by the end of this video I hope to get you excited about sidewalks there are a lot of great things about Dutch street design I'm working on a video about traffic coming but I wanted to talk about one thing that makes the biggest difference for safe walking. If you look at a typical North American junction it looks something like this. The sidewalk ends, there's a drop down to the level of the road and it's very clear that you're crossing a space for cars. For the driver it looks just like the rest of the road. The only thing marking the pedestrian crossing is the same magical white paint that they use for bicycle lanes but it doesn't seem to do a very good job of slowing down the cars and neither does the stop sign. Hey buddy there's a stop sign there! Compare that to this crossing in Amsterdam. For the pedestrian the sidewalk continues through the junction and doesn't drop down. This sends a very clear message that this is a space for walking. For the driver everything about this design from its look to its physics demands slow speed. The Netherlands actually isn't the only place in the world with continuous sidewalks but I think the Dutch version is the most effective. Here is an example from London in the UK. As you can see the level of the street is raised to sidewalk level to make it a continuous footpath but note the look of the design there's a double yellow line and the raised portion is the same color as the road not the footpath. This sends a clear message that this is a space for cars. It acts like a speed bump but everything else about the design is still very car friendly. Here is an example from Copenhagen in Denmark. This is definitely better. It looks more like the sidewalk than the road. When there's a bicycle lane present there are two drops for a car driver. But from a driver's point of view I find it's still pretty easy to cross right through the space for pedestrians without noticing and lots of junctions don't use them at all. Back to the Netherlands you'll notice the sidewalk color is consistent it's clear to every road user that you're crossing a sidewalk. The raised portion is often set back quite far from the junction so a driver will be guaranteed to be driving slowly when they cross paths with the pedestrian. The road fans out sometimes but there's no large corner radius here. The ramp down ends abruptly and the corner is 90 degree angle making drivers slow down almost completely to make the sharp turn. These slow speeds ensure the drivers have a chance to stop before a collision and if a collision does happen it's extremely minor due to the low speeds involved. There's one other benefit as well. For a driver turning off the major road it signals that they're now entering a new zone when with slower speeds and more pedestrian activity. Of course these design principles only apply to smaller streets where they meet more major roads. At major junctions different design principles apply and pedestrian signals are used and for small streets crossing other small streets the whole junction becomes like one big speed bump but I'll talk about that in a future video. When there's a separated bicycle path it's also raised up to sidewalk level and people on bikes don't need to drop down to the level of the road or even to slow down at all. This makes sense because the person on the bicycle is on the major road and shouldn't need to slow down just because there's a minor junction. It's hard to describe how much nicer it is to walk an environment like this. It feels like the people walking are in control and that drivers are a guest in their environment not the other way around. Of all the great street design in the Netherlands I think this should be the first thing that every city does right now to improve their streets. Not just for the safety of pedestrians but also just to make walking more pleasant and encourage people to do it more often. So excited about sidewalks!