalt, clinkers are long-lasting, aesthetically pleasing, and have environmental benefits. They facilitate natural water infiltration, reducing urban heat effects, and can be reused, promoting sustainability.

Dutch road design splits roads into highways, distributor roads, and neighborhood streets, each tailored for specific traffic needs. In neighborhood streets, clinkers help control traffic speed and volume, enhancing pedestrian safety and urban living quality. This system reduces vehicle dominance and integrates community-friendly spaces with ease.

Moreover, the focus on using locally-sourced materials like river clay for these clinkers adds an eco-friendly dimension to street crafting. The Netherlands sets a high standard in road design, emphasizing the harmony between functional utility and environmental consciousness, making for cities that are pleasant and efficient to live in.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Asphalt and Clinkers This chapter explains the benefits of using asphalt for road construction, highlighting its smoothness, safety, and cost-effectiveness, particularly for large areas like highways. It also mentions the rapid installation process and contrasts the use of asphalt on highways with the prevalent use of brick pavers on most Dutch streets.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Use of Clinkers in Dutch Street Design The chapter titled 'Use of Clinkers in Dutch Street Design' explores the use of clinkers as a primary material in the construction of streets in the Netherlands, including driving surfaces, sidewalks, curbs, and road markings. It delves into the reasons clinkers are favored over asphalt and what this choice reveals about the underlying principles of Dutch street design, emphasizing the charm and significance of handcrafted, artisanal streets.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Clinkers in Modern Neighborhoods In modern neighborhoods, stone pavers and cobblestones are often used to enhance aesthetic appeal. This practice, common in historic areas, adds a medieval charm but can cause practical inconveniences, such as the noise of rolling suitcases. The use of bricks for paving has a longstanding history, exemplified by the brick streets in historic city centers, such as those in the Netherlands.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Technical Details about Clinkers The chapter titled 'Technical Details about Clinkers' discusses the prevalent use of clinkers in the Netherlands, even in newly developed neighborhoods. Clinkers are primarily made from river clay, though they can also be made from concrete or a mix of recycled materials. The clay bricks are baked at high temperatures to enhance their durability, making them stronger than typical building bricks. The chapter also notes the technical term for these clinkers is 'strot buck stain,' and provides a reference for further learning through a video by the manufacturer.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Patterns and Municipal Choices The chapter explores the concept of 'clinkers,' a colloquial term for street bricks in many regions, emphasizing their unique sound and etymology. The chapter humorously notes the Dutch term for vowels is also 'clinkers,' although the focus remains on street bricks, not vowels. Various shapes and sizes of clinkers are discussed, with emphasis on the three most commonly used types in municipal settings.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Parking and Sidewalk Design The chapter delves into the design of streets in the Netherlands, highlighting the use of various patterns of clinkers—a type of paving stone. It mentions that municipalities have the autonomy to choose specific patterns for different street components, though there's a national trend towards standardization. This standardization is often driven by practicality. For instance, driving surfaces often use kifor mod clinkers arranged in the 'Caper for balt' orientation because it provides high resistance to displacement by tires. The 'ELO for bond' pattern is commonly employed for parking spaces due to its durability against vehicle loads.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Sidewalk Tiles and Bicycle Parking The chapter explains the use of different brick patterns to distinguish between driving and parking areas. Temporary loading zones are marked with an X, created by diagonal lines of white bricks, which involves significant diagonal brick cutting. However, newer streets feature a pixelated X pattern, possibly to reduce the need for brick cutting. Additionally, the chapter notes how parking spaces for micro cars are outlined on sidewalks using white bricks. Overall, it reflects on the thoughtful design strategies used in urban street planning.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Street Construction and Clinkers The chapter discusses a new trend in urban planning where parking spaces are relocated from the road to the sidewalk level, effectively expanding the sidewalk when no cars are parked. This shift can help in reducing traffic speed, as roads appear larger without parked cars, which typically encourages speeding. This measure aligns with Amsterdam's initiative to remove 10,000 parking spaces to enhance city friendliness. The change is seen as beneficial for pedestrians and urban aesthetics.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Bicycle Paths and Red Asphalt The transition from driving to more pedestrian-friendly urban environments may lead to parking spaces gradually becoming wider sidewalks. These sidewalks, often made of square tiles known as 'stoop tles' (sidewalk tiles), are designed for functionality and accessibility. There are specialized tiles for directional guidance for visually impaired individuals and for concealing fire hydrant connections. The chapter touches on innovative uses of standard materials, such as using white clinkers for various urban applications.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Reconstruction and Reuse of Clinkers The chapter discusses the various uses of clinkers in urban environments, particularly in pedestrianized areas. Clinkers, which are specialized bricks or blocks, can be used to demarcate zones where bicycles can be parked on sidewalks. They also serve aesthetic purposes, providing visual distinctions for specific use areas. On streets, different patterns of clinkers can convey important information, such as the beginning of a school zone, or simply enhance the street's appearance. Additionally, the chapter mentions that curbs utilize long clinker segments that interlock through rounded ends, distinguishing them from traditional poured concrete sidewalks and curbs.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Durability and Maintenance The chapter titled 'Durability and Maintenance' discusses the analogy of assembling structures from pieces like a Lego set, highlighting the insights of Stefan, a traffic engineer with experience in both the United States and the Netherlands. It delves into the differences in construction methods between these regions. Stefan's expertise is showcased through his YouTube channel, 'Build the Lanes,' where he discusses Dutch versus US street design, even featuring a video on the reconstruction of a street in Harlem.
• 11:00 - 12:00: Asphalt vs. Clinkers This chapter provides a detailed explanation of the construction of a Dutch street. It mentions that clinkers, a type of paving brick, are transported to the site by truck on pallets. The construction process begins with the placement of curbs to define the area's boundaries. Subsequently, clinkers are positioned around the curbs. Small sections of the street are typically arranged manually to meet specific pattern requirements, while larger areas can be constructed by machines. For the machine-assisted construction, groups of clinkers are pre-assembled into the required patterns and then lifted into place by machinery to lay the major portions of the street.
• 12:00 - 13:00: Environmental Impact of Asphalt This chapter discusses the process of laying clinkers (a type of paving material) for streets. It describes both manual and machine-assisted techniques, pointing out that machines exist which can lay whole streets like a carpet, though they may not be widely used. It contrasts these machines with typical street construction scenes where small compact excavators and manual labor are prevalent. The focus is on the smaller, more lightweight nature of the equipment and vehicles used in this method of street construction.
• 13:00 - 14:00: Permeability and Storm Water Management The chapter discusses the differences in space and equipment needed for laying asphalt or concrete sidewalks in Toronto compared to using clinkers in Amsterdam. It highlights the advantage of using clinkers, which can be reused, eliminating the need for heavy equipment when streets are dug up for maintenance work like installing cables or pipes. This reuse of materials is positioned as an efficient practice in urban infrastructure management.
• 14:00 - 15:00: Traffic and Clinker Durability The chapter discusses the process and benefits of reinstalling clinkers after construction work. Clinkers, used in streets and sidewalks, allow seamless restoration, making it appear as if the area was never dug up. The only clue to previous work is the presence of small fiber optic sprouts at every doorway, which indicates the installation of fiber optic cables. The author expresses a preference for streets and sidewalks made with clinkers because they often result in a superior surface quality post-construction.
• 15:00 - 16:00: Dutch Road Safety Philosophy The chapter discusses the issues with road construction in Canadian cities, particularly focusing on the sidewalks. It highlights the problem with the use of asphalt to patch up holes, which results in an unattractive and uneven walking surface. These repairs are referred to as "asphalt scars" and are described as a long-lasting, unpleasant aspect of the city landscape. The chapter includes a specific example from Toronto where brick pavers are disrupted by such interventions.
• 16:00 - 17:00: Categorization of Dutch Roads The chapter discusses the categorization of Dutch roads, focusing on the interplay between asphalt and clinkers. It highlights the unique practice in the Netherlands where dug-up asphalt is sometimes replaced with clinkers, resulting in an unusual appearance. This is contrasted with Canada's asphalt issues. Additionally, the chapter notes that while clinkers on bicycle paths create a rough surface, many Dutch bicycle paths are constructed from them.
• 17:00 - 18:00: Neighborhood Access Streets The chapter discusses the preferred materials for constructing cycling surfaces in the Netherlands, highlighting the use of red asphalt for busier roads. Unlike painted surfaces, red asphalt involves adding red stone and pigment directly into the asphalt mix, providing a durable and anti-slip cycling path. Despite the higher cost compared to paint, red asphalt offers a clearer and smoother cycling surface that efficiently indicates designated cycling areas.
• 18:00 - 19:00: Traffic Calming with Clinkers The chapter discusses the use of special smooth clinkers for traffic calming and their application in busy cycling routes. It highlights the aesthetic suitability of clinkers in areas where asphalt would not be appropriate, such as Harlem. The process of reconstructing streets involves reusing existing clinkers, allowing for manual assembly without heavy machinery. Damaged clinkers can be replaced, but typically, no new materials are necessary.
• 19:00 - 20:00: Continuous Sidewalks and Safety The chapter discusses the importance and advantages of using clinkers in reconstructing sidewalks, emphasizing their demand and reuse. It highlights the historic Square in Harlem as an example, where old, weathered clinkers are used to create beautiful patterns despite the area previously being paved over with asphalt and dominated by cars in the 1960s.
• 20:00 - 21:00: Comparison with North American Streets The chapter discusses the sustainable practice in Amsterdam of reusing weathered bricks, known as clinkers, from other parts of the city. These clinkers are repurposed for renovations in historic neighborhoods as a means of preserving material and maintaining architectural consistency. The process is facilitated by a machine that cleans, inspects, processes, and packs these bricks for reuse, showcasing an innovative approach to urban renewal and resource management. A reference to a video providing further details on this process is also mentioned.
• 21:00 - 22:00: Old vs. New Street Standards The discussion contrasts the longevity of clinker streets versus asphalt streets. Clinkers are noted for their durability, lasting many decades, typically over 30 years, whereas asphalt streets often need resurfacing every 10 to 15 years due to traffic wear. The narrator mentions a new clinker-paved street in their Canadian hometown, highlighting it as the only one among surrounding asphalt streets, and expresses interest in observing its performance over time.
• 22:00 - 26:00: Conclusion and Sponsor Message The chapter discusses the maintenance and durability of different types of road surfaces. It highlights the relatively easy and cost-effective maintenance of natural surfaces compared to asphalt, which requires frequent resurfacing and sealing to prevent cracks and water penetration. The text describes how water penetration through cracks in asphalt can lead to more significant issues such as potholes, and necessitate repairs to the subsurface and bit layer.

Natural Handcrafted Artisanal ... Streets?! Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 asphalt is a great material for roads it provides a smooth even surface that makes a road safe and comfortable for high-speed traffic It's relatively cost effective to install especially over large areas like highways and it can be laid very quickly especially if you're these guys so asphalt is routinely used around the world and here in the Netherlands it's normal to see asphalt on highways and roads but the streets are different most Dutch streets are built out of preconstructed brick pavers
• 00:30 - 01:00 called clinkers the driving surface the sidewalks the curbs and even some of the road markings where and why these clinkers are used instead of asphalt is genuinely interesting and they reveal a lot about the fundamental philosophy of Dutch Street design so let me share with you the magic of these handcrafted artisanal streets
• 01:00 - 01:30 in a typical City it's common to see stone pavers used in historic neighborhoods they might even use natural style cobblestones for that medieval feel in this case pavers are being used primarily for aesthetic purposes which is lovely until you have to hear a tourists dragging the rolly suitcase across them at which point You'll wish they had Asphalt in the Middle Ages and brick streets have been around for thousands of years so of course the streets of historic City centers in the Netherlands will be made out of bricks but what what's more
• 01:30 - 02:00 interesting is that clinkers are used all over the Netherlands even in recently built neighborhoods like this one the clinkers themselves are usually made out of river clay but they are sometimes made out of concrete or a mix of recycled materials the clay bricks are baked at a high temperature so that they are much more durable than the bricks used in buildings if you're interested in learning more I'll leave a link to this video by the manufacturer in the description technically the proper name for these are strot buck stain which
• 02:00 - 02:30 literally translates as Street bricks but that's a really boring name so most people call them clinkers oh and they're called clinkers because they make this sound which I mean I just love that also random fact clinkers is the Dutch word for vowels but just to be clear this video is about Street bricks not AE i o u and sometimes I clinkers come in many different shapes and sizes but it is these three that are typically used to
• 02:30 - 03:00 make most streets in the Netherlands and they're typically used in one of these six patterns municipalities are able to decide for themselves which clinkers are used where but there is some degree of standardization across the country sometimes just for practical reasons for example most driving surfaces use the kifor mod clinkers in Caper for balt because this orientation is the most resistant to displacement from tires rolling along the street ELO for bond is common for parking spaces and you can
• 03:00 - 03:30 see here how the area for driving and the area for parking is differentiated by the different brick pattern temporary loading zones have an X across them using diagonal lines of white clinkers which when you look closely actually requires a lot of diagonal brick cutting though I've noticed newer streets have a more pixelated X so maybe they got tired of cutting all those bricks and I like how the parking space for this micro car is outlined on the sidewalk in white clinkers one thing I found interesting
• 03:30 - 04:00 is that there's a new trend of putting parking spaces up onto the curb at sidewalk level instead of on the road and I think that's interesting when parking spots are on the road if there aren't any park cars then the street becomes bigger which we know encourages people to speed but when the parking spaces are on the sidewalk it allows the sidewalk to be bigger when there are no cars there which is a lot nicer I think this is great because given Amsterdam's plan to remove 10,000 parking spaces and to make make the city less friendly to
• 04:00 - 04:30 driving it's likely that over time these parking spaces will naturally become wider sidewalks speaking of sidewalks they are usually made of square tiles called stoop tles which literally means sidewalk tiles so yeah very descriptive name there these square tiles are a standard size and there are special tiles that are used as science or for wayfinding for visual impaired people or for hiding away a fire hydrant connection here white clinkers are being
• 04:30 - 05:00 used to show where bicycles are allowed to be parked on the sidewalk in pedestrianized areas different patterns are used sometimes to distinguish specific uses but often just for Aesthetics on streets different clinkers can be used to indicate important information like the start of this school zone or just to make the street look nicer curbs use these long segments that have rounded TS at the end to lock together so instead of being poured like concrete curbs and sidewalks they're
• 05:00 - 05:30 assembled from pieces like a Lego set incidentally for the research for this video I had a lot of help from Stefan who runs the YouTube channel build the lanes he is a traffic engineer from the United States who moved to the Netherlands to become a transportation engineer so he was the perfect person to talk to about the differences in construction methods if you'd like to learn more about Dutch versus US Street design you should definitely check out build the lanes like the video he made about the Reconstruction of his own Street in Harlem the goes into more
• 05:30 - 06:00 detail about how a Dutch street is constructed I'll leave a link in the description when a street is being newly constructed the clinkers are brought in by truck on pallets the curbs are placed first to define the space and then all of the clinkers are assembled around them small sections are usually done by hand in whatever pattern is required but larger sections can be done by machine here groups of clinkers have been pre-assembled into the desired patterns and then lifted in place by machine to lay the bulk of the street while the
• 06:00 - 06:30 rest will be filled in by hand there are also machines that can lay down the clinkers for an entire Street like a carpet but I'm not sure how common these are because I've never seen one in person this video is from the manufacturer when I see streets being constructed or reconstructed it usually looks like this one compact excavator to help with the lifting and a couple of guys laying clinkers I think this is interesting because the trucks and machines needed to lay clinkers are much smaller and more lightweight than the
• 06:30 - 07:00 machines used for asphalt or concrete it's kind of crazy to see how much space is needed for a concrete truck and crew to lay a concrete sidewalk here in Toronto versus one made with clinkers here in Amsterdam but even better when work is being done on an existing Street the clinkers are reused so no heavy equipment needs to be brought in at all when a street needs to be dug up say to install new cables or pipes the kind of thing that happens often in any City the old clinkers are removed and set aside
• 07:00 - 07:30 when the work is done the clinkers are put back in place and you can't even tell that they were dug up at all the only indication that this sidewalk was completely torn up to install fiber optic cables are these cute little fiber Sprouts growing up from the sidewalk at every front door this is one of my absolute favorite things about streets and especially sidewalks made with clinkers because when work has been done on the street the surface quality is almost always better after the
• 07:30 - 08:00 construction one of the things I absolutely hated about Canadian cities is that when sidewalks were torn up for whatever reason they would just fill in the holes with these Blobs of asphalt not only does this look like it also makes for a rough and uneven surface on sidewalks and bike lanes and the city is absolutely covered in these ugly asphalt scars that last for years and sometimes even decades this treat in Toronto actually has these really nice brick pavers but they still slice through it with these
• 08:00 - 08:30 awful Blobs of asphalt like you could just replace the bricks people ironically the Dutch sometimes have the opposite problem when asphalt is dug up they often fill in the hole with clinkers which just looks bizarre although I don't really like it when they do this on bicycle pass because it makes for a rough patch on the otherwise smooth red asphalt not as bad as the asphalt blobs in Canada I suppose but it's still not ideal many bicycle paths in the Netherlands are made of clinkers
• 08:30 - 09:00 which is fine as long as they're properly maintained but the gold standard in the Netherlands is this red asphalt which is used on busier Roots the distinctive color is not painted on it's actually red stone and red pigment that is added to the asphalt mix this is more expensive than paint but paint can create a more slippery surface and the color doesn't last as long as dyed asphalt this makes for a very smooth cycling surface and the red color makes it clear where people are expected to cycle
• 09:00 - 09:30 there are also special smooth clinkers that are more expensive but are more comfortable to cycle on and these are used on busy cycling routes where asphalt would not be appropriate aesthetically such as this street in the center of Harlem as I mentioned earlier when reconstructing a street all of the clinkers are reused to reassemble the street and this can be done entirely by hand without requiring any heavy machinery or concrete trucks or anything else any damage clinkers may be replaced but otherwise no no new material needs
• 09:30 - 10:00 to be brought in at all which really simplifies reconstruction and the best part is that any clinkers that are too worn down aren't thrown away in fact they're actually in very high demand and I love what they do with them this is the historic Square in Harlem and you can see that there are these nice old and weathered clinkers including this beautiful pattern in the center but these aren't original because in the 1960s this whole area was paved with asphalt and totally infested with cars
• 10:00 - 10:30 so all of the clinkers you see here are actually from other parts of the city these are the bricks that were worn and weathered and they were saved so that they could be used somewhere like this which is an absolutely brilliant idea for reusing old material this video shows the machine that the city of Amsterdam uses to automatically clean inspect process and pack weathered clinkers for use in renovations of historic neighborhoods I'll leave a link to the full video in the description
• 10:30 - 11:00 and this is another major benefit to using clinkers they last for many decades asphalt streets typically need to be resurfaced every 10 to 15 years depending on how much traffic drives over them but a street made of clinkers can last 30 years or more my hometown in Canada recently built this one Street in their downtown with paving stones this is the only one they built though so it'll be interesting to see how this street holds up over time compared to the surrounding asphalt streets streets with clinkers do need
• 11:00 - 11:30 maintenance of course as over time the ground May shift and the surface becomes uneven but these are relatively easy and inexpensive problems to fix and without any Machinery required especially compared to Asphalt which requires frequent resurfacing and sealing to avoid cracks and water penetration asphalt roads can develop hot holes and other problems but this mostly happens if water is allowed to penetrate through the cracks in the surface eventually water gets into the subsurface and the bit layer needs to be repaired which
• 11:30 - 12:00 means the entire Road needs to be replaced early and the road becomes even more expensive to maintain over time the solution to that is to fill cracks as soon as they are discovered which helps to prevent potholes and makes the road last much longer even in freezing temperatures of course the problem with North American cities is that because of car Centric urban sprawl there are so many kilometers of asphalt per person that it's too expensive to maintain it all to an acceptable level yet another reason why designing a city exclusively
• 12:00 - 12:30 for cars makes it worse for drivers these gaps in the clinkers allow for expansion so these streets deal much better with changes in temperature at very high temperatures asphalt becomes softer and stickier but clinkers can easily handle extreme heat because they were baked at over a th000 de during their manufacturing asphalt is also a significant contributor to the urban heat island effect that can make cities even hotter in hot weather which doesn't really happen with clinkers because they
• 12:30 - 13:00 absorb much less heat than asphalt does so sorry you won't be able to fry an egg on the clinkers clinkers are more expensive than asphalt to install initially but maintenance is relatively inexpensive and the street lasts a long time so overall streets and sidewalks made with clinkers are actually less expensive than those made with asphalt and concrete which means that Dutch cities are actually saving money by having these nicer looking streets and since clinkers are mostly manufactured from
• 13:00 - 13:30 River clay that can be sourced locally in the Netherlands they're relatively sustainable material especially compared to Asphalt that requires imported bitamin made of petroleum for what it's worth asphalt is one of the world's most recycled materials but the process is very energy intensive and every time it's recycled it requires new bent another problem with asphalt is that it prevents water from naturally infiltrating the ground which leads to problems with storm water runoff flooding and strain on on the drainage system clinkers can be installed with
• 13:30 - 14:00 sand or gravel joints that allow some water to get through but not too much or otherwise the water will erode the base material and cause the surface to become uneven there are special clinkers that are designed with holes in them and usually have grass growing in them as well which looks pretty nice but these are usually only used for temporary and private parking spaces otherwise the grass wouldn't get enough sunlight so on a typical Street there will still be a gutter with a different pattern of clinkers that leads to storm drains just
• 14:00 - 14:30 like any other street so you might be thinking if clinkers are so clinking great why would any City use asphalt at all well it wouldn't be a naous bikes video if I couldn't blame cars for something ultimately a street like this is not going to hold up well to a large amount of motor vehicle traffic the clinkers will quickly deteriorate and develop ruts and grooves which is why asphalt is still used on roads with high car volumes even in the Netherlands but this brings up an extremely important
• 14:30 - 15:00 aspect of Dutch Street design the very clear distinction between distributor roads and neighborhood access streets in the 1990s Dutch Transportation Engineers created a program called sustainable safety which is a comprehensive Road Safety philosophy that probably deserves its own video someday but the one aspect that's important here is that every Road in the Netherlands is strictly categorized into three types the first is the snel which is a highway or through Road they're wide and straight
• 15:00 - 15:30 and they have merge lanes for entering and exiting the important thing though is that highways should go between cities and around cities but never through the middle of cities Urban freeways are an absolutely terrible idea for many many reasons but I've talked about that several times before and it's not really relevant here the second category is the kabid on slou which is a distributor Road and I'm just going to refer to these as roads these are designed to be connections between
• 15:30 - 16:00 places within a city but they are not highways and they will still have traffic lights or roundabouts but importantly they will not have driveways to any destinations because that would negatively affect efficiency and safety these are the roads with the asphalt this is in stark contrast to a stro the word coined by strong towns for this kind of Road these are pretty much the default design for any road built in the US and Canada even in the middle of cities where they have absolutely no
• 16:00 - 16:30 business being built strods are expensive inefficient and extremely dangerous because they try to combine high speeds with lots of destinations resulting in many points of conflict that create dangerous situations and slow down through traffic but I have a whole other video about stress if you want to learn more and thankfully because of sustainable safety multi-lane strads lined with driveways and side streets do not exist at all in the Netherlands and and our roads are much
• 16:30 - 17:00 safer the third and final category is the a tuang or neighborhood access Street and to bring it back to the topic of this video this is where you'll find the clinkers a strict safety requirement for any a and I'm just going to say street from now on because that word is way too long is that they cannot exceed a certain number of motor vehicles per day the exact number differs by region but it's typically no more than 5,000 vehicles per day in rural areas and half
• 17:00 - 17:30 that number in urban areas and importantly if any Street exceeds this amount of traffic then the street will be modified or redesigned to reduce car traffic to well under that maximum amount sometimes by installing barriers that cut off the street to through traffic by Motor Vehicles a good example of this is this design near our house in Amsterdam this used to be a through Street for cars but after construction it was blocked off to motor vehicles and now this part of the street is only
• 17:30 - 18:00 accessible to people walking and cycling so by meeting the requirements of a neighborhood access Street it is guaranteed that motor vehicle volumes will not be too high for a street that is made with clinkers for a street to be a neighborhood access street it also needs to have a low speed limit normally 30 kmph within cities so they are designed with traffic calming like speed bumps and chicanes and other methods to slow down drivers but the clinkers actually
• 18:00 - 18:30 play a part in this too because of the uneven surface these streets produce more road noise when driven over than an asphalt Street and this is a great feature of clinkers because it sends a subconscious message to the driver that they should not be driving quickly here the traffic caling elements themselves are also made out of standardized parts that fit together such as these large Square pieces that make up the ramps to this speed bump other times the whole speed bump will be made of clinkers with this white brick pattern signifying that a driver needs to slow down and at the
• 18:30 - 19:00 intersection of two lowspeed streets the entire Junction is raised up to sidewalk level like a big speed bump made out of clinkers and you yield to anybody coming from the right the boundary between a distributor Road and neighborhood access street is also well defined with something called an outrate constru SE which is a word I have a hard time pronouncing properly but it's basically this thing and I've referred to these before as continuous sidewalks now I have a whole video from the early days
• 19:00 - 19:30 of the channel about continuous sidewalks if you want to learn more but I actually think that these are so important that they should be required to be built in every city everywhere so I want to mention them here too right now we're on a road aabid on slou and because it is designed for the efficient flow of traffic vehicles on this road have priority over any side streets they never need to stop the continuous sidewalk is here and as you can see the sidewalk continues through the whole Junction across the side
• 19:30 - 20:00 street the sidewalk stays at the same level this makes sense in the context of a road because people on the road have priority over anybody coming from the side street and this includes people walking and cycling because the Netherland acknowledges that those people exist and have just as much of a right to the road as people in cars which is a truly novel concept that I never experienced in Canada The Continuous sidewalk has these ramps on either side that are made out of larger curb pieces and the corners are made out
• 20:00 - 20:30 of these sharp 90° angle clinkers that prevent drivers from taking the turn too quickly all of these are standard pre-built components that are used all over the Netherlands these curbs act as big speed bumps that guarantee that a driver will have to slow down before crossing the sidewalk which significantly reduces the risk of a crash they also make it clear that people walking and cycling have priority over any driver going in or out of the side Street by comparison this is
• 20:30 - 21:00 what a typical Junction to a side street looks like in Canada and most other countries for that matter here the Sidewalk Ends and anybody walking needs to step down to the level of the road and cross the asphalt what's even worse is that the corner radius is very large because they are designed to allow drivers to take the turn at high speeds which is insane because nobody should be turning quickly in or out of a side street I honestly don't understand how any any traffic engineer could possibly
• 21:00 - 21:30 think that this is an acceptable design but this kind of Junction off of a Strode is the norm for the US and Canada and given how often drivers go right through stop signs without coming to a complete stop this is a serious safety issue which is why continuous sidewalks have become part of the standard Road design guidelines here in the Netherlands so these continuous sidewalks have an important role in safety but they also clearly indicate when you are moving from a distributor road to a neighborhood access Street
• 21:30 - 22:00 this Force speed bump that requires slow speed combined with the change in Road material to clinkers sends a very clear message to drivers that they have exited the higher speed distributor Road and have entered into an area designed for mixed traffic and slower speeds all of these elements combin together to make Dutch streets fundamentally safer especially for anybody outside of a motor vehicle so given all of these guidelines you might be surprised to see a street like this this is very clearly
• 22:00 - 22:30 a neighborhood access street but it has asphalt that would imply as designed for higher traffic flow so why is that well ultimately it's because all of these guidelines are still pretty new the first sustainable safety program was only introduced in the 1990s and the implementation details have been refined since then as municipalities find out what construction methods work best and since streets can last up to 30 years it simply means that there hasn't been
• 22:30 - 23:00 enough time for every street in the country to be reconstructed this results in some very strange situations such as an older asphalt Street like this that has had speed bumps installed recently entirely made out of clinkers but as streets are redesigned they're brought up to the latest standard and things keep getting better and I think that that might just be my absolute favorite thing I never used to look forward to road construction but I definitely do here in the Netherlands because while
• 23:00 - 23:30 construction can be inconvenient when it's complete the streets become nicer looking safer and really just better in every way something else I'm a fan of is incog which is why I asked them to sponsor this video incog is a service that automatically removes your personal information from the internet and I've found it to be incredibly useful your personal information is stored in hundreds of databases across the internet internet anytime you buy
• 23:30 - 24:00 something or use any online service your information will be stored in a database the problem is that those companies can make extra money by selling the information in their databases to data brokers who collect massive amounts of personal information on millions of people and then package it up to be sold to anybody willing to buy it in the US this can be even worse as your information can end up on people search sites that publish detailed personal profiles online there are many of these sites that that expose home addresses financial information and even family
• 24:00 - 24:30 details posing risks of scam harassment and stalking it might be possible for you to contact each of these companies directly and have them remove your personal information but that's a timec consuming process assuming you even know who to contact in the first place incog takes care of this for you they reach out to data Brokers on your behalf request the removal of your personal data using whichever method is most successful for your country and they manage any objections too and with a yearly subscription to a
• 24:30 - 25:00 cogni they will continuously follow up ensuring that your data doesn't end up back in their datab bases in the future I trust incog but I must admit that I always had a thought in the back of my mind was my data actually being removed when incog said it was and the answer is yes recently the data broker national public data was hacked in what was likely the largest data breach in history the leak included people's names addresses phone numbers data birth and Social Security numbers but what's
• 25:00 - 25:30 important here is that when security researchers investigated the leaked database they found that the information of people who use data removal services like incog could not be found in the leaked data and that's all the confirmation I needed to want to keep using incog so if you're concerned about data privacy like I am then I recommend that you check out incog you can sign up for an annual plan for yourself or for their friends and family plan which allows you to protect backed up to four people on One account sign up now at
• 25:30 - 26:00 incognitomotion thanks for watching and thanks to incog for supporting this channel