Picture Post: 30 minutes at Meester Visserplein

This morning I stood at Meester Visserplein, a square in the City of Amsterdam, for 30 minutes taking pictures of people cycling. This used to be a large multi lane gyratory with an underpass through it, as part of initial plans to create a motorway right through the heart of the historic city centre. Thankfully due to protests those plans did not go ahead and in 2010 the two south east corners of the gyratory were turned into space for people with seating areas, trees, a wide cycle track and the underpass becoming a children's play area.

I stood by the trees in the bottom left of the photo on the right

This is a very busy cycle track, a well used route for people cycling into and out of the centre of the city. It is similar, in some ways, to Apex Corner in Hackney, except it has well designed space for people cycling and walking that is easily recognisable rater than the confusing shared space nonsense that has been installed in Shoreditch. Also leading towards it are streets like Plantage Middenlaan, where motor traffic has been entirely removed to provide space for cycling and trams, rather than having to fight for space with lorries on Pitfield Street.

These picture were taken at around 9am so probably just outside of the peak time. Also the empty child seats and box bikes makes me assume people have already dropped their children off at school n the suburbs and are now heading into work. Not too many bemused looks this morning and a significant increase in people waving but I was too slow with the camera to catch most of the waves!