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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

#171

Post by wappieslurkz »

mcv wrote: post #4

The title makes it sound like streets in Amsterdam currently don't have a 30 km/h speed limit, and after December, they will all have a 30 km/h speed limit. The reality is that a lot of streets already have a 30 km/h speed limit, and have had them for years. It's been slowly expanding, and clearly will continue to expand even more. There will still be roads with higher speed limits, but their number will shrink. I ex…

Thanks for adding this. It's going the right direction. Personally I'm baffled the speed limit on the (for instance) Rozengracht - Raadhuisstraat is still 50km/h. Crazy.

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

#172

Post by bananapub »

Muromec wrote: post #109
pjc50 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mere suggestion of this in Oxford has caused people to go completely mental and invoke all sorts of WEF conspiracy theories. It might work but the public transport alternatives need to be the working default first.

I heard the one about 15 minutes cities. Which is like normal quality of life aspiration, but then tinfoil hat goes “… and then they will put a wall around it”. It’s ridiculous

it's not just tin-foil-hat loons, it's now also the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/rishi-sunak-claims-15-minute-10263...

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

#173

Post by taylodl »

timrichard wrote: post #127
nvm0n2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decisions haven't really been explained by the standards of explanation you might expect for such a move, at least not everywhere. In Wales the official explanation is: Welsh ministers said a 20mph (32km/h) limit would reduce deaths and noise and encourage people to walk or cycle [1]. Drakeford elaborated by saying "It's going to take you a minute longer to make your journey, and we will save 10 people's lives in…

Yup. Another data point from someone driving in Wales at the moment : - People seem fixated on their speedometers rather than the road, which isn't great for safety. - I'm spending way more time in third gear when I would have previously been in fourth, meaning the engine is revving higher, thus consuming more fuel, thus releasing more emissions. - The rollout has been utterly chaotic. They first released an interact…

I'm an American but I'm into British motorbikes so I watch guys like Stuart Fillingham on YouTube. It's predominantly a motorbiking channel but he talks a lot about local politics and he's been all over these laws and the Net Zero laws in general. You should check him out because if even half of what he says is true then you folks are about to get whacked upside the head!

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

#174

Post by sebazzz »

meheleventyone wrote: post #14
mcv wrote: post #4

The title makes it sound like streets in Amsterdam currently don't have a 30 km/h speed limit, and after December, they will all have a 30 km/h speed limit. The reality is that a lot of streets already have a 30 km/h speed limit, and have had them for years. It's been slowly expanding, and clearly will continue to expand even more. There will still be roads with higher speed limits, but their number will shrink. I ex…

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.

> 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.

The car speedometer is conservative so it is several kilometers behind, and the speed camera allows in the Netherlands about 3 kilometers margin. In practice this means you can drive about 107km/h indicated car speed on a 100km road.

That said, lowering the speed on a road should not only be achieved with different signs but also with traffic calming - so redesigning the layout of the road.

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

#175

Post by sebazzz »

mcv wrote: post #154
dagw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current petrol engines are designed operate at optimal efficiency in the 60-90 km/h range. Electric cars on the other hand can operate efficiently at much lower speeds due to how electric engines work. Efficiency here primarily refers to km/unit of energy. So if you care about minimising pollution in the city centres it's much better if all cars can drive either 70 km/h or not at all through city centres.

ICE cars tend to have gears, and can drive very well in lower gears. You don't want to do 30 in 4th gear.

Correct. In my Hyundai Matrix I drove at 3rd gear.

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

#176

Post by mcv »

pjc50 wrote: post #135
kmlx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from my experience the level of perceived dangerousness is proportional to your most recent experience. drove in the center of Bucharest, Romania, where drivers constantly go over 70kmh (yes through the city center). then drove in London where 20-30mph felt ridiculously slow.

For those who haven't seen it, may I present https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilR93GwSYEA : "C'ETAIT UN RENDEZ-VOUS" - Claude Lelouch (1976), a short film of driving from the north of Paris to Montmartre in eight minutes. The title card says "no trick photography and the film has not been sped up". Don't try this at home.

What an absolute maniac. But Paris in 1976 looks a lot quieter than I remember it from 10-15 years ago.

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

#177

Post by anonymousDan »

mcv wrote: post #40
matsemann wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also surprising how much safer that little speed change is for pedestrians/cyclists if they were to get hit. https://www.nullvisjonen-agder.no/images/grafikk/dodsrisiko-... Speed in km/h vs death rate. From about 10% death (90% survival) at 30 km/h (~18mph) to about 80% death (only 20% survival!) at 50 km/h (~31 mph)

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.

Sure, as a sometime cyclist I am not discounting that as a reason. I made the comment above as I found it was something that perhaps isn't mentioned as much but really does give an immediate quality of life improvement.

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

#178

Post by nvm0n2 »

mcv wrote: post #125
nvm0n2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decisions haven't really been explained by the standards of explanation you might expect for such a move, at least not everywhere. In Wales the official explanation is: Welsh ministers said a 20mph (32km/h) limit would reduce deaths and noise and encourage people to walk or cycle [1]. Drakeford elaborated by saying "It's going to take you a minute longer to make your journey, and we will save 10 people's lives in…

Point 2 is nitpicking. Obviously every trip is different, but a reduction from 30 to 20 mph does not have nearly as big a difference on travel times as your proposal to reduce all the way to 10 or 5 would have. Everything is a compromise. 30 mph was a bad compromise because it's a deadly speed that will kill people in a collision. 20 mph is significantly safer. Reducing further to 10 mph or even 5 mph would not have…

Your first paragraph contains a one sentence explanation they could have easily chosen and presented, but they didn't. That's the complaint.

> your proposal

I haven't made any proposals. My proposed alternative would be for the Welsh government to focus on much bigger problems that they may actually have a mandate for. The alternatives were just examples to illustrate the point. Ask yourself why 20 and not 25, if it helps.

> you generally need an excessive amount of evidence to get politicians to do anything

What an amazing country you must live in. For the schmucks like us in the rest of the world, we have the politician's fallacy. Something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done. Evidence-based policy making is the exception not the norm :(

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

#179

Post by nvm0n2 »

rsynnott wrote: post #150
nvm0n2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decisions haven't really been explained by the standards of explanation you might expect for such a move, at least not everywhere. In Wales the official explanation is: Welsh ministers said a 20mph (32km/h) limit would reduce deaths and noise and encourage people to walk or cycle [1]. Drakeford elaborated by saying "It's going to take you a minute longer to make your journey, and we will save 10 people's lives in…

> It could just as well apply to a limit of 5mph, or 10mph, or banning cars completely. It explains the desire to lower the limit but not the choice of 20mph vs 30mph. Banning cars completely wouldn't be particularly practical. Death rate increases pretty dramatically after about 20mph/30kph. Do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good, here. 30kph in urban areas is about a sweet spot; it makes things a _lot_…

Fine, but none of that is how the policies are being justified, which is what the actual complaint is here. It's not that no justification can be conceived of.

You don't get to kvetch about how boringly logical and evidence-based the explanations are so it's just the prole's being stupid, when the people creating policy aren't justifying their policies with evidence or logic in the first place.

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

#180

Post by pakitan »

matsemann wrote: post #145
pakitan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you see the graph in my comment? There's a steep curve beginning a bit over 30 km/h. Hence great impact per km/h reduction at those higher speeds. Not as much when going even even lower. Most people don't think in extremes, and are actually capable to think of the various tradeoffs. No need to be so hyperbolic.. I'd like some streets to be 20 km/h as well, though. But that is because those streets should be for p…

I saw the graph. It's probably crap, given that there is 5% death rate at 0km/h but let's take it at face value and let's say we implement 30km/h limit. Then there will inevitably be people claiming "death rate can be reduced by another 40% if we were just responsible enough to reduce the limit even further, to 10km/h". That's not hyperbole, that's exactly the way events unfolded near the end of the covid epidemic. Under the "every life is important" slogan, there was massive strain imposed on everyone, just to have a tiny % of old people die next year instead of this one.

Of course there should be 10 or 20km/h limits on certain streets, no one is arguing about that. We're talking about city-wide limits. Here, if I was driving at 30km/h on a main city road, I'd be lynched and rightfully so.

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