Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
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Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#2I like it mainly because this probably is limiting electric bikes more than restricting cars. It's a lil' difficult for cars to hit 50 /too often/ and I say this anecdotally but those bikes in a very 'bike friendly' city are blurring lines and only getting faster.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#3I like it mainly because this probably is limiting electric bikes more than restricting cars. It's a lil' difficult for cars to hit 50 /too often/ and I say this anecdotally but those bikes in a very 'bike friendly' city are blurring lines and only getting faster.
Electric bicycles aren't allowed to exceed 25km/h anyway, so legally only human-powered bikes can exceed the 30km/h speed limit. If the owners messed with their bikes to override the speed limiter, I doubt they'll care about the 30km/h signs.
Mopeds and similar vehicles (the ones with license plates and mandatory helmets) will probably be hit the worst.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#4Safer roads for all stakeholders. Well done Amsterdam. Progress is possible.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#5That's amazing. Meanwhile, in some other first world countries (allegedly): "come on bro, just one more lane, and increase the speed limit, that'll definitely fix traffic and make everything better".
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#6I like it mainly because this probably is limiting electric bikes more than restricting cars. It's a lil' difficult for cars to hit 50 /too often/ and I say this anecdotally but those bikes in a very 'bike friendly' city are blurring lines and only getting faster.
One thing that really surprised me about London when I visited (and people told me that this was also true for the EU and so presumably Amsterdam), was that ebikes are limited to a top speed of 15mph before pedaling. If I heard correctly, it sounds like this won’t affect ebikes?
This surprised me because in NYC ebikes are limited to 25mph before pedaling.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#7The "quieter" aspect is no joke. For the first time in my life, I moved into an apartment near a busy road, the noise is very difficult and I have to wear silicone ear plugs/pillows at night just to sleep because of car noise, especially people with loud motorcycles and trucks and cars that think everyone wants to hear them at 2am. Outside of that over-the-top "flex" noise, just the car noise is fatiguing. One can say "well, you shouldn't live there" but after I experienced it I realised how much housing is built right by main roads and many people don't always have the most privilege to make that choice.
So I think this is a big win for noise pollution, which affects everyone. We just don't realize how much it matters until we hear the inverse, which is silence. Then it's like "oh wow, I didn't realise how loud it was, that feels so much better".
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#8Safer roads for all stakeholders. Well done Amsterdam. Progress is possible.
And probably not much slower. Most of the time of the
journey in roads that are limited to 50km would be waiting
in traffic and junctions. I wonder if perversely this might speed the average journey up? If a road can really only support 20km/h average when traffic lights etc. are taken into account then why try to shoot
traffic through it at 50?
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#9That's amazing. Meanwhile, in some other first world countries (allegedly): "come on bro, just one more lane, and increase the speed limit, that'll definitely fix traffic and make everything better".
In Sydney it is one more tunnel! I am not against it as the infra could
be used by an army of electric buses that could be a psuedo-metro. Please do that!
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#10That's amazing. Meanwhile, in some other first world countries (allegedly): "come on bro, just one more lane, and increase the speed limit, that'll definitely fix traffic and make everything better".
Yeah it's a known thing now that widening highways / adding more throughput does not ease congestion etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic....