Default 20mph for Wales

[pwa]

Personally I feel that sheep farmers need to wake up to the reality of today's food market and change their ways to match. Grow stuff that will produce far more value-per-acre and doesn't turn everywhere into a green desert of low biodiversity.

This Farmers Weekly article agrees with you:
https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/grow-tre ... sh-uplands

Most land used for sheep grazing in Wales would not be suited to other forms of farming. Some of the lowland pasture would, but not the open expanses of moorland. Forestry is the alternative there, if the land is to produce anything.

[Carlton green]

Moving to Forestry is surely easier said than done, it takes decades for trees to grow to a harvestable size and harvesting them ain’t easy.

Rather than force the land to do their bidding the Farmers that I know tend to try to work with the seasons and the land. There’s a wide mix of land types and agriculture locally, people trying whatever might work and continuing with what is delivering a living to them as individuals. In recent years we’ve seen solar farms arrive here and I hope that we’ll see a few more wind turbines. One local farm has some glasshouses which it heats with biomass from locally grown wood.

Moorland might be difficult to farm but when needs must then folk all over the world have found ways to work with difficult land. At the moment it’s cheaper to import food than to grown it here in the UK but that could all change.

As for the Welsh twenty mile per hour default limit I think it a wonderful idea and wish we had it here. We do have a local 50 mph default limit which is mostly obeyed; there are still some fatalities - perhaps less than would otherwise be the case - but the roads seem safer for being slower and my journeys don’t seem to take noticeably longer. As a general thing I’d like to see all of our National speed limits reduced and particularly so on minor roads.

[Pete Owens]

Looks like Newport has published the list of roads to revert to 30mph:
https://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/ ... eed-limit/
They have whittled 335 proposals down to 16 (though that still includes one road running past a school!)

Looking at the views of people they interviewed it seems that most are supportive of 20mph now they have had a year to get used to it.

[Bonefishblues]

I got some stats back from Oxfordshire CC via a foi request a couple of weeks ago. OCC has now re-surveyed speeds in 20mph areas and reports a mean 1.2mph reduction in speeds after implementation.

[Pete Owens]

Which is exactly what you would expect for selective implementation 20 mph zones in England.

The majority of streets already have low speeds so the speed limit will not make any difference at all.
A few streets do have higher speeds so the new speed limit will make a significant difference here, but since the benefits are concentrated on a few streets the overall average change is not that great.

The biggest benefits are to be had on main roads (where most crashes happen), but these tend to be excluded from most English schemes.
Wales has included main roads in is 20mph adoption. The greater proportion of faster roads with larger speed reductions means the mean speed reduction has been 2.4 mph (double that reported by Oxfordshire). What is more significant is the 28% reduction in casualties. There are hundreds of Welshmen who are sill alive and uninjured due to the policy.

[Carlton green]

The biggest benefits are to be had on main roads (where most crashes happen), but these tend to be excluded from most English schemes.
Wales has included main roads in is 20mph adoption. The greater proportion of faster roads with larger speed reductions means the mean speed reduction has been 2.4 mph (double that reported by Oxfordshire). What is more significant is the 28% reduction in casualties. There are hundreds of Welshmen who are sill alive and uninjured due to the policy.

I suspect that you intended to say that: There are hundreds of Welshmen (and women) who are either still alive or uninjured due to the policy.

I don’t doubt that both lives have been saved and injuries have been reduced, and I do support slower motoring. Please would you give a link to the data that shows the Welsh casualty figures - the claim of hundreds seems potentially overstated, though I think that they might be nearly true. Apologies if that data has been supplied elsewhere, I’ve not been actively following this thread.

My own research:

The figures, external show there were 377 casualties of all severities in January to March, compared to 510 in the first quarter of 2023.
That included five fatalities at 20 and 30mph, compared to 11 in the same period in 2023.

So for one quarter (January to March of 2024) there were 133 less casualties and 6 less deaths.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cydvr2rnm4ro

From Welsh Government data I note that in the decade between 2010 and 2020 the rate of accidents nearly halved - a really wonderful change, and hard to improve on. That trend (circa 7% a year?) shows a fairly consistent improvement and trend which makes me wonder how valid attribution of (all) further improvements to the 20 mph limit can be.

In 2024 Q1, there were 606 police reported road collisions in Wales. Of these collisions:

16 (3%) were fatal.
163 (27%) were serious collisions.
427 (70%) were slight collisions.
The total number of collisions is 18% lower than in the previous quarter (737) and 17% lower than in the same quarter in 2023 (733).

The number of police-recorded road collisions in 2024 Q1 is the lowest quarterly figure recorded in Wales outside the COVID-19 period. However, the number of quarterly road collisions in Wales has generally been declining steadily over the last decade and quarterly figures can be volatile. Care should be taken when interpreting this data over a short time period.

https://www.gov.wales/police-recorded-r ... 20were,%25)%20people%20were%20seriously%20injured

[Pete Owens]

Try this:
https://www.20splenty.org/wales_1st_9_months
The casualty reduction seen in the first 3 months as been sustained.- so that is hundreds fewer casualties since the limit was reduced.
The figures are broken down so you can see the reduction is on 20/30mph roads but not on 40+ roads.
Nor is there a similar reduction in English casualties over that period.

[Pete Owens]

Wrexham seem to have been rather more enthusiastic about reintroducing high speeds.

There is a list of about 50 proposals which they are consulting on:
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/service/coun ... peed-limit
It would be worth folks from North Wales commenting on roads they are familiar with.
While some are sensible revisions, some are places where pedestrians really are not well provided for.
Imagine trying to cross the road to get to this bus stop on the B5605 in Ruabon:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/6QcyiyqKvNQBk4Xb9

[Carlton green]

Wrexham seem to have been rather more enthusiastic about reintroducing high speeds.

There is a list of about 50 proposals which they are consulting on:
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/service/coun ... peed-limit
It would be worth folks from North Wales commenting on roads they are familiar with.
While some are sensible revisions, some are places where pedestrians really are not well provided for.
Imagine trying to cross the road to get to this bus stop on the B5605 in Ruabon:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/6QcyiyqKvNQBk4Xb9

I had a look at the Ruabon road. Historically it’s obviously a quick road and it’s a significant route to other communities. With the exception of a small gap in them the crash barriers in the middle of the road prevent pedestrians from crossing the road at that point, and I don’t see alternative provision for pedestrian crossing: so there is significant pre-existing pedestrian isolation between the two sides of the road. Further North and further South on that road there are (paired) bus stops which are near enough opposite each other.

[Bmblbzzz]

That Ruabon road is a classic example of prioritizing motor traffic over pedestrians. Or to put it another way, machines over people. Not only the central barrier, which is fairly uncommon in an urban setting, but also the very common kerb-edge anti-personnel railings, which they've used on one corner next to that same bus stop: https://maps.app.goo.gl/tEQeDDVjF253bk648 Both are good examples of why measures such as lower speed limits (and electric cars) are not in themselves sufficient to counter the damage done to society by motor normativity.

[Pete Owens]

Conwy's list seems more reasonable at 15:
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north- ... d-30793305
Though including the prom at Rhos seems a bit odd.

[Carlton green]

Conwy's list seems more reasonable at 15:
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north- ... d-30793305
Though including the prom at Rhos seems a bit odd.

Whilst I haven’t been there for many years I know and love that part of North Wales. My recollection, and Google street view seems to confirm that this is the case, is that the coast road was wide, had decent pavements and was a main link between places. As such a 30 mph limit would seem appropriate. There will be some pedestrians, but one side of the road isn’t a residential area and footfall has a seasonal element.

[Mike Sales]

They have proved hugely controversial, but 20mph speed limits appear to be making car insurance cheaper.

This week a leading price comparison website reported the biggest annual drop in UK car insurance prices in more than 10 years, with the average cost of cover falling by £161 – or 16% – in the past 12 months.

“Some UK insurers are observing that areas where 20mph zones have been introduced result in lower levels of claim frequency – a key factor in the cost of car insurance,” he says.

“Though many drivers find these reduced speed zones frustrating, it’s positive to see the bright spot this is creating for drivers’ costs.”

The first indications that 20mph zones could bring down the cost of car insurance – as well as cutting speeds and reducing road casualties – came in June last year, when the car insurer esure reported that vehicle damage claims in Wales fell by a fifth after the default limit was introduced.

The company said at the time that the speed restriction was “clearly having an impact”,” and it later said that the average driver could be looking at a £50-a-year saving on their motor insurance if the zones were rolled out across UK towns and cities.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/ ... s-premiums

[Pete Owens]

Conwy's list seems more reasonable at 15:
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north- ... d-30793305
Though including the prom at Rhos seems a bit odd.

Whilst I haven’t been there for many years I know and love that part of North Wales. My recollection, and Google street view seems to confirm that this is the case, is that the coast road was wide, had decent pavements and was a main link between places. As such a 30 mph limit would seem appropriate. There will be some pedestrians, but one side of the road isn’t a residential area and footfall has a seasonal element.

The trouble is you are viewing this from the perspective of a car windscreen. The Welsh guidelines evaluate exceptions in terms of whether that road is not used by pedestrians and cyclists.

As with any prom you have the town on one side and and a popular recreation area on the other used by cyclists and pedestrians. These need to cross the road to get to and from the prom. There are hardly any formal crossings for pedestrians, and although the road is wide it is used for on-street parking, which complicates cycling and poses a hazard for crossing children in particular.

It is not a situation that you might see at the edge of a built up area where a main road passes housing on one side with as set back cycleway & footway so that pedestrians have no need to cross the road, but more akin to a residential street with houses on one side and a park on the other.

[Bmblbzzz]

The trouble is you are viewing this from the perspective of a car windscreen.

This is, sadly, almost always the case.