Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:06
Nick Falbo
The way we design our roundabouts has not been that great for people walking and biking. And there is another way, and I think that I'd love to see more cities embracing Dutch style geometry and approaches to roundabout design, and so that we can try to bring it back as a tool that's not just good for safety, for people driving, but good for the safety and access of everybody.

00:00:23:10 - 00:00:42:19
Nick Falbo
And so I think there's this is a room for growth. We have here in, in the States is to rethink our roundabouts in particular and offer more compact designs for urban areas. So I'd love to see some of these also, emerge here in this the next ten years of, the building of our safe, connected bike systems here in the States.

00:00:42:21 - 00:01:09:19
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns channel. My name is John Simmerman, and that is Nick Falbo from Portland, Oregon. And the Dutch transportation design firm Mohican. We're going to be winding back the clock a bit and taking a look at some of the early days of protected bike lanes, protected intersections and some of the graphics work that he did in creating some videos explaining about Dutch inspired, protected intersections.

00:01:09:25 - 00:01:29:17
John Simmerman
But before we get to that, I just want to say, if you are enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. Just hit the join button right here in YouTube down below, or become an Active Towns Ambassador via Patreon. Buy me a coffee or making contributions to the nonprofit.

00:01:29:17 - 00:01:41:17
John Simmerman
Super easy to do? Just navigate over to active towns.org. Click on the support tab at the top of the page. Okay, let's get right to it with Nick.

00:01:41:20 - 00:01:46:11
John Simmerman
Nick, although thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:01:46:14 - 00:01:50:05
Nick Falbo
Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you today.

00:01:50:07 - 00:01:56:19
John Simmerman
Nick. I love giving my guests an opportunity to introduce themselves. So who the heck is Nick Felber?

00:01:56:21 - 00:02:22:15
Nick Falbo
I am a transportation planner, and designer. Sometimes I call myself a play engineer. I'm not an engineer, but I like to think about, kind of how that all fits together. And I do my best to be able to hold my own in conversations with engineers. I work for a planning firm called Moby Con. That's a Dutch American planning firm that has been doing work here in the US for over a decade.

00:02:22:17 - 00:02:46:01
Nick Falbo
And, I come to this firm from a background in public sector planning here in Portland, Oregon, other private sector planning with all the planning and design where I started my career and, and, and yeah, I've been super excited about the work I've got to do over the course of my career and, the work I'm doing today, back in it in the private sector, getting to work in cities all across the country.

00:02:46:04 - 00:03:05:09
Nick Falbo
And I have a real strong passion for street design. And I've seen what the best can look like. And I know that we can do better and we can build the best here in the US. So I'm excited to get to be a part of that effort to bring high quality, wonderful streets, streetscapes and places here into, America.

00:03:05:12 - 00:03:14:00
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. That's great. What was the, origin story in terms of what got you interested in doing this type of work?

00:03:14:03 - 00:03:37:09
Nick Falbo
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. It's, it was living in Portland. Got me interested in doing planning. You know, Portland's going to be known as a place where they, maybe punch above their weight when it comes to planning, land use planning, transportation planning. We're not a very big city, but we have a lot going for us, for, when it comes to how you can get around and how you can live your life.

00:03:37:12 - 00:04:00:12
Nick Falbo
So it was really living in Portland in the early 2000. That got me noticing that this city was built differently and got me realizing that there was a whole industry dedicated to making changes to the world that we live in. And I think a lot of people kind of have those realizations. They come to planning with a background in something completely different.

00:04:00:15 - 00:04:15:26
Nick Falbo
And then realize that there's a whole world out there that they can get involved in to, to kind of make their city, their place, their community better. And so I definitely had one of those types of realizations where I was working a whole completely different job here in Portland. And, I just noticed that the city was different from every other city.

00:04:15:26 - 00:04:30:16
Nick Falbo
I was like, why can I ride my bike to work here in Portland? But I couldn't do that in Boston. I couldn't do that in Cleveland. Some of these other cities I'd been visiting. And, what made that different than it was? It was planning. It was design. It was transportation.

00:04:30:18 - 00:04:43:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And the rest is history. It's a good stuff. Well, you mentioned, Moby Con, so. Yes. You made the switch over to Moby Con. It's been about a year and a half, hasn't it?

00:04:43:02 - 00:05:00:05
Nick Falbo
It's been about a year and a half to. So. Yeah, we came to Moby Con. And it's been great. You know what began as a small company? We're a Dutch American firm. There's a headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. Here in North America, where we've got a great team of people working. I work with them every day.

00:05:00:08 - 00:05:20:15
Nick Falbo
And then here in the US, we're very small. It's myself and a, And my colleague Jamie. Now, who works here in Portland with me. So we have a tiny little crew here in Portland where we serve the whole U.S.. Yeah, of course, in close collaboration with our team in Canada and our team in the Netherlands. So, we kind of try to be everywhere all at once, and,

00:05:20:18 - 00:05:35:25
Nick Falbo
Yeah. And it's been great. We've got to work with some great clients all around the country, and we're always looking for those cities that want to build better and do some incredible work and kind of innovate in a in a field that is, you know, constantly changing.

00:05:35:28 - 00:06:03:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And I, I've lost count. I've interviewed so many people from Moby Con. It's been. Yeah, it's been pretty funny. I've, I've had the opportunity to, have a few people on the channel in the podcast, but then also I've been able to meet up in person with, other members of the team, including Leonard. Now, Leonard just, moved to New Zealand, and so he's heading up the what they're calling the Pacific office.

00:06:03:18 - 00:06:13:17
John Simmerman
I was joking with him. And because I used to live in Hawaii and I'm like, hey, you're just to hop over to to Hawaii if you're going to call yourself the Pacific Division. There you go.

00:06:13:19 - 00:06:31:09
Nick Falbo
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, Honolulu is doing some great work in street design and bikes and transit. So maybe there's some opportunity there. But yeah, it's actually been so great. The sort of, global offices lets us work, you know, kind of in a almost a 24 hour cycle at this point where we can hand work off to each other, we can coordinate.

00:06:31:16 - 00:06:47:26
Nick Falbo
It's actually easier for me to talk to Leonard in New Zealand than it is, when he was in the Netherlands, in fact, here on the West Coast. So, it's, it takes some getting used to, but I've worked in these sort of remote environments for a while and, more in the past. And so it's, it takes some getting used to, but I enjoy it.

00:06:47:26 - 00:06:53:10
Nick Falbo
I enjoy getting to connect with people all at all times a day and all across the globe.

00:06:53:12 - 00:07:21:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that that is exciting about Moby Con as an entity, as a firm helping out, in these remote locations, international locations, is bringing that concept of Dutch design to, a market, an area that may just not understand, you know, that, that nuance. And you have a long history in doing that.

00:07:21:17 - 00:07:43:09
John Simmerman
We're going to talk a little bit about design. Go some go through some images that that you supplied, for us. And, and I mentioned before we hit the record button that I can remember some of your work that you did, I don't know, a decade ago. It's it's been a long time. And time is a weird thing, especially with pandemics and all this other stuff that's going on and, warps our time.

00:07:43:11 - 00:08:06:06
John Simmerman
But yeah, I can remember some of the early stuff that you were doing and we'll, we'll kind of look at that a little bit. And especially like the Dutch design, protected intersections, protected bike infrastructure, that sort of stuff. Why don't you, you know, kind of close the gap a little bit. You shared a little bit about your how your origin story within this type of work, within relationship to Portland.

00:08:06:09 - 00:08:25:23
John Simmerman
But that doesn't necessarily explain your fascination with Dutch design, which really is what caught my attention with the work that you were doing and the content that you were creating because you were a content creator back there. And to what was that, kernel of, interest? Yeah, it was the Dutch design.

00:08:25:25 - 00:08:52:09
Nick Falbo
Yeah. And I think, some of the materials that we'll flip through, you'll get to kind of see a little that story unfold of, kind of what, what prompted a little bit of a deeper dive into the, Dutch practices and, and in general, it's sort of this interesting question. You know, I think ten years ago, 15 years ago, you could come in from the Netherlands and say, hey, we're from the Netherlands.

00:08:52:09 - 00:09:13:25
Nick Falbo
We're here to help. We know what we're doing and how to do this work. And and that was and everyone was like, yes, that's great. Let's tell us what to do today in 2025. We're in a whole different world, you know, new, new guidelines are out that are adopted by FHWa, by NATO, and for the most part, the Americans kind of have it figured out.

00:09:14:00 - 00:09:51:15
Nick Falbo
And it's been this journey over the last 15 years that has gotten them there. And so I'm I'm always like trying to think, okay, what's what's left? What's next? What are those next innovations happening in, in the Netherlands that, that we need to be thinking about, we need to be adopting. But as far as the, the, the work back, back in 2014, which is when I released my protected intersection video and in 2010, 2011, the early days of the Octo bike We Design guide, it was really about, you know, recognizing that we had a lot of catching up to do that we had in the US, been kind of

00:09:51:15 - 00:10:18:07
Nick Falbo
frozen in time from some, get some, some ideas from the 70s that really held us back when it came to what it meant to serve people in particular, bicycling for transportation. And so it was, recognizing that that, that kind of like this hump we had to come over and recognizing that we can learn. So much from those cities and those places around the world that are doing far better in, their outcomes.

00:10:18:07 - 00:10:35:15
Nick Falbo
And what does it take for them to get there in terms of the way they're providing for people biking? And so it was that kind of work. But one of the one of my first projects in this industry as an intern, was to work on the National Urban Bikeway Design Guide, where, you know, incredible project to get to work on.

00:10:35:18 - 00:10:56:11
Nick Falbo
As I was starting my career. And that was really a deep dive into, what was happening internationally. And interestingly enough, they didn't they didn't lean very much in the acto bike guide, which was a little bit of a criticism, and it was following that thread to understand what do the Dutch do differently? How do they, approach things differently?

00:10:56:18 - 00:11:09:29
Nick Falbo
That made me kind of more deeply understand what they were doing, that, I was kind of like the ideas I need to get out there. What did I need to help share to keep furthering the practice here in, bikeway design in the US?

00:11:10:01 - 00:11:44:22
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, and I had, recently I had Bill Schultz on to talk about the new Astro, bicycle facilities design guide, and then, had Ryan Russo on from knocked out to talk about the new natto, bike design bikeway design guide, that Naito had put out. And we it was fun going back and rewinding and sort of looking at that era of the 19 or the the 2012, 2013, bike design guides that, that that came out from both natto and from Astro and and some missed opportunities there.

00:11:44:22 - 00:12:12:06
John Simmerman
And so I appreciate what you're saying of, of that they didn't really kind of lean heavily into the Dutch design necessarily. And it was unfortunate for both of the design guides, but the NAFTA one was still far and above better than the 2012 Astro Bicycle Bikeway Design guide, which, you know, which Bill and I chatted about. And he was very, you know, very bummed that that didn't you know, materialize a little bit differently.

00:12:12:09 - 00:12:39:18
John Simmerman
But what was really interesting too, about it was thinking, rewinding and thinking about what our influences were back in that era. It's like we had the, you know, the people for bikes, Green Lane project. And so we were just starting to come to grips and understand the, the after effects of vehicular cycling and that impact the, you know, that that really had on our bikeway design guides.

00:12:39:20 - 00:13:07:19
John Simmerman
And, you know, at the time it was, you know, just even having green paint down was up, you know, it was like, you know, earth shattering. It was like cutting edge. And so we have really come a long ways when you start to look at having protected and separated, facilities that start to look and feel a little bit like the Dutch concept in terms of their protected and separated infrastructure.

00:13:07:23 - 00:13:32:01
John Simmerman
But one of the things that I always emphasize to here on the channel is that a lot of their, their network is shared space, and it's really traffic calming and it's street designs that reinforce slower speeds. And that's what we see you in there, you know, shared space environments, whether it's their feet struts or their local access roads that are just paved and bricks.

00:13:32:01 - 00:13:44:09
John Simmerman
Then send a message to drivers to slow down. And that brings us to your very first image, is how street design can reinforce slower speeds. So walk us through what we're looking at here.

00:13:44:12 - 00:14:19:24
Nick Falbo
Oh yeah. You know, I think when and when preparing for our conversation today, you know, I kept thinking about, how, really the story of innovation in this industry, in this field and how I think, I think transportation gets kind of, this reputation is being stuck by its design manuals, the mud, the subway, these, these, organizations that are keeping us back from innovating and and maybe there's a little bit of truth to that, obviously do exist in a world where we are following standards and rules, regulations.

00:14:19:26 - 00:14:46:06
Nick Falbo
But I would like to argue that transportation has always been highly innovative. And, you know, it's hard to kind of put ourselves back 100 years. But this is an image here from Oregon on the Columbia River Gorge Highway, where the very first yellow center line was used here in the United States in 1917. So this was like these are this is an example of where transportation innovation has always been happening from the very beginning days.

00:14:46:06 - 00:15:06:01
Nick Falbo
You know, when roads were first built, they didn't even have center lines at all. And then they started playing with markings and they started playing with colors. I think the original center line experiment with was, in a different state, like 1911. They added color to make it yellow. It wasn't formalized in any sort of design guidelines until the 1930s.

00:15:06:01 - 00:15:34:23
Nick Falbo
And it didn't really, you know, even the conventions of dashed lines and solid lines didn't start to get formalized until in the 50s. So this level of, ideas, experimentation, trial learning, sharing, this has been a part of this industry since the very beginning. And I think that, you know, as we see the transformation that has happened over the past 15 years in, in particular, I think bikeway design has really been where we've done so much.

00:15:34:25 - 00:15:54:04
Nick Falbo
It is, maybe heartening to know that as hard as it feels sometimes, you know, there is a pathway forward. And we have been putting that into practice. So I think we've been able to see how we go from ideas to, practice to ideas, sort of trial and experimentation to formal adoption. And we've been able to see that happen over the last 15 years.

00:15:54:04 - 00:16:01:08
Nick Falbo
So we'll we'll kind of flip through a few things where I kind of you can see that story unfold bit by bit over the years.

00:16:01:10 - 00:16:29:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And before we do that, I just want to comment too, that this, these two images, the top image of course, is from 1917 and is like the historical context of this, this road and then a more modern, snapshot below. And one of the things that comes to mind when we see this from a street design perspective is that our first gut reaction is like, oh my gosh, this looks like a dangerous road.

00:16:29:06 - 00:16:53:04
John Simmerman
You know, it's it's a rural environment. It's a mountainous environment. No, these are not from the Netherlands, folks. You know. And so that that inclination of, oh my gosh, this must be really, you know, really dangerous. But the counter intuitiveness of a street like this, a road like this, a rural road like this is it reinforces slower, better driver behavior and slower speed and more attentiveness.

00:16:53:10 - 00:17:36:13
John Simmerman
And so the, the sort of the irony is, is that a street like this is actually a safer street than one that has forgiving design, that encourages faster speed and less attentiveness and so, it reminds me of the chapter in, Tom Vanderbilt's book traffic, where he describes the similar type of mountainous road in Spain where it was like white knuckle, you know, it's like one wrong move and you can plummet off, the versus the earlier, the, the previous day, he got off the plane and he was jetlagged and he nearly fell asleep, you know, while driving on this massive motorway that, you know, had multiple lanes and forgiving design.

00:17:36:13 - 00:18:00:19
John Simmerman
And it just doesn't demand your attention. And so I always when I see streets in images like this, it reminds me of that lesson of the counterintuitive ness of a road that is quote unquote, looks and feels a little bit more dangerous because there's a cliff right there or whatever. And it and, you know, there's lots of curves, like even the lower, image here.

00:18:00:24 - 00:18:13:13
John Simmerman
If we turned it over to unlimited budgets and transportation engineers, they'd probably straighten out all those curves and, and, and have more forgiving design. So I love that you include this.

00:18:13:15 - 00:18:28:14
Nick Falbo
Yeah. Could you imagine building this street today? They would never be able to build it like this. And it. You're absolutely right. It's the lanes are too narrow and the sight lines are compromised. But it is actually part of what gives this whole corridor its character, its beauty and its its environment. Yeah.

00:18:28:16 - 00:18:33:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. Good stuff. All right. And now we're going to take a look at some history.

00:18:33:19 - 00:19:02:03
Nick Falbo
And yeah. So you know in the, in the, in the vein of like how do we, how do we innovate in this industry. You know, we've been doing it. We've been trying. And there was an era in sort of the late 60s and early 70s where we were enthusiastic about experimenting and supporting bicycling for transportation. And so, you know, down in California in, the kind of Davis, California area, there was a lot of experimentation, research and trial happening.

00:19:02:05 - 00:19:21:00
Nick Falbo
And this is a, study from 1972, from, UC Davis, where they were experimenting with protected bike lanes, back in those late 60s and early 70s. And so it really just sort of you look at those photos and like, that looks almost like what we build today. Like.

00:19:21:05 - 00:19:22:08
John Simmerman
And what's funny is that.

00:19:22:09 - 00:19:22:29
Nick Falbo
You got the part.

00:19:22:29 - 00:19:27:13
John Simmerman
Exactly curbside. So we got parking protected bike lane 1972. Yeah.

00:19:27:16 - 00:19:56:10
Nick Falbo
For parking. Yeah. Wild. Right. So we were doing this in this era and this study, if you dig into it, you know, they, you know, just like we do today. Well trial things out. We do some understanding of what our objective is. We, study the outcomes and we make decisions. They did run into some challenges. They did know challenges with visibility, driveways and intersections, concerns about people just sort of popping out behind parked cars, concerns about right hooked risk.

00:19:56:17 - 00:20:29:25
Nick Falbo
These are all the same concerns that continue to be raised when we talk about protected bike lanes today. And certainly did we sort of reset our efforts to get protected bike lanes into the industry, back in 2010 with an acto bike guide. And so this this is just like a little bit of a reminder of, you know, the the path these can take can be kind of circuitous, but unfortunately, just four years later, John Forester released his book Effective Cycling, which really captured the imaginations of, at least the engineers that, we're trying to design our streets.

00:20:29:28 - 00:20:45:16
Nick Falbo
And in light of the challenges that they faced in these early studies, and this may be easy out in the form of effective cycling, these ideas kind of got forgotten and fell to the wayside for, you know, for the next 30 years.

00:20:45:18 - 00:21:05:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And for those who are unfamiliar with, with who John Forester is and the book Effective Cycling is really the godfather of, vehicular cycling. And and. Yeah. So they really were vocal in advocating against putting in those types of facilities. Yeah. And then along.

00:21:05:10 - 00:21:05:27
Nick Falbo
Comes the.

00:21:05:29 - 00:21:07:24
John Simmerman
Portland, blue bike.

00:21:07:26 - 00:21:27:01
Nick Falbo
Back in Portland, this one. So this is sort of the era I moved to Portland in. So this is where I got inspired to do this kind of work. Was living in Portland, where at the time we had blue bike lanes on the ground. And, which was really unique. I, you know, I don't know if any other cities were really doing much experimentation with color at the time.

00:21:27:03 - 00:21:47:15
Nick Falbo
Portland had been hot off the heels of their 1996 bike plan from, sort of led by Mia Burke in, in the Portland, Bureau of Transportation. And they were embracing bicycling in a big way in the 90s. They had been building out bike boulevards in their neighborhoods. You were mentioning kind of slow streets being an important part of the network here in Portland.

00:21:47:15 - 00:22:06:04
Nick Falbo
They are the majority of our network, and it works really well for our context. But they were also experimenting with bike lanes and how do we make them better? And safer. So kind of countering the John Forester narrative that these bike lanes and separated spaces aren't safe and promote conflict, we said, well, you know what? They are safe.

00:22:06:04 - 00:22:33:02
Nick Falbo
They are comfortable, but what can we do to enhance them so that they can be safer, more visible, more noticeable? And so they're experimenting with blue bike lanes, inspired by the Danish and their use of blue in their bike lanes. So they had they did similarly, they were putting some examples on the ground studying their effectiveness, found that color did seem to increase awareness of the bike lane did seem to increase.

00:22:33:04 - 00:22:54:18
Nick Falbo
The opportunity for drivers to notice and yield to bicyclists. And so this is all, you know, that next little bit of evidence says, yes, let's keep doing this, let's do more of this and let's apply it in the right places. So this is a sort of context where I was riding around. I was seeing these blue bike lanes, and I was seeing a place that was, through investment, through innovation, doing something different.

00:22:54:18 - 00:23:15:08
Nick Falbo
And I was appreciating it as a resident. And I was realizing that, oh, there's there's a whole world to this of, of understanding and, innovation. And I it was just it was really very inspiring to me at the time and got me thinking about urban planning and transportation design as a career. Here it was pretty. It was a very formative time for me, just being here in the city.

00:23:15:08 - 00:23:30:14
Nick Falbo
And, I didn't mention too much in my background, but when I moved to Portland, I moved up from Eugene from the big to the big city here in Oregon, with an art degree. So I have a degree in fine art, and I studied, animation and filmmaking. And so I was working has a.

00:23:30:14 - 00:23:33:21
John Simmerman
Van that comes through.

00:23:33:23 - 00:23:51:11
Nick Falbo
Yeah, that comes through later. Yeah. So I was working Portland as an animator and doing, doing video games and, graphics and animation, but like, realizing that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to, you know, was building these, kind of fake worlds. And I was realizing that there's more in the real world that I maybe want to put my mark on.

00:23:51:13 - 00:24:16:04
John Simmerman
What's what's interesting, too, about this image. And we'll describe it here for the, the listening only audience is that we have this, blue bike clean, painted, across the conflict area. And this looks like it's a permissive, slip lane, like right turn lane. And so, in the background, it looks like we've got some, a bus and a couple of other cars.

00:24:16:04 - 00:24:33:21
John Simmerman
It looks like a very high speed environment. It just makes me shudder to think that. Oh, my gosh, this was even something so important and innovative that we put it on the cover of something. And then now, in today's era, we'd look at that and say, don't do that, please.

00:24:33:23 - 00:24:50:16
Nick Falbo
Yeah. We don't we don't want to kill people. This particular location has gone through multiple iterations of changes over the years, and it still is, not perfect. So there's more to do. I, you know, I can test that, but this is one of our more major bikeway entrances, into the city. And so, yeah, they were prioritizing.

00:24:50:16 - 00:24:55:14
Nick Falbo
How do we make this feel more comfortable? And what is kind of a stressful condition?

00:24:55:16 - 00:25:09:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. And and part of the history to people might be going blue. Yeah. Copenhagen. They use blue later on though in the United States blue got adopted as like I think medical and hospital the zone.

00:25:09:08 - 00:25:12:19
Nick Falbo
Yeah. Like accessible Ada parking and exactly.

00:25:12:19 - 00:25:39:12
John Simmerman
So blue sort of got tagged for that. That's where we're in in our quote unquote design guides and whatever they're they're calling that blue in the United States. Green. We mentioned earlier the people for bikes, green lane projects. So this almost like Kermit colored green has been the color that is has been adopted in and used widely in these conflict zone areas.

00:25:39:14 - 00:26:02:16
John Simmerman
And then of course, the Dutch use the terracotta colored, red the in in theirs, which is a natural pigment. Which ended up being a very cheap and accessible, you know, natural pigment color that they used, in the early stages of some of their bikeway. Development that took place, back in the day about 50 years ago.

00:26:02:19 - 00:26:25:19
John Simmerman
And, and we're actually using the terracotta pigment color in Austin and we'll see some of those, in a little bit. We actually add them to concrete slurry when we're doing concrete work. And we want to separate, the, the pedestrians from the people on bikes. But our local folks have not figured out how to add that pigment to the asphalt yet.

00:26:25:19 - 00:26:30:21
John Simmerman
They just can't seem to get their head wrapped around that. But yeah, yeah, it.

00:26:30:23 - 00:26:44:03
Nick Falbo
It is an interesting note. Yeah, there's some flexibility and experimentation still going on, but, sort of the, the blue and the green a little bit more, intense than maybe the nice, elegant red that they use in the Netherlands and in Austin.

00:26:44:05 - 00:26:57:23
John Simmerman
Yeah. And that brings us to our urban, bikeway design guide. From now we talked about that earlier. And yes, now we're super excited to have the most recent edition of, of this out as well.

00:26:57:26 - 00:27:23:28
Nick Falbo
Yeah. So this was really, you know, maybe a watershed moment for the industry with release of the Urban Bikeway Design Guide as a, national level guidance by a growing but respected organization that could help tell people what was happening in the most bicycle friendly cities in the US that could help give them an example to follow, to be inspired by and to copy, in a way.

00:27:23:28 - 00:27:46:14
Nick Falbo
And so, this, this bike guide, I mentioned this, kind of in my transition into urban planning, am my role and also planning design as an intern. I got to work on this project, which really formed my career in so many ways, both supporting the, authorship, the narratives and the research behind the scenes. But also in the visuals.

00:27:46:14 - 00:28:05:00
Nick Falbo
So I mentioned I was an animator and an artist and so I did all the drawings in the NAFTA Urban Bikeway Design Guide, illustrating all of these innovative bicycle facilities. And, you know, in the process of doing that, really, learned so much. So it wasn't just like I'm writing down a bike lane, it's going to be this big.

00:28:05:00 - 00:28:30:22
Nick Falbo
But I was actually kind of building them in these virtual environments for these illustration purposes. And so it was like I got very close to street design, to bikeway design. Yeah. The image up here now shows, protected bike lanes, you know, retrofit design with paint and parked cars and, and at the at the time, you know, the same challenges that we had in the 1960s with protected bike lanes still persisted today.

00:28:30:22 - 00:28:53:29
Nick Falbo
People were concerned about visibility. They were concerned about right hook risk. They were concerned about safety at intersections. And, the the Nadeau bike guy did have some solutions at intersections. But it didn't have the Dutch design. So the protected intersection didn't come until years later as a viable design that we could be embracing. But, what we did offer up or things like mixing zones.

00:28:53:29 - 00:29:14:27
Nick Falbo
So, there's different solutions to these problems. And the mixing zone was embraced as one that I think engineers could could understand. They could see and it could help get you to, yes, get you to a point where you could say yes to these protected lanes that for the last 30 years had been rejected outright. And so, you know, we I think it's important.

00:29:14:28 - 00:29:38:00
Nick Falbo
And yeah, where were we in this industry? We were just trying to convince people that this was going to be okay. And having something like a mixing zone, which does actually resolve right hook conflicts in a way, it's stressful, but it's safe and so, also, you know, very much so inspired by maybe, by, the Danes and the work that they were doing.

00:29:38:00 - 00:29:53:26
Nick Falbo
If you go to Copenhagen, you can kind of squint your eyes. It looks a little bit like an American city in some ways. When you look at the streets and they use, mixing zones, pretty comprehensively. And so I think we saw that, we saw that as a solution and embraced that in this guide as one potential answer to the problem.

00:29:53:29 - 00:30:34:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And that that you're very you know, you're correct there. You're, you're you're quite you're spot on in terms of the differences in the challenges between the Danes and the Dutch. And yeah, when you're in Copenhagen, you squint your eyes and you're like, this seems very north American in context. And and that's also some of the things that they're challenged with and they're working on is to try to make it enhance it and make it a little bit safer and start prioritizing the motor vehicles as much as they are, which is kind of what is happening when we see these mixed mixing zones in these, you know, the these lanes that are trying

00:30:34:20 - 00:31:21:01
John Simmerman
to prioritize the movement of, of cars and, and making those, permissive sort of, right lanes, right turns. And so, yeah, it I think we've learned a lot, you know, since then. And I will even say this, I think that some of the work that we're going to be profiling here in just a little bit that you put together, we really helped that because the, the videos that you put together and the, the work that you started put together of explaining what a protected intersection was and how it works, was instrumental, I think, to really helping North America get their head wrapped around the fact that, oh, we don't have to do

00:31:21:01 - 00:31:22:24
John Simmerman
it this way.

00:31:22:26 - 00:31:39:18
Nick Falbo
So just. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it was it was a little bit like the National Guard. I think they would tell you that, you know, one of the things they were doing at the time was trying to say yes to the things that people were already doing. So, if it wasn't already being done in the US, it wasn't being included in the guide.

00:31:39:20 - 00:31:57:15
Nick Falbo
So there was a little bit of this test where if it was too far, it was too innovative or like, not embraced in the US. We weren't going to do it because we always wanted to be able to point to, American cities that were making this happen. And so when it came to the Dutch protected intersection design, that had yet to happen, and so we had didn't have anywhere to point to.

00:31:57:19 - 00:32:04:13
Nick Falbo
We didn't have those examples on the ground. And so it was like it wasn't eligible, really to be included at the time.

00:32:04:15 - 00:32:28:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. I want to pause on this memorandum here because it's it's also we see the the introduction of the bike box here and the again, this mixing zone area and allowing the right turn. You've included this memorandum. It's too, too small to actually read the print on it. But what did you want to say about this.

00:32:28:02 - 00:32:46:21
Nick Falbo
Well, just that you know, the natural guide introduce ideas that were considered new. You know, cities like Portland. We're doing the cities like New York City were doing that San Francisco. But other cities weren't. And they would often, and struggle to even though it was in the Acto guide, they would still struggle to do it because it wasn't adopted.

00:32:46:21 - 00:33:08:29
Nick Falbo
By that way, as a part of their bikeway design guide or the the met or other design guides. But along the way, just a few years later, FHWa started to take the work that the cities were doing through that experimentation process and start to adopt them. So these are called interim approvals. So these are approvals from everywhere that says, yes, you can do bike boxes.

00:33:09:01 - 00:33:45:15
Nick Falbo
Yes, you can do colored bike lanes. And that's where they settled on green. Yes, you can do signalized intersections with bike signals. And this starts to formalize these in even more kind of legitimized fashion through way. And, you know, there may be there's issues to be taken about what they did formalize in each of these cases, but it is a part of that process going from these ideas that were being tested, documentation in things like the Acto guide, the formalization in by FH SWA with now all of these things are folded into the new, MCD based off this work.

00:33:45:15 - 00:33:57:14
Nick Falbo
So just that sort of pipeline from experimentation to formal adoption, along the way is what I wanted to kind of communicate, that the fact that it was actually highly effective at making some of that happen.

00:33:57:17 - 00:34:14:15
John Simmerman
And just, you know, for folks who who can't read this data on here, this is 2016 that we're talking about. So we're looking at about nine years ago. So I think puts that in the context. Look at this. This is starting to look Dutch like except for where in green.

00:34:14:17 - 00:34:39:09
Nick Falbo
Yes. Yeah. So so this is a little bit like that. This is, this came out a couple years after the Octo Bike guide came out. And this is a still from a video, from a blogger bicycle. Dutch, who has been promoting Dutch design for, for years on the internet through his posts, through his blogs and, and when the bike guide came out, he's like, finally, the Americans are trying to figure this out.

00:34:39:09 - 00:35:03:00
Nick Falbo
They're trying to do next generation bikeway design, but they're failing and they kind of like, yeah, kind of a critical voice to the work that we were presenting. And in particular when it came to intersections because we did not include the Dutch intersection design. So this is he's describing what he called Dutch junctions, and he takes some graphics from the act guiding.

00:35:03:00 - 00:35:18:06
Nick Falbo
So remember I made these graphic. So like he's loading this thing on the screen, he's telling us how it's wrong. And I'm taking it a little bit personal, but, but this, this video did get a lot of attention when it came out saying, hey, the Americans are doing a good job, but they need to do better.

00:35:18:10 - 00:35:40:25
Nick Falbo
And here is this design, this Dutch Junction, and, and figure it out, guys. And and so we do get a lot of attention. And I looked at it, I was I was very skeptical, frankly, when I first saw this, I was like, I don't know how this is going to fit in our streets. And is there really enough room and how as a bicyclist, what I want to go through this like circuitous path that he's kind of illustrating here.

00:35:40:25 - 00:35:57:09
Nick Falbo
And, and so I had a lot of skepticism, but I was also I was also curious. And he got my imagination started and as many as well as many others about. Is there more we can do, add these protected bike lanes so that they can, perform better or be safer or be more comfortable?

00:35:57:11 - 00:36:27:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And Mark is a dear friend of mine and has been on the channel multiple, multiple times, and I've had a chance to, to film with him, in, in his hometown as well. So, it's good stuff. And I remember that that original, video that he put together on this and, now at this time in this era of, of when you were putting this stuff together and you had mentioned you were kind of like, oh, I wonder, you know, that circuitous route around, had you visited the Netherlands at that point?

00:36:27:18 - 00:36:31:06
John Simmerman
Have you spent had you spent any time there writing yet?

00:36:31:08 - 00:36:50:22
Nick Falbo
I had not, I had not. So I was sort of being introduced to some of these differences in the Netherlands that I had not been familiar with. And, that because we weren't doing it in the US, it wasn't being incorporated into the acto guide and so I had to do a little more digging to kind of get to the root of his concepts.

00:36:50:24 - 00:36:54:03
John Simmerman
Yeah. Here's Mark.

00:36:54:05 - 00:37:00:22
Nick Falbo
And this is the latest advice for a cycling with the right turning lane. The problem with this.

00:37:00:22 - 00:37:01:09
John Simmerman
Design.

00:37:01:12 - 00:37:02:27
Nick Falbo
Is the extremely bad angle.

00:37:02:27 - 00:37:05:27
John Simmerman
Of crossing a drive. Just correct.

00:37:06:00 - 00:37:17:25
Nick Falbo
Yeah, yeah. And I love the sort of Dutch, brutal honesty that he just kept gates, the gates saying the great guys. But look at this design. Let's do better. Yeah.

00:37:17:28 - 00:37:42:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. And this very much his, his, his style and the way that he does it. And it's also very Dutch, as you know, working for, a Dutch firm now, the, the Dutch have a or are famous for being, like, brutally honest and upfront and almost brusque about how they deliver things. So, yeah, that's pretty fun.

00:37:42:17 - 00:37:49:00
John Simmerman
Now, this is, the protected intersection video from 2014. Is this one years?

00:37:49:03 - 00:38:04:17
Nick Falbo
This one's mine. So yeah. So I after that video came out, I spent, you know, I was I was working on projects, continuing to do design guidance work for cities as, as part of bike planning projects while I was working at all the planning and design. And I did a lot of doodling at the time, I was like drawing these out.

00:38:04:17 - 00:38:24:15
Nick Falbo
Like how? How can this work? I've got some challenges that I see with wet, wet, market, but what can I what can we do to solve them? And, it kind of emerged into this concept for protected intersections. So, yeah, this video was really my way of trying to communicate these ideas on in a broader way.

00:38:24:18 - 00:38:44:10
Nick Falbo
And I agreed with them. We were doing things, kind of we weren't doing enough. I start out really critical in some ways of things like mixing zones. I got in a little bit of heat, for being too critical in some ways. But I'm trying to set this up to say we need to do better, and we need to go beyond some of these tools that we already have.

00:38:44:12 - 00:38:58:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's funny too. You know how thin skinned some of these engineers and designers are about this stuff? It's like, guys, you know, it's not a personal attack on us, but yeah, what.

00:38:58:28 - 00:39:02:24
Nick Falbo
We always want to do better, right? We always want to get where we need to go.

00:39:02:27 - 00:39:28:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I love this too. I mean, circa 2014, that was when we actually made the move from Hawaii to here in Austin, Texas. By that time, Austin had, already had, an ongoing relationship with the Dutch cycling embassy. And so some of the first protected bike lanes, and terracotta, red colored, were already in place.

00:39:28:24 - 00:39:47:24
John Simmerman
So when we arrived in 2014, in Austin, we already had the beginnings of our first protected bike lanes. And then very soon after that, we had our first protected intersections. But that's what you're describing here now. And you're walking through this. Let's turn the volume up just to get a little urinary there.

00:39:47:26 - 00:40:14:28
Nick Falbo
There are four main elements to protected intersection designs a corner refuge island, a forward stop bar for bicyclists, a setback bike and pedestrian crossing, and bicycle friendly signal phasing. The corner refuge island is the key element that makes these intersections function. This island brings the protective barrier from the bike lane far into the intersection. Think of it like a curb extension for bicyclists.

00:40:15:00 - 00:40:22:09
Nick Falbo
The island physically separates bicyclists as they make right turns, and provides a secure refuge for those waiting at a red signal.

00:40:22:11 - 00:40:24:04
John Simmerman
I'm going to press pause here for just a second.

00:40:24:09 - 00:40:44:12
Nick Falbo
You got you loaded this up at the perfect time because what the video did that I think it so this video came out and it got very popular right away. And which was so great to watch. And it was, it was like this new idea that people were hungry for because at this point, this is 2014. The actual bike had been out for a few years.

00:40:44:12 - 00:41:10:22
Nick Falbo
Cities were building protected bike lanes, and they were finally starting to build networks of protected bike lanes and so not only did were there, you know, the challenges of what do you do at the intersection, but the challenges of how do you circulate through intersections to connect from one protected bike lane to another? And then that the people were getting hungry for some solutions that didn't feel like you were just sitting out in the middle of the intersection in a in a turn box, which is sort of the solution that they had at the time.

00:41:10:24 - 00:41:31:26
Nick Falbo
And, and so I think it was the right time for cities who were trying to solve this very problem of how do we circulate as we build out a network, but they just didn't have the language. And so what I did in this video, not only, calling it protected intersections, this is actually the first time that name had really come out in a big way, talking about Dutch style intersections.

00:41:31:28 - 00:41:56:29
Nick Falbo
And that name itself is compelling and easy to grab on to in the in the era of protected bike lanes. But then within the video, I'm articulating the different elements that help you build it and put it in the language that American engineers can understand, because they understand median islands and refuge islands and stop bars and waiting areas like they they just couldn't put it all together.

00:41:57:01 - 00:42:18:13
Nick Falbo
And in some ways, even the, even in the Netherlands, they didn't quite have a name for it. It was just sort of the natural product of what happens when you have these wide separated protected bike lanes starting to intersect. But we needed to, like, deconstruct it and reconstruct it for our engineers. And so it gave them a language, it gave them terminology, and it gave them kind of these foundations to understand what they were even looking at.

00:42:18:13 - 00:42:40:21
Nick Falbo
So it it worked so well that I think I as soon as it came out, people were grabbing this video and forwarding it to their city councils or their planners or whatever, saying, we need these in our community. How do we do this? Let's build this. And and sort of just came out and surprise people with, with how much, potentially could surprise me in some ways with how much attention it got.

00:42:40:24 - 00:42:51:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. If you were to recreate this video now, what would you change about the design graphic was.

00:42:51:09 - 00:42:55:00
Nick Falbo
Oh, that's really that's an interesting question. I think,

00:42:55:03 - 00:43:01:06
John Simmerman
You know, I have some things I have some immediate things that pop into mind that I probably also say.

00:43:01:08 - 00:43:19:03
Nick Falbo
I mean, I would I would love to hear your thoughts on it. I think, you know what? I was really recognized in this in, in terms of the design that I portrayed here is, just taking advantage of kind of the extra widths that these parking protected bike lanes had. That was really what helped me personally, like, realize this could work.

00:43:19:06 - 00:43:36:28
Nick Falbo
And, above and beyond, maybe the original by the bicycle Dutch, Dutch Junction video of, how do we make this work in a way that is really comfortable for me as a bicyclist and prioritizes where I want to be and where I want to go, and taking advantage of that extra width worked, in the design.

00:43:37:00 - 00:43:47:14
Nick Falbo
But, yeah, I mean, I, I'm. Yeah. I'm curious your thoughts. What, what would you like to see in a in a revised version of this year, ten years later? If we were rethinking it or redoing it.

00:43:47:16 - 00:44:12:24
John Simmerman
Well, I mean, just also kind of like taking into context to what we've observed in the Netherlands, in terms of their design and how they're adapting some of their design. They're, they're they're like starting to realize that their, their little refuge islands that they're creating, they're they're starting to sculpt them out and like, because they need more waiting area for, for the people on bikes.

00:44:12:24 - 00:44:33:29
John Simmerman
And so they're, also making sure that the, the angle, the turning angle, the radius that the cars have is much more abrupt, and less of a sweeping turn that where cars can, you know, the drivers are able to do that kind of at speed and then, then they're perpendicular to. So really kind of tightening up some of those angles.

00:44:34:01 - 00:44:57:07
John Simmerman
And so those are the those are the two things that immediately kind of like ooh it's close. It's almost Dutch scale. But then when you look at it from above you're like oh wow, look at this. And they're like doing these sorts of things. And so that's one of the things that I love about the Dutch approach to how they're building their streets is that they're always evaluating.

00:44:57:07 - 00:45:20:18
John Simmerman
They're always tinkering with it. It's like this concept in business called continuous improvement. And they're they're always working on, evaluating and tweaking and making it even better, including looking at, oh, we've got a problem of so many people are queuing in this area, how can we create more space for them to queue and get through the intersection quicker?

00:45:20:18 - 00:45:24:03
John Simmerman
So I just love that spirit of continuous improvement.

00:45:24:06 - 00:45:41:05
Nick Falbo
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. There and there we are. You know more modern guidance does get into tightening the radius using things like truck aprons. You know here we love our big vehicles and we you know, try to figure out how did the engineers solve for this. So there have been some innovations in the guidance since this video has come out.

00:45:41:05 - 00:45:43:05
Nick Falbo
And, and not just something that.

00:45:43:06 - 00:45:48:25
John Simmerman
You just said, something there. You clarify that. What do you mean? We love our big vehicles.

00:45:48:27 - 00:46:13:26
Nick Falbo
Oh, yeah. Well, you know, maybe not all of us, but, you know, there's a challenge. You're trying to adapt this type of infrastructure into a US context. And, you know, we it's partly political, partly physical. And really, in the end, it does take engineers sort of saying yes to this. So while some of this is these baby steps of how do we hold our own against the engineers, how do we bring solutions to the table, get them to say yes and say, oh, in the end, it's not too not too bad.

00:46:13:26 - 00:46:15:11
Nick Falbo
Let's do this anyways.

00:46:15:13 - 00:46:24:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I we've got this, this image here, which makes me chuckle a little bit, but I'll let you, introduce it to, to the audience here.

00:46:24:18 - 00:46:46:07
Nick Falbo
Yeah. This is just a, the still of kind of those different elements that I outlined in the video, how you build a protected intersection. And, and again, like by giving people names to refer to, I think it really gave advocates, designers, planners, tools to talk to the engineers and engineers, tools to understand so they could think about what they were building and why and what it would take.

00:46:46:07 - 00:46:55:06
Nick Falbo
So this is it was, again, this sort of like just giving people the words did so much to help, reveal to them that something different was possible.

00:46:55:08 - 00:47:16:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I, I chuckle to when I see the bicycle friendly signal phasing and the other thing that, you know, pops up, especially when the Dutch are watching some of the videos that I'm producing from here in North America, and they're just like, what is it with these signals that are across the intersection? Why don't you have the bicycle signals on the near side?

00:47:16:28 - 00:47:31:16
John Simmerman
And I'm like, oh yeah, that's one of the great things. Now in Portland, you guys have one of the first, I think I had seen from Peter Coons, the post that, you have one of the first near side bike, bike signals,

00:47:31:18 - 00:47:53:17
Nick Falbo
That we've got many install actually all over the city. Fantastic nearside bike signals and I think. Yeah, inspired by the Dutch, kind of nearside signal. It's good. As a bicyclist. You got the signal? It's for you. But I think actually, the one of the best things that they do is it's all the signals are on the near side, and I've, I've got an image I supplied a little bit later of a protected intersection that Moby kind designed.

00:47:53:20 - 00:48:05:00
Nick Falbo
That's maybe the most Dutch protected intersection in North America. And it does. And we'll talk maybe more about that. But it does move those all of the signals to the near side, not just the bike signals. So, kind of interesting.

00:48:05:03 - 00:48:07:01
John Simmerman
That's the one in Canmore, right?

00:48:07:04 - 00:48:09:27
Nick Falbo
That's the one in Canmore. Yeah. You probably maybe you heard about it with time.

00:48:09:27 - 00:48:24:02
John Simmerman
Yeah. We've I've, I've profiled it on the channel. I can't remember who I profiled it with. It might have been Leonard, or it might have been somebody else who was involved in that project. But this is really interesting. This is from UCLA in 1972.

00:48:24:04 - 00:48:25:06
Nick Falbo
Yeah. We're going back to the we.

00:48:25:06 - 00:48:28:22
John Simmerman
Were looking at this way back then. We were going back to the 70s.

00:48:28:22 - 00:48:46:29
Nick Falbo
Yeah, it's pretty wild. So in the same way that we were experimenting with protected bike lanes, in California and the UC Davis area, they were also thinking about this problem of how do we do this? Now, this is a diagram that's on the screen from a 1972 design guidelines that this has never been built. In the US.

00:48:46:29 - 00:49:03:16
Nick Falbo
They I think they referenced it as like a German design. So these types of ideas were being pursued in Europe. But when you look at it today, you're like, that's the protected intersection. And it's it's wild because I had not seen this, before doing my work. This sort of emerged a little bit later as we continued to dig into it.

00:49:03:16 - 00:49:21:07
Nick Falbo
I'm like, and it was just so wild seeing these ideas that we were thinking were so new, so innovative. And instead, actually, you know, we've we've thought about this before. People have known about this for a while. And here's this diagram from 50 years earlier where we are finally now seeing it.

00:49:21:09 - 00:49:29:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, the vehicular cyclist, movement killed it pretty effectively.

00:49:29:09 - 00:49:50:22
Nick Falbo
So so the video had just come out and people were excited and there was sort of an arms race to try to build these things. Cities were like, how do we do this? Who wants to be the first? Who can who can get their protected, intersections? And they're connected. Protected bike lanes first. And, this is, a pop up protected intersection from 2015.

00:49:50:22 - 00:50:12:26
Nick Falbo
So just that within the year, I got reached, someone reached out to me from Minneapolis in their efforts to try to promote bicycle, you know, Minneapolis, a great biking city here in the States. And we we built one. We built kind of a mock up, full size protected intersection during an Open Streets event in 2015, to demonstrate that it can fit you can do this.

00:50:12:26 - 00:50:30:23
Nick Falbo
We can make this happen. So this was a parking protected bike lane configuration with the corner islands and the refuge islands. And it's, you know, it's made out of, you know, bits and pieces of stuff we could assemble for the one day only demonstration, but it was also very effective in showing how this can work. How do you circulate through this thing?

00:50:30:26 - 00:50:46:22
Nick Falbo
How would it protect you in the, in the interaction with cars, potentially. And and also just proving that it can fit into a space where I think people look at that in there, like, how does this even fit? We've got the space. We can do this. We can make it happen. So helped demonstrate that that was possible.

00:50:46:24 - 00:51:14:16
John Simmerman
What's really, really interesting, too, is, in the middle of this, of this image that's on screen here and again, for the listening only audience, this is a, pop up demonstration project, a tactical urbanism type, demonstration project of a protected intersection, but in the middle of the screen and off to the far left, you'll see that there's a car sort of cued up, and you'll you'll see some planter protection.

00:51:14:19 - 00:51:44:20
John Simmerman
That's also, you know, delineating a planter protected bikeway. And what was really funny is I remember those exact planters and that exact setup from the previous year, because I was actually filming, the Open Streets event, in Minneapolis, and they had a pop up, protected bike lane. And so they were collecting data. They were showing people at the open streets event what a protected bike lane was, with a planter protection.

00:51:44:20 - 00:52:30:08
John Simmerman
And so that, that, you know, image just kind of like they took it to the next level the previous year, they were doing the, you know, getting feedback from people using a protected bike lane the next year, obviously, they took a next level up of the protected, bike lane into a protected intersection. And this is one of the great things that I think has emerged over the last decade, is that acceptance of doing these sort of tactical urbanism, these, pop up sorts of installations to try to help people understand, what this is all about, because it's so much better to feel it and experience it than looking at a diagram like this

00:52:30:08 - 00:52:49:10
John Simmerman
on page. And so when people are presented at open houses with the, you know, the fancy diagrams and scrolls that, that the designers, you know, put together and everything, it's like, yeah, I still don't get it. What's it feel like? This helps people understand what it feels like.

00:52:49:13 - 00:53:17:05
Nick Falbo
Yeah. And it was interesting because we're sort of the in some ways, the first time I really got to, see this in the US as like a functional thing as well as like, you know, we at this point had been. Yeah, had been diagrams that had been conceptual. And here we are actually building it. And it's it's kind of funny because we used to build these islands, these sort of fake concrete islands was like, I think like two inch thick foam, sort of like, like construction foam.

00:53:17:07 - 00:53:36:02
Nick Falbo
I have a such a fondness for by a whole different conversation this. But I'm such a fondness for the, the low height curbs that they use in the Netherlands that are much more bicycle friendly. And when they build these protected intersections in the US. One of my biggest criticisms is that everyone's goes to the full standard six inch curb, and a six inch curb is it's not a bicycle friendly curb.

00:53:36:04 - 00:53:55:23
Nick Falbo
It eats into your operating space. It's it's too beefy. It collects debris. These like more elegant, low, high curbs. It's funny, this pop up the first one in some ways that little detail like. That's one thing I wish I could see in these more permanent constructions that we have yet to see. But so yeah, so the, the the race was on, how do we build these?

00:53:55:23 - 00:54:27:10
Nick Falbo
We did this pop up which was so wonderful. But the first, kind of formal protected intersection in the US came to Davis, California, which feels appropriate given its connection to the history. And this is a project that Moby Kahn had worked on, with Fair and Piers to design and incorporate, this like latest intersection design. They had a connection of bike lanes to some shared use paths, and they were using it as a way to try to to formalize that circulation and create a comfortable condition for people, walking and biking.

00:54:27:12 - 00:54:31:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And then our next.

00:54:31:12 - 00:54:53:29
Nick Falbo
Second protecting it. Yeah. Maybe a month later, the second protection intersection got built in Salt Lake City, which is one that I got to be, participating on. I helped design this one. And so it was this sort of, this cascade of protected intersection implementations that started to happen, all across the country. So, yeah, starting in Davis, here we are in Salt Lake City, who, you know, famously known for their super wide streets.

00:54:53:29 - 00:55:14:18
Nick Falbo
So as a part of these re roadway reconfigurations to do road diet to put in protected bike lanes, there is the space to try to build out these protected intersections. And these first ones were really critical for understanding how they work. Can we build them. What do they look like. And and really helped set the tone for a lot of the the protected intersections to come.

00:55:14:21 - 00:55:35:23
John Simmerman
Yeah. And this this innovation I mean, very soon after this being built, the Congress for the New Urbanism had their meeting there in Salt Lake City. I was able to to ride on it, look at it, profile it, come back and interview John Larson on the podcast, when it was, audio only. I need to get John back on.

00:55:35:23 - 00:55:59:01
John Simmerman
Actually, I need to get back to Salt Lake City to look at some of this stuff that has happened, in the interim in the years since. But yeah, it was wonderful to see. And we start to see, you know, some other designs. This is actually in the Mueller community here in Austin, Texas. And we believe that this is the first protected intersection in the state of Texas.

00:55:59:04 - 00:56:33:28
John Simmerman
And this is an interesting design because this is the intersection of Zach Scott and Tilly and the construction that you see in the the the upper image. The lower right corner is the corner of Tilly and Zach Scott where the Marshall Middle School is. And so now this is, this is like, you know, in fact, in the lower, lower photo, you can see, you know, some of the riders going through the protected intersection here, and you can see some of the homes being built, in the distance.

00:56:34:05 - 00:56:57:27
John Simmerman
Now, this, this is the school is is done. It's been open for two years, and we're at about 95% build out of of the community here at, Miller. Mueller spelled Mueller. Have have people, pronounce it Miller. Have the people pronounce it Mueller. And it used to be our airport. And so this was a complete redo.

00:56:57:27 - 00:57:28:19
John Simmerman
A greenfield development of what used to be the runways at or municipal airport or our main airport. And, it's been fabulous to see this mature and document this maturing over the last decade. And I can tell you that these protected, bikeways throughout the community and the protected intersections make a huge amount of difference to the number of families and kids that are riding on a daily basis there.

00:57:28:22 - 00:57:57:19
Nick Falbo
Yeah. This is, you know, maybe a great example of, you know, planning done right in, the US. I mean, this whole new development area that clearly had been thought through with streets and trail systems that interconnect. And here at this intersection, this opportunity to have this circulation in that low stress protected intersection fashion. And and one of the reasons I wanted to bring this example from Austin to the table is because while all this was happening, the knocked our guides out, the Dutch Junction videos out.

00:57:57:19 - 00:58:21:18
Nick Falbo
I'm putting out these ideas about protected intersections. Nathan Wilks in the city of Austin, Texas, was doing the exact same thing, and he he was really leading, kind of quietly in Austin on doing this type of low stress design, high quality design in protected intersection, Dutch style design. So, you know, he was exploring these exact same ideas, and we were kind of doing it in parallel.

00:58:21:18 - 00:58:40:25
Nick Falbo
And so is, kind of a one of those examples of every we're all thinking in the same way. We're all trying to get to the same place. And, and also a great example that I love the attention to detail here on this intersection. And yeah, when I went to go visit it, you I took this photo at the bottom, riding around with some friends.

00:58:40:27 - 00:58:59:21
Nick Falbo
Yeah. The neighborhood yet had really yet to be built. So it was sort of this, the streets didn't all connect. The circulation wasn't necessarily complete, but, but now, you know, I imagine that it's it's it's well-used and well-loved. So, just you got a great example of, like, these ideas coming to fruition, over time.

00:58:59:21 - 00:59:08:12
Nick Falbo
But I just want to give good credit to Nathan Wilks and all the great work being done in Austin to really make their, their city, safe and comfortable place to ride bikes.

00:59:08:14 - 00:59:32:29
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And Nathan, of course, you know, has benefited from the fact that, you know, again, over a decade ago, the city was able to establish that relationship with the Dutch cycling embassy, and there was lots of, information exchange back in 2012. They had their think bike workshop. The very first thing bike workshop with the, the Dutch cycling embassy.

00:59:32:29 - 01:00:01:11
John Simmerman
And that really helped pave the way, pardon the pun, for being able to get these Dutch inspired, designs out on the ground here in Austin, Texas. And, you don't really see it in this particular image, but we'll see it in other images, I think, is that, we also adopted the using, of, as I mentioned earlier, the terracotta pigment in, in some of the, the infrastructure when they're using, they're pouring concrete.

01:00:01:14 - 01:00:22:27
John Simmerman
And that brings us to protected intersections. And we see the, don't give up at the intersection, which is kind of one of the NAFTA, approaches of understanding what was happening is we we started to adopt the green lane program and the protected bikeways, and then we would get to the intersection and just sort of give up.

01:00:22:29 - 01:00:46:05
Nick Falbo
Yeah. Just like the story of these other bike lane elements, you know, the experimentation happens on the ground. The guidelines start to formalize it, and it becomes this formal tool that can be used, protected intersections, which was not in the original Acto guide. Went through that same process. So the idea comes out, the cities are building these and learning from them.

01:00:46:07 - 01:01:15:21
Nick Falbo
And then the formal guidance gets adopted. So, in the kind of years after the protected intersection video came out and the city started building these intersections, then these these organizations started formally, embracing them as well. So, both Naito and FHWa, recognized protected intersections as a new tool in the toolbox and started to provide guidance for cities to, to start to implement these.

01:01:15:21 - 01:01:26:13
Nick Falbo
And so you start to see kind of a little more of that formalization of these tools, into the, the regulations and the guides that are available for cities all around the country.

01:01:26:20 - 01:01:29:23
John Simmerman
Now, we're seeing some of the, the red pigment.

01:01:29:25 - 01:01:52:00
Nick Falbo
Yeah. So, you know, so since then, you know, and they're now formal tools. We are here we are ten years later since these ideas came out and, I wanted to highlight this intersection as a great example of maybe that one of the more Dutch versions of a protected intersection. It's got the terracotta color throughout the pathway separating pedestrians and bicyclists.

01:01:52:02 - 01:02:12:03
Nick Falbo
It has, nearside signals. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance. I wasn't on the team at Mobike when they were designing this intersection, but they did. You know, of course they did everything right, bringing all of the Dutch tools to the table. The team working in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, in the city, was embracing of these ideas and wanted to try to do things differently.

01:02:12:03 - 01:02:31:10
Nick Falbo
So this really pulls all the tools together, including you mentioned the nearside signal. And so these traffic signals, instead of being across the street as we're all used to, they're on your side of the street where you stop and and we do that. Now, you know, you mentioned in Portland we have that a lot for bike signals. It is a nice handy feature to have your signal right there.

01:02:31:10 - 01:02:55:16
Nick Falbo
You know, it's for you. It's close to you. But actually I think bringing all the signals to our side of the street is a great innovation that, you know, maybe we can think about how we can do here in America. In particular, I think it it does a really good job of, of keeping people from running red lights and discouraging encroachment and all sorts of, you know, behavioral things.

01:02:55:16 - 01:02:57:14
Nick Falbo
We want to be controlling at these intersections.

01:02:57:17 - 01:03:23:00
John Simmerman
This particular image here on screen really highlights one of the things that I love most about the Dutch design of their bikeway networks. And this the continuous level of the bikeway design, we see this being implemented in a handful of cities, in North America. The one that I've documented in the past is is more Danish, inspired.

01:03:23:00 - 01:03:51:06
John Simmerman
But still in, using this. And that's in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they are, especially along Western Avenue and a few of their other installations. They've gone out of their way to prove that you can actually have continuous level, of your sidewalks and of your bikeways and, and then their case, they proved that they could retrofit it and put it in and the world wouldn't stop spinning.

01:03:51:08 - 01:04:00:22
John Simmerman
So incredibly important, you know, from your perspective, and the work that you're doing, add anything that I'm missing, about this.

01:04:00:28 - 01:04:35:13
Nick Falbo
Yeah. You know, a lot of what we've been talking about are the these protected intersections is the solution for these major streets. How do we make these major streets safe and comfortable? And, as I kind of was thinking, okay, well, what's next? What comes after? What's this next realm of innovation? What are we looking to the Dutch for in terms of what they're doing that we can bring here into, into the States and this world of, yeah, continuous, cycle track and sidewalk crossings and is, I think, the most underappreciated design detail we could be bringing into our streets.

01:04:35:13 - 01:05:10:03
Nick Falbo
And even if it's not even for bikeways or even just main streets prioritizing pedestrians, this idea that, your sidewalk and your bike lane should, remain raised and continuous through intersection crossings of side streets. I think that's a really powerful way of prioritizing bicycling and walking. I think that can, really create an experience where you feel uninterrupted because you literally the path is uninterrupted and and really actually building a design that reinforces the traffic laws as they are.

01:05:10:03 - 01:05:30:29
Nick Falbo
You know, when you're a, driver turning on to a side street or you're exiting a neighborhood and going onto a main street, you are supposed to yield to people walking and biking along the main line. But the way we design our streets, typically we don't. We don't. It doesn't happen. It's, you know, we clearly the the sidewalk ramps down, the bike lane breaks.

01:05:31:01 - 01:05:50:27
Nick Falbo
The priority even though legally is for people walking and biking through the design seems to say otherwise. And so what these, continuous crossings do is they make the design match the law, and they do it in such an elegant way. So when this photo that's on the screen, you look at it, you're like, oh, that's just a protected bike lane.

01:05:51:00 - 01:06:11:24
Nick Falbo
That's an intersection. And it's hard to even notice in some ways because the sidewalk and the bike lane are so uninterrupted. And so I think that that this is an area that I would love to see more of. How do we create that? Continuous experience, end to end? There's a lot of criticism of protected bike lanes on areas with frequent intersections.

01:06:11:26 - 01:06:29:21
Nick Falbo
Here in Portland, we have relatively short blocks, so we often have intersections. And so what can we do? We can do something like this where the experience as a bicyclist or a pedestrian feels uninterrupted. And we're we're really designing with their user priority in mind. So to me this is this is a great tool, a great treatment.

01:06:29:21 - 01:06:37:09
Nick Falbo
We're seeing a lot more in Canada, but I really hope to see more of this getting embraced here in America, in the US.

01:06:37:11 - 01:07:03:29
John Simmerman
And I'd like to emphasize that this is really what I mean by creating all ages and abilities, design standards. Just imagine somebody in a, an adaptive cycle or a wheelchair, I mean, you know, had not having to go up and down off of these curb cuts at each and every one of these minor, intersections and, and, you know, more, less prioritize cross streets, etc..

01:07:04:00 - 01:07:15:22
John Simmerman
You know, it's like having that continuous level is much more, dignified for those individuals with mobility challenges.

01:07:15:24 - 01:07:37:02
Nick Falbo
And if this is a video of one of these in action, in Canada, and you can kind of see this, the video, the video, there's an interaction here of this driver and this bicyclist, and the driver is is waiting. And I think, like, we might not expect to see that kind of behavior, in a, the way we would typically design a driveway or, sorry, design an intersection.

01:07:37:05 - 01:07:38:11
Nick Falbo
Yeah.

01:07:38:13 - 01:08:00:02
John Simmerman
So one of my other favorite topics that I've, chatted with, Leonard to about know multiple times is, are the, the Dutch, designs of the Dutch, roundabouts and the cycle tracks and things of that nature. I don't know why you've included this photo, so I'm going to let you describe what we're looking at.

01:08:00:04 - 01:08:17:06
Nick Falbo
Yeah. You know, I know you've talked with Leonard a little bit about this topic. It comes up every once in a while, but really toward that, that idea of like, what's sort of what's next? And I think Dutch roundabouts have been what's next for a while now in terms of how do we incorporate good design here in the States.

01:08:17:08 - 01:08:35:25
Nick Falbo
But, the way they do roundabouts really is very different from how we do it here in, in the States. And the way we've designed our roundabouts. I think our Dutch, my Dutch colleagues describe the American roundabouts as slingshot roundabouts where you enter in, you know I think yeah. Design design guidelines that wants you to enter in slowly.

01:08:35:25 - 01:08:55:11
Nick Falbo
Right. You're doing those interactions with other cars, but then they kind of whip you around and launch you out the other side. And unfortunately, that place where they launch you out the other side because they want the exits to be fast. That's where people are walking and biking and crossing the street. And so, the way we design our roundabouts has not been that great for people walking and biking.

01:08:55:11 - 01:09:16:16
Nick Falbo
And there is another way, and I think that I'd love to see more cities embracing Dutch style geometry and approaches to roundabout design. And so that we can try to bring it back as a tool that's not just good for safety for people driving, but good for the safety and access of everybody. And so I think there's this is a room for growth.

01:09:16:16 - 01:09:33:22
Nick Falbo
We have here in, in the States is to rethink our roundabouts in particular, and offer more compact designs for urban areas. So I'd love to see some of these. Also, emerge here in this the next ten years of, the building of our safe, connected bike systems here in the States.

01:09:33:24 - 01:09:58:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And before any of our North American roundabout designers start freaking out and start to, putting things in the comments here to the video. Yes, we get it. You're the roundabout intersection designs that the North America has been employing are much safer than the previous iteration of of intersection design. So we're not saying that.

01:09:58:08 - 01:10:40:09
John Simmerman
We're just saying that being able to tighten up some of these angles and really, reinforce slower design speed and through the articulation of the, the intersection of the roundabout, and, and really fine tuning it using that Dutch lens of fine tuning, it really makes it so much safer for people walking and biking or in wheelchairs trying to cross and navigate through that intersection because, yeah, the way we've been doing it in North America, it's really car infrastructure and it's very effective car infrastructure, and it does enhance safety, but only if you're in an automobile.

01:10:40:09 - 01:11:06:05
John Simmerman
So and again, we're seeing this playing out in communities like, in Carmel, Indiana, where they have the largest number of installed North American style, roundabouts and multi-lane roundabouts. And in many of them, they're realizing, are not very comfortable for people walking and biking in, in that or in that area. So yeah, we're a hard lesson learned.

01:11:06:10 - 01:11:10:00
John Simmerman
Good opportunity for the future. Good stuff.

01:11:10:02 - 01:11:27:03
Nick Falbo
Yeah, I, I really do. I really think there's real opportunity there. And it's similar to the protected intersections as these cities are building out their bikeway network. They're going to be faced with how do we navigate these roundabouts. And there are ways to do it. And I think that the real message is that you can build these here in the States.

01:11:27:03 - 01:11:43:25
Nick Falbo
And I know that some cities are trying and we're seeing more, bike lanes, sort of protected bike lanes integrated into roundabouts. And it's still kind of rare, but there's a few around the country today. And I think that, as we start doing more of those, it's going to be even more important to get the rest of the details of the roundabout.

01:11:43:25 - 01:11:53:19
Nick Falbo
Right? So it's not just about providing a bike path around the roundabout, but you have to make sure that those interactions at the crossings are safe and that you're building it to be safe for everybody.

01:11:53:22 - 01:12:16:22
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. I'm going to pull up the website once again. Again, mobi con is who you are now working with, and you guys are doing some amazing stuff all around the globe. Certainly do appreciate you joining me here today. Is there anything that we didn't yet have a chance to discuss that you want to make sure to leave the audience with?

01:12:16:25 - 01:12:38:07
Nick Falbo
Yeah. I guess it's more of the overall theme of a lot of our conversation that this world of innovation is still ongoing. There's more to learn from, our colleagues all around the world, and that we can keep innovating in the US and we can keep, going beyond the guidelines. You know, we finally have the new generation of guidelines from from the acto.

01:12:38:09 - 01:12:46:03
Nick Falbo
But there's more to learn and there's more to, keep, keep doing and keep doing better. So I'm really excited to be, a part of a team that.

01:12:46:06 - 01:12:46:13
John Simmerman
Will.

01:12:46:16 - 01:13:00:17
Nick Falbo
Bring that energy and that vision of doing more and doing better and continuing to do different here into the States, and really look forward to what the next ten years of innovation have to bring us here in, in the US and Canada.

01:13:00:19 - 01:13:14:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. This has been so much fun. It's been a long time coming. I'm so sorry that it took us so long to to make this happen, but thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. This has been such a joy and pleasure.

01:13:14:11 - 01:13:18:28
Nick Falbo
And thank you so much for the chance to share. I really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to more.

01:13:19:00 - 01:13:34:04
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Nicole below. And if you did, please take give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honor to have you subscribed to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and be sure to ring that notification bell.

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John Simmerman
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01:13:54:11 - 01:14:13:23
John Simmerman
Click on the support tab at the top of the page. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers! And again, just want to send a huge thank you to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting your channel financially via YouTube memberships YouTube super thanks.

01:14:13:26 - 01:14:22:26
John Simmerman
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