Halved? So you could go 60 on narrow city streets?

In Netherland, the speed limit in cities used to be 50, and even in the 1980s, people were complaining that that was too fast. Most residential streets have been 30 (or less; the street I grew up in had a limit of 5 or 10 km/h) for some time, and Amsterdam recently made it the default for all streets with only exceptions for the biggest thoroughfares. They've also experimented with closing some of those thoroughfares.

Cars are bad for cities. It's a simple fact. The big advantage of cities is that everything is within walking or cycling distance, and the density is perfect for dense public transport. The only use for cars is to get out of the city.

Low speed limits make cars safer, but they also encourage safer forms of transportation. It's great to see this insight take hold in more countries.

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okr 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Machines allow the city to become bigger. Cars are machines. To move stuff. And big machines like buses, trams, subways, planes can move at batch speed. But fail on granularity.

I would not say, cars are bad. For me they are the cells that bring the oxygen, to use another analogy.

What is missing is organization to avoid clogging. And i dislike the noise and the danger one has. This can be done all better.

But i like cars. I like my bike also.

And after all, i like technology. :)

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preisschild 9 hours ago | parent [-]

In cities cars have no reason to exist. You can combine better scalable public transit (light rail, subways, trains) with bikes/scooters and you get best of both worlds. Have been living in one for years without a need for a car.

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account42 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are many things like moving furniture or even larger amounts of groceries that are infinitely harder without a car.

And then there is also the question of the environment on that public transport. IME "good enough that complaints remain manageable" seems to be the target here unlike a car where you can have private entertainment and air conditioning (not to mention sufficient ventilation) to whatever level you wish.

And even for relatively frequent public transit routes you end up wasting quite a bit of time waiting. Even more so if your start and destination don't happen to be close to the same route.

	▲	mcv 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You don't need to move furniture every week, so you can always rent a van for that. Using a car for the 500m to my nearest supermarket seems a bit silly, but these days our groceries are delivered to the front door. All of this is a matter of how you design your cities. Some have been designed so you have no choice but to use a car, others have been designed so you don't need a car at all. I know you don't control the design of your city, but others do. They could be making different decisions. > And even for relatively frequent public transit routes you end up wasting quite a bit of time waiting. The same is true for busy car routes.

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mysterydip 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree overall, with the caveat that it really depends on the infrastructure available and sprawl. I had flown in to a city late at night, and all the subways and busses had stopped for the night. My only option was a taxi or stay at the airport.

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skhr0680 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If there is no posted speed limit then the default is (was) 60. Now narrow roads have a default of 30.

In my area, I can’t think of a an example of a road that would be affected by this law change that didn’t already have a 30 km/h posted speed limit.

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tcp_handshaker 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Its ironic, because the biggest danger in Amsterdam are cyclists doing well over 60 inside town narrow streets.

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sigilis 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In my experience, cyclists travel from 15-25 in the city. Very rare to find someone going 60. Even motorcycles don’t usually go that fast. There’s a lot of people on the streets of Amsterdam.

The biggest danger here is not terribly clear. Somewhere in the intersection of people cluelessly walking into the bike lane and bicyclists hitting the clueless.

	▲	root-parent 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>> Somewhere in the intersection of people cluelessly walking into the bike lane and bicyclists hitting the clueless. Looks like bicyclists are the clueless...bordering on criminal: https://youtu.be/u10OCGJH0Lg?t=3 https://youtu.be/P0bZFkPtu4M?t=3

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piva00 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A cyclist that can do sustained 60km/h in narrow streets is an elite athlete.

Have you tried biking at 60km/h? Even on a very good bike with a gigantic gear ratio I don't think you'd manage to get close to it on flat ground.

Quick edit: just to give you some figures, if the bike + cyclist weighs in total about 80kg the cyclist needs to sustain an output of about 1000W (on an aggressive position down on the drops) without wind to ride at 60km/h on flat ground. Very few people on Earth can do that...

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yourusername 5 hours ago | parent [-]

>A cyclist that can do sustained 60km/h in narrow streets is an elite athlete.

Most "cyclists" are now actually drivers of light electric motorcycles. A $1500 Chinese ebike will do that easily.

	▲	piva00 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It will do for about 15 minutes until the battery complete discharges. Riding at 60km/h on a bike consumes a lot of power, aerodynamics are a bitch of a force.

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tasuki 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> cyclists doing well over 60 inside town narrow streets

I used to cycle and I don't think I could achieve 60 on flat ground like Amsterdam. That's very solid sprinting that even the best cyclists in the world can only achieve for short periods of time. On narrow Amsterdam streets with cobblestone? Impossible...

	▲	mcv 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm fast. I've been clocked at over 40. 40 is crazy fast. Most cyclist go 15. The fast ones 20-25. The very fastest maybe 30-35. 60 is a wild exaggeration. That's what sprinters do in the Tour de France.

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kzrdude 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You probably mean over 30-40 km/h, not 60.

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boesboes 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

more like 15-20 km/h

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tcp_handshaker 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No I mean up to 60... km/h

https://youtu.be/aEHIqqaPIqI

And you can see here "normal" bikes clocked at 36 Km:

https://youtu.be/FdoViT8-s5I?t=47

you get hit by one of these silent missiles, with an 80kg passenger on it, you spend weeks in hospital...you are older person, its life threatening...

Amsterdam bikes are terrifying :-))

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piva00 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And you can see here "normal" bikes clocked at 36 Km:

These bikes are not going at 36 km/h, whatever device she is using to measure it is incorrectly calibrated or simply not made to measure people on bikes.

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yread 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

WTF how does she measure 36km/h on the leisurely cycling people? And how does she measure the 28km/h guy when being so far from the direction he's travelling?

	▲	Mawr 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's probably a device meant for and tested to measure cars, not arbitrary objects. Probably needs to be used in a specific way too.

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tasuki 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> No I mean up to 60... km/h

That's not a bicycle, that's a motorbike.

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Mawr 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No I mean up to 60... km/h

"Cyclist" and "someone on an illegal e-bike" are not one and the same thing.

> And you can see here "normal" bikes clocked at 36 Km:

No, those people freewheeling on a regular city bike on relatively flat ground are not doing 36 km/h. That's around 20 km/h by my somewhat well tuned eyeballs. Have you never been on a bike and measured your speed?

You're not going to be seeing cyclists going 36 km/h beyond significant downhills or sporty people on drop bar bikes putting in significant effort.

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orwin 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Going 60 you need to have a _really_ good bike and want to go that fast. I barely manage to keep 30 for more than 20 minutes, and I would consider myself an average cyclist on an above average bike.

	▲	ndsipa_pomu 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You'd need a good bike and also be an elite cyclist/sprinter. I can usually manage 30kmh for an hour or so (providing there's a good tailwind and I'm going downhill), but the issue with going faster is the air resistance which is roughly proportional to the square of velocity (rolling resistance is roughly proportional to velocity so that becomes less important). Going twice as fast will mean quadrupling your power output.

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mmustapic 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s not ironic. Once you remove the biggest danger (fast cars), fast bikes take the top spot.