I'm confused why people are comparing London to Amsterdam...do I really have to point out that London has many more millions of people; we are a financial and cultural center in the world will millions of more people visiting here then Amsterdam...do I need to go on? The only people who want to bang on about Amsterdam are the cyclists. Everyone wants less traffic but just closing roads is not the way to do it...how about better public transport or less building work - has anyone looked at the number of cranes on London's skyline? ...the tube to work is expensive and disgusting and taking the bus now takes 30minutes longer because of Boris's cycle lanes. And don't say ride a bike - work doesn't have a shower and I'm certainly not sitting next to clients stinking. It's funny how there's a certain type that cycles...the desk bound types...they go on about a better place to live but I bet they still do their internet shopping...they probably don't count their Acado delivery as there own journey or all the other stuff they get online with upteen small white vans hurtling themselves around London - they weren't even around a few years ago.
So cyclist I say think about the journeys YOU are creating every time you shop on Amazon - you're a bunch of hypocrites.
Yes, they're always going on about Amsterdam, so I took a virtual tour courtesy of google maps.
For one thing it's much smaller than London. Population of Greater Amsterdam area is about 1.6 million compared to 8.5 million of Greater London, and the area is about 6 times smaller.
A quick look suggested their roads are better than ours. Theres a 3/4/5 lane circular motorway around the city only a bit bigger than the London inner ring road (20 miles circumference compared to 12 miles for the inner ring road). Imagine a motorway going through Archway, Shadwell, Brixton and along the western border of Hyde Park. You're never much more than about 3 miles from a motorway intersection. No need to slog through 17 miles of traffic lights, parked cars and stopped buses (A23 from Westminster to the M23) to get to a motorway.
Most of the small side roads with parked cars on both sides are one-way - they seem to like alternating one way streets. That way you don't get the stand-offs with vehicles trying to go both directions past the parked car obstructions. The main roads aren't blocked with parked cars - anything parked there is in a lay by or set back from the road. I don't know what happens with deliveries, but I'm guessing they must happen off road. In some places you can see vehicles parked on the pavement, I assume being unloaded. Even though a lot of the main roads only have one lane each way for general traffic they all seem remarkably free of the sort of obstructions you get on London's roads - parked cars, vans and HGVs being unloaded, stopped buses etc. They mostly have wide pavements and separated cycle paths, although there are some London-style cycle lanes as well. There are loads of parked cars around, but they are either parked down side streets or in laybys - not in places where they obstruct the traffic flow.
Most of the main roads seem noticeably wider than ours, which allows for all the segregation of cycles, buses/trams, general traffic and for parking areas. Compare that to ours - Camberwell New Road anyone? They also don't have the ubiquitous speed humps that are now appearing even on main roads in London (Denmark Hill got two of them about a year ago, Rotherhithe New Road is full of them). Although they do have some raised tables at junctions on the narrow back streets. Maybe nobody speeds over there?
I didn't notice any particular lack of through routes, although there are only 4 crossing points of the main waterway in the middle of the city (2 are part of the ring motorway, one is a Blackwall Tunnel style crossing but better quality and one is an ordinary road). There certainly doesn't seem to be anything like a 2 square mile area with no through routes. Maybe I missed it?
There seem to be less traffic lights on the roads as well. On a circuit of the 8 mile long Amsterdam inner ring road (Centrumring) you pass 31 sets of lights - just under 4 per mile, not including pedestrian controlled lights. For the London inner ring road you pass 84 sets of lights in a 12 mile circuit - 7 per mile - again not including pedestrian controlled lights. We have too many traffic lights on our major roads. All sorts of minor roads with very little traffic have traffic lights where the join or cross a main road, which disrupts traffic flow on the main road.
Overall, the roads seem better laid out there than here. But then I suppose you can do that if you have a bit more room. Generally we have crap infrastructure in this country - we never do the job properly. It's always left half done if done at all. Look at the North Circular - mostly free flowing now, but they left 3 or 4 traffic light junctions on it and those cause huge jams. Same with the A40 - 4 sets of lights between Marylebone Road and the M25 and you often sit in a mile long queue approaching the first one. The South Circular is a sick joke. Tower Bridge is good as a tourist attraction but crap as a main road - it has an 18 ton weight limit. Blackwall Tunnel northbound has a 13 foot height limit. How are lorries supposed to cross the river? They can't use the ring road or the main crossing in East London.
