1y ago

Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives

www.euronews.com Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives

The Welsh parliament has passed a law bringing down the speed limit on all residential roads and busy streets to 20 mph (30 km/h). Not everyone is pleased.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7658487

For more detailed information: https://www.gov.wales/introducing-20mph-speed-limits-frequently-asked-questions

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118 comments

While it sounds good on paper, in practice, they've screwed it up. They're putting the new speed limits in place on every 30mph road in Wales before they've put the public transport alternatives in place.
There's currently no reason for someone to switch to public transport, especially if the buses are going to be stuck at the same speed as the cars, but stopping regularly too. Our roads are too narrow to install bus lanes, and barely have enough room for single file traffic through lots of the towns and villages. The trains are being upgraded, but that's not scheduled to finish until at least next year, and at the moment they're slow and very unreliable. It feels like every week the trains are cancelled and an inadequate replacement bus service is put on.
I'm disabled, and have to travel from my town, Aberdare, to the main hospital in Cardiff, UHW, on a regular basis. If I had to leave now, it would take 42 minutes by car, or 2 hours and 6 minutes by public transport. The shortest journey is tomorrow morning and would take 1 hour and 31 minutes, more than double the time of the car journey. The closest inpatient hospital is 22 minutes by car, or over an hour by public transport. The difference the new speed limits are going to make is negligible compared to how slow public transport is here.
All this is going to do is annoy and upset people, and turn them off the idea of using public transport, and push a lot of people towards voting for the parties who were against this. Out of the main parties, that mainly seems to be the Conservatives, so that's going to be bad for all of us.
- The FAQ in OP's link tells you that it is not all 30mph roads, but rather all restricted roads, with a link to a map of all 30mph roads that are staying 30mph as well as the option to see which restricted roads will change to 20mph. "Restricted Roads" is a classification of roads in law that is defined by the lamppost density, so this change won't affect larger and more rural roads where lampposts are more sparse.
  
  Then they've screwed up the marketing. Everything they've been pushing out makes it appear that it's all roads. Not that there's much of a difference. There's a grand total of two roads in my area, and five in the Aberdare area that will apparently stay as 30mph.
  
  Marketing lol
  
  I couldn't think of a better word 🙈
  
  Then they've screwed up the marketing.
  c'mon
  
  What’s wrong with that? Liberal governments are terrible at spreading the word about their few good policies, marketing may not be exactly the right word but we know what they meant by it
  
  It's just the type of comment to be proven wrong, even admitting it, and then still not changing the position towards the policy. Things can be both marketed badly and also good
- The Tories originally supported the proposal which is quite hilarious seeing how much stink they are throwing currently.
  I do agree public transport needs more funding but they are in a pretty tricky situation where the Gov has very little money to improve the service (partly due to Wales transport funds being spent on HS2) and at the same time bus usage is down and not recovered after lockdowns. I hope the 20mph limits will encourage more onto busses, but I am not confident.
  
  The Tories are bullshitting to gain support? That's not like them 🤔🤥
- At this point it sounds like me on my E-bike would be the fastest thing on the road. It does 25mph/40kph
  
  Which would mean that you would also be speeding, since e-bikes in the UK are required by law to be capped at 15.5mph (technically 25kph).
  
  I'm in the US, but fair point
  
  Ah, that makes sense. For what it's worth I think you guys are on the right track with e-bikes; allow more powerful motors but give them a different classification.
  What are things like on that side of the pond? The "20's plenty" campaign is well underway over here, do you have similar movements in the US?
  
  We are basically ignoring that they exist. There's a law being floated in CA that would prevent teens under the age of 16(?) from driving them, but I suspect that will die in the State Assembly.
  
  and i think the 20mph limit would also apply too - so even if the cap were lifted, you can't go breaking the speed limit just because it's a bike.
- Will this prevent you from using your car though?
  
  Not in the slightest, which is part of my point. It's going to slow down cars and frustrate people, while not having the intended benefit.
  
  From the Welsh government's FAQ again: "The evidence from around the world is very clear – reducing speed limits reduces collisions and saves lives." The intended benefit is to reduc the risk of collisions and to reduce injuries in the case of collisions. Lowering the speed limit will result in both of those things, and so we will be seeing the intended benefit.
  
  A road with a large number of accidents over the last few years is one that campaigners have been begging the Welsh government to fix, but it's been ignored, and is one of only five roads in the area to stay at 30mph. It's also a road that the local government has been using as a showpiece to say that they're working on transportation problems.
  This whole exercise feels more like they're trying to show that they're doing something, rather than actually doing something useful.
  
  So you agree they aren't going far enough lol
  
  No, I don't. I think they're going about it all wrong.
  An almost blanket conversion of 30mph roads to 20mph does little to help. A better idea would have been to change the speed limits on roads where people live or regularly walk, and leave the others. Once the public transport has been updated, and people are used to the lower speed limits, then look at making them universal.
  Give drivers a viable alternative, as opposed to the current system where buses are unreliable, trains are worse, and neither go where you want them to.
  Once people start using public transport, then push for it more.
  At the moment, public transport is still worse than driving at 20mph here, so all that's going to happen is that drivers get frustrated, and spend even longer on the road than they usually would. When the next election comes around, they're going to vote for whoever they feel isn't 'attacking motorists' again.
  
  You think maybe all the other people without disabilities might see some other options here which in turn would free up more road for you, a person actually needing to drive a car, for it?
  
  Here's a reply I made to someone who asked a similar question:
  'Our cities are quite small, and have decent cycling infrastructure as far as I can remember, but it's been a while since I've been to a city centre.
  A large portion of South Wales is small towns and villages built on hills and mountains, so it's difficult to cycle from place to place for most people. Mid Wales tends to be very spread out and hilly, so again, difficult to cycle around unless it's for pleasure. If you cycled to work, you'd probably be very sweaty by the time you got there.
  Have a look at Google Street View to see how steep some of our hills are. They're great for a challenge, but you definitely wouldn't want to tackle them on a cold, wet, Welsh morning on the way to work.'
  Because of the obstacles I described in that reply, it's hard to walk particularly far too. There's physically not enough room for anything bigger than buses, like trains, even if the budget was there. There are some areas where trains used to run for the coal mines, but they've been converted to joint footpaths and cycle paths, which would have to be ripped up to convert back.
  A decent rail system running through and around Wales is a desperately needed start, but, again, our geography is a massive obstacle. Even the main road going north to south through the country is a single lane in each direction for the majority of it. It's only near the capital that it becomes a dual carriageway.
  
  A large portion of South Wales is small towns and villages built on hills and mountains, so it's difficult to cycle from place to place for most people.
  The Taff trail forms a convenient path from Pontypridd to Cardiff that doesn't require travelling over steep hills. Further into the South Wales valleys past Ponty, each valley has their own cycle trail that links to the Taff Trail. Commuting around the valleys and to Cardiff is only tough going if you follow the motorways instead of pre-existing cycling infrastructure.
  The main problem is travelling between valleys since you're either going over hills or circling 'round to Ponty but this is also a problem with public transit infrastructure which uses Ponty as hub so if you're going say Merthyr to Maerdy you have to catch a bus or train to Ponty and then a bus to Maerdy.
  
  A large portion of South Wales is small towns and villages built on hills and mountains, so it's difficult to cycle from place to place for most people. Mid Wales tends to be very spread out and hilly, so again, difficult to cycle around unless it's for pleasure. If you cycled to work, you'd probably be very sweaty by the time you got there.
  E-bikes have been invented for a while now
  Have a look at Google Street View to see how steep some of our hills are. They're great for a challenge, but you definitely wouldn't want to tackle them on a cold, wet, Welsh morning on the way to work.'
  This is just bog standard "It wouldn't work here" stuff. It gets cold and wet elsewhere and it doesn't stop people from cycling
  Even the main road going north to south through the country is a single lane in each direction for the majority of it.
  That's a policy choice not an inherent condition of geography. Switzerlands full of mountains and they have good trains.
- All this is going to do is annoy and upset people, and turn them off the idea of using public transport, and push a lot of people towards voting for the parties who were against this.
  Bingo. But they don't care who they hurt in the process. "Fuck cars = fuck lives"
  
  lmao
  
  Get fucked car lover lmfao
  Completely deranged
  
  Shidding and farding over a 1 minute increase on my commute through a residential area
  
  "Fuck cars = fuck lives"
  are cars sentient where you live
  
  oh fuck off you hysterical dipshit
- It's a regressive tax on people to generate revenue disguised as a public safety measure
  
  Surely it only generates revenue if people decide to break the law?
  
  That's... how speeding tickets work, yes.
  Thus, it is a tax on commuters, who tend to be people who can't work from home, and also tend to be poorer, making it regressive... Which is why Tories came up with it.
  
  This change came from the Welsh Labour government, it is not a tory policy (though they apparently initially supported it)
  Again, it's an entirely avoidable cost by simply obeying the law. If you're poor and can't afford to pay speeding fines, don't speed.
  
  My point being that they won't generate any revenue if people actually follow the rules of the road. Revenue only when people break the law is not how taxes work.
  
  Might wanna dig into what classes of people pay the overwhelming amount of traffic citations to see why certain groups prefer this method of revenue-raising over just normal taxation.
  
  Might wanna dig into what forms of transportation the very poor use! Hint: it's not driving.
  Traffic safety laws protect the most vulnerable members of society: the very poor, very young, very old, and very disabled (all populations that can't drive and are more likely to become trapped in their own homes when streets are unsafe for those outside motor vehicles).
  
  so it could be describes a tax on commuters who choose to drive over the speed limit - fuck them hower poor they are. poor people are capable of committing crimes just like non-poor.
  poor people can also drive slower, or take the bus, train, (and many can ) bike, walk . . .
  personally i find bike/bus/train way cheaper than car.
  recycle the revenue into bus service and its probably neither progressive or regressive,but sways people out of cars, and reduces the danger to people not in cars.(however poor they are)

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