9 ms·

Paris speed limit falls to 30km/h

28 points by nmc 5y ago

josephcsible 5y ago
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.
- vmception 5y ago
  But also slower
- ThePadawan 5y ago
  Huh, that's curious. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_km/h_zone#Europe [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begegnungszone https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begegnungszone [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrittgeschwindigkeit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrittgeschwindigkeit
  - doubled112 5y ago
    Here in Ontario, Canada, the speed limit inside cities is usually 50km/h with school zones being 40 km/h. We're just recently dropping speed limits in suburbs and more urban areas to 40 km/h and those school zones to 30 km/h. I'm almost certain 4-10km/h is slower than idle in first gear in my manual diesel. That sounds painful, to be honest.
    - ThePadawan 5y ago
      Factually speaking, no one drives in first gear without gas in Germany either. But that's no different than the adherence to any other speed limit. And of course it's painful, that's the point. You're supposed to avoid those 4-10km/h areas if at all possible. They're basically an admittance of "we couldn't technically forbid cars from entering". You'll never encounter them when shopping, going to church, or driving to the park.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrlonglong 5y ago
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.
- twiddling 5y ago
  Only if they are enforced.
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Even if they are not effectively enforced, I have noticed it means that the average idiot now goes at 45kph with a 30kph limit instead of say 65kph with a 50kph limit.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  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.
  - chobytes 5y ago
    Ubiquitous traffic cameras. Or perhaps GPS based speed limits (or speed warnings) if youre really concerned with fines.
chobytes 5y ago
Sounds amazing. Wish we could get them that low here. Biking on the road next to multiple ton, blocks of metal going 30mph (48km/h) is never pleasant.
cm2187 5y ago
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.
usrme 5y ago
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.
greatgib 5y ago
Here in Paris, it is becoming a nightmare. 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 5y ago
  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.
1-more 5y ago
Kinda want to go rip around Paris in the middle of the lane on my bike now. Look you can't get mad I'm going over the limit!!
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  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).
  - fy20 5y ago
    What if you don't have a bike computer, so don't know how fast you are going?
    - banana_giraffe 5y ago
      Then you still get a ticket. Every time I see an article about this, they always manage to quote someone in their "man on the street" copy that doesn't have a speedometer on their bike that still got a fine.
  - paddez 5y ago
    I'm not sure about Paris specifically - but across the channel in the UK, speed limits do not apply to bicycles as the legislation which governs speed limits on public roads applies only to mechanically propelled vehicles. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/jul/25/can-cyclists-be-fined-for-speeding https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/jul/2...
  - 1-more 5y ago
    Probably can. Will you? IDK. I am now adding "evade the police on a high speed chase" to my holiday itinerary in Paris. TY for this idea.
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  Good way to lose the driving license, if you have one. Speed limits apply to all traffic.
t-writescode 5y ago
Honestly, for city centers, I'm pretty okay with this. 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 5y ago
  In addition highways shouldn't go through cities (or black neighborhoods).
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    But there should be plenty of arterials to get to them. I’ve definitely toyed with a “massive parking garage + transit hub at the edge of the city” more to improve walkability in cities.
pkaye 5y ago
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. https://www.fremont.gov/3274/Walnut-Ave-Bikeway-Improvements https://www.fremont.gov/3274/Walnut-Ave-Bikeway-Improvements
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I wonder how much this eases the problem of self driving, if the car itself and other cars are all moving slower. Feels like you could reduce speed yet increase throughput.
speeder 5y ago
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.
- Isinlor 5y ago
  Take a bus, tram, metro, try bike - ask your politicians to make them reasonable. Cities should be pedestrians first, public transport and cyclists second, cars third. Certainly something we should aim at in Europe.
  - speeder 5y ago
    Where I live we don't have any tracks. Bikes are impractical, terrain is stupidly hilly, some places even cars struggle. As for buses... they are not useful for me because often the reason why I am taking out the car in first place (usually I just walk everywhere) is because I am going to supermarket (and our inflation-prone economy favors you making a huge purchase once per month, instead of many small purchases) It is no wonder in a capital city nearby, there are so many cars that the area used by all cars is bigger than the area of all roads and streets combined.
freemint 5y ago
I wonder what impact that will have on congestion, as capacity is lowered but also induced demands gets lowered.

28 points by nmc 5y ago

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.

vmception 5y ago
But also slower
ThePadawan 5y ago
Huh, that's curious. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_km/h_zone#Europe [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begegnungszone https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begegnungszone [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrittgeschwindigkeit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrittgeschwindigkeit
- doubled112 5y ago
  Here in Ontario, Canada, the speed limit inside cities is usually 50km/h with school zones being 40 km/h. We're just recently dropping speed limits in suburbs and more urban areas to 40 km/h and those school zones to 30 km/h. I'm almost certain 4-10km/h is slower than idle in first gear in my manual diesel. That sounds painful, to be honest.
  - ThePadawan 5y ago
    Factually speaking, no one drives in first gear without gas in Germany either. But that's no different than the adherence to any other speed limit. And of course it's painful, that's the point. You're supposed to avoid those 4-10km/h areas if at all possible. They're basically an admittance of "we couldn't technically forbid cars from entering". You'll never encounter them when shopping, going to church, or driving to the park.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mrlonglong 5y ago

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.

twiddling 5y ago
Only if they are enforced.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  Even if they are not effectively enforced, I have noticed it means that the average idiot now goes at 45kph with a 30kph limit instead of say 65kph with a 50kph limit.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
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.
- chobytes 5y ago
  Ubiquitous traffic cameras. Or perhaps GPS based speed limits (or speed warnings) if youre really concerned with fines.

chobytes 5y ago

Sounds amazing. Wish we could get them that low here. Biking on the road next to multiple ton, blocks of metal going 30mph (48km/h) is never pleasant.

cm2187 5y ago

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.

usrme 5y ago

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.

greatgib 5y ago

Here in Paris, it is becoming a nightmare. 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 5y ago
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.

1-more 5y ago

Kinda want to go rip around Paris in the middle of the lane on my bike now. Look you can't get mad I'm going over the limit!!

banana_giraffe 5y ago
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).
- fy20 5y ago
  What if you don't have a bike computer, so don't know how fast you are going?
  - banana_giraffe 5y ago
    Then you still get a ticket. Every time I see an article about this, they always manage to quote someone in their "man on the street" copy that doesn't have a speedometer on their bike that still got a fine.
- paddez 5y ago
  I'm not sure about Paris specifically - but across the channel in the UK, speed limits do not apply to bicycles as the legislation which governs speed limits on public roads applies only to mechanically propelled vehicles. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/jul/25/can-cyclists-be-fined-for-speeding https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/jul/2...
- 1-more 5y ago
  Probably can. Will you? IDK. I am now adding "evade the police on a high speed chase" to my holiday itinerary in Paris. TY for this idea.
rad_gruchalski 5y ago
Good way to lose the driving license, if you have one. Speed limits apply to all traffic.

t-writescode 5y ago

Honestly, for city centers, I'm pretty okay with this. 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 5y ago
In addition highways shouldn't go through cities (or black neighborhoods).
- t-writescode 5y ago
  But there should be plenty of arterials to get to them. I’ve definitely toyed with a “massive parking garage + transit hub at the edge of the city” more to improve walkability in cities.

pkaye 5y ago

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. https://www.fremont.gov/3274/Walnut-Ave-Bikeway-Improvements https://www.fremont.gov/3274/Walnut-Ave-Bikeway-Improvements

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I wonder how much this eases the problem of self driving, if the car itself and other cars are all moving slower. Feels like you could reduce speed yet increase throughput.

speeder 5y ago

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.

Isinlor 5y ago
Take a bus, tram, metro, try bike - ask your politicians to make them reasonable. Cities should be pedestrians first, public transport and cyclists second, cars third. Certainly something we should aim at in Europe.
- speeder 5y ago
  Where I live we don't have any tracks. Bikes are impractical, terrain is stupidly hilly, some places even cars struggle. As for buses... they are not useful for me because often the reason why I am taking out the car in first place (usually I just walk everywhere) is because I am going to supermarket (and our inflation-prone economy favors you making a huge purchase once per month, instead of many small purchases) It is no wonder in a capital city nearby, there are so many cars that the area used by all cars is bigger than the area of all roads and streets combined.

freemint 5y ago

I wonder what impact that will have on congestion, as capacity is lowered but also induced demands gets lowered.