It is unfortunate that some countries are using cameras, microphones and others to control the behaviour of people. I agree that it is a required measure - as some people do not change their behaviours out of good will - but it is definitely not ideal.
Hopefully, in some years it will no longer be necessary, as people will have those good behaviours deeply rooted.
I agree that it is sad that we have to come to that, but if good procedures are in place to make sure that the cameras and microphones are used for only this purpose, this can really help to have a better living environment.
I live in Amsterdam and can confirm this is a real problem. Lots of assholes with small dicks who pimp their cars or motorcycles to be loud as fuck. I applaud this measure
Ngl would community self-reporting be better? I don’t even know how to report traffic violations etc. in the US. Do they also need proof in order to do something about it? I wonder if being able to record and send video to the police of loud vehicles would be better. Or perhaps that could turn out worse?
If a motorcycle is zooming at Mach 3 in a general vicinity of your house it’s pretty hard to report due to practical issues like getting shoes on, getting to your Mach 4 capable vehicle, locating the offender and catching up with him to get his plates.
I don’t think you want to outsource these kinds of things to the general population. If I have problems with noisy drivers in front of my house, I’d have to stand outside all day waiting for them to take a picture, or I’d have to install a camera. Both aren’t things a private person should have to do.
For me, it’s worth it. I live next to a forest already, far outside the city center, and there’s still assholes racing at night at the nearby street because it’s quite secluded and straight.
Also, I’m not worried about microphones on busy streets. It’s a public space already, which affects the content of my speech already. Microphones at home should be much more important for anyone worried about privacy.
Wish we had that here. I could only afford a home on a busy street and the pollution is bad enough we it is without the modded trucks, muscle cars and motorcycle racing by at 1am. It’s illegal, but uninforced.
And that crying about being spied on… we already have cameras everywhere, actually having them used for something we want would be lovely. This and carpool lane enforcement, regulated in a way that can’t be abused (unlike red light and stop sign cameras, which local governments really abuse given lack of top down regulation).
I hear that the UK is trialling them in England an Wales, and London also had a trial run in 2021/22. Not sure what came of it, though.
Trouble is, the UK has no law limiting the noise a car can make. Only if there is e.g. a modified exhaust can the police even do something.
This is not true. See rule 123 of the Highway Code which says it is illegal to modify your vehicle to make more noise and that the noise of a vehicle should be below 86 db.
The current issue is that enforcement is not proactive and the fines are very low. Most police departments only issue a warning for first time offenders.
A couple hundred meters away from me, there’s a piece of a two-lane two-lane road that has no traffic lights for a little over 1 km and has the priority of way, too - meaning that at night, you can get a somewhat high speed over there for a little while without leaving the city limits.
There’s only a few bikers in my city, but holy shit do they make “good” use of the opportunity in summer. I really wish we also had this kind of cameras out there, because the noise from just one is insane, especially at dead of night, and sometimes they do this in packs.
The best part is that it never lasts once - they just speed between the two traffic lights for a while, making a shit ton of that noise.
There are also buildings with windows overlooking that same road from a much closer distance than mine. Can’t really imagine what it’s like for people living there, even though we’re basically meters away from each other.
Please sell these cheaply to consumers. I would really love to have one that photographs the plates extremely high pitch 50cc scooters on my street. I would pay $€£ 1000 for the ability to launch rotten eggs when someone uses the horn at 2am.
I wish :( The city centers are very walkable and there's plenty of safe bicycle infrastructure, but cars are still very clearly the dominant mode of transport. Every weekend there's queues to the parking garages in every part of the city.
I like the way most city centers are set up but I think public transport coverage should be improved in most places before the government starts trying to push people out of their cars. My local municipality is trying the same thing and making the same mistake, they’re not improving public transport but they are trying to discourage people from coming by car. How is that supposed to work if you can’t even get there properly if you live in a part of town that either has no connection or it takes you 3 to 4 times as long as it would take you by car to take the bus?
If only our public transport was affordable. We pay way more than other European countries (besides maybe Germany and the Scandinavian countries), especially when you consider how little distance you’re really travelling. As an example, to get from Eindhoven central station to Amsterdam central station you take 1 train, it takes you 1 hour and 20 minutes and you pay €22,70 for a one way ticket. If we’re looking at distance, this is about 120 km. This means that to get there and go back home you pay €45,40.
If you travel by yourself you can argue that it’s worth it to take the train there since parking + fuel isn’t that cheap here either. However, as soon as you have more than 1 person the car quickly becomes the cheaper option, even with parking included. As long as they don’t solve this issue I don’t see any success in their push to get people to use public transport. And I know the solution will probably be to make everything even more expensive but that’s not going to help in the long run either…
A lot of people only tend to look at the fuel costs and maybe parking. However you’re forgetting a big part of the costs of driving which is that every km adds to the depreciation in the cars worth as well as requiring more maintenance.
It’s very easy to say just buying fuel is pretty cheap, but those costs are easily doubled if you look at the full costs. Check out www.anwb.nl/auto/autokosten for examples of how much variable costs/km actually are.
That said, this is for solo travelers… It’s true that when you add more people the costs become much lower / person if you go by car since the costs just get multiplied with public transport. Exactly why my next vacation with 4 people will still be by car…
However I’ve started taking the train for work now which still comes out a lot lower (40% discount outside of rush hours helps a lot too!)
Thanks for the link, I never had a look at that before. If I look at my car, the variable costs per km (without the fuel) are €0,15 per km. The fixed costs are only interesting if you don’t have a car and are looking at getting one, I have to pay those costs regardless of whether I leave it at home or not. That means that taking the car in my example above would add another €18 which does change things a little bit.
However, my main point was that people would flock to public transport if they were using the prices you sometimes see in other countries. For example, in Italy it costs me around €10 to get a return ticket from Florence to Pisa. The trains are slightly less fancy of course but they’re still very serviceable. If they could make it so you pay maybe €30 for a return ticket from Eindhoven to Amsterdam, it would make it a lot more enticing to take the train.
If I were to drive my car to work I would double the amount I drive per year. If you don’t think this adds a lot of costs then I don’t know what to tell you. If you drive somewhere incidentally sure, it doesn’t really matter.
In most countries the maintenance costs for highways are funded from the budget of the country, and thus split on the whole population. Those amounts are not included when someone makes a cost calculation for driving from A to B, unless one has to pay for a vignette for using the highway.
Also the cost of the car maintenance per kilometer is often not taken into account.
What is also annoying is that the budget allocated for the maintenance of the railway infrastructure is in most countries a lot less than that allocated for road infrastructure, further increasing the costs of train tickets (and thus the apparent cost of train travel) when compared to road travel.
The trains and subways are already very full. Just making things cheaper will not be enough. We need to massively invest in new lines and more frequent trains everywhere.
One of the train companies here are using a 3 coach commuter train for long intercity travel. It’s extremely unpleasant, people are always standing in the aisle and sitting on their suitcases by the doors.
I honestly have no idea why they can’t just… make the train longer?! The 30 min frequency is not an issue for me, although it isn’t great. The constant overcrowding on the other hand is horrible.
Germany has monthly local public transport passes for 49€ for all local public transport including regional trains. So if you wanted to go that kind of distance, you propbaly buy that instead and use public transport for some trips in the city or for some other trip. For groups some states have state passes, which can be very cheap as well. Lower Saxony for example has the Niedersachsenticket, which is 25€ for the first person, another 6€ for the next and then 5€ for each of the next three people. That works for a day after 9am for all regional public transport in the state. So you could get everybody within a normal sized car on a similar distance for 46€.
In other words, I am sorry, but public transport in the Netherlands is more expensive then in Germany. At least it is on time thou.
That pass doesn’t cover trains you actually want to take between regions. It’s basically a subway pass equivalent.
Source: I still pay €25 to go to the nearest city because it’s a 1+ hour train ride and going local station to local station sucks. Yes I have been busted by the Deutche Bahn employee checking Tickets and thought the country wide pass worked.
Ulm- München is abou 120km and it takes to 2:00 by regional train. Berlin - Magdeburg is also similar and at about 1:45. Both can be used using that pass.
Aalen to Stuttgart can’t. Stuttgart to München Can’t.
“using that pass” means not taking the direct train line. And stopping locally.
Don’t ask me, ask a DB employee telling me that pass isn’t valid for those connections.
Edit: here’s the carve out
Please note, however, that the Deutschland-Ticket is not valid on trains operated by DB Fernverkehr AG or other long-distance providers such as FlixTrain (e.g. IC, EC, ICE, as well as RE operated by DB Fernverkehr AG). DB Fernverkehr is currently in talks with the German state governments and authorities about exceptions on certain sections of line.
The Deutschland-Ticket is currently also permitted for long-distance trains (IC, EC, ICE) between Rostock Hbf and Stralsund Hbf.
Sounds like a nice concept, I wish we had something like that here. And you might think trains run on time but there’s actually quite a lot of delays recently. Because our network is relatively small and almost everything passes through Utrecht all it takes is 1 minor disruption somewhere around there and it’s mayhem.
Feel free to tell me if I’m wrong but I think it’s cheaper to subsidise public transport than to build and maintain car infrastructure. The way I see it is that every euro spent on making transport cheaper is 2 euros saved.
Oh I fully agree with you, it’s just that it doesn’t seem like they invest much in public transport. It feels like you hear more about lines closing down and capacity on the line going down than new lines being created.
Bristol to London is about 1hr20m, ok it’s 185km so a bit longer, but the cost of a peak time return is £252.80. So it could be worse if your country decided to privatise the rail services, a natural monopoly, while keeping infrastructure and strike costs public.
Oh they privatised it alright. It’s just that the government holds all stocks for the company. So they have to subsidize the losses while fat CEO pigs run off with the profits.
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