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 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".
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 roads at every opportunity, rattling windows and setting off car alarms, clearly to gain the notice of everyone sleeping rather than for their own safety.
At least the leaf blowers happen during the day. I live in a very dense neighbourhood, and it's a running joke among neighbours in the local FB groups. That being said, the (on purpose) loud motorcycle and car crowd honestly deserves the worst.
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.
As a motorcyclist I hear you and wholeheartedly agree with you!
The motorcycling community has this stupid mantra "loud pipes save lives." There's only one problem: it isn't true. There is no compelling evidence backing up that claim. They then use it as an excuse to get the most obnoxiously loud pipes they can - often illegally modifying them to remove baffles so they can be even louder! I have no idea why this isn't being policed as it's easy to do.
Their bikes are so damned loud I can't even ride alongside of them. The one thing that gives me a smile is I know in 20-30 years they are going to have one helluva case of tinnitus. Yeah, payback really is a bitch!
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]
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.
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…
If people didn’t live in such places then the housing crisis would be much worse. Infact where I live I think main roads/trains are a requirement to get the zoning to build the apartments!
I wonder if sound proofing (the expensive high density kind) might help? Depends if you are renting or not. It might cost a few $10k but could be worth it for QOL.
Sound proofing can totally work, and I actually think all apartments in an apartment building or maybe just all dwelling structures should have an average, min and max noise level in decibels with the windows open.
It is really nice, and sometimes important to be able to get outside air into the home. Noise proofing only works (and it does work with the right windows, doors, floors, ceilings) if the windows and doors are closed. Once you open one even a crack, the noise comes pouring in like high pressure water.
The move to EVs has made my neighborhood in silicon valley a lot quieter over the past 10 years.
We live near a private school so some mornings the line of cars gets long - since about 2020 a large number of these are Teslas or other EVs. The line is annoying but the noise and emissions aren't a big deal anymore.
I used to read a book about complex systems. The book told a story that a town decided to build speed bumps to slow down traffic in its downtown area. As a results, there are more cars on the road and more noise. I guess the reality is more complex the what the book covers.
I actually live in one of the more expensive "luxury" apartments in the area, is has an amazing view too. This really doesn't have anything to do with being poor. There are million dollar apartments in NYC that have this same issue. Are they poor?
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 limits, especially close to metro.
> Reason is simply - apartments were put there they are well after city was fully developed.
I'm confused by this statement. In any older city in the US, like in any city in Europe, the heart of the city is apartment buildings. Those would have been the main part of the city by the time it was big enough to be called a "city." Single family homes were generally in later areas -- suburbs, or suburbs that got swallowed up by the city -- or in the small exclusive pockets of extremely wealthy areas.
Some new apartments in 5-over-2 buildings sure. But developers only build apartments in areas that already have high land value, this includes areas like center city, Phila, the loop in Chicago, the central west end in St. Louis, etc,
It is obviously not the case that developers only build in the Loop in Chicago; in fact, virtually none of the housing built in Chicago is built in the Loop.
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.
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 it's not a crazy decision and how it can make the life of the residents so much better.
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.
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.
Pretty much all of Amsterdam is pre-WW2 or older. Only the parts outside the A10 ringroad tend to be post war and more car friendly.
There were indeed plans to bulldoze large parts of the old city and build highways and high rises, but after many protests almost no plans were executed.
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 30 km/h limit will apply to all vehicles, including bicycles and in particular electric "fat" bikes which have become a particular problem in the city lately.
I think the expectation is that they will eventually traffic calm the streets until people really go 30km/h. (Or speed a little, probably not 40 km/h.)
FWIW, 20mph school zones seem to be becoming more common in the US.
They use automated cameras on many roads and they will fine you for going over 30km/hr, from experience in Ireland. Although I think they are only that strict on problematic stretches. My mother got a fine for going 34km/hr in a 30 zone.
People in Amsterdam use km/h not mph.
From my experience in france, on 30km/h roads, people would drive anywhere between 30-40km/h, while on 50km/h roads, people would drive between 50 and 55km/h.
I was just confused by the usage of mph in this context and interpreted parent's comment in a way that would mean amsterdam residents were using mph.
I also wanted to provide a data point that does indeed go in the way of the parent regarding people going over the speed limit.
For one, your car's speedometer will underreport actual driving speed, then there's also around 10% tolerance usually. So if you go "35"kmh, you're still below limit.
In the US it wouldn't make sense. Spending 2 hours to go to the grocery store and back just on the travelling part would be a big commitment whenever you needed to go.
Amsterdam won't have just 30 km/h roads. Those are just for the last mile.
On the other hand, in Amsterdam there's usually going to be some sort of grocery store somewhere in walking or biking distance; and a lot of train stations have grocery stores too, so you can just pick up some last minute shopping on the way back from work for instance.
30km/h makes sense on urban roads. If you need to go 15-30km to get to your grocery store you probably live a lifestyle where you plan that trip, use a freezer and so on. Unless that trip happens to be a motorway/freeway.
Fast motorways are incredibly safe because no pedestrians and energy absorbing crash barriers and traffic control/monitoring. There are exceptions e.g. where there is fog for example.
Fast roads in cities should ideally be designed so it is really hard for pedestrians to get on them except at the intersections.
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.
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.)
They probably get great photos but the camera may be set to the actual limit whereas the fine only comes when you exceed that limit by a certain amount.
> i'm pretty sure that's only a legit business model in the usa
lolwut? i haven't gotten a single camera-based ticket, ever - many decades of driving in the US - unlike say Italy where every time i drive (about once in 5 years) i seem to break some stupid minor rule and get a photo ticket
Do you really think that in a country with extensive rail and a bicycle culture as a national identity that the reason for reduced speed limits is a cash grab?
Is it so alien to you to consider that perhaps the country is implementing these kinds of laws to reduce the harmful effects of automobiles with the ultimate end game being the extinction of car culture?
The end goal is not the extinction of car culture. The end goal is to get everyone from A to B safely and swiftly, regardless of transport mode.
Basically if you put Germans and Dutch people together, they'll argue which country has the best car infrastructure. The grass is greener on the other side. Dutch people say you can go faster on German roads, while Germans say that the dutch speed limits make traffic more smooth and logical.
Either way, once you drive out to the highway you can theoretically lock the cruise control to 100 km/h [1] (including on intersections) until ~5-10 min from your destination.[2] That's not a bad country for cars!
[1] Except eg. Amsterdam ring-road which is 80 km/h. Exception that proves the rule.
[2] I did say theoretically. Roads ARE busy and you may need to tap the brakes sometimes. Though... in practice I'm willing to bet that on any given day some number of people actually manage to achieve this by accident. (outside rush hour and with a little luck)
Because I see technology as a being used as a means to social control and authoritarian rule. Most HN commenters are perfectly willing to see this as well when it comes to DRM, remote attestation, secure boot, etc, but magically forget that when discussion of traffic and cars comes up.
It's not authoritarian rule and social control to limit the speed of death machines inside a dense city. I don't want fast cars in my city, I don't want the noise, the fatalities or injuries, nor the pollution.
Cars are a privilege, you need a licence from the government to drive them, are you going to advocate for removing driver licencing as well? Because that's pretty much full government control over who can drive or not. Pretty authoritarian, no?
That'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".
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:
It's the psychology that they don't take into account. Making travel times better in one area makes more people take more trips or change when they take trips, making it worse again until some kind of equilibrium is reached over a year or a couple of years (which is often around the same kind of travel times you had before the upgrade).
You could absolutely make traffic better by increasing lanes somewhere where the population was generally decreasing at a decent rate, of course, but population growth is another source in many places - you can't build enough new capacity in a lot of areas to keep up with the growth.
The fundamental problem is that cars are a very space inefficient way of moving people - that's why we see this problem in cities but don't tend to see it in rural areas (because they don't have many people but have plenty of space, so the volumetric inefficiency doesn't matter), and why you don't tend to see the issue much with rail other transit - since they have so much passenger capacity for the space they take up, if there's induced demand there's often scope for increasing service frequency.
Out of curiosity why wouldn't it be? Technology is improving all the time. We'll solve CO2 in the atmosphere and at the point every person on earth will want a green car.
> There is little dispute among transportation researchers that expanding highway capacity increases vehicle use. This phenomenon is commonly known as induced demand, and it demonstrates a fundamental economic principle: individuals tend to consume more of a good as the price of the good falls. In other words, wider highways increase traffic speeds and reduce the time cost of driving, thereby inducing additional vehicle travel. In the short run, when residential and employment locations are fixed, faster peak period highway speeds attract drivers from alternate routes, modes, and times of day. Then, in the long-run, faster speeds encourage additional social and economic behavior in areas made more accessible by the new highway capacity, which further increases traffic volumes.
> Research studies since the 1960s have suggested that, because of induced demand, the hoped-for benefits from highway expansion tend to be short-lived and do not provide lasting relief to traffic congestion. Early studies by Downs (1962), Smeed (1968), and Thomson (1977) go so far as to argue that, over time and without any other offsetting deterrent, rush-hour traffic speeds tend to revert to their pre-expansion levels. The finding has even been dubbed the Fundamental Law of Road Congestion (Downs, 1962), which asserts that the elasticity of vehicle miles traveled with respect to lane mileage is equal to one, implying that driving increases in exact proportion to highway capacity additions.
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!
Seriously, at least in France the big success story in my book has been the use of heavy-duty buses to expand transit networks. You just gotta take over existing lanes, and you make your main bus lanes have buses every 5 minutes or so. It's not ideal but it exists and works.
Highly recommend as an alternative to wishing for metro lines.
They have introduced 30km/h limits in my city center (Christchurch, New Zealand). Also introduced synchronized lights to reduce traffic speed. Plus techniques to take traffic away from city center. And reducing parking.
Traffic is now far more congested - as must have been expected by the planners. And people are avoiding going to the city center for shopping/meals/etcetera.
AFAIK the planners do not measure outcomes: intention of changes is A/B/C but do they measure that A/B/C occurred?
I think one major aim is reducing the number of cars hitting cyclists and pedestrians. No idea whether that is being achieved.
The one council planner I know is a cycling nut! It is "interesting" watching the results of expensive cycling upgrades. On a per cycling trip basis (per person using the upgrades), the changes appear to me to be hidiously overpriced. Let's see how it pans out over the decades. I cycled to work every day for a while through the city center so I do understand some of the needs.
I work next to a road in Amsterdam where cars are currently driving 50 and will have to drive 30.
My view is that the cars always have to wait at the traffic lights, because it is too busy with traffic. So essentially they speed up to 50 just to stop again moments later. Therefore I think the time difference will not be very big.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Depends on the timing phases of the lights.
Certainly the new 30km/h and modified phases has caused noticable congestion where previously traffic flowed very well.
Sure to be safer for pedestrians and cyclists because the traffic is now mostly at a standstill.
On some roads you could race the phases and go 60 to 70 in a 50 zone.
I would be interested to see a measure for the improvement in safety. People were careful on those roads, and can now be more cavalier e.g. cyclists lane splitting and pedestrians jaywalking through dense standstill traffic.
Cycling infrastructure is much cheaper than car infrastructure. Way less material needed (narrower paths, less foundation) and much lower maintenance costs.
Initial investment per cyclist might seem high, but you need to build it before they come. And they come. Just look at Amsterdam (became a cycling city in the 70s) or Paris (started investing heavily in cycling infra a little less than 10 years ago).
"The $290m 16-kilometre Northern Corridor motorway extension, funded by the government, cost $18m a kilometre to build, while the second stage of the southern motorway worked out at $20m per kilometre." says https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/124611551/building-10...
In the US it costs about US (20230) $4 million/mile to put in a new small urban road. https://kobobuilding.com/cost-to-build-a-road-per-mile/ . That's about NZ$4 million/km, if I did the conversion correctly, and still more than the bike path.
Arguing that roads are more expensive is roger irrelevant.
> 10x more expensive than this bike path.
And faaar less than 1/10th of trips goes to bike paths. Cost per actual trip is what matters. What I see is a few busy bike lanes (say city centre). And some virtually unused bikelanes e.g. there are very nice expensive cycle lanes next to the Southern Motorway - but their cost per trip is surely much much higher than the cost of the Motorway per trip costs. I.e. your argument isn't just wrong, it's likely wrong in the wrong direction.
And some of that expensive road costs are for cyclists e.g. a costly ROAD intersection designed for bikes (near a university). The new redesign to fix the cockup is more $$$. One intersection - and designing for bikes was the cause for the costs (the externalities were also high). https://i.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/123202841/traffic-light...
Cyclelanes get road barriers e.g. road to Lyttelton has a new one. Fairly accounting for costs added to roads matters.
> NZ$317
Aaaaand just where do you think those government taxes come from eh? You are trying to imply that the difference between $750 and $317 is free money not paid for by Christchurch tax payers.
My bigger point is that the reality needs to be rationally acknowledged. Ignoring usage is putting head in sand.
It's also incorrect to compare this bike path, which seems to be more expensive than most, to the average road cost. I quoted several road projects which were much more expensive than average.
Is the average comparison price comparison more like 30x? If so, that's what you would expect for 3% of the population, yes?
> Cost per actual trip is what matters.
Then work out and present the numbers, rather than feelings.
Every person biking is a car off the road, and the car on the road requires a LOT more space than a bike. Bikes also take far less space to store, so you don't need a much space dedicated to parking instead of housing or businesses.
Your secondary effects should include reduced pollution (EVs don't have exhaust, but still release tire/brake particulates) and improved general health (by people biking instead of driving).
Try digging up the planning study which justified this work, and see what it reports. That should include the "rationally acknowledged" details you seek.
> You are trying to imply that the difference between $750 and $317 is free money not paid for by Christchurch tax payers.
No, I was pointing out that your math - "that is $750 per person" - is wrong. If that simple calculation is wrong, how well can you/I trust your analysis?
Roads are mostly paid for by car users - so their relative expense is fucking irrelevant.
It is perfectly valid to complain about the costs of cycle lanes when they are being paid for by people that are not using them. Sure non-cyclists do get some benefits - but nowhere near the amount that non-cyclists are paying.
I couldn't find any figures on cross-regional tax imbalances. But as a first estimate I think it is fair to assume Christchurch government taxes are approximately the same as government expenditure on Christchurch. Not quite right e.g. we hear a lot of complaints that Auckland roading infrastructure is subsidised by the rest of the country.
I'm only quoting public info - this is not an area I care that much about. I'm just interested in some estimates given the issues I perceive around the city.
> The government money for the cycle lanes comes mostly from car and fuel taxes:
My experience from the US is no doubt leading me astray.
However, you have mischaracterized your source. It says "Revenue in the NLTF comes from two main sources – fuel taxes and road user charges."
The entry for "Road user charges (net)" says "$6 billion End customers of freight carriers in the prices paid for goods and services. Light diesel vehicle owner payments."
It does not give a breakdown for just cars, and even people without a car pay for goods and services which are transported over roads.
Furthermore, the National Land Transport Fund is not the only organization which funds roads. It took a while to find it, but I see that "Council receive Transport related revenue from several operating streams. These are rates, borrowing and the National
Land Transport Fund (NLTF) subsidy, via the National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) which Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency administer on behalf of the Government." at https://ccc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/The-Council/Plans-Strat... .
You therefore need to include rates and borrowing into the total budget sources.
According to https://www.nzta.govt.nz/planning-and-investment/national-la... , for example, the "Total for Canterbury › Christchurch City Council › Local road maintenance" for the "The total cost of the activity’s phase for all years, including local share" is NZ$ 548,783.1 while the NLTF funding is 32,772.9+35,390.3+40,024.8 = 108,188 or less than 20% of the total cost - if I understand it correctly.
If I understand "Total for Canterbury › Christchurch City Council › Local road improvements" correctly, under 10% is from NLTF funding.
That sure seems like far less than half the funding for roads in Christchurch come from car and fuel taxes.
Can you find a better breakdown?
Lastly, look at the breakdown of NLTP funding. "In 2021–24, $24.3 billion of funding is forecast to be managed under the NLTP" of which $910m is "to walking and cycling improvements".
That is 3.7% for walking and cycling.
You wrote that in Christchurch "3% of trips are by bicycle".
> and even people without a car pay for goods and services which are transported over roads.
Only partially. About 750000 personal light vehicles below 3500kg pay RUC charges - a lot of that is deisel personal vehicles - 4WDs etcetera. Looks like they pay about 40% of total RUC revenue. The RUC revenue for heavy vehicles is supposed to be assigned to road costs caused by heavy vehicles. RUC = road user charges. The fact they are paying for cyclists is really against the stated purpose of the RUC.
Note that the new National government intends to introduce RUC for electric vehicles since those use roads but are not paying their fair share of costs.
For 2020/21 common costs are forecast to be $4.49 billion, less fixed revenue of $1.55 billion made up of ratepayer funding, motor vehicle registration and licensing fees and other Crown revenue, which leaves almost $3 billion of common costs to be recovered from RUC and PED.
That implies council rates pay about 1/3 of costs which is a similar ratio to your earlier calcs. Hard to calculate better because a lot of the common costs are towards national infrastructure rather than local.
> Looks like they pay about 40% of total RUC revenue.
So the other 60% is paid by people wanting goods and services, even if they themselves don't have a car?
> About 750000 personal light vehicles below 3500kg pay RUC charges - a lot of that is deisel personal vehicles
Yes, because your source says petrol vehicles pay fuel excise directly. It also points out "Unlike Europe, there are relatively few diesel passenger cars in New
Zealand, which may be a reflection of effects of having to pay RUC."
Where is the excise tax going?
I see motorcycles don't pay an RUC. I assume because they are all petrol.
> The RUC revenue for heavy vehicles is supposed to be assigned to road costs caused by heavy vehicles.
Yes, your source says: "Heavy vehicles pay substantially more than light vehicles, largely because the CAM includes an exponential calculation for the road wear component but also reflecting the need they create for stronger bridges and other structures, and the additional road space they occupy."
and "The weight related damage costs are allocated according to the so called “4th power rule”. This is written as ESA = (laden weight/axle factor)^4 x load factor x number of axles. The “4th power rule” is based on historical research from the USA, South Africa and NZ, and is widely accepted as a rule of thumb for road design."
A bicycle of 120 kg (including rider) has 1/10th the laden weight of a vehicle so the ESA should be about 1/10,000 th as much. In practice the exponential doesn't work that way ("Vehicles weighing less than around 6 tonnes do almost no damage to roads") but the point stands that bicycle roads are significantly cheaper to build and maintain than ones handling cars.
A bicycle takes at most 1/5th space as a car, so the space related costs should also be much smaller.
I don't know about NZ but in the US bicycles are generally prohibited from highways, which are also more expensive to build than city streets.
> That implies council rates pay about 1/3 of costs which is a similar ratio to your earlier calcs.
My earlier calcs had the NLTF paying under 1/3 of the costs for city roads in Christchurch the rest by other ratepayers and other sources.
> Hard to calculate better because a lot of the common costs are towards national infrastructure rather than local.
Yes, that is why I don't think looking at NLTF numbers gives a good idea of who pays what for the roads in Christchurch.
It still doesn't seem that the money spent on the new 101 km of bike paths is all that outrageous, given that it seems proportionate to the number of users or predicted users.
The points I made are just as relevant to "cheaper". costs/benefits need to be compared against population usage. You are not arguing against the data I gave.
If you build cycling infrastructure, you get more cyclists. 'Build it and they will come' turned out to be true in the examples I gave (and there are many other examples out there).
The question is if you want increase that 3%. For me it's a no-brainer, given the benefits.
> 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.
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?
That's kind of the point. Part of the design of Dutch cities is to make the fastest, most direct, most convenient form of transportation _not_ the car.
You use a car when you _have_ to, not simply as a default. If it takes longer to get to your intra-city destination in a car, that's the city working as intended.
> Part of the design of Dutch cities is to make the fastest, most direct, most convenient form of transportation _not_ the car.
That's only a good thing if you accomplish it by making other forms of transportation faster and more direct. It's a bad thing if you do it by making cars slower and less direct.
It'll be interesting to see the average speed change after this? Traffic jams don't care about speed limits.
I'm guessing that the improvements in efficiency (fuel, noise, wear) and safety are probably going to be worth it.
Also, I don't see cars being a fast way to get through the city with today's speed limits, I'd say my 6km commute in SF is faster on bike, especially after accounting for parking.
If you want to be efficient in Amsterdam, you take the bike or public transport. That has been faster than cars even before this change, and now more so.
It is terrible. They introduced similar speed limits in parts of London UK and it sucks. It does help with noise pollution but driving in London on empty roads at 20 mph is horrible.
It also happened in Portland in 2018, and it sucks, and makes me avoid Portland.
The speed limit is 20mph on most roads, no matter how many lanes of empty tarmac there is, what time of day it is, with how much visibility, how straight the road is, etc. It's a blind political statement with no regard to the actual roads and their circumstances.
It can be a political statement, or it can be about noise and pedestrian safety, depending on the environment.
Basically, it's irresponsible to drive faster than 30 km/h anywhere with a significant number of pedestrians. The risk of serious injury and death rises quickly above that speed, and human drivers cannot react quickly enough at higher speeds. You can justify a bit higher speed limits on major streets with significant traffic, as pedestrians tend to be more attentive when crossing them. But even then, the limit should be 40-50 km/h, as road capacity decreases and noise level becomes unacceptably high at higher speeds.
Because the tarmac is empty does not mean the people and nature living around the roads are gone. Whenever resource sharing with other living creatures pops up in America it somehow gets turned into a 'blind policital statement'.
If you want to reduce the number of cars on roads - which is a sensible approach - you reduce the need for cars. The easiest is to not mandate people to work in offices where not needed. By slowing vehicles down you achieve a placebo effect since said vehicles would be slow anyway when there’s traffic, while they’d be needlessly slow when there is none. Spending more time driving slowly means the same amount of noxious gases being emitted - even if emissions per car are lower, given that they spend more time on the road you gain little benefits.
However safety benefits and noise reduction are an asset. But those can easily be reduced in better more environment friendly ways.
Seattle dropped residential speed limits to 20mph some time ago. Havent followed up to see what impact that has had yet... Most roads though still kepts their old speed limits.
What happens in the US when speeds are too low, is you get half the people obeying it, and half of them driving way faster. It creates a dangerous conflict q lot of times. People road rage like crazy in some areas and will do dangerous shit like pass slower cars in unsafe places, tailgate, cut people off, etc.
They haven't put in any road diets in Seattle and the cops aren't enforcing traffic laws so everyone just drives the way they used to. So you've got 25 mph limits on 4-lane stroads with no pedestrian traffic (like literally no sidewalks in one case I can think of) and everyone does 45 mph.
It looks like they're going to start using speed cameras now instead of police enforcement (they certainly don't want to use police enforcement here, that would clearly turn out badly). They're trialing "racing cameras" to supposedly catch the kids drag racing at night, but it is obviously a way to introduce enforcement of the 25 mph limits without doing road redesign and to generate revenue.
The result is pretty obviously going to be regressive taxation, because Seattle/Washington State runs everything via regressive taxation. So the traffic cameras are not being setup on W Seattle Bridge to catch white collar people commuting to the office, but are put on W Marginal Way which are going to catch blue collar workers.
I'm just waiting for liberal Seattle to wake up one morning and realize the DOT is funding their bike lanes by regressive taxation through traffic camera enforcement, falling on the lower class and minorities, and see if their heads explode or not.
There's a way to do it right like Amsterdam where they've already built all the infrastructure and done all the road diets, we're doing it the ass-backwards way by dropping the speed limits and setting up traffic cameras.
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.
Wouldn’t this cause more pollution? Lower fuel efficiency, increased congestion, more half-clutch inching, more stopping, more time spent by each vehicle on each road…
…At least assuming the number and routes of travels stay constant.
I used to drive a 2010 Diesel VW Golf, about 55kW, in Central Europe. It would take 4l/100km at 70kph and closer to 11l/100km when maneuvering slowly. 2.75x pollution diff per km in these scenarios.
Sound is important, but cars also pollute the air.
- people travel half as many miles per day than the US [3]
Unlike most cities, especially in the US but also elsewhere in Europe, other forms of transportation are actually dependable and more convenient alternatives to driving. Making driving less convenient will actually entice mode shift in Amsterdam, rather than simply be a nuisance.
I don't think the three points you made are a consequence of speed limits or making cars inconvenient. They are a consequence of city planning and making public transit and bicycle transit convenient.
I think cars are in quite inelastic demand for many people who use them in Amsterdam. There are people with cardiovascular conditions, people who need to transport others, carry heavy items, and so on.
Incentivizing works better than punishing generally.
See also perhaps "Effect of reducing the posted speed limit to 30 km per hour on pedestrian motor vehicle collisions in Toronto, Canada - a quasi experimental, pre-post study"
I 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.
Thanks for pointing that out.. Maybe 35km/h is a more reasonable ceiling.
The reason I mentioned this number is because I found this article of some Norwegian middle aged woman saying she is reaching 50km/h explaining something with the speed limit of bicycles in Norway.
However she meant that she reaches that speed downhill, which makes sense..
30km/h is doable with some minor effort, sure, but it's not exactly common. You'll be held up by other bikes constantly on most roads this applies to.
50km/h is for athletes or going down steep hills. If you're training for the tour de france in some random neighbourhood in Amsterdam, I think you're doing something wrong.
Nitpick: the assist must cut off at 25 km/h but you can pedal it faster if you are up to it. (unless it's a s-pedelec which is allowed to go 45 km/h but away from bike lanes).
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.
That's an EU thing and aims to make it safe to put e-bikes on the bike paths instead of in the car lanes. It groups vehicles with similar speed and relative weight together.
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?
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.
No they will not. Not everyone has the toxic combination of stupid and lazy that you car drivers put into your tank every week... try using a tree or the earth. Feet don't need fuel.
eBikes are limited to 25km/h on the motor I believe. But given how many people cycle in Amsterdam, I'd be surprised if you'd get much chance to actually get to that speed (on an eBike or legBike) very often.
But even so, the problem is not speed but momentum. A typical car+driver weighs at least 10x (actually, with modern cars it's more like 20x) a bike+rider. So at the same speed, a car will impart 10x the damage/force than a bicycle will. But cyclists are more careful as they don't have a protective metal box around them - if a cyclist collides with a pedestrian, the cyclist is almost certainly going down and getting injured, compared to a car, where the car occupant has zero consequences.
That’s crazy slow! I can’t even begin to think of how long it would take to get anywhere.
By comparison, “The Texas Transportation Commission is allowed to bump up the speed limit in certain sections to 75, 80 and 85 mph, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. The speed limit can be raised if the highway is deemed safe and reasonable..”
Also.. you can typically avoid a ticket by arguing you were still driving at “reasonable and prudent” speeds as long as you don’t exceed the posted limit by more than 24 miles per hour.
I'm pretty sympathetic to both Amsterdam's 30km/h thing (and the campaigns for 20mph speed limits for most streets in many cities in the US) and Texas' 75mph-standard, lots-of-80 and -85mph areas policy. These are completely different situations. One is for rural highway (for 85, controlled access highway with underpasses/overpasses), the other is for city streets where people live, walk, bike, etc. Neighborhood streets in Texas don't have 75mph speed limits.
> That’s crazy slow! I can’t even begin to think of how long it would take to get anywhere. By comparison, “The Texas [...]
Amsterdam is roughly 25km across, so less than an hour on surface streets (which this is about). Meanwhile, Austin Tx is a similar population, roughly 30 miles across, and takes ~50 minutes to drive across if you avoid the freeway. They're pretty much identical (but Amsterdam's streets will be much safer for everyone)
And the inner ring part of Amsterdam, which is were most of the action is is less than 7.5 km across, rarely would you visit more than one outlying area and the center in a single trip, and if you did you might take your bike on the subway (outside of the rush hour only) for the long stretch. Small foldables are always legal and don't have a surcharge.
The reasonable and prudent thing sounds like one of those myths to me. Like people saying they get out of a ticket on some technicality like a misspelling of the car brand. That doesnt happen unless you have a lawyer who is golf buddies with the judge.
You’ve just compared a densely populated city with a sparsely populated state that’s several times the size of the country the aforementioned city is located in. And then started talking about highways.
This is just the last mile(s) though. At the other end of the speed spectrum, highways around Amsterdam are 50 mph, rising to 60 mph once further out (and up to 80 mph at night where applicable) .
People have truly lost their minds with this fetish for safety. This is what happens when you don't have a good old fashioned war for a couple of generations. We are breeding weakness and fear.
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".