We’ll begin in the modern waterfront neighbourhood before heading into the older parts of the city. Along the way, we’ll take a closer look at people-friendly streets, some great bicycle paths, and others that are (or maybe were) a work in progress.

This part of the trip is primarily to spend time with both sets of parents, so there is less focus on the infrastructure, and we didn’t have time to ride bikes here, but of course, there’s still going to be some photos worth sharing… The photo above is Kneza Mihaila, the main pedestrian street in the centre of Belgrade, but our trip will begin in a new neighbourhood in the city, Belgrade Waterfront. On our ride from the airport to the apartment at Belgrade Waterfront, or BW for short, the taxi driver tells us there are already problems there… And if the land had been any good, Tito would have already built there…

Still… Technology and techniques have improved since Tito’s time, and if the Dutch can build homes on entirely new islands, surely these new towers would have some decent foundations… It’s been about 10 years since we were last here, and this neighbourhood didn’t even exist at that time, so let’s take a look…

Belgrade Waterfront

The Belgrade Waterfront is still heavily under construction, but we’ve lived amongst construction in our own neighbourhood up on Burnaby Mountain forever and find it interesting to see progress, so no issues there. First impressions are pretty good… We have new buildings, a bi-directional protected bike lane, a floating bus stop with a real-time information display, street trees, landscaping, and the conflict area features these zig-zag markings as well as these spaced-out yellow strips… Construction hoarding is taking up half the sidewalk, but not the end of the world…

What’s going on below though? The walk signal is lit, but these cars are going through the crosswalk… Unfortunately, this is normal in North America, but not usually in Europe… Is it allowed here too?

You can almost see it in the photo above, but there is a bike lane off to the right there, if we turn to the right and look down the street, it’s an interesting buffered bike lane of sorts that acknowledges the issues of the door zone… An element I really like is the street trees between parking stalls, but with this being new construction I don’t know why they didn’t just put the bike lane behind the parking lane…

It’s a similar story at the intersection... Despite all the streets being new construction with tons of space in the corners, they haven’t made the intersection protected for people on bikes…

Too negative too soon? There is a pretty cool park next to our apartment. I’ve talked with colleagues a lot about wanting to put a pump track alongside a bike path to introduce a fun element into the street, and they’ve kind of done it, albeit in grass… Maybe on a mountain bike it could work… But not only that, the blue surface is a running track around the park, around 700m in length… I’d love to see more elements like this in the street… The attention to detail with the landscaping is also a step up on what we’d typically do…

Here’s a couple of photos stitched together awkwardly from the balcony of our apartment. You can see more of the park, the running track with small kids on their bikes, the bike path, landscaping, new construction in the background, and one large intersection…

We’d earlier tried to cross from one corner to the other, not realizing it was missing a crosswalk on the far side from this perspective… Whether here in Serbia or the many similar intersections with missing crosswalks in North America, this has only one purpose and that is saving someone sitting in a car a few seconds at the expense of everyone walking… In this location, If you come out of the mall on the far right side and want to get a bus on the far left side, you have to cross three streets instead of one… Or take your chances which people of course do… The centre boulevard even encourages it… A design that encourages that is not good design…. I’m curious who designed this brand-new neighbourhood and why it doesn’t follow best practices. The bike path is on the opposite side from the mall and doesn’t connect down this main street to the mall too…

The BW branding is everywhere: flags, construction fencing, even the push buttons (that I didn’t take a photo of…) making me think this is one huge strata-type development, not necessarily a bad thing, as there seem to be a lot of people maintaining the landscaping and keeping the streets clean… Just an observation…

If you dropped me here and asked me where I was, it would be difficult to say. It could be Coal Harbour in Vancouver… It’s a very big change from the rest of Belgrade. Not a bad thing… Progress and change are inevitable, but I’m curious about the impetus for this change. Wikipedia provides the following insight into this new neighbourhood…

“Belgrade Waterfront is an urban renewal development project headed by the Government of Serbia aimed at changing Belgrade's cityscape and economy by gentrifying the Sava amphitheater, between the Belgrade Fair and Branko's bridge, including the Savamala neighbourhood.

It is the second largest mixed use complex under construction in Europe, just after Minsk Mir, worth $3.5 billion. Belgrade Waterfront complex will include 10,000 residential units, bilingual elementary school and kindergartens, luxury hotels, the largest shopping mall in southeast Europe, and public buildings. In total, about 1.8 million square meters will be built.

The project was initiated in 2014 between the Government of Serbia and Eagle Hills, a leading Abu Dhabi–based private investment and development company focused on creating new city hubs in high-growth international markets. Around $3.5 billion will be invested by the Serbian government and their UAE partners. The project's central point is Kula Belgrade, a new city landmark. Standing at 168 metres (551 ft)”

Let’s keep exploring along the waterfront… There are a number of restaurants amongst the new apartment buildings. Here at the end of one of the streets that will generate crossing activity, there is a red crosswalk with those zigzag lines to indicate this is a conflict area…

Walking back toward the centre of the neighbourhood, the building below left is the Kula Belgrade building, the central showpiece with roads radiating out in a spoke-like fashion from its base. At the bottom of this building, there is a bike path along the waterfront as you see above, but it drops underneath a showpiece walkway that loops you out above the Sava River, and provides a focal point for the neighbourhood that will be undeniably Belgrade Waterfront for any photo opportunities. If you keep rolling along the river, you’ll come to the confluence with the Danube pretty quickly…

Interestingly… You might do a double take when you see that Kula building from a different angle, swearing it was wider at the top than the bottom… It’s both depending on the angle you look at it from…

The intersection above and below is the same one I complained about above, but it does at least have bicycle signals, coloured surface treatment for the crossride, and wide crosswalks for pedestrians…

Going back to those cars turning right while someone was crossing… What I figured out later, maybe it was more obvious after dark, is that while the pedestrian walk signal is on, so too is a green right turn arrow… Presumably the stop sign is there to encourage drivers to come to a stop, and make sure it’s safe before turning right at the same time there may be crossing pedestrians… This seems like a step backwards in terms of road safety. Going out of your way to add signals so that drivers can effectively turn right on red, something we know is a huge safety and accessibility issue in North America just seems unnecessary…

Near bus stops… I’m just downstream of one below… I wanted to get a close-up of these rumble strips of sorts that are presumably a bicycle calming technique… The effect appears to be pretty subtle, but as soon as I stood up, this guy came by on his scooter… Clearly not a fan of them…

To end this first look at Belgrade Waterfront on a good note, the streets are lined with TWSI’s, Tactile Warning Surface Indicators or guide strips for those with sight loss to the layman. They appear to be metal strips bonded to the surface, which seems like it could be a huge headache to maintain long term. It isn’t really high contrast for those with partial vision, but they are prominent and easily detectable. It makes me wonder about the omissions above, how their TWSI game is so good, the fact they’ve made an effort to add protected bike paths, but not to the extent that it meets best practice at intersections or in terms of desire lines…

Maybe because everything seems so new, it makes any omission seem like a huge oversight. But to be fair… I live in a relatively modern master-planned neighbourhood in Canada - UniverCity - and we have less bicycle infrastructure and tactile wayfinding than I see here… My neighbourhood began being planned probably back in the 90s, this one maybe early 2000s… Both before bicycle infrastructure best practices extended beyond just the Netherlands… Which raises the question, at what point do you rework older plans to meet best practices before they’re built, or just accept it will require a redo in 20 years’ time when a street comes up for repaving…

Heading into the Centre

We jump on the bus into the centre, and as tourists trying to pay for tickets on the bus, having to go through a long-winded process of selecting a ticket, tapping, printing the ticket, and repeating it another three times, unlike the basic tap to pay that is common at least in Canada… Locals typically send a text to buy a ticket but with no local SIM card, that wasn’t an option… The price was 50 Serbian Dinars per ticket or around 0.60c Canadian… As the bus passed us, so to did this guy on a bike… Definitely takes some confidence…

We walk to Republic Square where people are passing through on foot, bicycle, and scooter… This would have been a much better photo if I had been on the other side of these kids on bikes with a grand building and statue in the background…

The square connects to Kneza Mihaila, the main pedestrianized shopping street through the centre of Belgrade. Why don’t we have streets like this?

Kneza Mihaila leads to Kalemegdan or the Belgrade Fortress, the original core of Belgrade, in which residents lived within its walls. It dates back to 279BC, but today, it is surrounded by park space both inside and out…

There is no cost to enter, and it essentially serves as a huge public space, albeit one of historical importance… I’m sure this guy would like a bike rail…

Being so close to the modern centre, it’s just a nice chill place to hang out. The views over the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers are great… And there’s also a bike path down by the river that will take you back to the Belgrade Waterfront pretty quickly…

A couple of other random little transportation observations… The crosswalk between Kneza Mihaila and Kalemegdan includes these tactile wayfinding strips you see below left… And then somewhere nearby, I spotted this Dutch-style woonerf sign, and later a few more on similar streets… I think it is used here to signify more that this is a slow residential street rather than specifically being a Dutch woonerf… We’d see this elsewhere on our trip too…

Ada Ciganlija

This is one of the places to be in the summer, with cafés lining the man-made lake that is a popular swimming spot. There was one guy still swimming in it on this cold, damp October day, but it was much less busy than normal while we were there… There is a bike path around its perimeter that connects to Belgrade Waterfront…

We got there by bus, an older bus this time, and the driver didn’t want a credit card payment… We speculated that the credit card transaction charge was possibly more than the ticket itself… We’d also heard that many people don’t pay for the bus; they just jump on… Which became something we also did on the old buses… Do as the locals do, I guess… I’ve heard since then that there are people checking now and again…

The popcorn place was closed for the season… A few people still enjoying the bike path though…

I imagine this guy is just using the pathways to get from A to B rather than enjoying a nice recreational bike ride…

This is technically just for pedestrians (I think) but not a big deal today…

Back at Waterfront

A few more interesting things back at Waterfront as we explore north along the river. Belgrade is no different from anywhere else; people park in the bike lanes too… Had they put the bike lane on the other side of those street trees, it wouldn’t have been so easy to park in it… Still possible; I’ve seen it in Utrecht a few times… But it takes greater driver commitment…

This little Belgrade Waterfront maintenance vehicle was pretty cool…

Below is the pathway north along the river, still relatively new… Interestingly, it has the zigzag pavement markings all the way along it where you wouldn’t expect pedestrians to be crossing… Maybe it’s intended to send a “keep out” message to pedestrians… Probably could have saved a few Dinars there…

The pathway leads to what I presume are old port buildings. The crane even reminds me of the shipyards in North Van… But these old warehouses are now pretty upscale restaurants. It was pretty quiet while we were there, but again, I’m sure it gets livelier in the summer and later into the evening. Pavers could use some maintenance in spots... A lot of Danube cruises stop here, and the boats we saw had bikes for the guests to use while they are docked.

Walking back to Belgrade Waterfront, those zigzags are definitely more necessary here, and really that crosswalk should be a lot wider. The messaging says “watch out, pedestrians” or something to that effect…

Wandering Around at Night

We begin this wander on a section of red bike path that’s clearly been there a while, maybe inspired by the Dutch some time ago… This is the section that made me think the bike paths are (or maybe were) a work in progress. It seems like at some point a real effort was made to add them, but it hasn’t expanded significantly… Not super obvious is the signal head which includes a pedestrian and bicycle, something we could use in North America where people on bicycles behind the curb often share the same crossing as those walking…

A little further along, someone is getting in a late-night training ride…

Where the bike path above is clearly a different surface, and presumably added by re-purposing part of a wider sidewalk, the one below is a very quick build you could say, just using paint and utilizing the wide pedestrian realm to add a bi-directional protected bike lane, conveniently the TWSI’s that once ran along the centre of the sidewalk, perhaps help define the edge of the bike lane without you being in it if you were to follow them…

That bike path takes a left and crosses the road, where there’s a pedestrian and bike crossing sign not dissimilar to what we have in Canada. Signage also helps to inform people that this is a bike path and sidewalk…

Switching streets, a bike path comes in from the right and does a little shimmy along this sidewalk before crossing the road, the zigzags indicating this is a conflict area… Popcorn is a popular street snack… Not just a movie snack…

As I was walking along, I saw this cool old tram crossing the street up ahead… I hung out for a bit, waiting for another, whilst new tram after new tram came by, but eventually an old one came…

A few people on bikes passed while I was waiting… I liked this guy’s style the best…

Another view of the real-time bus information boards as a bike food delivery rider passes… Don’t think I’ve commented on that yet, but they make up a large part of the cycling population, understandable given the bike network is not extensive, seemingly including the waterfront and a few specific routes…

I make it back to Kneza Mihaila, the main pedestrian street that is still pretty lively on this now quite wet evening…

More food delivery…

I guess the trams are less frequent at this time of night, or the taxis are busy… The taxis park on the tram lines, waiting for a ride…

A few blocks, maybe a 5-minute walk from Kneza Mihaila, is the Skadarlija neighbourhood, and the main street Skadarska, which is the historic bohemian area of Belgrade… According to Wikipedia…

“Skadarlija partially preserves the ambience of traditional urban architecture, including archaic urban organization, and is known as the main bohemian quarter of Belgrade, similar to Montmartre in Paris…”

It was pretty lively as I walked along the street… Although being around 10pm, the night was probably just getting started…

Walking back passed the Parliament building…

An elevated plaza gives an opportunity for an aerial view of the protected bike lane here… The closest I came to getting someone riding it was this guy ignoring the pavement markings…

Panning left… This centre running tram goes by…

And just one more old tram shot before we’re done for the night…

A Few Final Scenes

Coming to the end of our stay in Belgrade, there are a few things I haven’t touched on that are interesting. In the centre, there are quite a few underpasses which you would expect to be super sketchy, but despite the graffiti in places, they’re not… The stores below mean there are always people about, at least during their hours of operation. I never ventured down here late at night, so who knows… But something I haven’t seen elsewhere…

Many of the streets have these digital signs telling you how many parking spaces are available, and whilst this must have taken some investment that I’d rather see put toward walking and cycling infrastructure, it likely does help avoid people circling looking for a parking stall…