The main lesson from Leuven is that cities don't necessarily need more road capacity to improve accessibility. Sometimes, they need to change who gets to use their streets, and for what purpose. After all, making a city easier to move through does not have to mean making it easier to drive through.🔚

Leuven offers an important takeaway for cities struggling with motor dominance. Building cycling infrastructure matters, but the wider organisation of traffic matters just as much. A network of bike routes cannot reach its full potential if streets remain choked with drivers using them as shortcuts.

Over time, the circulation plan became an increasingly accepted part of Leuven's landscape, demonstrating resistance rarely lasts. When people experience the benefits of quieter and more inviting streets, the debate can shift from what has been taken from drivers to what has been gained by everyone.

The changes extended beyond numbers. Fewer cars meant a more pleasant environment for walking and cycling, as well as an improvement in air quality. The reallocation of public space helped reinforce a broader ambition to make the city a place to pass time, rather than simply a place to pass through.

Leuven held its course, and the results provided a powerful riposte. From 2016 to 2019, cycling grew 44%, bus usage 18%, while car traffic dropped 19%. The total number of visitors remained stable, proving that curbing traffic hadn't reduced access. Instead, people chose different ways to get there.

Like many attempts to reclaim streets, the scheme wasn't universally embraced; provoking opposition from critics concerned about congestion, convenience and economic impact. The concept of changing familiar routes proved controversial, and officials had to defend their differing vision for mobility.

The idea was simple but radical: remove unnecessary through traffic, not access to the city itself. By filtering certain streets and changing direction on others, Leuven made it harder to use the centre as a shortcut. In doing so, it created more space for walking, cycling, shopping and socialising.

The city was divided into five sectors and a pedestrian zone. Drivers could reach destinations, but moving between neighbouring zones was prohibited. Instead, they had to return to the ring road to reach another sector. Cyclists and buses meanwhile, retained the freedom to travel through the centre.

In 2016, Leuven made a bold decision: instead of trying to accommodate ever-increasing car traffic, it would change the rules of the road entirely. A decade later, the Dutch-inspired traffic circulation plan has drastically improved the city’s accessibility, liveability and quality of public space.🧵

Leuven might be the best cycling city you’ve never heard of. 37% of trips are by bike; not by accident, but by years of rethinking streets, reducing car dominance and recirculating traffic. While the large capitals attract most headlines, Leuven is another example of a small city making big moves.

Therefore, the main takeaway from the Netherlands shouldn’t be to just build more bike lanes. It should be to make the act of getting on a bike easy at first, and let the network grow from there. As Dutch planners learned long ago, the most important part of your bike plan is actually the car plan.🔚

The better approach is to create the conditions for cycling first: build demand; then invest in high-end infrastructure where the numbers justify. Not every street needs a protected lane, and sometimes the most important intervention is just a street where cars have been slowed, filtered or removed.

Yet planners elsewhere often reverse this sequence: building segregated lanes assuming people will use them and support will follow. When those lanes are expensive, disruptive, isolated or lightly used, they become easy targets for opposition; creating a vicious circle of low ridership and support.

One of the key lessons from Dutch cycling history is cities didn't start with protected lanes. They began by making streets safer, calmer and more inviting; with lower speeds, parking restrictions, traffic filters and reduced through-traffic to create an environment in which cycling could flourish.🧵

After years of waiting, TU Delft is finally on the (tram) map. Yesterday, tram 19 reached the campus, and what a multimodal scene: trams, cycling, walking and green—all sharing the same car-free corridor. This is what a well-connected university looks like: making the right choice the easy choice.