266
Amsterdam: Speed limit will be 30 km/h on most roads from today
(www.amsterdam.nl)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
266 points (97.2% liked)
Europe
8484 readers
3 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, ๐ฉ๐ช ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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 point is, it's not an "oh, it's just 'cause it's old and historic and couldn't possibly be replicated anywhere else" thing. It absolutely can be done everywhere; the only difference is that Amsterdam is one of the few places that's had the, frankly, good sense to do it. (I almost wrote "political will" there, but when you consider the fact that car-centric design doesn't even fucking work for car drivers themselves, it really is more a matter of competence than ideology.)
Not sure why you're so insistent on replying to your own strawman argument. The statement is "Amsterdam is not built for cars". That's it. That's what you replied to...
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.
1 second is not 3 car lengths unless you're going really fast. Also, when pulling away, you shouldn't sit stationary and wait for the gap to establish, as by the time you're going you will be even further back. Instead, pull away at the same time as the vehicle in front, but restrain your acceleration so they still pull away from you. When they stop pulling away, you stop accelerating and you'll have more or less the correct gap.
Standard advice is usually 2 seconds in the dry, 4 in the wet - "only a fool breaks the two second rule" takes about 2 seconds to say, then "but if it pours, make it 4" brings it to 4 seconds.