Back in the Spring of this year, I visited the Netherlands where I took a look at a village bypass scheme, but this post is from across the border, just outside Antwerp in Belgium.
As we cycled to Hulst in the Netherlands from Antwerp, we happened on an interesting road layout on the N70, about 10km west of the city, in Beveren, East Flanders (below). It wasn't something I had on my list to see and it's only after doing a little research have I realised how clever it all is. It's a "hamburger junction", but one with some fancy relish.
What's a hamburger?
In road engineering terms a "hamburger" is a type of roundabout where there is a road straight through the centre ,and which is kind of the patty with the semicircles above and below formed by the circulatory area looking a bit like the two halves of the bun. It's generic and they are quite varied, and often use traffic signals.
In the UK, hamburger roundabouts are often signalised and are set up to prioritise the main flow of traffic through the middle with other traffic entering and leaving via the circulatory area.
It was a hamburger that we stumbled across at the junction of the N70 Grote Baan and Pareinpark (above).
Mixed uses
This particular location had plenty going on. To the north of the road is a bit of a retail/ industrial park, and to the south, a strip of residential development (and redevelopment) which turns into more residential streets a little further back on each side.
The N70 is the main (non-motorway) Ghent to Antwerp road and as well as providing a secondary connection for motor traffic between the two cities, it also provides a local function. The junction isn't unique in this area, there's another one about 1km to the west towards Antwerp which we didn't even notice as we cycled along.
From a walking, wheeling and cycling perspective, the N70 has quite a variation in provision. Sometimes people are routed to quieter streets parallel to the main road. There are also shared-use paths, and when there's a bit more street frontage, there's sometimes separate space. The photograph above shows a fairly typical example of a shared path - it's not that wide and was only improved to this standard about five years ago when the hamburger was built.
Back to the burger
In the image below, I have turned on the aerial photography which shows the retail/ industrial complex to the north and the residential development to the south.
The road which branches off to the north-west serves the commercial area and perhaps the layout helps that operate; but why not just have a roundabout? The image shows a pale grey road running through the middle and this starts to pull at the purpose.
Back in 2020, the junction was a pretty typical inter-urban/ urban fringe road (above). The left turn lane in the centre was to access the commercial area and you can see there's a painted cycle lane. On the right there's a bus stop in a layby which doesn't exactly help with bus priority.
And here we find the purpose of the hamburger - it's a bus priority measure. The photograph above shows the westbound approach and there's a fair bit going on here.
Just to the left of the image, there's a bus lane to the left of the general traffic lane and this is controlled by a traffic signal. It's hard to make out, but it's actually a tram signal and depicts a horizontal white bar in the upper aspect which means stop. The chequerboard marking shows where the bus lane crosses another road and essentially means "keep clear".
Drivers give way to traffic on the circulatory area due to the triangular "shark's teeth" markings. For general traffic on the other side of the road, there are other signals, including the mast arm - we'll see more of these in a while. You can also see a cycle parking shelter in the middle of the junction.
The geometry is tight and the curves have an adverse camber to slow drivers down. The block paving is for larger vehicles to overrun if required, but that's a little sketchy when you're on the shared use path to the right!
The photograph above is on the same side of the road, but looking east this time. You can just see there is a separate cycle track to the left of the hedge with the footway in a slightly different material. There's the same on the other side and they are actually two-way!
You can also just make out the access road to the commercial area on the left. The traffic signal by the red car on the left is to control traffic entering the circulatory area and the one in the centre is for buses leaving the central road. The right hand signal is for buses entering in the junction and again, is a tram signal.
Getting to the meaty part
The photograph below is the view east from the centre of the hamburger - the meat in the bun. You can see the bus stop with its shelter. The bus road here is concrete to resist braking and acceleration forces, and to the left, the light grey guidance tactile paving ends at a black square which will be where the front door of the bus stops. The black square is a "tactile ground surface indicator" (TGSI) and is made from neoprene, so it has a slight amount of give to provide a tactile response.
It's hard to see, but the mast arm traffic signal to the right of the photograph is showing an amber signal at the bottom (where we would usually expect a green).
It was actually flashing which means drivers should slow down and be prepared to give way, which will be to buses leaving or entering the centre of the junction which is an exception to usual roundabout rules. In practice, this means the chequered areas are acting like a level crossing for buses which have absolute priority in this context in the same way as a tram would.
The photograph above is from the same location as before, but now looking west. At the opposite bus stop, you can see a high kerb which is compatible with low floor buses to make them almost step-free.
There's guardrail to help marshal people to the crossing point (which I am standing near) and the shelter is free of advertising so views through it are clear. You can also see the signals on the mast arm to the right with the amber aspect showing (caught mid-flash once again).
Taking a step or two back, the photo shows the crossing that I was standing by in the previous photograph. The crossing is between the two bus stops and a bus driver stopped would see people crossing in front of them. For pedestrians, there are zebra crossings over the two bus roads as well as the general traffic lane in each direction. The tight geometries of the general traffic lanes mean drivers have been slowed before they reach the crossing point.
Cycle traffic is required to give way, which is fairly consistent for a road of this class, and for the bus roads, absolute priority is with buses anyway given the general approach taken from tramway design. When we were there, it was fairly easy to crossing as a pedestrian or a cyclist.
Bun-stoppable
The final image (above) is of the commercial access road (Pareinpark). I had to take this from Google because I was too interested in the main layout I didn't think to snap this!
You can see from the red surfacing across the junction that the cycle track is two way and cycle traffic has priority over traffic. The problem we found here was the the advertising on the verge to the right of the footway. As we approached the junction, drivers couldn't see us as they approached the junction from the side street and so crossing he junction felt a little precarious.
A continuous treatment would have been better from a design priority perspective, but running HGVs over that would destroy it and so a marked (parallel) crossing with a zebra for the pedestrian side would have been better.
(Nearly) well-done
I have had a dig around to see if I could find out more about the scheme that led to the layout that caught my eye, but I couldn't - if you have some insight, please share it as it's good to know the background.
It's worth a cruise up and down the N70 here on street view to see other things going on, but it just shows that bus priority can be retrofitted, even where the corridor isn't that wide.
The thing I like most about this junction is that it is all very logical and intuitive, even if a little rough around the edges for cycling and I think it's a design we could use in the UK, although the signalling would have to be adapted to our standards.
The mapping and associated street view images are all © Google 2026.
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