Comment on Why cyclists should NOT get the same fines as motorists | Car Culture 6 - Motonormativity
abhibeckert@beehaw.org 11 months agoEven a modest change reducing a speed limit on a residential street from 50 to 40 undergoes heavy review and is unlikely to happen if even a small vocal minority opposes it.
That doesn’t happen in my city.
For example there are two intersections on my commute that are virtually identical (on the same road/etc). One of them is 100km/h the other is 40km/h. Why? No idea. But if there was “heavy review” then surely they would have the same speed limit. Lots of people go 60km/h over the speed limit on one of those intersections by the way.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 11 months ago
I won’t speak for what goes on in your city, but it is definitely the case in Brisbane. And honestly, I’d be surprised if the one specific example you’re pointing to isn’t an oddity for some particular reason, and the general trend is the same.
We literally had the Lord Mayor call it “socialist” to suggest that 30 km/h speed limits on local residential streets is best practice. That same Lord Mayor’s government voted down a petition that was apparently signed by every single resident on the street to reduce their speed limit because it was being used for ratrunning by trucks doing construction nearby.
abhibeckert@beehaw.org 11 months ago
I’m in regional QLD, and this is no where near the biggest problem we have.
For example a major highway (National Route 1, which passes through every major city in Australia) goes through a a mountain range just 20 minutes from the CBD and closes almost once a week for an average of 6.6 hours due to car crashes which are difficult to recover. The detour when the road is closed, adds 3 hours to the drive time and worse it’s unsafe (and illegal) to perform a U turn anywhere on the entire stretch of road up the mountain so whenever it closes thousands of people get stuck and just have to wait until the road opens (which again, takes hours). Emergency services are forced to drive on the wrong side of the road around hundreds of narrow blind corners to reach the accident, and anyone who does turn around is risks crashing into them.
A multimillion dollar review into wether something should be done about it was delayed repeatedly for years and then finally carried out during a full covid lockdown when you could be fined for leaving the house without a necessary excuse (essential worker, need to see a doctor, etc) and they determined that traffic was minimal and recommended re-assessing the situation in 30 years time.
The silly speed limits on my commute are, frankly, way down on the priority list compared to issues like the one I just detailed. I could list more serious problems that are being ignored. And these are state or national highways, so the local council doesn’t have any right (or budget) to deal with them.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 11 months ago
That doesn’t sound good, but it’s like…completely unrelated to this thread. Not sure why you brought it up.