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Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

amsterdam.nl

121–130 of 202 posts

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#121
post #46

So 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.

No, they tried that but aborted the plan, fortunately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokinen_Plan

But not until they did quite a bit of damage, some of which remains today. If that idiot had had his way a lot of the historical city would have been destroyed.

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#122
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean it was quite clearly designed for water traffic first. I wouldn't describe it as designed for cars in comparison to say Los Angeles or Kansas City.

The water traffic was the equivalent of today's trucks.

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#123

Interesting that this got flagged off the homepage. Wonder why. If you flagged this would you explain why a development like this in a world capital is off-limits?

>Wonder why Articles like this always cause flame wars between car haters and non car haters, and city dwellers and non city dwellers.

It's a major win for sustainable living regardless of whether you're a car hater or a city dweller or the reverse, after all: cars aren't banned, just slowed down to the same speed as the rest of the traffic, as are mopeds etc. It makes it safer for everybody.

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wonder why Articles like this always cause flame wars between car haters and non car haters, and city dwellers and non city dwellers.

It's a major win for sustainable living regardless of whether you're a car hater or a city dweller or the reverse, after all: cars aren't banned, just slowed down to the same speed as the rest of the traffic, as are mopeds etc. It makes it safer for everybody.

The contents of the article don't matter. People will start flame wars since it's tangential.

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#125
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it was quite clearly designed for water traffic first. I wouldn't describe it as designed for cars in comparison to say Los Angeles or Kansas City.

The water traffic was the equivalent of today's trucks.

Probably more efficient in some ways, definitely better for the environment.

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#127
post #10

Earlier 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...

Here in Sydney, we just got a massive 'size' upgrade and well well, it slowed traffic! https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/the-rozehell-interchange...

Unfortuantely maths and the real world don't always add up..

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#128

The "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…

I live on a popular local road, but cars/trucks are nothing in comparison to motorcycles. It’s especially bad when there are large groups - not sure what the physics behind this, but it seems to resonate even worse and shake the entire house. There’s no reason it needs to be this loud and the usual safety argument doesn’t resonate with me… pun intended…

[deleted]

Re: Amsterdam Switches to 30 Km/h on 80% of its Roads

#130

The "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…

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 see your transient crowd of loud motorcycles and raise you a stationary team of suburban gas-powered leaf blowers.
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