Floating Bus Stops: An Open Letter to Members of the Greater London Authority

This is an unusual post for me as someone used to signposting data, research and studies, as well as telling some stories of how infrastructure came to be designed; but the London Assembly's recent behaviour has angered me.

Dear Members of the Greater London Assembly,

I watched the Assembly's plenary session of 5th November 2026 which included a vote calling on the Mayor to instruct Transport for London (TfL) to pause the installation of all new floating bus stops [here, from 5h18m]. 

With the notable exceptions of AM Russell and AM Bokhari (and noting some of your were absent), I found the discourse to be wholly disingenuous. In the final vote, there are 17 of you who will be contributing to the deaths and injuries of Londoners who are only trying to get around our city.

I won't spend time setting out my credentials, they are easy to find on my blog [1] and on my professional website [2]. Suffice to say, I am a specialist in sustainable mobility design. On the matter of floating bus stops, I am fully conversant with the subject and the range of issues arising from it from various viewpoints. It is also worth noting that I am not and never have been a member of any political party.

I am also not going to spend time setting out the objective case for floating bus stops because I have written extensively about this, but I will make a clear statement:

If cycling for transport is taken as a serious part of London's transport mix, then the deployment of design responses that support this makes the provision of floating bus stops an inevitability.

If you as an AM, a member of your party or just a human being disagrees with my statement above, then you are against cycling as a serious part of London's transport mix, despite the data showing how important it is. You are against giving Londoners transport choices. You are against people like me who rely on cycling as part of the transport mix for some of their journeys. Most of all, you are against people like my daughter who has long been known as #TheDoodle both on my blog and on social media. 

We live in Havering where successive council administrations have simply not delivered for walking, wheeling and cycling; and where the Mayor and Transport for London have done little to deal with the severance created by the TLRN. But we do get out and about together on our tandem from time to time; and despite the odd groan about her father stopping to photograph streets, she remains interested in how streets work and she is just starting to ask questions about who makes the decisions.

She has struggled to learn to ride a bike, but she is a natural as my side-kick on our tandem and one of her favourite weekend activities is taking it on the Elizabeth Line to use Maryland or Moorgate (which have decent lifts) as a base from which we can explore parts of London where cycling for transport has been made a safe and routine activity by politicians who care about their citizens.

The photograph above is of a floating bus stop under construction on High Street, Stratford that we saw just a couple of weeks ago. The previous layout was extremely risky. We had just cycled from Maryland to Spitalfields and were on our return leg. Our route took us along Cycleway 2 which has several floating bus stops and this trip was only possible because of them having been constructed as a result of cycle tracks being provided.

So, as I watched the floating bus stop item on the plenary, I grew more incensed by what I was hearing because in the final analysis, 17 of you literally voted to throw her under the bus. This is not hyperbole, it is the consequence of your vote and even if indirectly, the discussion is one which will leave you with blood on your hands.

I am not going to counter anything I heard with data and objectivity. The actual facts, the research and the design responses are fully available to anyone with an enquiring mind. However, I do want to take a little time to respond to the most egregious points made as they showed several of you to be severely lacking in understanding and empathy - I don't care if it is genuine or performative either because you've shown me who you are.

AM Hall, you said "are we going to wait until somebody is killed". Given the number of people killed in London while cycling over the years, this is as best crass. In fact, given the number of pedestrians, older people, disabled people and children killed on London's roads over the years, it's offensive. All the more so because the actual risk as you well know comes from motor vehicles.

AM Baker. You couldn't help but make a joke about e-cycles before you made your points. None of this is a joke. Whether it is about people trying to independently travel by bus or cycle; the risk of getting hurt or killed using the streets is a serious issue, and as an AM, I would hope you would have taken things more seriously.

Despite there being comments from several members about the subject not being political, the discussion very much was. Transport is political and AM Wilson, your comment that your party will "rid the city of them [floating bus stops], including cycle lanes and LTNs [low traffic neighbourhoods] and all of the other nonsense" is the tired populism that so many of us in London are sick and tired of hearing. Comments like this seek to divide people and in making them, it shows you have no insight into the subject and nothing constructive to offer.

AM Best. You said "as somebody who does cycle I wouldn’t use them [floating bus stops], I would always use the road". The old "I'm a cyclist myself trope". Well, if you do actually cycle in any of the parts of London which have been safer to cycle and you prefer to use the road then that's your choice. But many don't have a choice and won't cycle unless the streets are safe. Your boast that you will always use the road is therefore just arrogant.

AM Boff. I was steering clear from the technical in this open letter, but your comment that you had a question with the Mayor about the legality of the zebra crossings at floating crossings was a surprise. Given the Mayor published a reply to your question on 22nd September, you either hadn't read it or you had read it and decided to showboat the fact you'd asked the question. I don't really care either way. 

As for your nonsense about cycle lanes being on "every single road" or your implication that cycle tracks shouldn't be on main roads is laughable because that is exactly where they should be. You cannot create a cycle network on quiet streets and despite what you said, Hackney does have some cycle tracks on its main roads, but these are not enough. I only have to point at the people killed while cycling on the A10 through that borough to highlight my point.

I did note above that AM's Russell and Bokhari were notable exceptions in the discussions. I think you both understand the wider issues, even if perhaps you, AM Bokhari, are a little more cautious. Having said that your colleague AM Roberts voted for the motion. 

Ordinarily, I would limit my words to saying there needs to be some internal work within your group, but AM Roberts, you are the Leader of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and this makes it more serious. You have sent a clear message to the people of your borough who cycle or want to cycle that you have thrown them under the bus.

To AMs Russell, Polanski and Hamdache, you have my thanks. I am sure with the extensive knowledge of AM Russell, you understand the local user frictions that floating bus stops can cause and that good design is key in mitigating them, but also the much bigger picture around where the greatest harm to Londoners using our streets comes from.

But finally, I come to you AM Prince - the proposer of the motion. You talked at the beginning about evidence and yet you simply presented anecdotes. You also quote the Telegraph which, the last time I looked, is not an institution known for the impartial treatment of cycling, nor for its expertise in transport research. It's as populist as were your comments which cynically use the most vulnerable Londoners as cover.

It is of course fine for you to take a political position against cycling as transport, although it's a deeply unserious position to the people making the 1.5 million daily journeys by cycle in London. 

As a Havering resident, you are my AM. You are also the Leader of my council and in proposing this motion, it is very clear that you don't care about my safety, but what is worse than that is you don't care about my daughter's safety. What an absolute disgrace.

Actually, I already know you don't care because you recently cancelled the fully-externally funded (including partly by TfL) safety scheme at Marsh Way which was a response to two cyclists being killed in collisions with goods vehicles on that street. The irony that this would have delivered Havering's first properly designed floating bus stop is not lost on me.

Actually, that isn't strictly true. There is a floating bus stop in your very own Gooshays Ward on Hilldene Avenue where passengers, including the visually-impaired people you say you care so much about, have to cross to get to. In this case though, they only have to cross side roads, a service road or a car park. But if you are consistent, I look forward to you ripping out the roads that people have to cross to reach it.

Perhaps that site is a little complicated and so I will leave you with this photograph of a floating bus stop at Collier Row Lane which dates back to when the area was developed to its current form. Of course, this is a service road which dates back to at least 1960, although the current bus stop layout with the with humped crossing only dates back 20 years and was part of a London Development Agency-funded regeneration project. Again, I am looking forward to you ripping this out for the safety of visually-impaired bus passengers.

I would imagine most of the business of the Assembly goes unnoticed and that's fine because running a city shouldn't be exciting. But this vote, the comments made and the way in which you all voted needs to be publicised and scrutinised as much as possible. As a professional in this space and as a father of children who just want to get around I simply have to make some noise about this vote and call you out.

However, this open letter is less about challenging the Assembly and more about getting people to think a little more widely, and I want some of this thinking to be made by the groups campaigning against floating bus stops, and especially those led by or representing disabled Londoners. 

You are being used by some of the members of this Assembly to further their political ideologies or even just their political careers. Some clearly don't understand the subject, but that's on them and not on us. They don't actually care about you or your members in the same way they don't care about me or my daughter.

They want you to keep fighting with those of us who know that cycling as transport is important for the functioning of our amazing city and who also know how poor access and inclusion is - we all want a better London, but votes like this and the rhetoric around them are deflecting from that outcome.

I don't seek or require a reply.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Philpotts

[1] https://therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com/

[2] https://cityinfinity.co.uk/

It's more complicated than that

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the City of London for an event, but I just had time to go and have a look at the St. Paul's gyratory project which has improved north-south cycling between London Wall and New Change via St. Martin's Le Grand. 

However, this post is not about the scheme or really about the design of the new floating bus stop on St. Martin's Le Grand. Sort of. I like this photograph from the site though. It pulls at the tension between traffic engineering and human behaviour, and also the misunderstanding people have about what is trying to be achieved and for who.

Zebra crossings are not black and white

Many people see the role of the zebra crossings sometimes used at floating bus stops being very much, well, a black and white thing. It's a zebra crossing and so those cycling must stop to let people cross. 

That's already wrong because pedestrian priority only exists when someone steps on the crossing. While stopping for people crossing might be good behaviour and a recommendation of Rule 195 of the Highway Code that few people have read recently, it's not a requirement.

While we're on the Highway Code that few people have read recently, Rule 18 recommends that people crossing should stick between the studs or on the zebra crossing markings. 

Rule 19 recommends that people crossing should "give traffic plenty of time to see you and stop before you start to cross", but also "remember that traffic doesn't have to stop until someone has moved onto the crossing" - those statements don't work together when you think about it; and where there are people cycling in clumps, it's all the more tricky.

Our legislation has developed from a very motor-centric position in that people can do what they like unless otherwise regulated, and zebra crossings are a method of regulation that's really there to give pedestrians a right of priority in specific location in situations where it's otherwise going to be harder for many to cross otherwise. 

This system also only "works" when everyone obeys those rules at all times and in the case of zebra crossings at floating bus stops, this includes people crossing as well as cycling, but it is the latter "group" who get the the ire for not obeying the rules.

Why are we putting zebra crossings at floating bus stops?

Of course, all of this hasn't considered why we are putting zebra crossings at floating bus stops and I can confidently tell you that it isn't for the two people crossing in my photo. 

Despite floating bus stops actually being present in the UK for decades, the newer slew of cycling infrastructure projects that started to be delivered over a decade ago (many in London) brought them closer to people's attention and I would say in part, that was driven by some of the media and certainly some politicians railing against the shift in street space towards what was often seen as an out-group - The Cyclists - and it's an easy bandwagon to join.

Zebra crossings (with humps) started to be used in London at floating bus stops in reaction to complaints that some people, including visually-impaired people, who were finding it hard to cross the cycle tracks of such layouts. This is an unresolved (and possibly unresolvable to the extent some people might wish to see) issue and we need to acknowledge it as such. Even this has nuance though. 

For some people this is about confidence in being able cross or at least being able to "create" a gap in cycle traffic by setting foot on the crossing, for others it's a useful way to help orientate themselves in preparation as they arrive at or depart from the bus stop. 

After some experimentation, Transport for London updated its design guidance to make them the default. The research here showed most people understood zebra crossings, even if compliance was variable - and that's the compliance of people cycling only. Manchester also experimented with them and the idea spread across the UK and into the various guidance documents of the devolved nations.

The wayfinding issue purpose is also complex. The use of tactile paving tells visually impaired people that they are encountering a kerb which is flush with a carriageway or cycle track, rather than somewhere "safe" to cross. 

The zebra crossing regulates the interactions between the users as I explain above, but the position in the photo and in currently guidance is that the crossing is aligned where the loading doors of the bus will be (rear doors in London) so wheelchair users and others can use the ramp deployed from the bus, rather than any objective thought about the best place (although at some stops there is more than one crossing point identified). But I am getting too much into the detail. 

Lost in translation

The bus stop in my photograph shows a couple of people crossing in a location that suited them at the time and as far as I am concerned, that is fine and also quite common, because we are dealing with human movement and desire lines more than we are dealing with traffic engineering; but that is where I think we have the problem and where things are getting lost in translation. 

It's also worth noting that as I watched the bus stop, there was definitely human-scale behaviour going on with pedestrians waiting to let a group of cyclists go past and cyclists slowing down so that people ahead would be able to cross before they arrived at the crossing (from a use of energy perspective, that's easier than stopping).

While people driving are generally doing so in reasonably well-defined streams of traffic within a system of traffic control, people waking, wheeling and cycling tend to want to follow desire lines that don't coincide with convenient driving or even street layouts. 

That is surely why we add crossings on busier roads because some people can't just find a gap to suit them; even if said crossings are not in the right location from a desire line perspective? Desire lines are powerful things and from individual perspectives, they lead "other" people to do "wrong" things. Tricky to do in a car spatially, far easier when you're a cyclist or a pedestrian.

Coming full circle

And this brings me full circle. All of this stuff on our streets only exists because of motor traffic and most of the compromises that people walking, wheeling and cycling have to make are as a result; and that's not the conversation we're having. 

This is partly because our culture is very motonormative which makes it hard for even non-drivers to envision a different system, but to some extent, it is also very easy to point at a thing we don't like rather than consider systemic issues and in our media landscape of short attention spans, nuance cannot compete with outrage.

Personally, I have seen zebra crossings at floating bus stops an issue where I have just been on the side of using them in principle because they have value for wayfinding. 

However, using them might well have created a perception problem in which at some locations where there are higher cycle flows they are the wrong treatment, and we need to be far cleverer in our design approach. 

I have some ideas as to the how, but it's very context-specific and besides, it would be nice to pick up some work trouble-shooting this kind of thing!

This first appeared as a LinkedIn article which I have republished here with a little bit of editing to reach a wider audience.

Oh. Vienna.

One thing I have learned over my career is that nothing is new and for this post that's technically correct, but equally, it's not often that I end up doing a double take with a piece of design. My second post from my summer trip to Vienna.

My first post from Vienna looked at the city's first cycle street.

For this post, I was on Taborstraße to the north of the city in the area between the River Danube and the Danube Canal where I was off to find a breakfast pastry in a local super market with my family. As we left, we saw a tram/ bus stop and we decided to sit there to eat before heading off for the day's activities.

A double-take

I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on, but then a tram arrived and things got "interesting". Above is a general view of the southbound Karmeliterplatz tram/ bus stop. So far, so ordinary.

On closer inspection, you can see a tactile paving strip with a tactile "box" to help visually impaired folks get to the front of the tram or bus (above), although it stopped short of the edge of the raised kerb at the bus/ tram stop.

People get on and off the tram (above) as you would expect, but notice the tram/ bus stop flag and where the tactile paving stops - it's for a good reason.

Then things got weird. Drivers started undertaking the tram through the boarding area. At first, I thought that someone had somehow made a mistake.

Then I noticed people cycling through the boarding area when I realised that the boarding area was also the carriageway - the line across the area (just behind the cyclists) is a stop line for the traffic signals at the junction ahead of the tram (above). You can see a tram coming from the other direction.

A look at the layout

Above is a view of the approach to the stop and the black car is being driven up a slight ramp onto the boarding area and so note that essentially, there is a pair of tram lines in the centre of the street with a traffic lane to the right of each direction and for the stop, the traffic lane goes through the boarding area.

If we look at the stop from the other side of the street, we can see the definite kerb upstand of the boarding area that people are driving next to (above). Taborstraße has been used as a traffic route for as long as it has existed and the photo also reminds us that Vienna still prioritises quite a lot whether for moving motor vehicles or parking them.

I went back again another day (to get breakfast) so I would get a proper snapshot of the stop in action and this follows in the next group of photographs.

The tram arrives (above) and people are waiting on the main footway.

The tram has stopped (above) and people start to move towards the tram. the driver of the black car has stopped just behind the tram.

Nobody is getting on or off the tram, so drivers and cyclists start to move up the inside of the tram towards the traffic signal stop line (above).

More traffic arrives, but the tram is still held at a tram stop signal (above).

The tram moves off with a tram proceed signal, traffic is still held on red.

With the tram clear of the junction, general traffic is released and so the arrangement is used for tram priority at this location because in the distance, the street narrows and all traffic shares the tram corridor (which is very sketchy for cycling) and so trams get get ahead of general traffic. My understanding is that buses use the general traffic lane rather than the tram route because they are still subject to the general traffic signals.

Nothing is new in highways

Now, this isn't an isolated design. On our last day, we were dashing to find a rail replacement bus so I didn't get any chance to watch the stop, but this one on Ungargasse outside Rennweg station turns into three traffic lanes as it approaches a signalised junction. Actually, if you follow the tramlines in the city, you will see this design in lots of places which provide tram priority through signalised junctions.

Austrian traffic law requires drivers and cyclists to stop to allow people to board and alight, only being allowed to proceed afterwards which makes the layout rules-led rather than design-led.

This approach isn't new for cycling as can be seen at some bus stops in Copenhagen (above), although it turns out there are a fair few international examples where general traffic operates as with Vienna - stops without platforms being a pertinent description and for me, a whole new area of design to investigate.

Here's one in Melbourne, Australia where passengers cross a traffic lane and in this case, there isn't a platform, so there's no level boarding as well as another with the same layout as Vienna - nothing is ever unique in the world of highway design! In the state of Victoria, Rule 163 of the "Road Safety Road Rules 2017" sets out the required behaviour, with the details for road markings and signs set out in local design standards (p69). There's also an interesting video from a local enthusiast which is worth a look.

From a tram perspective, centre of the street running makes sense because it literally gives wriggle room so that any curves or corners to negotiate can be as gently as possible. However, from what can be seen in Vienna and elsewhere, there is also the tension of trying to balance this with motor traffic capacity. If a street is low traffic, then any residual motor access would use the tram alignment freeing up space for other things.

Contrast with the UK

I have written quite a bit about bus stops and in the UK context, these layouts are called "shared-use bus boarders" (above) but only for cyclists. They have been controversial to the point there is currently a moratorium on them in England. In UK law, there isn't anything requiring cyclists to stop which might be part of the issue in cultural terms, although I will also say that design-led approaches are always better than rules-led approaches in my view.

I am also not saying we look at Vienna's (and other countries') designs as a way saying that they make shared use bus boarders in the UK for cycle tracks a good design approach, as they have problems; but I have found this whole subject interesting in putting some of the UK practice and discourse into perspective. 

The key issue for me is these designs, wherever they are, are compromises that never tend to impact drivers because the implications for better design is the removal of general traffic space and capacity.

I will leave you with a video of the stop which, well, made me stop.

Argentinierstraße: A Dutch Inspired Cycle Street

August saw a family trip to Vienna, but of course, there was time for me to go for a couple of cycle rides while I was there and in this post, I am going to show you Argentinierstraße, a street to the south of the city centre.

Argentinierstraße provides a connection between Vienna's Central Station and Karlplatz, which is just outside the city core. The street was named after a donation from the Argentine government after the First World War, but the streets in the area had been around for longer.

Apparently it carried one of the city's first separate cycle tracks, but at around 2 metres wide, it had become overcapacity with 6,000 trips a day and conflicted with pedestrian space.

Argentinierstraße in context. Map data ©2026 Google

The public realm also left a lot to be desired, as well as there being lots of traffic permeability and car parking. It's worth having a look at how it used to be.

Send for the Dutch

The city wanted to improve the street for cycling given its usefulness in connecting Central Station to the city and so as part of a programme to develop the cycle network starting in 2021, minds were turned towards Argentinierstraße.

Dutch consultant Royal HaskoningDHV (now known as Haskoning) was brought in to help. Engagement with the community demonstrated a desire for change and especially having a much greener street. The cycle track simply no longer worked and so the solution was to create a cycle street.

Careful translation

My impression of Austria as a visitor and reading up a little on their traffic law is there is a much higher reliance on rules than my experiences cycling in the Netherlands. In terms of cycle streets (Fahrradstraßen), they are rules-led and governed by traffic regulations, supported by traffic signs (below), whereas Dutch cycle streets (fietsstraten) are design-led from a functionality perspective and not governed by traffic law.

The designers took a design-led approach because that is far more important for self-explaining streets than signs backed by rules and this also included network-level design.

By this, I mean the local area for motor traffic movement was redesigned and using filtering (mostly one-way loops), motor traffic has been greatly reduced while maintaining local access. Cycle traffic has full two-way access and like Dutch cycle streets, one can think of it as a cycle track that can be used by local traffic; but the filtering of that traffic is crucial.

My post on Dutch cycle streets goes into far more detail, but the design of Argentinierstraße follows some key principles:

• It is designated as and clearly is a main cycle route,
• Residential - there is a bit of mixed use here which is fine,
• Where through motor traffic has been removed,
• Where cycle traffic flow is much higher than motor traffic,
• A speed limit of 30 kp/h (20 mph)

It's a "mixed-profile" style design with a 4.5m wide carriageway surfaced in red asphalt and with paved channels. Car parking is inset which also has a buffer of 0.5m from the edge of the carriageway (as best as I can measure from Google) which is very much in line with Dutch guidance - although the parking bays are marked a bit close to the edge of the carriageway.

For more detail from the designers, have a look at this piece from the Dutch Cycling Embassy, but the redesigned street (and local road network) fully opened in 2025.

A ride along Argentinierstraße

Let's have a look at the sights. This series of photographs starts at the street's northern end and then heads south.

Joining the cycle street, just off Karlplatz, it's marked with a cycle street traffic sign. The legal force of the sign in Austria allows cyclists to cycle two abreast and only allows drivers to over taken where 1.5m clear space is available (below).

I am not 100% sure on Austrian law, but requiring people to cycle in single file was the requirement until recently, but this has been changed to permit it on the road where the speed limit is 30km/h. It still seems a bit messy, but at least in Vienna, things seemed less restrictive and on busier roads, you'd want to use the cycle tracks anyway.

For completeness, this is the end of the cycle street legally (above).

Above is the junction with Gußhausstraße which, curiously, is signalised. I am not sure you'd find this in the Netherlands, but Gußhausstraße seems to be quite a busy connector road. The photo below is from west of the junction with Argentinierstraße running left to right.

As can be seen in the photo above, Gußhausstraße runs eastbound and I think it works at the network-level with Weyringergasse to the south which runs westbound for general traffic and which is also signalised. The cycle track you can see has to be used by people cycling and it's two-way which is quite narrow.

The photo above is also from Gußhausstraße, but looking east and the signals do provide an easy way to turn right into the cycle street.

Above shows the junction with Wohllebengasse. General traffic is required to turn left here as is general traffic coming towards us because of the one-way filtering. In order to mitigate this for pedestrians moving ahead, a zebra crossing is provided on the side road. 

Further south again (above) and St. Elisabeth's church can be seen in the distance. On the left, there isn't quite the buffer to parking that's needed, but the pale coloured channel block helps to some extent and as a cycle street, people can be more confident taking the space.

Above is another view of the street, but looking north in this case. One observation I have is the kerbs at the edge of the footway and the channel block are slightly different tonally, but maybe not enough for people with impaired vision to distinguish. This can mean that people think the channel is the edge of the footway which creates a risk of stumbling or tripping on the actual kerb.

Above is a crossing just south of the junction with Plößlgasse and here perhaps the kerb line is a little easier to pick out. We are looking uphill here and so I am guessing the stripes across the road are some kind of warning to northbound users. You can just make out a slight bend at the crossing and this is where the carriageway has been shifted over a little which might act as a bit of traffic calming.

Further south still and we are on the approach to St. Elisabeth's Church (above).

The route wraps around the church and we're heading up a slightly steeper hill as we get further away from the city centre (above).

Finally, the route meets Wiedner Gürtel (above) which is a major road and a formal federal highway. It's a very wide road and full of traffic, but for the cycle route, there is a direct crossing which connects to the central station.

Final thoughts

As an example of a cycle street, I think Argentinierstraße does a fine job. Even though I visited mid-morning on a Tuesday, there were plenty of people cycling and there was very little traffic. The design is testament to the Dutch designers taking the essence of their home-approach and working with the city to deliver something that feels very familiar to use.

I think the signalised junctions are incongruous and over time the wider neighbourhood needs cross-traffic filtering out as there are roads to the north and south which should be used for through-traffic. I also think the northern end needs better wayfinding to the main cycle route through Karlplatz to improve coherence.

I will leave you this time with a little video of me cycling south to north (downhill) . The quality isn't my usual standard, but this was with my phone in my shirt pocket rather than my usual camera, but it shows the route fairly well. Watch out for the close pass and the car door being opened (near the end). The former was bad behaviour (which is universal) and the latter shows how the design places people cycling in the lane and so there was little risk.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: New Zeeland Stories, Part 2

In my last post from Zeeland province, I took a look at the new bypass around the village of Vogelwaarde. In this post, I will have a look at some interesting things on a trip across the border to Hulst and then on to Goes.

Zeeland is a very rural part of the Netherlands and consists of various peninsulas and islands. The southern part shares a border with Flanders (the Flemish speaking north of Belgium) and is known as "Zeelandic Flanders". As well as Vogelwaarde, my visit took in a range of places as we cycled back across the border from Antwerp:

• Hulst - an historic city in the south of the province with a strong local connection to Flanders.
• Terneuzen - a city which is also in the south (north of Hulst) which has been a port for centuries, but has much more modern development than Hulst.
• Breskens and Vlissingen which are connected by a foot and cycle ferry that we used, but sadly, with no time to linger.
• Goes - A city in the heart of Zeeland which was on my list to visit because of a roundabout (a good a way as any to decide where to go, right?)

My usual health-warning applies in that I was visiting places as a tourist, even though some of what I was saw was with engineering eyes!

Historic Hulst

I visited Hulst in 2017 with my youngest who at the time I transported in a child seat on the back of a campsite bike. We only had lunch there and so when planning Spring 2026's trip, I was eager to have an overnight stay and have another look around.

The crossing from Belgium into the Netherlands was on a traffic-free route between De Klinge (BE) and Clinge (NL), complete with a customs barrier (above, looking into the Netherlands). Sadly for the Dutch, the Belgian section of this path was far superior and so I think the Netherlands needs to up its game on providing for cycling.

The path itself is along a former railway line and is a nice way to cross the border. We could have stayed on the path to reach Hulst, but instead joined some very quiet rural roads which took us into the south-east of Hulst where we turned west along Van der Maelstedeweg to reach our hotel - Hotel Hulst. 

Just opposite the hotel was the new "in ulst/ i hulst" sign (above) which is part of the city's branding as a tourist centre where "ulst" is apparently the city's name in the local Flemish dialect.

I was actually more interested in the new looking junction that the sign sits by (above). This is the T-junction of Van der Maelstedeweg/ Absdaalseweg with Stationsweg (the minor arm). When I visited in 2017, Van der Maelstedeweg and Stationsweg formed the main road for motors which essentially fired them at the old city.

The redevelopment of the junction now means that general traffic avoids the centre and is directed towards local car parks and a regional road, leaving Stationsweg nice and quiet.

From a walking, wheeling and cycling perspective, these modes run in parallel with driving and so this means the crossing of the entrance to Stationweg is with a parallel crossing (above). 

However, crossing the two arms of the main road keeps priority with drivers in a way I don't think you'd get in other places such as Utrecht. Pedestrians used to have zebra crossings on all three arms, so a reduction in service there. There was a nice little cycling link from Absdaalseweg which took us to the hotel's yard where they had secure cycle parking.

The old part of Hulst is surrounded by a city wall and moat which is shaped rather like a holly leaf - Hulst can be translated as "holly" in English and the plant is depicted on the city's coat of arms. There's a walking route around the top of the wall which we took advantage of (below).

During the day, the city is busy and a place for locals and tourists alike. We were there a little early for the main season staring at Easter and by the evening we had the historic streets to ourselves (below) and they were typically old Dutch and while accessible by car, the network layout discourages through traffic.

We visited the Prince of Wales (below) for a drink where we struck up conversation with the owner. In-between some of his taller stories, we asked about transport in the area. He reported that despite the big push for tourism, there was often a problem finding staff; and many people relied on their cars because public transport wasn't the best, especially as there was no railway. It seems these problems are international.

The road to Breskens

After Hulst, we were heading to Goes on the peninsular to the north with the plan to cycle from Hulst to the ferry port at Breskens, with a slight diversion to look at the Vogelwaarde bypass and via Terneuzen for lunch. This was going to be a 50km day and it turned into one the hardest legs I have cycled in the Netherlands!

As soon as we left Hulst, we turned into a headwind which stayed in our faces until we reached Breskens - it was blowing at around 35km/h all day! By the time we got to Terneuzen, we were in no mood to mooch around taking photos and so we found a supermarket and stuffed our faces and rehydrated.

The port of Terneuzen is on the western side and there are huge lock gates between the Scheldt and the Gent-Terneuzen Canal which is an important route for cargo heading to Ghent. We arrived at the first lock which was in use and because the region is so flat, the main road crosses the locks on lifting bridges which are pretty astonishing to see on the open position (see above and below).

There are three locks and from a roads perspective, there are two crossings of each lock so when one bridge is up, the other is down so one can always get through the area. The problem for cycling is the worry that as soon as you head to the "down" bridge, this swaps round and you have to come back on yourself. Luckily, we didn't get caught out.

We crossed the entrance to the Westerscheldetunnel which is a route for motor traffic which was opened in 2003 and which saw the end of the ferry between Kruiningen and Perkpolder to the west. You can actually take bicycles on a local bus service through the tunnel, but it's limited to two per bus and you are only taken between the bus station in Terneuzen and the toll area on the north side which means a decent onward cycle to the nearest towns.

Once over the locks, the route to Breskens skirts an industrial and port area (above). Of course, there is a smooth and separate cycle track which provides links to the commercial and industrial premises as well as the open spaces. 

It's one of those places where building cycle tracks wouldn't stand up to any UK-style business case scrutiny, but where the Dutch Sustainable Safety approach demands separation from traffic (and lots of HGVs in this case), so why wouldn't cycle tracks be built?

One of the most curious parts of this leg was the road between Savoyaardsweg and Havenstraat (above). It's a pretty typical Dutch rural road with edge markings (not cycle lanes) and a 60km/h speed limit. It also has some pretty wide junctions at each end. Ordinarily, this type of road can feel a little sketchy with that speed limit, even though they are not always too busy. This one was devoid of motors because it is closed at each end with barriers and I think technically private.

Looking at the local road network, having this road open to motors would create a rat-run, including with HGVs, and so the area is filtered which requires general traffic to route to the parallel national road N61 to the south. There is an off-road path parallel to this road too, but Google Maps at least will route you along this closed road which I can only assume is maintained to be an emergency route or for local resilience.

We we skirted the edge of Hoofdplaat, a village which has been around for quite a long time (above) and which marked the approach to Breskens.

The Breskens to Vlissingen ferry

As I mentioned above, this was a long day and so we weren't interested in looking around and made straight for the ferry terminal at Breskens where we were looking forward to a sit down.

The ferry service is at least hourly off-season and twice hourly for much of the day in peak season; it can also get busy in the summer and the advice is to pre-book. We were still off-season so it was a ride-up and go affair. You can literally ride into the terminal and park your cycles indoors which we did (see above) while purchasing tickets from the helpful staff and having a snack.

As it turned out, we didn't have to wait long as the ferry soon arrived and we were invited to board (above).

Cycle passengers weren't exactly high in numbers (there were more foot passengers), but we parked our bikes (above) and headed to the passenger cabin (below) which was comfortable enough for the 25 minute or so sailing over to Vlissingen.

A nose around Goes

We had thought about cycling from Vlissingen to Middleburg before catching the train on to Goes, but we were too tired and opted to catch the train direct which was easy as the ferry terminal and station are next to each other.

Taking cycles on trains in the Netherlands is permitted on most off-peak services, but there is a charge per cycle which generally means most people don't take a cycle, and there's is usually enough of the limited spaces available. You're meant to take panniers and other bags off your cycle and after many trips and many trains taking our bikes on them, we had our first train manager who asked us to take ours off. The photo above is on a Sprinter train from a couple of years ago.

Goes is another historic city with a short cycle to the city centre from the station. We were staying to the north which was an easy 2km or so cycle along the main road to the west which was on a disappointing painted cycle lane which had the risk of right hook at a main car park entrance. This was a reminder that the roads and streets of the Netherlands remains an intergenerational work in progress.

Our hotel was just north of Ringbaan West, a busy urban connector road providing access to several neighbourhoods to the north of the city. Only a few years ago, we would have crossed at road level, albeit within a protected junction, but there is now an easy to use underpass (see above) which came with the construction of a new neighbourhood. In this area, the motoring and cycling networks had become unravelled from each other.

Part of the new development fronts some canal-side which provides access to apartments and shops via a footway and cycle track with the latter almost being in stealth-mode given the choice to mix the same colour of the footways with a little bit of red (above). It's not a main cycleway, but a little odd.

The old city looks very Dutch with Sint Maartenbrug (above) providing direct access for walking, wheeling and cycling (and mopeds), but not general traffic.

Just the other side of the bridge, the area has been pedestrianised with an exception for cycles, exemption-holders and deliveries in specific time windows. A lack of parked cars certainly enhanced the evening view as we headed back to the hotel after a couple of beers and some dinner (below).

Being dark also gave a chance to check out the underpass at night which was well-lit and see-through which is common in the Netherlands (below).

After Goes, we were going to head back to Rotterdam by train and then on to Hoek van Holland for the night ferry, but before we did, there was just time to cross something off my list.

A roundabout within a roundabout

To the west of the city is the Tiendenplien roundabout which connects the larger city roads to a spur which becomes the A256 motorway which is just 2.5km in length and essentially a connector spur to the A58 motorway which runs east-west along the peninsula.

The traffic roundabout is of the turbo variety (turborotonde) where drivers have to choose a lane well before entry and which drops them at the correct exit. Lane changes in the circulatory area are prevented with kerbs and this means they can process high volumes of traffic and side-impact risks are reduced. You can see in the photo above that there signs telling drivers which lane to take.

Cycling (and walking/ wheeling) should not be crossing the arms of this type of roundabout because crossing more than one traffic lane at once is both subjectively and objectively unsafe, although such layouts do exist in the Netherlands. Here, there are cycle tracks and service roads (with cycle track spurs such as the one above) which provide for cycling under the roundabout. 

In general, the road has been raised above general ground levels and the cycle tracks and footways dropped a little so that it's no effort to access the central area and the views through are good (above).

Finally, there are four routes converging on the centre of the roundabout and the cycle tracks meet at their own little roundabout. You don't really need roundabouts to manage flows of cyclists, but this one did slow people down a touch and provided a good place for a directional sign (above) and which we used to head back to the city centre and then the station for our homeward journey.