road design

Not Just Bikes introduces the "stroad", a street-road hybrid common in the US and Canada that fails at both jobs. He contrasts it with Dutch design, where each road has a single purpose, and covers cost, danger and ugliness.

Tom Scott explains why Ipley Cross in England's New Forest was one of Britain's most dangerous junctions. The angled crossroads lets a car's A-pillar hide approaching traffic and cyclists because there is no relative motion in the driver's view.

Not Just Bikes explains how North American speed limits are set and why posted limits matter far less than street design. It argues that drivers follow the road's cues, so safe speeds have to be built into the street.

Not Just Bikes explains why cars rarely crash into buildings in the Netherlands, attributing it to street design that forgives mistakes and to systematic crash investigation. It contrasts this with North American acceptance of such crashes.

Not Just Bikes argues that oversized American fire trucks and fire department requirements push cities toward wide roads and dangerous street design. He compares this with the Dutch approach to emergency response.

A five-minute BicycleDutch episode showing how Dutch junctions are designed so cyclists and pedestrians can cross safely. It explains the layout choices that separate and protect them.

Not Just Bikes shows how traffic calming is built into streets across the Netherlands, from city centres to villages. Street design naturally slows cars and makes roads safer.

Not Just Bikes compares the same cycling trip to a hardware store in Calgary and in Amsterdam, using a 'plus 1 minus 2' format. It shows how street design shapes how safe and practical cycling is.

Not Just Bikes explains why crossing streets is dangerous in the US and Canada, where roads are designed to move cars fast, and contrasts it with Dutch designs for pedestrians.

A short Not Just Bikes video on continuous sidewalks in the Netherlands, where the sidewalk runs unbroken across side streets so cars must visibly cross pedestrian space. It places them within Dutch sustainable safety and Vision Zero efforts.

A short BicycleDutch episode showing how Dutch junctions with protected cycle paths are laid out. It argues these are proven, non-experimental designs that make intersections safer for cyclists.

A design essay on why products designed in Western contexts often fail when deployed in developing countries. It covers expert blindness and cultural assumptions, with examples such as malaria nets and the One Laptop Per Child project.

Technology Connections praises a 1940s-50s Sunbeam toaster and explains what makes a toaster well designed, drawing on a vintage Sunbeam video.

Not Just Bikes tours Houten, a Dutch town designed around cycling, explaining how its layout makes most trips by bike safe and easy. It also promotes a book about the town.

Practical Engineering explains how continuous welded rail copes with thermal expansion by restraining it, using the relationship between temperature, stress and strain. The video is part of a series on railways.

Map Men's Jay Foreman tells the story of how the London Tube map nearly looked very different, including Harry Beck's design and TfL's initial rejection of it. A short, witty history of a design icon.

Bill Hammack of Engineer Guy explains the engineering behind the aluminum beverage can: why it is cylindrical, how it is manufactured, why it narrows at the top, the double seam, and how the pull tab works.

A Design Club episode that analyzes how Super Mario Bros. level 1-1 teaches players to play through level design alone, without text tutorials.

Answer in Progress investigates why Japanese websites look different from those elsewhere, using an AI clustering approach to test the 2013 claim. It then looks at possible explanations.

Not Just Bikes explains how Dutch traffic lights use early detection, transit priority and conflict-free design to cut waiting. The aim is to move as many people as possible rather than as many cars.

A short BicycleDutch episode showing how Dutch protected intersections continue cycle paths through the junction without needing extra street width.

Technology Connections explains how refrigerator and freezer design affects energy use, using chest freezers to show why top-opening designs and layout choices matter. It includes thermal-camera footage of cold air spilling out of upright units.

Dave Jones of EEVblog debunks the Solar Roadways project, which raised millions through Indiegogo and government funding. He works through the solar generation and LED power calculations to show the idea isn't viable.

FortNine looks at the data on why newer pickup trucks with tall, blunt grilles kill so many pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. It argues that lowering hood height would substantially cut fatalities.

Tantacrul explains how he and engraver Simon Smith designed the free music notation font for MuseScore 3.6. It draws on the history of the SCORE notation application by Leland Smith.

The Signal Path takes apart a Starlink dish layer by layer, analyzing the phased array RF design, system architecture and integrated circuits, with an X-ray of the RF stack.

Technology Connections spends 22 minutes on the humble can opener and what its design shows about products and why people don't know what to look for. It uses an everyday tool to draw broader lessons.

The first episode of a Cities: Skylines series on urban politics and planning, focused on parking. It uses the game to show how parking minimums shape cities, drawing on Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking.

CityNerd Ray Delahanty explains induced demand and what happens when freeways are widened. He walks through the economics of supply and demand applied to traffic and asks how much new traffic appears and whether congestion returns.

A short Vox video on Barcelona's superblocks, an urban design approach that closes interior streets to through traffic to return space to pedestrians.

Not Just Bikes explains Dutch bicycle-only roads, which let people travel long distances in and out of cities with almost no car interaction. It shows how this changes cycling from a chore into something enjoyable.

Game Maker's Toolkit examines Nintendo's design approach of starting from a core play mechanic, making it fun, and building around it. Examples include Mario's jump and Luigi's Mansion's vacuum.

An Extra Credits episode on how MMO economies get overrun by inflation when players can mint unlimited gold by killing monsters. It covers approaches borrowed from real-world economics, such as anchoring or pegging currency, as alternatives to simple gold sinks.

Not Just Bikes explains how SUVs and light trucks have grown in size and share of US sales, and why that is dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and city life. He covers the regulatory loopholes, such as fuel economy rules and the chicken tax, that favored them.

Explains induced demand beyond roads, showing that it applies to transit, walking and cycling infrastructure too but with different consequences. It corrects common misunderstandings of the concept.

Not Just Bikes explains the Downs-Thomson paradox using Amsterdam and Toronto: road widening doesn't fix congestion, and buses stuck in traffic make transit slow. It argues for giving transit its own priority infrastructure.

Not Just Bikes argues that stop signs are a poor traffic control, drawing on Dutch practice and the Idaho stop to show intersections can be safer without them, especially for cyclists.

A short Not Just Bikes video on the 1960s plans (Plan Jokinen) to cut highways through Amsterdam to accommodate cars. It shows how radically different the city would look had they succeeded.

A look at Le Plessis-Robinson, a French suburb transformed from modernist urbanism into traditional mixed-use fabric with local-style architecture, green space and a more balanced housing supply.

CityNerd explains why traffic congestion grows nonlinearly as more cars use a road network, and why adding road capacity tends not to fix it. It covers the consequences for drivers, bus riders, cyclists and pedestrians, and discusses alternatives such as true bus rapid transit.