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July 2025
Cycling / Cycling infrastructure / Mobility / Urban Mobility Design
The Value of Experiencing Dutch Design, First-hand
A key part of learning to build less car-dependent cities is to experience them first-hand. Last summer, Elizabeth Allingham, Matt Pinder, and Nick Falbo had the chance to have their own ‘Team Mobycon’ Study Tour. They worked from the Mobycon office in Delft, Netherlands, and interacted with local infrastructure to soak up knowledge about Dutch best practices, to better support North American cities in their multimodal transition.
Experiencing Dutch Culture
Last summer, the Dutch Mobycon team hosted Elizabeth Allingham, Matt Pinder, and Nick Falbo for a collaborative North American Staff Retreat. The team visited the Delft Botanical Gardens for an afternoon workshop, followed by a scenic canal tour of the historic city center in Delft. They were able to meet the many faces of Mobycon in Delft and our Den Bosch office, as well as tour the area on foot, by bike, and even by boat!
Through a guided tour of Delft and its history (including the first woonerf in the Netherlands) with Johan Diepens, and settling into a new time zone, the team gained an understanding of Dutch culture before experiencing the infrastructure & mobility.
Participating in Dutch Infrastructure
Later in the week, Robin van der Griend led Nick Falbo and me on a tour to experience a variety of roundabouts in Voorburg, including some that are no longer permitted (photo below). We even bumped into a local city councillor who stopped to chat on his way to work by bike. The visitors also had the chance to observe intersections and roundabouts, spectate the morning school rush, and see one of the busiest bike routes in the Netherlands.
“It was extremely useful to see first-hand what elements both increase and decrease safety and efficiency. With our new perspectives, we were able to create a series of educational Mobycon Academy videos examining the Dutch designs and the possibility of implementing them in North America.”
Immersion in Dutch Best Practices
The team also had the chance to travel outside of the Delft area to Haarlem and Amsterdam. Former American engineer Steffen Berr led a bike tour of Haarlem (a city with a beautiful centre, but just outside: wide suburban roads). This was followed by an evening in Amsterdam spent touring by bike, where they had the chance to visit the underground bike parking facility at Amsterdam Centraal, with over 5,000 spots.
The team was all-around impressed and shocked by how much Dutch infrastructure & mobility had changed since the last time they visited. Matt Pinder reflected, “Nothing is ever fully complete in the Dutch mobility system – they are constantly experimenting and improving streets to improve movement and placemaking. I look forward to implementing these designs and ideas into practice now that I am back in Canada.”
Interested in Experiencing Best Practices First-hand?
Book a Study Tour or Masterclass to experience best practices first-hand by immersing your community and yourself in integrated mobility networks and culture. Reach out here, or check out our NEW Masterclass opportunities below!