1y ago

Amsterdam: Speed limit will be 30 km/h on most roads from today

www.amsterdam.nl Just a moment...

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City's like Amsterdam are not build for cars. They are allowed but it is mostly people on foot and bicycles. Going over 30 is not possible and dangerous.
- On the contrary: Amsterdam was rebuilt for cars in the 1950s-1970s, then re-rebuilt for bikes because they realized that they had made a terrible mistake.
  
  So... it's not currently built for cars.
- The old center that was built before cars is only a part of the city. The rest of the city has been built with car traffic in mind. The problem is more that it is too crowded.
  
  The problem is really that cars are too space inefficient for what they do. Cars travelling at 50km/h should have at the very least 1s of travel distance safety distance between vehicles which is about three car lengths. In other words for the often single person travelling in a car you need about one lane width times 4 car lengths of space which is probably more than your average apartment size in most cities and unlike apartments roads tend to not be stacked 5 or 6 high on top of each other. And that does not even take parking and space to enter and exit each parking space into account. Not to mention that a lot of that space is unused outside the peak usage hours at any given location.

We're were getting a 20 mph limit for most roads in our UK town (until it was scrapped yesterday) and the local Facebook groups are acting like they're turning us into an open air prison.
Apparently having shops in walking distance is a Chinese conspiracy, and we must reject the climate emergency, and other such frothing at the mouth...

There's no point to allowing private cars in cities anyway. Just ban the lot of them.
- The only exception i can think of are people with impaired movement that are fit to drive though. But for this we dont need full cars.
  
  There are a few others I can think of but most of those revolve around rare events like moving in or out or buying furniture.
- So - how do they get in and out of the cities?
  
  Park and ride- I'm struggling to remember if it's called that in English. They set up a bus line between a car park on the outskirts of the city and the city centre. So you just have to park and then jump on the bus. More specifically to The Netherlands trains and bikes are usually workable options as well.
  
  Public transport?
  
  Massive parking lots at the edge of the city. At least this was the recommendation of the Berlin Autofrei initiative.
  
  Schiphol airport is also a train terminal.

And next step is to enforce a 25km/h speed limit for e-bikes. Those kids on those fatbikes are a menace.
- We have that in Germany, 25 for regular e-bikes. Anything above requires you to register and insure your bike, you get an actual license plate and you are considered a vehicle not meant to use regular bike lanes.
  
  Not quite. Only the motor assist has to shut off at 25 km/h. You can go as fast as you want (and your legs allow) with most e-Bikes. The ones which require a license plate are extremely rare.
  Fun fact: the default speed limits of 50 in built-up areas and 100 on country roads do not apply to bicycles without license plates. Those, by law, are only for "Kraftfahrzeuge". Signposted limits on the other hand are for "Fahrzeuge aller Art", which includes bicycles and horse carriages.

What's so strange is that still you will find big Toyota, Audi and Mercedes vehicles parked in the center, even though it's not handy to move that way in the city

i misread that, and thought the entire country was going to implement it. this really does make a lot of sense (in this particular city). but i woudn't go around and limit traffic in every city to 30km/h like some politicians in germany tried to do.
- I'm not aware of any german politician wanting to implement a general speed limit of 30 in every/any city. Instead there is an attempt to allow cities/mayors/city planners to implement speed limits on individual streets for a variety of reasons. As of now many reasons like noise, risk to other road users, even schools/kindergartens in the vicinity are often not sufficient to warrant an individual speed limit according to road traffic regulations.
  
  The workaround Germans seem to have discovered is to have roadworks that last indefinitely.
- Why not?
- 30kph in every city centre makes sense. It's safer for everyone, including drivers. Nobody wants to hit a cyclist or pedestrian and you can see more at this speed, and have a shorter length to stop.
  It also encourages people to take ring roads if they need to be on the other side of a city and need to have their car there.
- Wales implemented it country wide. Almost all 30mph limits are now 20mph.

That sounds like a big mistake. I can understand like, 48 km/h per hour in highly populated areas, but going below US school speed limits is going to create lots of offenders (maybe that's the end game). I can ride faster that 30 km/h on my bike. I can continually do that with as little as a 5% decline from the horizontal axis.
- Loudly and visibly changing the rules doesn't "create offenders". Offenders aren't victims of changed rules.
  It has been shown time and again that lowering speed limits in cities reduces traffic accidents and emissions at close to no costs to the flow of traffic.
  My own city (in Germany, so it really was a heavily-criticized decision) lowered the speed limit on one of the major arterial roads to 30 kph. It is one I have to use regularly, and oh boy, let me tell you: I was soooo opposed to the change. Yet, it really only changed how fast you arrive at the next red light. There is literally no discernable change in how long it takes to pass that street, especially during rush hour. Traffic just got a little more fluid.
  It is, however, the street with the most speeding tickets in town. I regularly see one or two mobile speed cameras along the way. And I've never been fined. You got to wonder...
  
  Offenders aren't victims of changed rules.
  I'd say they are, if the rules are shit. In this case though the rules are fine imo.
  
  It is, however, the street with the most speeding tickets in town.
  Is it still built like a 50km/h street? If yes then there you have your answer.
  
  Typical walking speed is about 2.5 to 3 MPH suppose your government legislated a universal walking speed limit of 1.5 MPH. I think you can easily see that ridiculous laws create offenders, and the offenders are the victim of bad laws.
- Wait school zone speed limits in the US is higher than 30km/h ?
  In my country school zone speed limit is usually 20km/h and there are tons of residential areas as well as more and more cities that restricts big portion of their roads to 30km/h.
  This is mostly done to reduce noise pollution as well as mortal accidents.
  
  Remember the american mentality:
  As soon as children are born, they don't matter any more.
  
  It's 20mph which is 32kmh
  
  School zones are 40km/h in my country.
  
  Most school zones in the US are 20mph (32km/h). Some states will have 25mph and, for example, a highway going through a school zone that usually 65mph may go to 35-50mph when the school zone is active but this is an exception, not the rule and is done on a case by case basis.
  Remember though, American roads are much larger tha European roads. Most of these school zones that go that slow there's really no need for it.
  
  Also you are only allowed to drive as fast as to not endanger others. Children are not reliable and predictable. In front of a school during school hours driving at the speed limit is still reckless.
- Thankfully Amsterdam isn't the first city to do this and most of it is also limited to 30 kph anyway, so we actually this will work out fine.
  I can ride faster that 30 km/h on my bike. I can continually do that with as little as a 5% decline from the horizontal axis.
  5% is pretty steep, I wouldn't be surprised if one could reach 30 kph without pedaling at all.
  
  5% is pretty steep, I wouldn’t be surprised if one could reach 30 kph without pedaling at all.
  Technically you can reach that with any amount of drop per distance where the speed gain exceeds drag as long as you don't specify how long the incline is.
  
  5% is pretty steep
  found the dutch person
- Also 30km/h with a 9kg bike isn't 30km/h with a 1600kg toyota when you hit someone
  If you want to go fast go around the city
- Amsterdam isn't the kind of place where you'd be doing 30km/h. In car or on bike.
  Amsterdam is one big highly populated area. See point 1.
  If you do try going over 30km/h in Amsterdam, you're frankly a danger to yourself in most places on bike and a danger to pretty much everyone else when you're in a car.
- Many major European cities already implemented this, and I've yet to hear of a single one where it turned out to be "a big mistake". Can anybody from these cities report (e. g. Helsinki or others)?
  
  Madrid did this. Massive fail, basically no one was going 30km/h, if you did (which I used to, just to fuck around) you could expect lots of honking and comments about your mother. It was reverted shortly after
- but going below US school speed limits is going to create lots of offenders
  That's not really relevant in Europe.
- You obviously never been to Amsterdam
- 30 km/h is somewhere around the point where pedestrians can walk away from a collision with a car. Not unharmed but likely without broken bones.
  Yes you can bike faster, but a bike has much less mass so they're less dangerous for pedestrians in collisions.
- The limit before was 50km/h. The city is just too crowded. By lowering the speed limit even more you force people to take the highways if they want to reach the other side of the city.
- Actually there's so much road crossing from people and bikes in Amsterdam that cars kind of already go to 30km/h in most streets

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