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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

#161

Post by bronikowski »

lostlogin wrote: post #34
jrockway wrote: post #16

That's getting close to something reasonable to achieve on a (non-"e") bicycle. I have always wanted to get a speeding ticket on my bike, but never have.

Just checked, my fairly hilly commute on a bike averages about 25kmh. That would mean exceeding 30 for a fair bit of the ride. I have never seen anyone get a ticket on a bike for anything. It would be more like a badge of honour I think.

Once I had a cop point a speed gun on me when I rode in deep outskirts of Poland on a road limited to 30kmh. I think he was just joking and passing time seeing that in the hours I rode on that road maybe 10 cars passed me by.

(the only two tickets I got in my life were on bike)

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

#162

Post by ben_w »

rsynnott wrote: post #152
thejackgoode wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, sirens are noisy and nobody even talks about regulating them adequately

Sirens are _necessary_; being noisy is the point. Probably not a huge amount you can do there (beyond enforcing that they are only used where appropriate, but in most well-run emergency services that's largely not an issue). Anecdotally, living in a medium-sized (~1.5 million people) city, I don't hear them that much, except when walking along a road near my house that leads to a major hospital.

Pure-tone sirens are necessarily noisy; a while back there was an attempt to replace them with alternating white noise and a more normal siren sound, the reasoning being that sirens only needed to be so loud because they were serving two different goals at the same time, to identify the existence and location of an emergency vehicle, and that white noise could be played at a much lower volume while making it easier to locate the vehicle relative to your own.

Also anecdotally: I live on a busy cross-roads in Berlin, and I've had half a dozen so far today… and one more while writing this line. The exact number varies a lot from one day to the next, so I'm not sure the overall count, but the new one is still going on by the time I get to this word ← here even though the road was fairly clear at the moment.

Sometimes I even get them in stereo as multiple vehicles go past with a gap between them; and I've witnessed at least one occasion where different services passed the junction in different directions within a few seconds of each other.

The sirens are the only bit about this place that I really dislike; but enough of a problem that I'm looking for a suburban place next even though that will probably mean a longer walk to shops and restaurants.

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

#163

Post by LeanderK »

matsemann wrote: post #18
jraph wrote: post #9

My city has been limited to 30 km/h for a few years now. As someone who is mostly by bike and by foot, sometimes in public transports and occasionally in a car, that has been a good thing. The city is small and full of traffic lights, and there's a ring road, 50 to 30 km/h inside the city can't be increasing travel time too much for cars. I don't think it was possible to drive at 50 km/h in most of the city anyway. (…

I'm fan of the concept of superblocks. You can drive inside them, but not between them. Want to go from block A to D? Can't drive through B and C. Need to drive out to the ring road, then follow it and into block D. Makes it so that no through traffic at speed goes through the areas where people live and stay.

It's also being rolled out in berlin and what I saw it's really, really great. But there are drawbacks. People living on the main streets get more traffic and pollution and some violently oppose it. Public transit and emergency vehicle access can be solved. It's really not that easy to implement because car drivers will try to drive through anyway, so you have to install modal filters everywhere (elements that bike traffic can flow through but not car traffic). But then you have to think hard about public transit and emergency vehicles. So it's not really that cheap.

I think you have to reduce car-dependency first, afterwards you can roll them out because the acceptance is higher and advocacy groups form.

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

#164

Post by meheleventyone »

macleginn wrote: post #153
meheleventyone wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only place I’ve got a ticket was in the countryside so YMMV!

Yes, they do exist, but they are clearly marked, including on the maps, so you need to do only a minimum amount of adaptation. On the other hand, most of the examples of egregiously bad driving I noticed were in Reykjavik, and in the countryside drivers are generally very careful (modulo tourists who suddenly slow down, stop, or even reverse a bit to take a photo or smth).

There are also regularly police sitting out running speed traps in a more adhoc style which is what got me.

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

#165

Post by ben_w »

xenospn wrote: post #111
macleginn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The stats I've seen say that they do both, to varying degrees depending on the quality of enforcement. If you're absolutely certain to get a ticket for speeding, and you are somewhere that will take your licence away for breaking road traffic rules too often, you're not going to do it again — not twice more, anyway.

Back in the UK, there was someone I knew who absolutely loved to go fast. He had a story about red-lining his (Lexus?) across northern France to get back to the ferry before it's last crossing for the day (and how he wasn't caught in France, but almost immediately hit a speed trap when back in the UK). I was in his car for a two-vehicle "convoy" from a restaurant to an indoor race track for a mutual friend's stag do, where the other car was driven by someone who followed the speed limit, and when I asked this guy why he was doing 97 mph on the A14, his answer was "if I was going faster I might have to waste time in court proving that's not dangerous driving" rather than to slow down.

But that guy, when he was on the maximum number of points on his licence before they'd take it away, was very careful to… not get caught.

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

#166

Post by 0JzW »

mcv wrote: post #140
hgomersall wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, hearing a siren is exceptionally rare. AFAICT, they overwhelmingly prefer lights only, saving sirens for a narrow set of circumstances.

Same in NL. Sirens are only turned on in the most extreme cases. In most cases lights seem to be enough. I do get the impression that firefighters are a bit more likely to use sirens than police and ambulance are, but I'm fine with that.

this is absolutely not the case in Amsterdam. 90% of ambulances/firefighter cars have their sirens on full blast. this is especially noticeable in summer nights when they can be heard from quite far away

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

#167

Post by LeanderK »

okokwhatever wrote: post #55
stinos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprisingly, the socialism is blatantly obvious. The science as well, the dependency between impact veolocity and severity of injury and risk of survival of pedestrians and cyclists is fairly well studied and known. the image there sure does not look like a 30km/h street to me I've been there (or somewhere in Amsterdam where it looks exactly the same) and at peak hour 50km/h passing by a crowded bicycle path whi…

It´s like mixing pedestrians with heavy construction machines. Wouldn´t be better to separate both of them for the good of everyone? I mean, not everyone has the possibility of walking a couple of streets to buy a cappuccino and then take an elevator to the office. Try having kids in a city today and then let's talk.

I don't get this comment? Separating what? Pedestrians and cars? Cars and bikes? Isn't this also mostly done? I mean that's the idea behind bike lanes for example. There are limits to the amount of separation possible though.

> I mean, not everyone has the possibility of walking a couple of streets to buy a cappuccino and then take an elevator to the office. Try having kids in a city today and then let's talk.

I don't get this comment. Is there no cafe near you? Also, you still shouldn't speed in residential or mixed neighbourhoods, regardless of where you live. Even if your office is further away. People live there. A highway and ring road usually takes you reasonable near you office, for most cities in europe and I bet every city in the US.

> Try having kids in a city today

What's the difference to having a kid in a city in the past? Cars certainly grew bigger and that's strictly worse for having a kid in the city.

I get not wanting your kids to grow up in the city, but that's also your own decision. And if you end up with a long commute others shouldn't bear unreasonable consequences. Others might raise their kids in the city and the kid might want to cross the road (assuming it is old enough) without a fear of death from thousands of cars speeding by.

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

#168

Post by thejackgoode »

rsynnott wrote: post #152
thejackgoode wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, sirens are noisy and nobody even talks about regulating them adequately

Sirens are _necessary_; being noisy is the point. Probably not a huge amount you can do there (beyond enforcing that they are only used where appropriate, but in most well-run emergency services that's largely not an issue). Anecdotally, living in a medium-sized (~1.5 million people) city, I don't hear them that much, except when walking along a road near my house that leads to a major hospital.

Of course they are necessary. They have to be used responsibly and not as a job perk, that's my point. Light signals are usually enough.

I also live in 1.5 mil city and I haven't got used to how many there are after moving here almost a decade ago.

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

#169

Post by xenospn »

mcv wrote: post #149
xenospn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My limited experience with cities in the Middle East and Asia is that the noise there also comes first and foremost from traffic, and those cities could also benefit from a less car-centric design.

Yes - bikes and people honking senselessly is incredibly noisy. In Asia, a lot of shops simply blast music in hopes of attracting customers (not sure how that works)

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

#170

Post by momirlan »

mcv wrote: post #160
momirlan wrote: post #132

Toronto is using potholes, natural way to slow traffic.

Netherland uses lots of traffic calming measures, but I think this particular one would be completely unacceptable here.

why, they grow naturally which ensure continuous lower speeds, until a perfect zero is achieved.
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