Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives
Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives
For more detailed information: https://www.gov.wales/introducing-20mph-speed-limits-frequently-asked-questions
Speed limit changes should be accompanied by speed humps / raised crosswalks, narrower lanes, narrower vertical space using trees, planters, bollards, etc, more frequent stops or mini roundabouts, curb bumpouts, etc etc.
Just changing the speed limit without changing the physical space will only do so much.
They're not just lowering the speed limit. From the FAQ:
Will the roll out involve money being spent on speed bumps?
There is no plan to include traffic calming (including speed bumps) as part of the change to speed limits. There are other ‘softer’ measures that might be introduced, such as using buffer speed limits, removing the centre line, narrowing the carriageway visually, using planting etc.
They just want to make money. They've covered the country with cameras and then they dropped the speed limit to a brisk walk. Breaking 20mph is almost guaranteed by accident, and those cameras are going to snitch.
Good job guys.
If people can't follow the speed limit they should be fined.
What's the point in speed limits if they aren't enforced?
I've never had a problem driving 20. In fact I do it voluntarily in some build up neighbourhoods.
Plus 20 mph is basically sprinting.
Edit:
Yes, 15mph is very fast for a runner as it equates to a 4-minute mile. 15mph represents the fastest a human can run, with extensive training,
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.
I'm not from Wales, so I don't know how good the cycling infrastructure is there. But for me this change would make me feel much safer cycling on busy city streets. So this might encourage a few people to take their bike instead of their car.
The person you replied to is disabled - or so he claims, even if we assume he is lying about that, there are other people in his town who actually are disabled (I don't even have to look, disability is common enough around the world). While bikes are great for "normal people", they are not an answer for the disabled who may not be able to ride them at all. As such while cities should encourage more biking, they should not make bikes the backbone of how people are expected to get around.
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.
Good. We not only have to make PT and cycling more attractive, we have to make driving less attractive.
US same. At least some places. 20 MPH in city and more bikeways. I think this is a trend.
Sounds dumb
Why do you think that's stupid?
Whales don't even drive.
God bless the orcas
This is becoming more and more the default speed limit in German cities (30 kmh actually, which is more or less the same).
Netherlands too. Amsterdam is even planning to change major inner city roads to 30km/h (minor roads already are).
My local council (UK) are rolling it out on a town-by-town basis over the next 3 years. I'm pretty sure they'd do it quicker if they had the finances to buy that many new road signs all at once. It does mean the process is a bit confusing, since traditionally there are other visual cues for what a road's speed limit is, which generally mean even if you don't see the signs, you still know what the limit is. Now those visual cues aren't consistent between towns (two roads with the same visual cues, such as "street lights in an urban area", have different speed limits depending on which town you go to.) Since I live equidistant between two very similar towns that now have different speed limit rules... I wish the council had just changed all the speed limits at once!
30 mph = 48 kph. That's not really the same at all.
30 mph isn't an unreasonable default speed, but 30 kph is really slow unless you're talking a dense city core.
I think this policy will fail to be honest; while I’m not in Wales any more Oxford where I live now is a supposed ‘cycling city’ with most roads at 20 mph and honestly I hate being on the road there either in a car or on a bike; I get the bus in even though it’s often flaky. Driving you’re sat between second and third gear the whole time so you’re either revving too hard and wasting petrol or the car naturally speeds up so you’re spending a lot of attention on not getting fined rather than keeping it on the road, and when you’re cycling the cars that do keep to 20 mph linger beside you for what feels subjectively a lot longer when they overtake which isn’t fun either and the tiny bike lines make you feel vulnerable to traffic. I had a lot of near misses when I did it regularly and Oxford is a very small city, the idea of cycling somewhere like Cardiff would be terrifying to me.
Great news, people don't realise how much safer 20mph is than 30mph.
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary 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).
Wales will introduce a default speed limit of 20 mph (30 km/h) in built-up areas from next year, in a bid to lower road collisions and noise pollution, as well as encourage people to walk or cycle.
The Welsh parliament voted on Tuesday to back the plan, which will bring down the speed limit currently set at 30 mph (50 km/h) on most busy streets and residential roads.
Both Labour and Plaid Cymru, who have a cooperation agreement and hold almost three-quarters of the 60 Senedd seats, backed the plan, but it has been met with criticism too.
Reasons for opposing the scheme ranged from concerns it could “annoy” drivers to an increase in journey time and congestion.
“They are quite rightly very concerned as they believe that pollution is increasing because cars have to drive in a lower gear and wait longer at traffic lights, there have also been more accidents,” he said.
Saved 71% of original text. :::
