Verkeersveiligheidsaspecten van gezamenlijk gebruik passage Rijksmuseum door voetgangers en fietsers. In opdracht van Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, Rijksgebouwendienst.

Road safety aspects of shared use by pedestrians and cyclists of National Museum arcade. The National Museum in Amsterdam is presently being extensively renovated. Underneath the National Museum runs the Museum Street, an arcade that was used by cyclists, (light-) moped riders and pedestrians until the renovation. However, in the situation prior to the renovation the museum did not have an entrance in the arcade. After the innovation, all four museum entrances will be located in the arcade, so that the number of pedestrians will highly increase. The arcade is a public road and falls under the responsibility of the current borough council of Amsterdam-South. Three different cross sections with a cycle track and footways have been designed for this arcade. By the end of 2009, the Goudappel Coffeng consultancy firm carried out a traffic-engineering analysis of these cross sections, upon which the borough council made a choice. The analysis had to make clear whether the cross sections were suitable for handling the expected numbers of cyclists and pedestrians. About the same time the RIJKSOPHETPLEIN interest group had a study carried out by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The memoranda of Goudappel Coffeng and TU Delft mainly concern traffic flow aspects, rather than road safety aspects. The project management of The New National Museum asked SWOV to assess the merits of both memoranda and in particular to reconsider the road safety aspects in greater detail. SWOV carried out this assessment by means of a study of literature. It shows from the research literature that a shared traffic space for cyclists and pedestrians is only acceptable with limited numbers of passing cyclists (no more than 600 per hour) and pedestrians (no more than 200 per hour and per road profile metre). In this case they will hardly experience any mutual hindrance. With respect to serious crashes, no substantial road safety problem is to be expected in the interaction between pedestrians and cyclists. However, far more pedestrians and cyclists are expected in the arcade underneath the National Museum than the numbers mentioned above. It is therefore practically impossible that cyclists and pedestrians can make use of the same sections of the arcade.