A Street Corner In Rotterdam

Back in the summer, I visited Rotterdam, one of my favourite Dutch cities and this time, stayed in a neighbourhood on the southern edge of the city centre.

Rotterdam is a great city to explore and it's also a great base for trips out to other places by cycle or public transport. However, this post is about a junction outside our hotel.

The photograph above is the view west along Witte de Withstraat at its junction with William Boothlaan (left) and Hartmansstraat (right). We stayed in the H3 Hotel Rotterdam which is on the corner to the left and we were in a room facing Witte de Withstraat.

Of course, staying somewhere a few nights can't possibly give you a local's perspective, but watching the ebb and flow of life was interesting, especially as our stay was either side of a weekend so we got to see life during the week as well as a weekend. From the early start of the street cleaning crew, through the morning deliveries and into the afternoon and evening of the restaurants and shops, it's a busy and every changing place.

Above is a view from within the junction, looking to the south-east towards the Bazar restaurant. The words above read "in alles is een oogopslag" - "In everything, there is a glance" and is there to promote the work of the poet JH Leopold from the city, with the full poem HERE. Nothing to do with the general design of the street, but Rotterdam is full of these little pieces of local culture.

Of course, it was the street design that interested me. Witte de Withstraat is the main road which has one-way for general traffic westbound (2-way for cycling of course) and with the side streets two-way for all traffic. There are zebra crossings on each arm. The main road is subject to a 30km/h speed limit, whereas quite bizarely, the side roads are the usual urban 50km/h!

The carriageway is surfaced in 100mm x 200mm block pavers (above) with road markings in white units and with the standard 300mm concrete tiles for the footway. The kerbs are concrete with a stone-effect finish and drainage gullies sit in the kerb line so as not to be damaged by heavy vehicles. All very standard for a Dutch street, but so much nicer than the sea of asphalt we often see in the UK. It is also practical because the paving elements can be lifted for works and they are easily replaced.

The photograph above is view of the junction showing that it sits on a speed table, the ramp being denoted by the long and short lines. The detail of that and the zebra crossing is easily seen where they are formed by the block pavers - much more flexibility than the UK and given the local context, the crossing are marked with standard upright signs. 

It is also worth noting the bollards just behind the kerb edge (above) because Dutch drivers are just as bad at parking on the footway and just as scared about damaging their paintwork as UK drivers. The bollards do help to force slower turns at the junction and in a more effective way than the raised table does. In the Netherlands drivers are required to give way to people crossing or obviously waiting to cross (Article 49 of the Dutch Traffic Regulations). Drivers are also not permitted to wait within 5 metres of a crossing.

The other little detail to note is the tactile paving. There is a trade-off between accommodating the pedestrian desire line and ending up having to cut tactile paving into a curve. In this example, there is a very practical approach which has blocks of blister tactile paving two tiles deep (so people are less likely to step over and miss them), but laid out set back from the kerb to avoid cutting them in. They are laid to the width of the stripes. The bollards are at risk of a visually impaired person colliding with them, but I suspect there would be drivers on the footway otherwise.

One final detail is the way the parking bays are inset from the carriageway as a result of the footway being built out at the junction. The photograph above is at the kerb edge looking east along Witte de Withstraat. Yes, the van is parked facing the wrong way in the one-way street. The hatched bay is for Disabled drivers.

The narrowing of the carriageway is helpful in terms of slowing turning drivers, reducing the crossing distance at the zebra crossings, discouraging parking at the junction and it puts the "obviously waiting to cross" pedestrians right in the field of view for drivers and cyclists; all features which help with "pedestrian-friendliness". It also provides somewhere visible for traffic signs and potentially other things such as cycle parking or greening which is not on the general pedestrian design line.

The crossroads doesn't have marked priority for traffic and so drivers arriving at the junction are expected to give way to traffic arriving from their right (including cycles) as is the standard Dutch rule which helps to control driver speed at unmarked junctions, although my observations here did tend to see lots of "might is right" from drivers on the main drag. 

Despite the tightness of the geometry at the junction, there was some pretty poor right turning behaviour from some drivers who did so at excessive speed and with some intimidation of pedestrians trying to cross. This was more evident in the evenings where it was pretty clear the drivers were showing off.

At the network level, Witte de Withstraat runs in parallel to large roads to the north and south of the immediate neighbourhood. While the local one-way streets tend to deal with some of the potential rat-runs. Witte de Withstraat could be attractive for those wanting to cut between Westblaak to the north-east and Westzeedijk to the south-west if the main roads got a little busy (but only in that direction). 

This could be why the street felt too busy with motor traffic at certain times of the day and evening, and probably explains why zebra crossings are used at the junction - if traffic was light, the zebra crossings wouldn't be needed.

The weekend evenings had another layer of interest where Witte de Withstraat was closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings to the west of the junction. As best as I can find out this was done for the summer to support the street's evening economy and got extended, but it also happens for other events. There are definitely some tensions with the traffic here and this might explain the 30km/h speed limit on the street.

I do like to share stories of the big and impressing pieces of infrastructure, but I also think it is interesting to stop and observe things which initially appear mundane, but where it actually turns out there are many layers to unpeel.