The municipality of Rotterdam will reduce the speed limit on 115 roads from 50 to 30 kilometers per hour next year. According to the municipality, these are busy streets where many people live or where shops, restaurants and cafes are located. The municipality calls the traffic situation in those places “so unsafe that something must change quickly”. This includes West-Kruiskade, parts of Mathenesserlaan and Hofplein.
The municipality says that the intervention is necessary because road safety in Rotterdam is not going well. Last year, 1,446 people were injured in Rotterdam traffic, almost 300 more than in 2021. Most accidents happened on a road where traffic is allowed to drive 50 km.
Rotterdam says that the new speed limit will be “clearly visible”. For example, new traffic signs are being installed, lines are being added or removed from the road and sometimes speed bumps are being installed. The measure will be introduced in one go in the third quarter of next year.
At the end of last year, the speed limit in a large part of Amsterdam was already reduced to 30 kilometers per hour. According to the council, such a drastic measure in Rotterdam is not necessary, because the city has largely been rebuilt after the war. Moreover, the maximum speed cannot be reduced everywhere, for example because of public transport or the emergency services.
In Rotterdam, more than half of the roads already have a speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour, according to the municipality.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl