One local government in Melbourne AU (very close to the city) announced they were doing this for a section of their roads (not including arterial roads). The head of the police force said it was ridiculous (so presumably they probably won't enforce it). Despite numerous studies showing the difference in safety for pedestrians, and the fact that most of these streets rarely go above that speed anyway, either due to traffic or physical constraints. But that's car culture for you.
Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
81–90 of 202 posts
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The loud motorcycle crowd deserve death. I am a pacifist and believe strongly that love and kindness is the natural state of man, but people unwinding their modified bikes down residential streets are just malicious monsters who torture entire neighborhoods for their perverse pleasure. I don’t buy their “to be noticed by cars on the highway” malarkey, since they wind up their motors to earth shattering levels on city…
I foresee a future where people who have become deranged by motorcycle noise build small quadcopters that have a steel piece in their frame and a sound detector that when triggered make the quadcopter fly insanely fast towards a motorcycle wheel, lodging that piece of steel right inside the wheel causing the motorcycle driver to lose control and die.
I sympathize with your sentiment if not with your method. I've lived on an intersection of two large roads in Riga, LV and in the summer you couldn't sleep with the windows open (and with the windows closed you couldn't sleep either). Ditto on Overtoom in Amsterdam. Loud bikes in cities are extremely aggravating.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#83> To keep public transport running smoothly, in some places we are constructing separate lanes for public transport. Public transport is allowed to continue travelling at 50km/h on these lanes.
So even more incentive to use public transportation.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 100k population German city I live in recently reported they made 2 million Euro in this year so far (using speed cameras alone.) That doesn't seem like nothing.
2 million / year is 5500 euros / day or about 100 infractions. On a city of 100k I'd say they missed a couple ;)
A lot are actually missed by not getting a good photo and probably other reasons. I've seen the flashing light around 4 to 5 times already, but have only ever gotten 1 ticket (where they changed the speed from 50 to 30 and immediately put up a camera - bastards.)
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#85The "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 sa…
So true - there are some good video comparisons that really hit this home for me, like the Not Just Bikes video “Cities aren’t loud; Cars are loud” [1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
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Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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... .
Yes, it really does. Traffic engineering is an entire field of civil engineering. This has been studied for over a century, and the effect of widening highways and increasing speed limits can be simulated mathematically: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_engineering_(transport... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01912...
Right, as can the effect of adding bicycle lanes, smart traffic lights, buses, bus lanes, traffic calming, different road surfaces, and etc etc.
And- apparently it gets interesting if you start computing throughput in terms of per person instead of per vehicle.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#87Sounds terrible. I wouldn't want to live in that city.
You mustn’t do much walking in your life then.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
That the thing, apartments in US/Canada are in 'trashier' pockets of the city. Single family homes are well located mostly and don't have such problems. Reason is simply - apartments were put there they are well after city was fully developed. Speaking from my experience in Toronto/Montreal areas. Thus I disagree about traffic noise, it's a necessary evil. Real evil is vast zones of single family areas in the city li…
What do you make of the switch to 30kmph with respect to “necessary evil”? It seems like Amsterdam has decided it isn’t necessary at all, for the reasons stated in the article
Context is the king. Read the original comment I'was replying.
As for Amsterdam - it's a tiny city area wise, 30 km/h is mostly core. All highway limits stays the same. Map they provided show 50 km/h outside of the very centre. I'm glad for them if that make a difference. As a side note I didn't enjoy Amsterdam public transport (again comparing with Montreal).
As a related fact in Montreal that stretch of the road https://maps.app.goo.gl/dgG8avYABUgbZ7BTA was switched from 50km/h to 40km/h. As you can see it has fences on both sides, so it's hard to justify safety reasons here.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#89So many comments in here using the context of US cities and missed that Amsterdam (like most big european cities) is not designed for high throughput car transportation and as a result painting that decision as making things "crazy slow" and that it "sounds terrible". I highly encourage you to go live a week in a big old european city (Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid) without renting a car to understand why…
Amsterdam notably was designed for cars in the 70s afaik, but they consciously redesigned it over time. So I’m a few decades, it could be your American city.
Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads
#90The "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 sa…
So true - there are some good video comparisons that really hit this home for me, like the Not Just Bikes video “Cities aren’t loud; Cars are loud” [1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
Delft has done an even better job than Amsterdam so far, but I think that because of the stature of Amsterdam in Dutch society that many other cities will follow now.