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gnfargbl 4 hours ago

On the other side of the coin, a wide-scale introduction of 20mph speed limits in Wales has been generally unpopular.

This is despite a relatively small (but real) reduction in casualty figures that came with the change.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93jvpjwdezo

enaaem 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Amsterdam also reduced many roads from 50 to 30 kmph. Accidents have reduced by 11% and travel time has only increased 1-5%. That is less than one minute on a 20 minute trip.

https://openresearch.amsterdam/nl/page/124453/onderzoeksrapp...

wileydragonfly 3 hours ago | parent [-]

A 40% reduction in speed only causes a 5% increase in travel time? Are the majority of car trips spent sitting at stop lights??

owenversteeg 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I haven’t looked into this specific case, but most of the time the limiting factor is other traffic. You’re not traveling at full speed the whole time. If a lower speed adds 10 minutes to the average trip, but it reduces 9 minutes’ worth of traffic, you’ve only lost net one minute. A lower speed limit will often reduce traffic because the speed-up-slow-down behavior is reduced.

Personally, I have driven around the Netherlands a fair bit and this sort of thing does seem to be roughly true for the median case. It can definitely be annoying when the streets are empty, though. For those journeys you’re obviously losing a fair bit of time.

3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
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