Back from the Netherlands…

This has been a not-so-brief interruption in my blogging as Mollie and I took a long anticipated vacation to the Netherlands. We saw many wonderful sights, experienced the local culture, and visited with family that we see far too infrequently. Fortunately, with the age of instant global communication, maintaining contact makes the world a smaller place.

There were a bunch of highlights from the trip that are appropriate to mention here. I plan specific posts about several of them, but here’s a brief list:

Transportation:

• Bicycles. There are more bicycles in Holland than citizens. Many families own one car, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who does not own a bike and many people own more than one.
• Bike lanes everywhere! With alternate coloured pavement and traffic signals for bikes.
• Bike racks everywhere! The bicycle parking at the train stations is larger than the car parking!
• Street designs and traffic rules that favour walking and cycling above driving.
• Very little free parking, and more expensive (if available at all) as you near the city core.
• Trains, trains and more trains. The Dutch have a network crisscrossing the country with “Intercity” trains going between major centres and Light Rail “Stop Trains” which run to the small towns in between. For each point A and point B you choose, there’s at least 3 ways to get there. And the trains run frequently, on time, all night long.
• For the few destinations with no train service, there are buses.
• The trains and buses run on the same fare system, with zones and strip tickets that you can use across the country.
• A Stoptrain goes directly to the Amsterdam airport in a tunnel. Not just to and from the City Centre, but as just one more stop in the network. Go up the escalator and you are in the terminal building! During the day it runs every 15 minutes and even in the middle of the night it runs every hour. Coming home, we had a 8 minute walk from our downtown hotel to the train, a 15 minute train to the airport, and then of course the lengthy flight.
• In Brugge, Belgium (a sight-seeing side trip) we parked at the train station outside the city and our parking stub allowed us to ride the bus to the city centre and back free of additional charge.
• In 17 days, I saw one stop sign. All the rest of the intersections were traffic lights, roundabouts and yield signs.
• There is no turning right on a red light.
• There is no turning left on a green light and having to wait for oncoming traffic to clear. If you have a left turn signal, you go. Otherwise you stop behind the line. There are no cars cluttering the intersection.
• I saw very little of people running caution lights or driving over the line to be in the way of bicycles and pedestrians.
• Bicycles are given preference at the lighted interesections, with cars stopping behind them.
• Photo radar in all speed zones.  Some are fixed and some are mobile.  Generally, I just drove the speed limit.

Power:

• From what I can gather, the Netherlands does not have any nuclear power. The only power generation I saw was coal and wind, but I understand that they also burn waste at the power plant. I did not specifically see examples of district energy, but I know it’s there and I think it’s more common in the larger city cores.

Waste:

• Since we were staying with my family, I got to see how they lived on a daily basis. The city collects trash bins and green bins. Beer, Liquor and Wine bottles work on a deposit-return system, and other glass and metal waste must be brought to a central depot.
• One aspect I did not approve of was that plastics were not separated for recycling, but instead are sent to trash which is sent for incineration in energy-from-waste plants.
• All in all, it’s far better than our system. There’s very little true waste since they have no room for landfill.  I’m not sure what they do with this.

Heating/Cooling:

• This is my second trip to the Netherlands, the first being 5 years ago. In all the homes I visited, I never once saw a hot water tank. The Dutch use, almost exclusively, tankless / instantaneous hot water heaters which do not waste energy keeping water hot all day when it’s not being used. I first heard about this from my mother when she went there in 1978. These are available in Canada now, but at a significantly higher cost than the tank version ($900 vs $200), and they are not available for rent anywhere that I have seen. I even complained to Direct Energy about this. Hmmm. Seems like a good business opportunity for someone.

The Netherlands. It’s a great country to visit. And you can see 90% of it without renting a car.

My advice? Rent bicycles and get a rail pass. And only rent a car for a day the odd time you need it.

If you do rent a car, WATCH FOR CYCLISTS!!! They’re everywhere, and they often have the right-of-way.