bringing the Dutch touch to SF Biking

What happens when you mix Dutch bicycle planners with San Francisco streets? You get ThinkBike, an intense two-day planning and design encounter sparking innovative solutions for better bikeways!

San Francisco was blessed with beautiful sunny weather and a delegation of visiting Dutch bicycle planners on September 18-20, 2011 when ThinkBike came to town. Following a superb Sunday afternoon joyride around our fair city, and an inspiring kick-off at City Hall on Monday morning, three teams of Dutch and local planners, advocates, agency staff and community members took an intense look at the Wiggle, mid-Market Street and upper Polk Street. They developed design concepts for these three essential pieces of SF's bike network, as well as promotional ideas to boost everyday bicycling in San Francisco.

If you weren't among the eager crowd that filled the Green Room on the balmy evening of September 20 to see what the Dutch-led teams came up with, you can check them out right now — review the three bikeway proposals and enjoy scenes from the ThinkBike encounter:

Market Street (5th to 8th)

Polk Street (Broadway to Union)

The Wiggle

Read SF Streetsblog's take on the ThinkBike teams' ideas for better biking along the three corridors, and be sure to check out the Workshop Design Brief for ThinkBike SF, great background on biking in the Netherlands and San Francisco and the overall ThinkBike approach.

A big dank u wel to the Consulate General of the Netherlands, San Francisco and Royal Netherlands Embassy, Washington DC, for bringing us ThinkBike, and big tulip bouquets to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the citizens and city staffers who came together to make ThinkBike such a ringing success. Now let's get to work making it real!

the Dutch bike pros

We had the great good fortune of spending a few energized days with these powerhouse Dutch bicycle practitioners:

• Hillie Talens is a member of Fietsberaad and CROW project manager, one of the main authors of the celebrated CROW Design manual for bicycle traffic. Hillie was the ringleader for the ThinkBike California 2011 tour (San Francisco & Los Angeles) and coached the Wiggle team.
• Richard ter Avest has worked at Goudappel Coffeng since 1992 as senior advisor and team leader of the traffic design group. He specializes in complete streets and complete cities, in cycle-highways, in sustainable safety and in developing attractive and liveable city centres. Besides advising Richard gives lectures and organizes workshops at universities,] colleges and institutions, including CROW, and organizes and leads bike excursions.
• Cor van der Klaauw studied Town and Country planning at the Transportation Academy in Tilburg. He mostly worked as transportation planner for the city of Groningen from 1995 till 2008, when he started working for the County Council of Groningen. Cor is a member of the "Fietsberaad" (www.fietsberaad.nl) and is a teacher for one day a week on the NHL Hogeschool in Leeuwarden, at the faculty of Built Environment.
• Tonny Bosch was educated at the Traffic Academy Tilburg (now named NHTV Breda). He started his career as traffic engineer at Goudappel Coffeng. After a period of ten years working for BVA (Consultancy for Traffic Engineering BV, Raalte) he returned to Goudappel Coffeng as project manager in the Transportation Planning Advisory Group.

more ThinkBike & Dutch bicycle policy & design resources

• Just launched — the Dutch Cycling Embassy, with a very lovely video (worth the 7:13) and a very lovely brochure.
• Fietsberaad Internationaal, Dutch center of expertise on bicycle policy.
• CROW, a Dutch think tank for infrastructure, traffic, transport and public space. The CROW Design manual for bicycle traffic is internationally regarded as the bible of smart Dutch bikeway design and policy (and bike-smarts generally).
• Hans Voerknecht discusses the launch of the Dutch Cycling Embassy and ThinkBike in a Fietsberaad news post.
• Be sure to read Leah Shahum's great Streetsblog essay on the lessons San Francisco can learn from Amsterdam as we work to grow into a truly great bicycling city.
• In August 2010 a group of Bay Area public officials (including SF Board of Supervisors president David Chiu and SFMTA chief Ed Reiskin) traveled to the Netherlands for a week-long in-depth look at the Dutch touch for bicycling — learn more about A Week of Biking Joyously (and big thanks to the Bikes Belong Foundation for making the trip possible).

{thanks to Gerla Brakkee for lending us her very sweet photo of a Dutch girl and her bike, daydreaming over a meadow vista)