New NJB: Cycling in Oslo

You mention the Street Design Manual for Oslo (Gatenormal for Oslo), and that's a topic I find kind of interesting, as a Norwegian who is just about weird enough to have read it voluntarily. The street/road distinction actually isn't unique to the Oslo standard. It's defined in the national design manuals (N100 Veg-og gateutforming, not available in English) by the national government in exactly the same terms; the Oslo manual just includes essentially a reminder, as well as defining that basically all of Oslo should be designed as streets. Another interesting thing is some of the history. The Oslo manual basically exists because Oslo was fed up with the national guidelines being in some aspects kind of bad. The bicycle handbook from 2013 is woefully lacking in some regards (only painted bike gutters, no standardisation of red/green/blue asphalt, no mention of protected/elevated/separated bike lanes, bike lanes to the right of bus stops only as an "exception"), even as it also has good things like fully separated bicycle roads (like the Tour de Finance) and "bicycle expressways". Oslo found this didn't satisfy their needs so they made their own standards. Other cities have also been deviating from the national guidelines for the same reasons, but on an ad-hoc basis. Oslo also is in a special position to do this. Oslo is the only municipality that also has all the powers and responsibility of a county, which includes all public transit and a lot of roads. Oslo's manual doesn't apply to works being done by the national government, but in other cities similar manuals also wouldn't apply to county roads, which are a lot of the roads (though not that many of the streets). I've seen bicycle plans in other cities be executed poorly because the county and/or state is holding to the national standards and installing painted gutters where there really should be separated bicycle roads (or at least curb-separated bike lanes) because of vehicle speed/volume. When designing bicycle infrastructure to function as a road it's almost always on county or national right-of-way, even within cities, so the municipality can only suggest, not decide.

Always a good day when NJB uploads

Øyvind Wallentinsen

Figured I might as well ask here: is there anywhere I can find statistics on how many car trips are actually neccessary (as opposed to people who drive because they want to?). In the video about parking spaces in Amsterdam you cited a survey of drivers, but that's a bit local.

Øyvind Wallentinsen

Amazing. A week later and I’m already itching for my next fix. The time is always worth it

Paul Wood

great video i love oslo and i love the tram in oslo

Great one! Would you be interested in making a Cambridge (UK) video? It's supposedly the cycling capital of England!

thank you for releasing to patreon and nebula at the same time.

The uk has a design guide - catchily named "Local Travel Note (usually shortened to LTN) 1/20". The problem is getting councils to follow it because it's gUiDaNcE. Even in Cambridge where a heavy majority of peopl e cycle at least a bit, we still get the council prioritising a non-existent bus route and cars turning out of drives over anyone with a wide bike (lots of cargo bikes/trikes around here).