Photo Assignment

Hello everyone!  On July 8th, our class broke into two groups and rode our bikes to a small community 4 km outside of Delft called Rijswijk.  Riswijk is a smaller town with 48,000 residents with a historic old town, new city center, and residential neighborhoods.  Our group visited 10 sites around Rijswijk.  Throughout the day, I took some photos which are below.

1. Delftweg - "Delft" - "way"

This is the old road to connecting Delft to Den Haag.  Rijswijk is in between Delft and Den Haag.  This road is very bike friendly with a two-way cycle track and one vehicle travel lane in  each direction.  As a traffic calming measure, a "bayonet" was installed to reduce speeds and limit the volume on this road.  The roadway width in the bayonet is reduced to around 10 ft so only one car can pass through the treatment at a time.  The extra space was converted to parking spots.  Priority is given to the northbound traffic.

2.   Bike Bridge "Do Oversteek"

The Haagweg runs parallel to a large shipping canal.  This pedestrian and bicycle swing bridge provides great connectivity to the communities living around the canal to services, employment centers and transportation options on either side of the canal.  We had to opportunity to watch bridge swing out when a boat rode along.  It only took a 4-5 minutes for the bridge to swing open and allow the boat to pass and was very quiet.  

3.  Rembrandtkade and Populierenlaan Bike Route

This is a residential street that was recently improved to become a part of the newly created bike highway between Delft and Den Haag.  The following pictures show the newly designed sections of this street.  There is one lane for vehicles to access the adjacent homes, with parking on either side with 1 tree positioned in the parking lane per two parking spaces.  The adjacent canal also gives this neighborhood a calm and relaxing feeling with a footpath on the other side.  

4.  Hoornbrug and Haagweg

Haagweg used to have two travel lanes in each direction with the tram tracks in the middle.  The new design incorporates residential parking, sidewalks, access route for houses, 1 separated travel lane in each direction, and new tram tracks to accommodate newly purchased wider trams.  The city is currently in the construction phase.

5.  Da Costa Neighborhood

Da Costa neighborhood was a Dutch experiment.  There was a lot of cut through traffic so the City installed traffic calming devices to discourage cut through behavior.  The speed humps slow traffic down midblock, and at some of the intersections, through vehicular traffic is not permitted.  Vehicles must either turn left or right onto one way streets while the cyclists can continue through.

6. Old Rijswijk City Center

The old city center of Rijswijk was outgrown when the population spiked 50 years ago.  Its current location offered no room to expand so a new city center was built.  The old city center still kept it charm and became a bike and pedestrian zones.  The businesses in the old city center are reaping the economic benefits of the bike and ped zone.

7.  General Spoorlan Road Diet

General Spoorlan received a road diet a fews years back.  Now there is only 1 lane for through traffic in each direction.  The extra space in the roadway was converted to a park.

8. New Town Center and Eisenhowerplein.

The new town center is built around the Eisenhowerplein which is the location for the new underground train station, major tram and bus stops, office and apartment buildings, and shops.  

Protected Intersection

Sky-lights for the underground train station