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Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

nltimes.nl

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Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re doing this in Reykjavik as well which is great, although enforcement is poor so on the larger roads that are now 50km/h everyone is still driving 70km/h as they were when the limit was 60km/h. Going back to the UK where a twisty road through my parents village with tiny pavements was 30mph was pretty shocking with how much more dangerous that felt.

As an aside, speed-limit enforcement in Iceland outside of Reykjavik is almost nonexistent. On the ring road, which goes around the whole country and has a strict but reasonable limit of 90 km/h (few cars but tons of bumps and sudden turns + a lot of low visibility due to bad weather), there are no more than 10 speed cameras, so everybody is driving at their own discretion.

Speed traps don’t make people drive slower. They’re just another way for the municipality to generate revenue.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#112
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is by far the biggest reason for the preference for 30 km/h. Reduced noise and pollution are certainly nice, but killing far less people is huge.

Why not reduce speed to 10km/h then? Even fewer people will be killed! This is the covid logic all over again. Let's lock everyone in their homes, we can't afford to have old people dying! Also, no, ICE cars generally don't pollute less at 30km/h, compared to 50km/h. Engine does the same work, just at lower gear.

Ban ICE cars altogether while we are on it!

https://www.amsterdam.nl/verkeer-vervoer/milieuzone-amsterda...

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less pollution not so much, everyone will be in 2nd gear, less deaths perhaps.

Is demonstrated pollution with such slow speed will increase dramatically. Next stage, take out cars from the center of the cities totally. Good luck if you bought there a house to take your kids to the college or to go to a better supermarket. Airbnb is rubbing hands

So, first of all, realistically most cars in cities are operating at these sorts of speeds for _most_ of the time, anyway. This won't make a huge difference to _average_ speed. But also, this feels like optimising for the past, frankly. Over 50% of cars sold in the EU last year were either electric, or some sort of hybrid (hybrids generally are about as efficient at 30km/h as 50km/h). Netherlands seems to be further along this curve; 45% of cars sold last year were electric or plugin hybrid (stats seem hard to come by for light hybrids), up from 30% the previous year.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#116

This is wonderful. remember : Cities aren't noisy, Cars are noisy.

Cities arent noisy?? where do you live lucky mate? I feel you guys live in an echo chamber full of avocado toasts and cappuccinos. Cities are crowded places full of noise pollution produced by humans being humans. Thats all. If people require silence go to the deep country. Next step, everybody shut the f... up to not bother the Karens.

A single motorbike produces like 5x more noise than a crowd of people screaming and stomping.

The vast vast majority of noise comes from vehicles and power tools.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#117

This is wonderful. remember : Cities aren't noisy, Cars are noisy.

Cities arent noisy?? where do you live lucky mate? I feel you guys live in an echo chamber full of avocado toasts and cappuccinos. Cities are crowded places full of noise pollution produced by humans being humans. Thats all. If people require silence go to the deep country. Next step, everybody shut the f... up to not bother the Karens.

I’m literally sitting in the middle of a midsize German city right now. It’s a Monday morning and blissfully quiet.

What you’re describing sounds more like the Middle East or Asia to me.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#118

I think it's really funny how humans can't help but use round numbers. 30 kph = 18.64 mph 20 mph = 32.19 kph So safety rules around the world are based on arbitrary length systems. I'm all for lower speed limits for safety but I feel there is still things to be worked out in suburban settings where long arterial(?) roads carry large amounts of traffic in large cities.

It is just that Americans are tougher people. That's why during the height of covid, Americans could safely stand 1.829 meters from each other without getting infected while the rest of the world required 6.5616 ft for the same level of safety.

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#119

TL;DR: 1. bicycles people want the cities for them 2. cars people want the cities for them. 3. Amsterdam is so f...g great that God decided to impose it to all of us. 4. Lets take back horses to the cities. They are so cute. We can also eat avocado toast while observing them.

Pedestrians, kids, residents, this isn't just bicycles vs cars. The status quo for years have been cars get all the priority, to the detriment of everyone else, and actually making it a necessity to own a car, why is that a good thing?

Re: Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour

#120
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably going to end up banned as well, as it was in New York, in order to let people live in the city.

Something inside me tells this won't happen everywhere. Real people with problems to pay rent and buy a house cannot afford (like us) live in the center of a city anymore and wont be in the near future. Mandating 30kph everywhere will make people more and more resistant to live in the cities moving out and leaving the center for the hipsters with their avocado toasts. This is gentrification.

... Hold on, making it _less desirable_ (and thus cheaper) to live in cities would be _gentrification_? How's that work?

(FWIW I don't agree that this does make it less desirable to live in cities; it will tend to reduce noise and improve the efficacy of the bus system, both of which make living in cities _more_, not less, desirable anyway.)

I wouldn't have thought most people living in central Amsterdam have parking, anyway? Generally people who actually live in cities are far less likely to have cars than those who live in suburbs (if it's a remotely dense city there simply wouldn't be _space_ for everyone to have a car...)

For what it's worth, I live in Dublin, in the city. Dublin brought in a 30kph limit on most roads around me in 2020; it really didn't change that much. The on-street residents' parking on my road is still generally mostly full. Things are a bit quieter, particularly at night. The bus system works somewhat better, though that one's multifactorial. The number of idiots driving far too fast down my road (it's narrow enough that 50kph was never remotely safe) has fallen off almost entirely, and when it happens now it's always non-Dublin-registered cars.

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