Default 20mph for Wales

pwa
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by pwa »

Ron wrote: 8 Nov 2022, 11:05pm I would prefer to see a blanket 20 mph limit on all streets in a community as exists with the 30mph limit. To have 20 mph limits on some streets and 30mph limits on others requires a lot of signage, also much greater diligence from drivers if they are not to contravene a limit. Time spent looking for speed limit signs is time taken from hazard spotting.
With the local pilot example, it wasn't just the residential side streets that had the 20 limit. It was the main roads too. And it wasn't just the sections of main road with continuous housing alongside, or a school nearby. It included a section where there was just the occasional house on one side of the road and nothing but cows in fields on the other side of the road. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.45617 ... 312!8i6656 So there will be case-by-case questions for each and every coomunity affected. Which bits to keep in the new 20 zone and which bits to exempt. The good news is that councils are going to have to look at this and justify any exemptions.

I am slightly concerned that this will be happening at a particularly bad time for councils, with budgets being slashed as never before. I am not confident that it will get the resources and attention it needs.
Pete Owens
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Pete Owens »

pwa wrote: 10 Nov 2022, 5:47am
Ron wrote: 8 Nov 2022, 11:05pm I would prefer to see a blanket 20 mph limit on all streets in a community as exists with the 30mph limit. To have 20 mph limits on some streets and 30mph limits on others requires a lot of signage, also much greater diligence from drivers if they are not to contravene a limit. Time spent looking for speed limit signs is time taken from hazard spotting.
With the local pilot example, it wasn't just the residential side streets that had the 20 limit. It was the main roads too.
.
Indeed - that is the whole point - the main roads are where the greatest danger to vulnerable road users is - so have the greatest need for reduced speed.

And it wasn't just the sections of main road with continuous housing alongside, or a school nearby. It included a section where there was just the occasional house on one side of the road and nothing but cows in fields on the other side of the road. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.45617 ... 312!8i6656
Exaclty the sort of road that needs a 20mph limit. As you correctly point out there are houses along that road - and people live in those houses need to walk along it to get into town - using an extremely narrow pavement. Children need to cycle along it to get to school and so on. The only roads that would need exempting are thing such as urban dual carriageways in cuttings where pedestrians do not go, or situations where the street lighting extends far beyond the last house in the village.

Take another example from the Borders - a rather more main road - the A7 through Galashiels
https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6073139 ... 384!8i8192
So there will be case-by-case questions for each and every coomunity affected. Which bits to keep in the new 20 zone and which bits to exempt. The good news is that councils are going to have to look at this and justify any exemptions.
The whole point of changing the default is to vastly reduce that need.
At present councils already have that duty - and with a default of 30 that means going this means that the vast majority of the street network has to be gone through, street by street, alley by alley. After September there will be a handful of streets that might require attention.
I am slightly concerned that this will be happening at a particularly bad time for councils, with budgets being slashed as never before. I am not confident that it will get the resources and attention it needs.
No resourses needed - just switch to the new default - job done. The savings start from year one; every year of prevarication has cost the lives of 10 Welshmen.

The number of exemptions will be tiny compared to the number of streets that currently subject to an inappropriately high limit and there is no rush. The exemptions do not have to be put in place by next September; councils will continue, as they always have done, to have the power to set local speed limits. In the Borders a handful of limits were adjusted a year after the initial implementation. It really isn't a big issue.
pwa
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by pwa »

Pete Owens wrote: 10 Nov 2022, 3:21pm
....The number of exemptions will be tiny compared to the number of streets that currently subject to an inappropriately high limit and there is no rush. The exemptions do not have to be put in place by next September; councils will continue, as they always have done, to have the power to set local speed limits. In the Borders a handful of limits were adjusted a year after the initial implementation. It really isn't a big issue.
It is impractical to convert all existing 30mph limits to 20mph, because some existing 30mph sections of road already seem as if they have too low a limit. I think it is practical and sensible to have 20 on all purely residential streets, and that is already the maximum I would drive at on streets like that. I'd say the same about some main roads where the hazard level seems high. But if we do not exclude some existing 30mph main roads where hazard levels appear low, we risk provoking widespread disregarding of the law. The limit changes should make sense or they won't be respected.
thirdcrank
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by thirdcrank »

This seems unreal. Although the thread began when it was a consultation, this is now coming in.
Pete Owens
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Pete Owens »

pwa wrote: 10 Nov 2022, 9:52pm
Pete Owens wrote: 10 Nov 2022, 3:21pm
....The number of exemptions will be tiny compared to the number of streets that currently subject to an inappropriately high limit and there is no rush. The exemptions do not have to be put in place by next September; councils will continue, as they always have done, to have the power to set local speed limits. In the Borders a handful of limits were adjusted a year after the initial implementation. It really isn't a big issue.
It is impractical to convert all existing 30mph limits to 20mph,
Of course it isn't - it has been done already in plenty of places.
because some existing 30mph sections of road already seem as if they have too low a limit.
That is only because you have become used to being allowed to drive through towns at lethal speeds - after next September it will seem normal to drive at a safe speed. In a few years time, when you visit England and walk around a town or village the high speeds will seem abnormally reckless to you.

Perhaps from your perspective, sitting in a metal box, secured by a seatbelt, and protected by airbags, blasting through towns at high speed represents little personal risk to yourself. From the perspective of a parent waving off their eight year old daughter as she cycles to school along that road the presence motor vehicles passing at lethal speed seems much too fast.

The choice of speed needs to meet the needs of that eight year old - not what appears reasonable to someone protected from the danger they are causing.
I think it is practical and sensible to have 20 on all purely residential streets, and that is already the maximum I would drive at on streets like that. I'd say the same about some main roads where the hazard level seems high. But if we do not exclude some existing 30mph main roads where hazard levels appear low, we risk provoking widespread disregarding of the law. The limit changes should make sense or they won't be respected.
The hazard levels are objectively highest on the busy through roads you would exempt. Which of course deep down you must already understand. If you were going to give a young child a first on-road cycle lesson then you would choose a street where (in your words) "hazard levels appear low". Are you seriously expecting us to believe you would choose the busy through road ... I thought not.

The very fact that there are some motorists who cannot see the sense in restricting speeds to to sub-lethal levels demonstrates the need for the reduced limit. Indeed, more generally, if we could rely on motorists to drive safely then there would be no need for any traffic laws at all - and there would be no pedestrians killed on our streets.
pwa
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by pwa »

Pete Owens wrote: 11 Nov 2022, 2:07am ....The very fact that there are some motorists who cannot see the sense in restricting speeds to to sub-lethal levels demonstrates the need for the reduced limit. Indeed, more generally, if we could rely on motorists to drive safely then there would be no need for any traffic laws at all - and there would be no pedestrians killed on our streets.
Judging from comments I have heard about our local pilot example, people typically feel that much of the new 20mph zone makes good sense, with the exception of that one section outside the main built-up area of the village, where you hardly ever see a pedestrian, and where anyone crossing the road is extremely unusual because there is nothing on the other side to cross for. On that section 30mph seems cautious. So my own take on this is that it is a good move, but that sensible and considered tweaking will be needed in each community to make it something that gets widespread support, which is what it will need to succeed.

I suspect that in practice, the difference on the ground between what you want this to be and what I want it to be will be quite modest in the area in which I live.
Bmblbzzz
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Safety, perceived and/or real, is the selling point but the benefits go way beyond that: quieter towns, cleaner air, more accessibility. It's a small move towards balancing the interests of people and the machines they use.
pwa
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by pwa »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 11 Nov 2022, 9:32am Safety, perceived and/or real, is the selling point but the benefits go way beyond that: quieter towns, cleaner air, more accessibility. It's a small move towards balancing the interests of people and the machines they use.
I very often end up driving (for my job) along the M4 in Port Talbot, which has had miles of carriageway reduced from National Speed Limit to 50mph to reduce pollution to adjoining built up areas, and it has succeeded in doing that. And mostly, this has been accepted by drivers. People can see the justification and find the solution proportionate.
Dingdong
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Dingdong »

thirdcrank wrote: 10 Nov 2022, 10:07pm This seems unreal. Although the thread began when it was a consultation, this is now coming in.
Agreed, and at a time when even the most critical of public services are being put under the cosh.
Nigel
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Nigel »

Pete Owens wrote: 9 Nov 2022, 4:17pm
Nigel wrote: 9 Nov 2022, 9:30am
Ron wrote: 8 Nov 2022, 11:05pm I would prefer to see a blanket 20 mph limit on all streets in a community as exists with the 30mph limit. To have 20 mph limits on some streets and 30mph limits on others requires a lot of signage, also much greater diligence from drivers if they are not to contravene a limit. Time spent looking for speed limit signs is time taken from hazard spotting.
Signs - every road with a 20mph requires repeaters. That's traffic law for the UK (unlike 30, which is default when there is street lighting,
Note the subject of this thread

In WALES from next September they are changing the default from 30 to 20 - this means repeaters will not be needed at all if the local authority simply goes along with the default then all that needs to change are the numbers on the edge of town boundary signs (it could be done with "2" stickers covering the exising "3"s on the 30 signs. IF they want to change some roads to 30 mph then those roads will need repeaters and also new boundary signs will be needed at every point where the limit changes.

OK, I hadn't realised the Welsh Government had the powers to vary the limit in the transport legislation. But a bit of research, and they have changed the default for "restricted" roads to 20mph. So, from September in Wales no repeaters at 20mph (with six months to remove the old ones), but repeaters will be required on any 30mph roads.


It will be open season on loopholes for speeding cases as the Highway Code doesn't mention Wales will be 20.
" A speed limit of 30 miles per hour (48km/h) applies to all single and dual carriageways with street lights, unless there are signs showing otherwise." (Signs showing otherwise will be "repeaters" - a regular point of contention over adequate signs for speed limits).
https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits
Pete Owens
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Pete Owens »

No loopholes - that will be the law in Wales.
Bmblbzzz
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Bmblbzzz »

The Highway Code is often cited but is not in itself law, more of a digest with pointers to the actual legislation.
pwa
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by pwa »

A bit more news about this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63782237
A council that has been running one of the pilot projects is tweaking it, by taking two of the default 20mph sections back into the 30mph band. But they are also extending the 30mph limit to include a bus stop currently on a stretch with a higher limit.

Additionally, I can report that as I move around my region I have seen, in certain districts, new posts appearing, as yet with no signs attached. They tend to be where side streets meet an urban main road, or where a main road nears a school. This entrance to a residential side road now has a pair of shiny new galv steel posts, one either side, but as recently as last July (the image) it didn't.https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.65699 ... 384!8i8192
I infer that at this location the main road will be 30mph but the residential street will go down to 20mph. Further up the hill the main road passes a school and at that point it already has a 20mph stretch, but from the location of new posts it looks as though that stretch will increase in length.
Bmblbzzz
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by Bmblbzzz »

The trajectory of that red car is an example of another reason why such widely radiused corners are a bad idea in urban areas.
pwa
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Re: Default 20mph for Wales

Post by pwa »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 30 Nov 2022, 12:01pm The trajectory of that red car is an example of another reason why such widely radiused corners are a bad idea in urban areas.
Corners ought to be designed for the largest vehicles that are expected to use them, which might mean things like school buses and removal lorries in this case.

The angle of the front wheels on that car make it look as though the driver has changed their mind about where they are going. Curious.
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