The real border starts like 100m further and has a clearly defined line. And the quality of the roads is pretty decent on both sides.
I know the joke about Belgian roads being bad, it mainly has to do with Belgium being used to travel through by the surrounding countries, because we don’t tax people for usage. So it all gets completely funded by the citizens actually living there.
The Netherlands roads are really quite good, but I am more in awe about their beautifully designed traffic light system. You never have to wait long, and usually don’t even have to stop because it all flows so well.
And then there is this town, which lies in both Belgium and Netherlands, and whose border is so complicated they had to paint in on the ground so people know what country they’re in.
On the contrary, you DO need to know which country you are in because of for instance a crime has been committed, it determines which country’s laws apply and which police department (they have two, a Belgian and a Dutch one) is responsible.
Also, they need to know which country each house is in because that’s who gets to collect their taxes. Not sure what they do with the one house that has both Dutch and Belgian front doors however, perhaps they get to pay taxes twice for that privilege?
I remember bringing my car over to The Netherlands after having moved there from Portugal, over 20 years ago, and it was exactly like that, only in my case it was in a major highway (so, of course, there were no cycling paths on either side of the border, but that major Belgian road was pretty much just as bad).
It’s also similar in the French-Belgian border, though not quite as extreme a transition.
Actually there borders, and they are called Schengen. Ireland, Romania and Bulgaria are not in Schengen. Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liecthenstein are not in the EU, but still within Schengen
I dunno. 60km/h is pretty much 40mph, which seems acceptable for what looks like a low density country road. On those sorts of roads the center line is sort of implied, and cars move to each side when approaching each other. I’d personally say the US plays it safe on low density road speeds. For example, there are a ton of roads like this that are a similar width to the above (despite not looking it) but have a 60mph (~100km/h) limit.
Sure there are. There are border controls between Germany and Denmark and between Denmark and Sweden. They were supposed to be temporary, but here we are nine years later and they’re still up.
Same between Austria and Slovenia and Slovenia and Croatia. Well, at least on one side. Going from Austria to Croatia, nobody will stop you, but going from Croatia to Austria, they stop you on each border. Austria took COVID as an excuse to reinstate it, and Slovenia I guess chose to be very worried about illegal immigrants.
Akshually, those bike gutters are a bit outdated here. Many shared roads are converted to ‘fietsstraat’ (bike roads where cars are permitted but must yield to bikes) or markings are removed altogether and replaced with speed limiting obstacles
They might be outdated in cities, but on the country side a lot of the streets still look this way. Probably even more at border crossings. The only bordercrossing I haven’t see like this is the main road Kleve-Nijmegen.
Yeah, I’m fairly sure if you turned this specific instance into a fietsstraat, it would just be a regular car street. Although given that this is a 60 km/h road, I do think that the next scheduled maintenance work is not unlikely to turn it into a proper separated bike lane?
Wait until you see the clean and well-maintained buses used by people from all walks of life we have here in Denmark! A bunch of them are even brand new and fully electric!
The street is still like that, but in 2022 or 2023 they added some poles on the street to slow down the cars. The speed limit may be lowered to 50 kmh on the Dutch side, but I’m not sure. It’s been a while since I’ve been there. The speed limit on the Belgian side is 70 kmh. The Belgian side has a separated bicycle lane but it starts behind the photographer of the original picture.
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