Cycling in Brussels

I try to avoid the STIB if possible. OK, the Metro works but the network is too small to reach most points of interest within Brussels. Buses and trams are just too unreliable. I never understand the Belgians waiting paitently for the bus that never comes: timetables are rather indicative. Also the realtime displays don't work. In my hometown we have these realtime displays at busstops since the early 1990 and they are accurate. Brussels seems to be another world. Again.

(By the way, I also like the new complaints part of the STIB website: they ask you if you want to have an answer to your complaint! This is so Bruxelloise.)

This is why I use the bike for getting around. Also for going to work. Not surprisingly this is made complicated by the lack of or inadequate bicycle infrastructure. Even new constructions of bike lanes end at curbstones or have signposts planted in the middle of it. I put some example here and explained why the "fietspad" is not suitable for road bikes.

Recently I came accross this hillarious video. It exagerates, definitly, but gets to the point of why infrastructure has an impact on the use of cycles in urban transport. And whoever has been in morning traffic in Brussels (anywhere) knows that this city has a bad problem concerning urban transport.

What I miss in this video is the problem with blocked bike lanes by cars parked without giving a ...

The video is inspired by some New York guy who went one step further: crashing into cars wrongly parked on the bike path. Probably a bad idea in Brussels to crash into the king of the road. I fear that even if a car is behaving wrongly in traffic it is always right compared to other means of transport. See also this story. Unbelievable.