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.
this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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...
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.
Actually was once caught going 35 km/h in a 30 zone but the police (hunting speeders near a school) were more impressed than angry (mountainbike, doesn't really have the transmission for speed fastest I ever went with that thing was 38km/h on flat ground). It's downhill or race bikes where you have to start to worry.
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