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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.
30km/h is actually above the average travel speed you typically achieve in a big city, if you take traffic jams into account.
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reduci…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. If you're willing to risk people dying just to get to your preferred McDonald's three minutes earlier, then the problem is you.
I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reduci…
The below article is in Norwegian, but has many references at the end. Apparently people are overwhelmingly happy, so it seems inappropriate to talk about «hurting quality of life». https://www.tiltak.no/d-flytte-eller-regulere-trafikk/d2-reg...
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reduci…
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reduci…
No, they only made it more painful to get into the city streets by car. And probably not by much, as it only matters if you are not stuck in traffic or waiting at a red light. Helsinki is a walkable city with good public transport, cars are not the only option.
> Mass surveillance under the ever present and weak excuse of “safety”
Speed traps (that's probably what is talked about here) are a very targeted from of surveillance, only taking pictures of speeding vehicles. And if it results in traffic deaths going down to zero, that's not a weak excuse. Still not a fan of "automatic speed enforcement" for a variety of reasons, but mass surveillance is not one of them.
> More than half of Helsinki’s streets now have speed limits of 30 km/h. Fifty years ago, the majority were limited to 50 km/h. So they hurt quality of life by making it more painful to get anywhere, taking time away from everyone’s lives. You can achieve no traffic deaths by slowing everyone to a crawl. That doesn’t make it useful or good. The goal should be fast travel times and easy driving while also still reduci…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. If you're willing to risk people dying just to get to your preferred McDonald's three minutes earlier, then the problem is you.
I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.
Suppose a trip is 5km.
At 50km/h, that trip takes 6 minutes.
At 30km/h, that trip takes 10 minutes.
In practice, this naive way of calculating this doesn’t even reflect reality, because odds are the average speed of a driver through Helsinki was around 30km/h anyways. Going 50km/h between red lights doesn’t actually make your trip faster.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 km/h to 30 km/h on a city commute doesn't make a substantial difference. If you're willing to risk people dying just to get to your preferred McDonald's three minutes earlier, then the problem is you.
I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.
I’m an avid cyclist in a US city. There’s a pretty large radius around me in which driving is Anyways, what the hell is everyone in such a hurry for? Leave five minutes earlier. Cars are absolutely magical. Drivers sitting on mobile couches while expending minimal effort? Magical. So, ya know, adding a few minutes should really be no big deal. Which I doubt it does.
Big, open highways are different. Or at least I’d imagine them to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see how a 20 km/h difference can't not make a difference averaged over so many commuter-miles, but I'm not a city planner or traffic engineer.
You don’t need to be either. Suppose a trip is 5km. At 50km/h, that trip takes 6 minutes. At 30km/h, that trip takes 10 minutes. In practice, this naive way of calculating this doesn’t even reflect reality, because odds are the average speed of a driver through Helsinki was around 30km/h anyways. Going 50km/h between red lights doesn’t actually make your trip faster.
This is a wonderful explanation.
Though I've lived in Europe (Düsseldorf and London), my default sense of urban density is still American so it was hard to fathom such a low potential average speed. In London, I didn't bother with a car.