Category: Netherlands Trip

  • Fast and Reliable Light Rail in the Netherlands: How they do it, and lessons for Portland

    Zef Wagner is currently in the Netherlands taking a class on sustainable transportation. He will be posting periodically about the Dutch transit system and what lessons we could apply in Portland and elsewhere in the US. One of the first things I noticed about transit after arriving in the Netherlands was how incredibly fast the…

  • More on Freight in the Netherlands

    One of our final meetings in the Netherlands was one attended by Tom Miller (Sam Adams’ chief of staff) and myself with two representatives of the freight industry: a freight forwarder and a representative of their industry association. The meeting was at Schiphol airport, a major European hub of air freight activity. The area is…

  • Rotterdam, a Different Dutch CIty

    We’ve been combing through our notes from our Netherlands trip, and have one or two more posts left… While our visit was centered in Amsterdam, we had the chance to visit a number of cities, and Rotterdam provides an interesting contrast. It is the commercial center of the country and a major port city (about…

  • It’s the Little Things

    Adapting the built environment for bikes is not always a matter of big capital investments. Sometimes it’s the little things, like this strip outside the window of a shop in the old city of Utrecht. It’s just a notched strip of metal that you can lean your bike against. The notches keep your bike from…

  • Netherlands Trip Featured in the O

    Our traveling companion Jeff Mapes writes in the In Portland section of the Oregonian this morning about our field trip to the Netherlands. Over at Bike Portland Jonathan has already done a nice summary of the article so I won’t repeat it here. I’ll just take the opportunity to mention that we’ve created a new…