← Back to context

Comment by Tade0

13 hours ago

There are many reasons why this is unlikely to happen in Poland, but from the top of my head:

-Traffic fatalities have been falling for years now anyway - the 2022 figure per capita is around 20% higher than in the Netherlands, but used to be much, much worse.

-Polish cities are sparsely populated due to adminstrative changes and little of the old architecture surviving the war. Official numbers say that Warsaw has a density of 3.6k/km2, while the runner up is much smaller Białystok with ~2.9k/km2. Most hover in the region of 2.0-2.5k/km2. Real numbers might be different, but it's sparse compared with say Amsterdam's ~5k/km2.

There are plenty of places in the Netherlands with much lower density. They have great cycling and urban design even in tiny towns.

  • Those are just two out of many points. I stand corrected on the second, but the first holds - road safety has been improving for 20 years now, why bother?

  • I do imagine those places benefited from the cultural mindshift originating in dense areas. Just a guess, of course.