The cityhall is led by incompetent and for a few years now they have started to do "media visible" demagogic actions without real thinking or discussion with the population.
For cars for example, they don't really try to be intelligent and have the most efficient and fast mix of transportation. They just try to annoy as much as possible the car drivers even when it was not justified.
And now Paris is dying, it becomes derelict and ugly, and it is losing inhabitants every year. And let's not speak about the abysmal debt that was created in a few years.
So much debt, in fact, that the city hall is not anymore able to pay for maintaining the city, like fixing pot holes and city furniture.
It is easy to think that the car is bad, and people are angry because they don't want to lose their egoistic comfort. But here you should see the overall situation:
Except during the covid period, Metro and regional trains are most of the time in over capacity, late and unreliable. In addition to be dirty and sometimes dangerous.
With the stupid urban changes, the BUS are blocked by the car policies and not able to operate well, efficiently and safely anymore. (For example, having bus stop in the middle of a street in a middle of a busy bicycle lane).
Some commercial area are dying because no one away more than 15 minutes by feet could by anything there and be able to transport it back home.
And for bonus point of idiocracy, it is said that Taxi prices will raise a lot now, because the taxi fares are calculated like this: higher than 30km/h, price per distance. Lower than 30 km/h price per minute.
Well, to add some nuance, cars are not fast anyway because of the bad traffic, the city is extremely polluted (there are days where we are told to stay inside) so cars are indeed a problem, and people are leaving for many reasons, one of them being that the city is too expensive.
The metro is not unreliable - it can be very crowded, but it's ok. I understand the regional trains can be very unreliable.
As to the politics of the city, the current mayor is a very divisive person, so you will find people who really like her, just as you will find people who really dislike her (parent comment ).
She did make a number of mistakes, but Paris is not dying in any way because of her. Sure, the city is not very lively these days, but it's mostly because of the consequences of covid ('I want a garden', 'I need a health pass to go to a restaurant', etc), and people wondering whether it's worth paying so much money to live and moving out.
I live in a city with low-ish speed limits and recently they added radars everywhere.
It is just a nightmare, because the country is big and hilly, cars tend to have gear ratios optimized to 100km/h, my car is a Peugeot 206 and it stalls often if I go slow as the speed limit on some roads, and it stalls hard, as in the engine stops so suddenly that the car was moving and suddenly it isn't, had people almost crashing on my rear multiple times, and I almost crashed on other people rears multiple times.
Also some roads with low speed limit NOBODY drives inside the limit, because the limit is impratical so people use it as license to actually go faster than average, and when you are on those roads you are forced to go faster, if you obey the limit people WILL crash on you, and I am not kidding, I saw flipped cars there from crashes like that.
And finally, to keep under the speed limit I must stay wiht my eyes glued on my speedometer and RPM meter, to make sure I can stay under the limit without stalling, multiple times I almost crashed because of that, and I believe the same applies to other drivers, because in the same places where this happened to me, I saw other drivers not seeing thigns and almost crashing or... actually crashing.
To be honest it is little more than symbolic. The traffic is so bad in Paris (traffic jam engineered by the same mayor) that the average speed must be well below that.
Can bicycle riders not get speeding tickets in Paris? Around me in the states, the cops can, and do occasionally, ticket bicycle riders going over the speed limit in school zones (20 mph at certain times of the day).
To put how slow that is into perspective, it's slower than the speed limit on most residential streets in America, and it's about the same as the school zone speed limits that are only used at the beginning and end of each school day.
My city in the bay area has been switching to more bike friendly roads. Mainly narrowing down the car lanes (or removing one lane) to expand the bike lanes. Also intersections are narrowed down to make them pedestrian friendly. In some areas the bike lanes have physical separation. But they just started this conversion and its a work in progress. But to be honest, I don't see a lot of bikers in our area using it and people complain but the work goes on.
This is something I would more than welcome in my home country. A speed limit of 50 km/h is too damn high when people see it more of as a suggestion and regularly drive at 55 or slightly above.
Lowering sped limits within towns and residential areas increases the chances of a pedestrian surviving a collision with a vehicle, especially heavy good vehicles. Too many kids and old people are dying just because they walk out into the road without looking.
Lowering speed limits doesn't do much except maybe in North Korea or somewhere else where draconian enforcement to actually get compliance is palatable. It's well understood in civil engineering circles that people in aggregate drive what they consider to be the reasonable speed for the road and if you want slower traffic you need to play visual tricks to make that happen. On multi-lane roads lowering speed limits makes things worse because it increases speed differentials between car traffic causing less predicable traffic flow (bad for pedestrians) and robbing drivers of situational awareness they could be spending on other things (like pedestrians). Changing out a bunch of signs is a feel good measure at best and a backhanded attempt to increase revenue via fines at worst.
If it was as easy as slapping up signs with low numbers and then reaping the political brownie points from reduced deaths every local politician would do it.
The top rated comment is a repetition of how great it is to drive at slow speed, how someone survives in a collision, and how too many people get into an accident.
Of course this comment is even worse: too many people die when walking when not looking.
What standard of responsibility for safety and well being are we putting on the person who goes outside their house?
I’m for low speeds and all but it has to come with a sense of rationale. And this argument can be argued for irrational limits.
Making Paris ped first and car second is great for peds. And it sort of does not acknowledge the benefits of cars. And that’s the problem.
greatgib|4 years ago
The cityhall is led by incompetent and for a few years now they have started to do "media visible" demagogic actions without real thinking or discussion with the population.
For cars for example, they don't really try to be intelligent and have the most efficient and fast mix of transportation. They just try to annoy as much as possible the car drivers even when it was not justified.
And now Paris is dying, it becomes derelict and ugly, and it is losing inhabitants every year. And let's not speak about the abysmal debt that was created in a few years. So much debt, in fact, that the city hall is not anymore able to pay for maintaining the city, like fixing pot holes and city furniture.
It is easy to think that the car is bad, and people are angry because they don't want to lose their egoistic comfort. But here you should see the overall situation:
Except during the covid period, Metro and regional trains are most of the time in over capacity, late and unreliable. In addition to be dirty and sometimes dangerous.
With the stupid urban changes, the BUS are blocked by the car policies and not able to operate well, efficiently and safely anymore. (For example, having bus stop in the middle of a street in a middle of a busy bicycle lane).
Some commercial area are dying because no one away more than 15 minutes by feet could by anything there and be able to transport it back home.
And for bonus point of idiocracy, it is said that Taxi prices will raise a lot now, because the taxi fares are calculated like this: higher than 30km/h, price per distance. Lower than 30 km/h price per minute.
Agingcoder|4 years ago
The metro is not unreliable - it can be very crowded, but it's ok. I understand the regional trains can be very unreliable.
As to the politics of the city, the current mayor is a very divisive person, so you will find people who really like her, just as you will find people who really dislike her (parent comment ).
She did make a number of mistakes, but Paris is not dying in any way because of her. Sure, the city is not very lively these days, but it's mostly because of the consequences of covid ('I want a garden', 'I need a health pass to go to a restaurant', etc), and people wondering whether it's worth paying so much money to live and moving out.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
chobytes|4 years ago
speeder|4 years ago
It is just a nightmare, because the country is big and hilly, cars tend to have gear ratios optimized to 100km/h, my car is a Peugeot 206 and it stalls often if I go slow as the speed limit on some roads, and it stalls hard, as in the engine stops so suddenly that the car was moving and suddenly it isn't, had people almost crashing on my rear multiple times, and I almost crashed on other people rears multiple times.
Also some roads with low speed limit NOBODY drives inside the limit, because the limit is impratical so people use it as license to actually go faster than average, and when you are on those roads you are forced to go faster, if you obey the limit people WILL crash on you, and I am not kidding, I saw flipped cars there from crashes like that.
And finally, to keep under the speed limit I must stay wiht my eyes glued on my speedometer and RPM meter, to make sure I can stay under the limit without stalling, multiple times I almost crashed because of that, and I believe the same applies to other drivers, because in the same places where this happened to me, I saw other drivers not seeing thigns and almost crashing or... actually crashing.
Isinlor|4 years ago
Cities should be pedestrians first, public transport and cyclists second, cars third. Certainly something we should aim at in Europe.
t-writescode|4 years ago
Highways are for fast traffic (and in many cases, imo, should have higher speed limits here in the US); but cities should be way slower.
Americans seem to like high (and still violated) speeds in cities and slow (legal but always violated) speeds on highways.
freemint|4 years ago
cm2187|4 years ago
1-more|4 years ago
banana_giraffe|4 years ago
rad_gruchalski|4 years ago
josephcsible|4 years ago
ThePadawan|4 years ago
30 km/h is what residential streets in Germany are pretty much by default [0].
In busy pedestrian areas, we're getting down to 20 km/h [1] and <low, technically undefined, but around 4-10> km/h [2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_km/h_zone#Europe [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begegnungszone [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrittgeschwindigkeit
vmception|4 years ago
pkaye|4 years ago
https://www.fremont.gov/3274/Walnut-Ave-Bikeway-Improvements
usrme|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
ZeroGravitas|4 years ago
Feels like you could reduce speed yet increase throughput.
freemint|4 years ago
mrlonglong|4 years ago
throwaway0a5e|4 years ago
If it was as easy as slapping up signs with low numbers and then reaping the political brownie points from reduced deaths every local politician would do it.
twiddling|4 years ago
nashashmi|4 years ago
Of course this comment is even worse: too many people die when walking when not looking.
What standard of responsibility for safety and well being are we putting on the person who goes outside their house?
I’m for low speeds and all but it has to come with a sense of rationale. And this argument can be argued for irrational limits.
Making Paris ped first and car second is great for peds. And it sort of does not acknowledge the benefits of cars. And that’s the problem.