Unbelievably busy bicycle crossing in Amsterdam

Thomas Schlijper · 428K views · 2018 · 9:04

Open on YouTube

Transit, cities & urban planningother

Why Hacker News recommends it

Cited in urbanism and self-driving threads as a vivid example of dense mixed traffic working through infrastructure and culture.

What it is

Nine minutes of unedited footage of a very busy bicycle and car crossing at Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam. Cyclists, pedestrians and cars flow through without traffic lights.

Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2021 to 2026.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec DonHopkins · 2026-07 · on “Park by Robot at London Gatwick Airport”

The therapy that Juleiie needs begins by watching nine minutes of mixed car, bike, and pedestrian rush hour traffic at the intersection of Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam. Unbelievably busy bicycle crossing in Amsterdam: [this video] Watching that video sooths my mind and warms my heart by proving how well a society of people who have not literally driven themselves mentally ill by viciously driving around in environmentally and economically destructive metal tanks can harmoniously and heathily get along together without fearing and murdering one another, by simply looking each other in the eyes and acknowledging that they all exist in the same shared space together. The fam

Recommends sjaak · 2021-03 · on “It's Never a Bicycle Accident”

To all the outlawed cyclists I'd like to say: show your fellow countrymen how it's done in the salvation state of the Netherlands. Cyclists own the roads here, see for yourself: [this video]

Cites DonHopkins · 2022-08 · on “Things people blamed on bicycles”

Hans Monderman was the world's most famous traffic engineer! ;) [LINK] >Hans Monderman (19 November 1945 – 7 January 2008) was a Dutch road traffic engineer and innovator. He was recognised for radically challenging the criteria used to evaluate engineering solutions for street design. His work compelled transportation planners and highway engineers to look afresh at the way people and technology relate to each other. [LINK] >de Kaden shared space.wmv: Shared space traffic intersection in Drachten, The Netherlands. Traffic signals removed in 2002. The junction handles around 17,000 vehicles per day. One of many projects led by the late Hans Monderman. [LINK] >Shared space intersection, Drach

Cites em500 · 2023-03 · on “Cyclists Now Outnumber Motorists in City of London”

Try to count the number of helmets you can spot: [this video] [LINK] In Amsterdam if we see adult cyclists with a helmet we'd guess it's probably a tourist or new expat. For children most parents only bother with helmets until they're six years or so.

Cites screye · 2023-07 · on “The New York Times attacks e-bikes while ignoring the real danger all around us”

> subtractive solutions and don’t “grow the GDP” like brand new EVs Maybe GDP is a bad metric. In any other field, a metric this naïve would be laughed out the door. If GDP is trying to capture net effective productivity, then let's stop using a metric that's 2 degrees of aggregated abstraction away from this metric of interest. Cars are middlemen. They allow labor to reach a location that performs a productive activity. They produce no productivity of their own. IE. Cars are network IO. Whichever transport method maximizes throughput and minimizes latency for the least cost is ideal. Any decent engineer knows that the key to better network IO is to: * improve locality - (keep things near ea

Cites Mawr · 2023-10 · on “Cruise pauses driverless operations across all cities”

> A bicycle is trash (fun to ride, not that useful). Entirely dependent on the infrastructure: [this video] > What are you going to carry on your bike? Five bags? Seems like a lot of groceries to buy at a time, but if you really want to: [LINK] > I don’t want to go 5 miles away, I want to go 200. You cover 200 miles every day? [LINK] Regardless, you can own a car for those longer journeys just fine and still make most trips by bicycle. > With bikes and walking, your world is small. Yeah, that's why public transport is important too. Cars as well, although deprioritized. > Electric cars powered by renewable energy get rid of most of the negative externalities. They get rid of some of the noise and

Cites Mawr · 2023-11 · on “Vehicles with higher, more vertical front ends pose greater risk to pedestrians”

You're comparing living in a car dependant city vs living in car dependant suburbs. It's not going to be meaningfully different. You mention the constant noise, but what do you think causes it? To see what everyone means by car dependency, you'd need to see the few places that aren't. Here's what a 100% car-free island looks like: [LINK] Here are some progressive European cities that have started to undo the damage that's been done by cars: • Freiburg, Germany: [LINK] • Haarlem, Netherlands: [LINK] • Paris, France: [LINK] Check out these background noise levels: • A very busy mixed-use street in Amsterdam: [this video] • Exiting the train station in Delft, Netherlands: [LINK] • Cycling streets in

Cites Mawr · 2025-04 · on “Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic”

A meme you say? [this video] As for the excuses: > they are a small What does a size of a country have to do with how their cities are designed? > dense Same as above, unless you mean city density in which case there's nothing special about Dutch cities. > flat Yes, and? > an oceanic weather Yeah, it rains all the time and yet they cycle.