Speed doesn’t get you around faster in urban areas, especially not in residential neighbourhoods, because stop signs and traffic lights (when not ignored) extend your trip more.

That’s why as a cyclist, I’m often catching up to cars going 3-4x faster than me. And when cars are queued up at stops, I’m often passing those “fast” cars, too.

But 30km/h is less likely to kill people, which is a good thing.

I’m already getting aggressively tailgated where I live when I follow the 40km/h limit. I don’t see this going well, unfortunately.

On a mountain bike tire maybe, but a roadbike tire and dual chain ring and cassette, if you aren’t a kid or senior you can easily do 30km/h and sustain it. Downhill sections I have seen 55-60 km/h on my bike computer, and that is with little effort because my front end gets twitchy when the grade is steep and speed is that high

I was thinking more relaxed, city streets, stop signs every block. Average speed.

True, but If you have been to Vancouver you’d know that cyclists don’t stop at stop signs

I can throw a rock and hit Vancouver!

Mind I’d have to walk a few minutes first.

Even with rolling stops, my tracking usually puts me around 20, 25 if I hustle a bit.

Not much overall I would guess. Most people going 60-70 in a 50 zone usually just end up getting to the next red light faster, wasting their gas and wearing down their brakes faster.

What tires are you running on?

A bicycle has significantly less mass than a car or truck, so even if bicycles are traveling that fast regularly the risk is significantly lower in the event of a collision.

People are downvoting you because your question is implying driver delays are not worth the increase in safety. Drivers are often protesting nearly anything that slows them down even when that thing slowing them down has been proven to save lives.

Huh. Is there a way I could have asked that without implying an answer, or a value judgement about the answer?

Like, if it was two hours on every trip I’d say it’s not worth the added safety, but a lot of driving tends to happen off of local streets anyway, so I was honestly wondering.

The kind you pump air into? Less nobbly than mountain bike tires, not as thin as road bike tires. The type of tire is the bike shop’s problem.

I mean for speed, the type of tire affects your rolling friction

I guess. Why do I want to go faster?

? Amnesia maybe. Original comment I replied to was you said 30-35 on a bike was not possible and maybe on downhill, and that you averaged 20 km/h. 30 is easily a steady pace on smooth narrower tires. That’s how we got here LOL

There definitely is a bit of that, although they also skip some lights they would have been stuck behind. If we model the lights as uncorrelated random stops, increased speed should still decrease travel time the same way.