Bicycle Highway in South Delft adjacent to N470

There may be no better way to encourage people to use bicycles for transportation than providing separate facilities, completely free from the risk of injury. This sort of commitment would take a significant amount of effort and lucky for me in my job, we aren't quite ready to invest in that level of infrastructure for cycling in all cases. The Dutch have balanced the scales to make that commitment and the Bicycle Highways are the epitomy of this. 

     The bicycle highways (overcrossings and grade separations of paths) in the Netherlands are another . The cycletrack is all at grade with concrete separation (islands defined by curbs) defining the edges of the travelways. The red coloring indicates the cycling facilties and there is some wearing away of the markings associated with the heavy traffic movements that are occurring at this location (pictures were taken late in the evening).  This bicycle interchange near the TU Delft campus is at N470 and Schieweg. The interchange is grade separated from the N470 and for the parallel bicycle facility that connects the southern part of Delft with the Delft Zuid (South) train station.     

The bicycle signals are essentially two stage crossings for bicycle movements, carefully coordinated to reduce delay for motor vehicles and separated from pedestrians in order to keep the signal timing snappy.



The turning movements for cyclists seem fairly small and during busy periods I am unclear how they keep the main cyclepaths clear for through traffic.

The following video provides the perspective of a person on a bike approach from the west and accessing the Schieweg, the north-south street that crosses under the bike highway and the N470.