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Trial of 12mph bike lane speed limit grinds gears of Dutch cyclists (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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As road deaths increase and cycle lanes overflow with e-bikes, the Netherlands is considering a cycling speed limit of 12mph (20km/h).

The government has started a two-week trial in Houten, near Utrecht, to gauge whether freedom-loving Dutch cyclists are willing to slow down – and whether they have any idea how fast they are going in the first place.

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[–] 22 points 2 months ago (1 child)

I was gonna say that seems quite low. 15 might be more reasonable maybe?

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  • [+] -13 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    No it isn't. The average speed of a pedal cyclist is 16 km/h.

    My natural speed at which I comfortably cycle is around 25 km/h,

    That is your maximum speed.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Max speed for the average (50th percentile) for the commuting population, sure, I believe that. Did you mean to actually question whether or not the other user can actually ride a bike above 25kmh maximum? I would imagine the 70th percentile of regular commuting cyclists could easily exceed that on flat ground if they needed to.

    My average speed on commuting rides is around 30kmh, ~18mph. My maximum speed on rides I regularly do for commuting is ~55kmh. Downhill, of course. Not all of us live in flatland.

    For whatever it’s worth, despite regularly riding at that speed I am 1000% in support of speed limits on dedicated mixed use lanes. 25kmh is a reasonable speed limit to put on bike lanes IMHO. I’m riding along a rural road when commuting because I have no other choice. If I was in a mixed use path I wouldn’t feel comfortable at all going that speed.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    My average speed is somewhere around 12km/h sure, but that's because half of the time I spend on traffic lights, limiting top speed to 20 would just make average closer to 10km/h

    Also, I don't think limit lower than 25km/h makes much sense, but that's personal opinion that is not backed by statistics. And yeah, I drive a muscle powered bike, not an e-bike, maybe I would've thought differently in that case

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    I mean I've actually measured myself. My standard pace is about 14 mph. But I'm fairly athletic so that may be above the typical cyclist.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 month ago

    This is about the Netherlands. In NL they ride Omafietsen. You're not going to push past 20 kmh on one of those without breaking a sweat.

    The problem is that there used to be a flow. Everyone kinda rode at the same speed. Now there's so many different vehicles, running at different speeds, it's impossible to keep everything flowing without everyone being annoyed as fuck.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Lmao this is hilarious.

    I also do about 24 as my "natural" speed. 28 is about the most I can sustain for a while, about 32 going full tilt for a couple of minutes. On the bike paths here I would say the average speed is closer to 20 than 16, as measured when I'm stuck behind bike traffic.

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