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news
Bruges (Credit: Marc Ryckaert, Creative Commons)Bruges makes it illegal for drivers to overtake cyclists in city centre
It is now illegal for motorists to overtake cyclists in the centre of Bruges, after the local authority last week turned 90 of the Belgian city’s streets into cycling-friendly zones.
The decision means that Bruges, the capital of West Flanders and the host of the time trial events at last year’s UCI road world championships, now boasts 13 kilometres of dedicated ‘bicycle streets’.
According to TheMayor.EU, a website reporting on sustainable initiatives across Europe, on these bicycle streets – which cover the entirety of the city centre – cyclists will have the right to use the full width of the lane, while motorists must adhere to the 30kph speed limit (already common across the city) and cannot pass anyone riding a bike.
This cost-effective way of creating bike-friendly streets – the initiative in Bruges only requires changing signage and road markings – is growing in popularity across Europe, with many local authorities recognising it as a quick, cheap and easy alternative to installing protected cycle lanes.
In March, officials in the city of Luxembourg announced the creation of seven new ‘priority cycling boulevards’, the result of a two-year trial designed to break the Grand Duchy’s car dependency.
> Antwerp streets are too narrow so there should be a ban on overtaking cyclists say campaigners
In 2020, campaigners in Antwerp argued that the Flemish city’s streets were too narrow for motorists to leave a safe passing distance when they are overtaking cyclists, and called for the same measures due to implemented in nearby Bruges.
The announcement of the ‘bicycle streets’ scheme in Bruges also coincides with the creation of a new car-sharing pilot for employees who live too far from the city to work, while families in Bruges are eligible for a €500 subsidy if they sell their car, in a bid to encourage them to spend the money on a bike or a public transport subscription.
> Cyclists in Brussels now allowed to ignore red lights
These initiatives form part of Bruges’ renewed focus on sustainable mobility, after a recent report found that the city was lagging behind on its environmental goals for the rest of this decade.
According to the report, which published the interim results for Bruges’ Climate Plan 2030, while the city’s residents have increased the number of journeys they take by bike, there remains an overt reliance on fossil fuels to heat homes and businesses.
CO2 emissions have also fallen by 17 percent in the last decade, below the 20 percent target set in 2011 – and miles off the city’s ambitious plan to cut its emissions by half while also constructing climate neutral buildings and expanding cycling infrastructure.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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23 comments
Could you imagine the newspapers in the UK if that was announced over here? I can see the comments now.
"Could we reserve judgement on Bruges until we've seen the feckin' place?"
Makes it even more of a fairytale fucking town...
Sorry, someone had to do it.
finally
I was thinking nearly 4 hrs and not a single line, maybe its just not their cup of tea 
Superb film. I'm going to see Martin McDonagh's latest this week.
Caught it last Friday, don't think you'll be disappointed - film of the decade so far for me by a distance.
We booked a hotel in Bruges. It turns out that Bruges is so car-unfriendly that when we finally managed to get to the hotel we had to be escorted by the receptionist on foot to the parking garage.
We had a similar experience in Ghent, where to get to the hotel we had to get through many no car allowed signs (it was explained in our booking that the hotel would register our stay and exempt us).
Slightly different was our stay in Seville where after the 3rd time round trying to find our hotel, I parked up on what I thought was a pedestrian area next to where the satnav was pointing us. A minute or so later, all was revealed as a car went down what looked like a pedestrian alley (see below). After 3 weeks in Andelucia we got used to the concept of roads being designed for people, and cars having to make do with what they got.
I've never been to Seville (or Bruges) but yeah, that does actually look like a road. A road built for people and pack mules, maybe horse carts, and into which cars are allowed as the successors of those vehicles – if they want to, and they'd have to really want to because, probably the crucial point, the road has not been altered to accommodate cars. It has been kept as a residential street for, um, residents.
UK towns and cities take note
Yeah, right!
When so many people argue against these kinds of changes - including a small number of car-loving fossil-fuelled people who post on road.cc - then I don't see how it can happen.
It's a crying shame that this arrogant, inward-looking country is so far behind our near neighbours in any number of significant ways. Our government and its supporters have made a massive (and successful) effort to portray the UK as by far the most blindly stupid, reckless and awkwardly backward nation in the whole of Europe.
A lot of the time it's about whether the local authority has a strategy and the will to implement it. Once people see the results they will support it.
My LA has a very negative attitude to active travel and change of any kind. They say they are seeking "consensus" on active travel schemes. Well, they will never get it and that means they will do nothing.
True, yet the world's waifs and strays want to make this place their home.
The UK takes 5% of the world's refugees. Pathetic for the "sixth richest" economy in the world. Shows how shit life must be in their home countries for those refugees if they risk their lives to legally claim asylum in the UK
The city centre of Bruges, which I'd define as 80% being within the canal and circled by the ring road, always seemed pretty bike friendly already, I dont think I ever saw any car attempt to overtake a bike because the roads there just arent wide enough, or really roads youd drive more than 10mph on anyway, if there arent cobbles or cyclists, there are tourists, it always felt fairly well traffic calmed.
So its probably just codifying something that was naturally happening anyway.
The Netherlands has the concept of "Car is Guest" streets where cyclists have priority. Usually indicated with this sign. Would be nice to see this used in the UK.
But in the UK everyone understands "non-motorists are interlopers" - which is the default and needs no sign. Also understood without signage: "parking everywhere, except if you're on some yellow / red lines where you might deploy your BOLAS".
As Awavey alludes to rules tend to work best where they're reactive and somewhat redundant (because most people are behaving this way). "Sign it better" is only effective if there's also regular and rapid correction (e.g. getting nicked and punished for a high percentage of rule breaches). The street next to me is signed "Home zone". It's a very nice, friendly, meaningless sign! Everywhere except parking bays is slathered with double-yellows. Does that mean parking only occurs in the bays? Or only on the carriageway?
I wonder if the laws in Belgium are the same as in the UK ie they are on the statute but none of them are enforced?
I was going to make a similar point. In this country we probably have thousands of miles of roads where it's illegal to overtake cyclists (going > 10mph). Not that anyone would know it.
I was overtaken last week by a vehicle which passed me, crossing the double white solid lines. I was doing 18mph, the Police X5 sat behind me for about 3 seconds then overtook.
I was overtaken last week by a vehicle which passed me, crossing the double white solid lines. I was doing 18mph, the Police X5 sat behind me for about 3 seconds then overtook
Was it this X5- PO66 CUH? It's probably unmarked police, as it's never had an MOT- unusual even for evader-friendly Lancashire. I assume yours was marked, but I've never managed to film an LC vehicle committing an offence- the one time it happened, with the illegal crossing of a single unbroken white line while I was doing 20 mph, I didn't have the camera on
This is a great idea. Gone is the vague intepretation of how close the close pass might have been; an overtake is an overtake. Easy to enforce from bikecam footage as long as the police will do their job.
Marvellous.
Imagine the Daily Mail gammon melt down if somewhere in the UK announced this.
In France a lot of towns now have a 20km/h speed limit for quiet and mainly pedestrian/cycling streets around the town centre. Very civilized.
Not only that but there is cycling infrastructure in French cities, towns and suburbs literally everywhere. Not only that, French drivers actually respect it. Even when it's not physically segregated, they don't park in it.
I think the only example of crap cycling infrastructure I've ever encountered in France was a painted murder strip over the Pont de Normandie. HGVs thunderimg past less than a metre away. I used the (segregated) pedestrian path. To be fair, installing a segregated cycle path would have meant rebuilding the bridge, so I'll give them a pass on that.