Wales' 20mph speed limit: How has the first month gone?
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Traffic volume is reduced with more people choosing walking and cycling. Speeds are reduced only a little (you weren't going as quickly as you thought anyway) but potentially reducing accidents. The Edinburgh data shows a dramatic reduction in accidents, down almost a third.
Also, I notice that most of those drivers complaining don't address what it's like to have a small child who's a runner and is always trying to get loose of your grip and run in to the street.
[0] which needs to be supported by e.g. separated bike lanes, well marked and signed x-walks, employment of limited access roads vs. stroads, enforcement, etc.
But (and I think you see this) there is a key difference between a street and a road - a _street_ most definitely _should_ have things to slow drivers, because the faster the cars go, the less pleasant it is for anyone not in a car. Nobody likes walking next to 80 kph traffic. But if a system is well designed the only reason you're driving on a street is because it's your destination, and not something you're using to get somewhere else.
I used to commute in the north between two mid-sized cities, and any time I checked taking the car instead of the combined bike+rail travel would not have been faster, only much more inconvenient and more expensive (parking costs a lot, and not always easy to find...).
Today we have e-bikes and scooters, so hilly terrain is not a problem anymore. What I do think IS a problem is driving is still way too cheap in the UK, compared to other transportation methods.
The hills and perceived insecurity[1] are probably the biggest limiters to biking. The former being solved by e-bikes. Bad weather is not that hard to deal with than some people would think.
[1] insecurity leads to either of these 2 things: - people are afraid to ride bikes - people feel they would need to use an helmet, which most don't want to, especially women, because it mess with their hair.
It’s all about finding words to sustain one’s idea, not about caring for the lowlys.
> Today we have e-bikes and scooters, so hilly terrain is not a problem anymore
ebikes average at $100pm. I’m sure you will contradict me with lowballing, but there are also people for whom it’s much more expensive. And if you live with normal people, there are no bikes that you can keep secure at home or at work - we’re not all bourgeois with safe garages.
That's why I specifically took an example of my then-commute, which consisted of 15mins to the train station, 25mins train ride, then 10mins to workplace. I wouldn't exactly call that "train-direct".
The UK doesn't exactly have "suburbia" quite like the US, although there are definitely remote places without good public transport, distances are not beyond practical for non-driving.
Another prominent UK feature is the "terraced house", with a small backyard patio, usually with a small shed. This is typical for a low-wage family, or in the towns even for wealthier people. Or you would be living in a semi-detached house, probably with a small garden. Storing a bike or two is mostly a non-issue.
Said no sane person ever.
The ruling Conservative Party are buying votes at the cost of the environment. It harms tax revenue, too, which should be put towards improving travel options.
> I'm travelling up the Rhondda Fawr valley from Pontypridd up to Treherbert - which is without its train line to Cardiff which is shut until the new year
Google Maps says there's half-hourly bus service from Tonypandy to Cardiff, but it takes 75 minutes, vs. 40 minutes by car.
It says the bike route is about 100 minutes.
Btw. is it a coincidence that they chose to write about this exact location, at this exact point in time (when there is no alternative way of transport)? (rhetorical question)
If you work outside the city, or in a different city, your commute skyrockets.
Additionally, many of these small villages only have very basic Nisa Today type newsagents/mini-markets, and the supermarkets are optimised for car travel, not bus (and certainly not scooter).
It's also a pretty deprived area, and a car, while expensive, is essentially a necessity. An e-bike would be an additional cost on top of the car. There are also considerations around the weather, etc.
That's quite an understatement. Wales is a very wet and windy country.
A city should be designed for pedestrians first but in the UK, the crosswalks aren’t even clearly marked!
dropping speed limits doesn't do that.
if you want netherlands, you need to invest in biking infrastructure and traffic calming. you can't just drop the speed limits and try to declare victory.
> Today we have e-bikes and scooters, so hilly terrain is not a problem anymore.
distracted drivers are still a problem.
they dropped the speed limits to 25mph where i live and while i could buy an e-bike, i don't feel like getting myself killed for a principle, so i just drive 15 mph over the limit like literally everyone else.
> dropping speed limits doesn't do that.
Why just make shit up?
Let's look at real data.
In edinburgh, after speed limits were reduced, # of people biking increased significantly. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/32217/evaluation...
In Belfast, after speed limits were reduced, traffic volume decreased significantly: https://jech.bmj.com/content/77/1/17
> 4.5 ‘Before’ and ‘after’ surveys were also carried out at a selection of locations where the 30mph speed limit was retained. At these locations, average ‘after’ speeds in 2021 fell by 2.32mph compared with average ‘before’ speeds in 2016. This is a further decrease of 1.83mph since average ‘after’ speeds were recorded in 2019. Although many factors may have influenced this speed reduction, it could in part be attributed to the effect of speed reductions on surrounding streets, with drivers slowing their driving behaviour throughout Edinburgh.
So the "control" streets also saw a decline in average speed, and the conclusion wasn't that the primary effect was due to increasing congestion over time, but instead clearly the speed limits just magically work everywhere.
And the highest average speed on these streets was 32 mph to start with, before setting the speed limits. The roads already were doing the work there. That doesn't compare with the ~40 mph stroads we have around here that they've slapped a 25 mph sign onto and called it a day.
Our streets are not designed for safe cycling and our public transport infrastructure is poor, at best. So the only way we can improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians is to reduce speed limits for cars across the board.
The political will to improve road/pavement safety for pedestrians and cyclists is not there (there's a war on motorists, apparently?) so while cyclists have to (by law) use public roads then we have to reduce car speed limits to make it safe.
Most modern cars have cruise control that work at 20mph, so the argument that it's difficult to stick to 20mph is lazy and incorrect. Studies out of Wales say that it adds approximately 30 seconds per journey and one of the quotes in this article _quoted a woman who does not drive!_
What would make a difference is teaching people to cycle on the road confidently and correctly (eg taking the full lane when required) and also adding a cycling component to learning to drive to give drivers more empathy for cyclists.
Both of these are too big to tackle so instead the solution is to blame speed and treat people like children.
https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/32217/evaluation...
inb4 pitchfork raising amongst the anti-car rabble
I don't know why you think anti-car people would raise pitchforks at that. In fact this was my criticism of the proposal when I lived in Wales; there seemed to be little attempt to alter the street environments to match the lower limits. I want effective 20 mph zones and that can't happen just by changing a few speed limit signs.
My prediction was that it would backfire: motorists behaviours wouldn't change, so the speed limits would be flouted even more than they are now. Councils wouldn't enforce it consistently, giving credence to the view that it's simply a revenue-generating scheme and/or a way for police to punish people arbitrarily. This is already the case for parking offenses; Cardiff motorists can park on double-yellows with almost complete impunity. Then, populist backlash, law gets repealed, making it even harder to get support for real street safety measures in the future.
>a-french-anon
20 miles per hour is 32km/h, 2 above the french residential limit of 30km/h
You can't enforce a speed limit by simply placing a speed sign and hoping everyone is going to magically follow them. More cops or speed cameras isn't going to work either.
My city is currently working on a plan to lower the speed limit from 50kmh to 30kmh (30 mph to 18 mph). The entire thing is a multi-year program because it essentially means redesigning those roads from scratch.
A road which has been designed for its speed limit doesn't even need a speed sign - the driver will naturally be driving at that speed already because anything faster will feel unsafe to the driver.
It's not flawless but sticking up signs has a reasonable effect. I'd say at least 50% of the people who drive on the local 20mph roads near me abide by the speed limit (that has not active enforcement) and this prevents quite a few others from speeding.
(I agree on the road design point though...)
That's just wishful thinking. You probably wished they didn't so you could make that point, but they 100% work :)
They have the benefit of not slowing down emergency vehicles too!
If you look at the data for speed limits vs deaths they show pretty convincingly that what drivers think are "completely normal speeds" are actually "reckless driving".
For a while the nice people I buy pizza from owned a restaurant (they began, and now continue, as a food truck, wood burning oven inside a converted vehicle) and it too was in a district that was converted to car-focused urban living in the 1970s or so. That time I at least discovered an intersection with a crossing, albeit low priority (ie arrive, press button, wait 2-3 minutes to cross) and their restaurant faced the river so that's quiet.
I tend to think of the whole city as being like where I live -- rat runs diverted to a few arteries, heavy use of mandatory (Zebra or sometimes Puffin) crossings with moderate urgency for pedestrians or where I work (the city refused permission to close the road through our university, but authorised speed bumps and four very high urgency Puffins, so in effect it's faster to drive around it even though the road exists straight through it) -- but that's actually not true which is sad. I know where our existing MP lives, it's near me, I wonder where the next one (well, the candidate from the same party who will stand next time) lives ?
London doesn't use Puffins by policy, I'm not sure exactly why - in very high density areas I can see that the Puffin features aren't helpful, but that doesn't explain a full policy.
[Differences: A Puffin's cross/ don't cross indication is local, your side of the road, next to the button and angled such that you're looking at oncoming nearside traffic as well as the indicator; whereas a Pelican has indication atop a post on the far side of the road. The timers work differently meaning Puffins can react faster if unused for a period and then called, initiating a walk cycle very quickly in this case if able; if you're road traffic the difference is that Pelicans use flashing amber and Puffins never do IIRC]
Sometimes in the west end you'll have a hundred people waiting to cross - higher pedestrian signals on the other side of the road are probably more visible to everyone in that situation. And I guess it's helpful if crossings are consistent in an area: particularly in areas with lots of visitors.
I remember thinking about this on my way back from a London fireworks display (Richmond maybe? Somewhere that way) because obviously an entire crowd of thousands want to cross a street suddenly and they're not going to politely queue up and wait for light changes, they just all cross, because there's nothing car drivers can do about it. A few minutes away, with the crowds dispersed, it was necessary to actually use crossings, but outside the park where thousands of people had just watched the display a crossing was completely superfluous.
I wonder what drivers would have to say to lights that are always red unless they press some button and wait?
I've literally never had to "keep begging". I believe them that the sensors exist, but the event you seem to think would happen frequently has never occurred in my experience.
Edit: As has been pointed out to me, there are a lot of speed cameras in the UK, but half of them are in the London area where I don't drive (and the rest are mostly motorways) which is why I had that impression.
I wonder what the impact of this policing by consensus was. Did the UK spend a lower percentage of GDP on policing than peer nations ? I don't think they have lower crime numbers. Surely not in London.
Why?
Sadly there is a significant part that is.
Every speed limit purist reply to this argument is that without cameras everyone would be going mad at 120mph no matter what. This just isn’t true and our country roads being mostly 60 mph is proof of this. 60mph is too fast for many of those country roads, everyone knows this and so most will drive 50/40/30 etc depending on the conditions.
My issue is with the government being literarily _everywhere_ to the point where it’s creepy.
It really only shows that either the british society is in fact quite “uncivilised” and requires massive amounts of policing in order to “behave” or that the frog is getting boiled for something bigger.
In residential areas however I'm totally fine with low limits + many cameras. A collision with a pedestrian at 20 mph might be survivable, at 40 it's a death sentence. And in residential areas, on well-asphalted straight roads, people will speed like maniacs.
I drove at 20 the other day for a bit assuming that this Wales rubbish would make it to England and it’s hard to stick to due to the drive train config (I drive a very boring Volvo as well), 25 is much easier.
Further to that, putting signage on a lot of these rural areas isnt economically viable for a road that has very little thoroughfare and associated accidents. That said, having 60 everywhere and trusting drivers sound insane
[0] https://www.youthforroadsafety.org/news-blog/news-blog-item/...
When they were first being installed, drivers got all whiny and said it wasn't fair. They were being tricked and local authorities were using them to raise cash rather than enforce speed limits. Cameras were placed where speeding was very common, and councils were supposedly hiding them behind foliage to catch as many people as possible. If they were really about stopping speeding, shouldn't they be visible?
Basically, drivers didn't want to have to obey the speed limit all the time (God forbid!). But they could just about put up with being forced to obey the limit where it was particularly dangerous. So to mollify the car lobby a rule was introduced that the cameras had to be highly visible.
It's surprising just how many people will continue to speed past these very visible cameras.
As a UK resident who spends a lot of time in France and Italy this statement really surprised me, and really isn't my experience. I had to read it twice as I assumed you meant the opposite
I recently drove from Brighton to Glasgow vis Nottingham. I'd easily passed through 10 before I reached the M25 south of London, including one on the street I lived on. The M25 itself easily had 10 possibly way more. The M1 must have had another 10 or so. I passed through about 5 or so driving through Nottingham. Similarly there about 5 before I hit the A1 which now has dozens. There were 3 or 4 on the A66 and even the M74 and M8 have cameras now. I keep Apple Maps on the whole journey even though I don't need it, specifically to beep and warn me when I'm approaching one.
I can't recall seeing cameras in France, but I'm sure they are there somewhere, plus I rarely drive through the large cities. I've never seen one in Italy, but maybe I don't know what they look like and I tend to drive the same routes. I have seen the police at the side of the road with a handheld radar.
Are we maybe driving different parts of Europe?
A quick check (after writing most of this) gave me this graph which, as a non-member, I can't see the sources for, but looks believable.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201490/speed-cameras-pe...
Which, ignoring Russia, has Italy #1 and the UK #2. So, clearly, I'm not driving the parts of Italy with lots of cameras, but the UK has more cameras than most European countries.
> yet almost everyone drives under the limit
Is also something I haven't observed. We have 'boy racers' shooting up and down our street, the M25 has giant expensive cars aggressively pulling up behind you and flashing their lights and driving through speed camera without a care (or weaving through traffic by undertaking). The right-hand lane of most motorways is people driving 90-100 mph when they can. My experience is that it's congestion, not British good manners that keep people under the speed limit. On the M11 which, last I checked, was still camera free, the fast lane was people driving at 100mph. The 6 lanes on the A1(M) between Huntington and Peterborough was even faster. I recently got an early-morning Taxi from Brighton to Heathrow, and the taxi driver drove at 125mph between cameras.
I have only seen a mobile speed camera van once in my life. Even that was signposted. If you want to avoid tickets and keep speeding it's super easy. I don't see people speeding. Again, I imagine it might be different around London but isn't everything different over there?
This article is kind of silly, and it's even worse seeing it from the BBC. I remember as a young person thr BBC felt more impartial than US news orgs but this article reads like a "news" piece from a sinclair owned station ranting about bikes and blacks.
Isn't is wonderful how vehicle owners are entitled to break the law, and nobody seems to care? Driving drunk, ignoring the speed limit, are all actions that directly endanger unrelated citizens. And all that vehicle operators have to say is "of course".
I'd just put speed cams until they stop paying for themselves and then use the following year's funds to narrow the worst of these roads.
So, yes, simply sticking up a sign and not actively enforcing it (Police, speed cameras) can have a pretty good effect.
So you would have lets say 10 major roads that get a patrol twice a day, and a deployable manned speed camera between them. If we add 20 minor roads to the jobs, then the police would need extra manpower to drive down these roads and another couple of speed cameras and crew to cover this increased demand. The assumption I am making is that many of the 20 mph roads were not previously under active patrols / enforcements when they were 30mph.
Perhaps it's a kind of active enforcement versus a passive kind.
> I went on a road trip a month on from the controversial change... with an open mind.
It's not possible to have an open mind about it. If the law is based on large-number population statistics, an individual driving around talking to people will have zero basis to question the statistics. If the judgement is to be based on personal preferences, well then you don't have an open mind, you have your mind.
There's nothing wrong with voting on policy based on personal opinion and preferences, but why tell me you have an open mind, as if other people don't?
If the speed limit was (magically) 0.001 mph then raising it to 0.002 mph would double throughput.
2 seconds at 20mph is ~18m.
Overrall lower speed limits (when streets are designed to take advantage of them) have a lot of benefits, this is in the category of minor drawbacks.
Increasing test duration means the backlog (which is already huge) will increase. Keeping same will mean less road features will be tested.
Specifically a "proper tailback"
I am reliably informed that our language has spread to other countries who have their own interesting and sometimes peculiar variations. We give these variations labels such as “American English” to distinguish them from the original.
For something different - cars going at slow speeds emit more fumes and consume more fuel.
There's research that refutes this for 30mph -> 20mph limit lowering.
https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/lowering-speed-limits/widgets...
" Do slower speeds cause congestion and pollution?
Imperial College London's research into the impact of 20mph speed limits suggests they have no net negative impact on exhaust emissions. Results indicated clear benefits to driving style and associated particulate emissions. The research found that vehicles moved more smoothly, with fewer accelerations and decelerations, than in 30mph zones, reducing particulate emissions from tyre and brake wear. We have undertaken an Environmental Evaluation and are satisfied that the lowering of speeds will not have an adverse impact on the environment or air quality. The Environmental Evaluation recommendation was that no air quality modelling was therefore required. "
Your example increases speed shown
20mph shown and 32kmph being base means that
20mph shown and 27kmph being actual means shown is increased?
? Do you mean "raises"?
The legal requirement is that it MUST NOT under-report your speed. So generally they over-read by about 10% compared to GPS ground track speed measurement.
This is worse than the both sidesism of before, this is like reading an article from any of the right wing press.