A taste of the best. Part 5: Almere

Almere is a new city and the first residents have only lived here since 1976. The area where the city is now, a former seabed, was pumped dry in the 1960s. I have written about this in an earlier blog post. The former sea became the province of Flevoland. Almere was the second large city in the new province after the capital Lelystad. Designers wanted to create completely separate grids for the different types of transport in Almere too, but they did not want to make the same mistakes as in Lelystad. There all the cycle routes were elevated and all crossings were built as 5 metre high overpasses. That meant that cyclists had to cycle up steep inclines and with the fierce winds in the former seabed that was not an easy task. So the designers went to the United Kingdom and looked how the cycle grid of Stevenage was built! They took their inspiration from that new town and perfected the system. All major roads in Almere were elevated one and a half metres, so that all cycle tracks only had to be lowered with one and a half metres too, to provide the necessary clearance for the crossings without needing steep inclines. In tunnels you would be cycling protected from the winds. This is why Almere now has 120 bicycle underpasses.