Houten has approached their transportation network as a bicycle centric place. Vehicles are not priority but rather bikes are the priority. Every aspect of this city was methodically thought out, from where landscaping would be, to the bike lanes, the roads, and the city centers. Every place could be accessible by bike easily and cars had to go around the road circle around the perimeter. Schools were placed along the many bike paths so children could ride their bike to school and have no conflicts with cars. When and if bikes and vehicles do meet, the bike has priority.
I can imagine this approach in the US; not for bikes, but for golf carts. Maybe not to this extreme but putting another mode as priority in front of cars happens a lot with golf cart towns for example in Peachtree City, Georgia and The Villages in Florida. What Houten did is hard to duplicate since it was designed from scratch a long time ago. This can be done in the US if it is desired by the public and they want to pay for it, but to meet both criteria is very unlikely. That is the hardest thing about planning transportation; not everyone is on the same page as the city of Houten. This city was cultivated from a young start to be the most bikeable city in the Netherlands in 2018. This idea could be done in the US but isn’t likely since biking is not a part of the everyday culture as it is in the Netherlands. There are pockets in some cities that have biking movements, so maybe one day the mindset will change. Until then, widespread bike-friendly cities the caliber of Houten are just a dream.
