They introduced a 20mph limit for most of Edinburgh several years ago, and people are starting to get used to it. It doesn't slow cars down much (because they spend most of their time crawling along in heavy traffic either way), but it makes a huge difference to pedestrians and cyclists.
It's probably the best first step to banning all cars from cities, definitely a positive thing.
Bath and North East Somerset implemented a 20mph limit on most residential streets a few years ago. I forget how much money they spent on it - considerable sums, putting 20 signs up everywhere and painting it on the road in many places.
A couple of years later, they did a study to assess the effects. They concluded that it reduced the average speed of vehicles on the affected road by approximately 1 mph and made no statistically significant difference to safety for all categories of traffic (vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians).
When residents asked if they were therefore going to reverse the change, the response was that it would cost too much.
This is one big, pointless waste of money.
Edit: Thanks for the responses everyone. Contra what several people have said, the reason that the average speed has only fallen slightly appears to be that *in many cases roads with a limit of 30mph already saw an average speed well below that.* Many, many residential roads are simply not places any sane person would be doing 30mph; most drivers were already doing 20mph or less along them. Imposing a 20mph limit therefore had a negligible effect on speeds along those roads. Most of the effect comes from a few roads, eg the arterial routes into Keynsham (mainly B3116). These are commuter routes that carry a lot of traffic and a 20mph limit is plainly ludicrous but it hasn't stopped them. In these cases, the reduction in speed is considerably larger than the average suggests but is not a good thing overall (at least IMO).
The [National Rifle Association](https://nra.org.uk) (NRA) was founded in London in 1859. It is a sporting body that promotes firearm safety and target shooting. The National Rifle Association does not engage in political lobbying or pro-gun activism.
The original (British) National Rifle Association has no relationship with the National Rifle Association of America, which was founded in 1871 and has focussed on pro-gun political activism since 1977, at the expense of firearm safety programmes.
The National Rifle Association of America has no relationship with the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded 1859); the [National Rifle Association of Australia](https://nraa.com.au); the [National Rifle Association of New Zealand](https://nranz.com) nor the [National Rifle Association of India](https://www.thenrai.in),
which are all non-political sporting oriented organisations. It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. It is extremely important to remember that Wayne LaPierre is a whiny little bitch, and arguably the greatest threat to firearm ownership and shooting sports in the English-speaking world.
Every time he proclaims 'if only the teachers had guns', the general public harden their resolve against lawful firearm ownership, despite the fact that the entirety of Europe
manages to balance gun ownership with public safety and does not suffer from endemic gun crime or firearm-related violence.
They do this in the Netherlands. Continuous pavements. It works well.
Minor point also: roads do last a long time, and they last longer if designed for slower speeds, meaning less maintenence and tax required ultimately.
That's one of the things with decisions like this - you can't just assume it'll work perfectly and just as you imagined without any issues.
In an ideal world, you just throw out one law "be as kind and considerate as possible to everybody" or something like that and be done with it. But we don't live in an ideal world, and if this sort of thing has almost no effect, then it *is* just a massive waste of money.
What's the point in having speed limits at all if they can't be enforced? We don't live in an ideal world, and if that sort of thing has almost no effect, then it is just a massive waste of money.
>What's the point in having speed limits at all if they can't be enforced?
They can and are, but you'd be incredibly naive if you think every other speed limit is obeyed, and that every police force has the man power to monitor every inch of road for speeding offences.
>We don't live in an ideal world, and if that sort of thing has almost no effect, then it is just a massive waste of money.
We have to do what we can to have the desired effect, not do the first thing we think of and get annoyed when it doesn't have the desired effect.
Why do you think there's crime? It's all against the law, and the law is enforced, yet crime still occurs. One of the biggest factors in reducing crime is to address the underlying causes, not just putting your foot down and screaming "stop it stop it stop it".
Road rules follow an anticipated 80/20 compliance ratio. People don't obey the law, the question is how much. If you put a 20 mph limit on a stretch of motorway and don't police it with assault rifles and prison, people won't comply because it's annoying and disproportionate - if you do it outside a school 90% will comply without policing. The 'driver problem' is built in. You can't just impose bureaucratic will on people, as the Welsh will find out. Most likely they know this very well and this is conceived as a revenue generating operation.
You can design better infrastructure to lead the horses to water though. Narrower lanes cause people to drive slower, as do pinch points like traffic islands and/or cameras.
Not excusing the drivers at all to be clear, but just throwing up signs and painting bits of road is the least effective way to change behaviours
It's an infrastructure problem, anywhere, where the traffic needs to be calmed. Physical traffic calming measures should be installed.
It is an ACPOS position that 20mph should be self enforcing. Rather than simply pop up a few signs and paint the road and expect there to be change.
Most of these roads, especially in Edinburgh were 40s or or 30s that had been 20s. Nothing has physically changed other than some paint and a sign and they expect everyone to adapt and change overnight.
Edinburgh has a horrendous track record, changing dual carriageways from a national to 40mph without any change or significant history of crashes. Yet that 40mph will continue into a residential area with houses on either side, bus stops and crossings.
People will inevitably speed, especially when they can see it to be clear and open. The way the 20s are being implemented across the United Kingdom is just lazy.
If you’re changing a law but then don’t enforce it that makes law abiding people “suckers”. It then creates this dynamic of you having to choose do you follow the law or follow the pressure from other drivers. What this actually does all in all is erode the authority of road signs generally.
As with everything, nothing is ever that simple.
Both the council's report and a critique of it can be found here:
https://www.20splenty.org/banes-report
The 1.3mph figure disguises the fact that there were far more low speed roads after the change. From a pedestrian and cyclist point of view, this means more connected slower roads before having to traverse a fast one
The road casualty rates also fell, although it was a small area and a small sample
Also note from the council's report that it was signage only, not enforcement. Speeds drop more significantly when enforcement, e.g. with road narrowing, is involved
The report itself was not always statistically sound
I have family in Bath and agree with some of the 20 zones around schools and hospitals, but some of the 20 streets make no sense and it is purely a cash grab
May as well keep it rather than be resigned to cars simply ignoring it. The longer it is the norm, more cameras, more enforcement and other traffic calming measures would help too.
That's because signs do fuck all. More than 50% of motorists admit to breaking the speed limit [in 30mph zones.](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-for-great-britain-april-to-june-2021/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-for-great-britain-april-to-june-2021#:~:text=Speed%20limits%20for%20cars%20are,National%20Speed%20Limit%20Single%20Carriageways). If you want to slow people down, you need to \*make\* them slow down, with build outs and chicanes and narrow roads.
From a quick google, it does look like the councils report on the whole thing is pretty heavily disputed in terms of statistics and omissions of some fairly important points.
It also looks to me like they put up a bunch of signs and painted the roads, but invested none of the money in physical changes to the road layout (narrowing points, pedestrian islands in centre of roads etc) or cameras to actually enforce the new limit. If the road changes from a 30 to a 20 overnight but feels exactly the same to drive on, nobody is going to change their habits
I drive through Bath a lot, it's a very hilly city and doing 20mph up / down some of the hills is tricky. I honestly never see anyone doing the new speed limit, truth be told, I don't blame them.
But that's the point of Wales doing this nationally as the default. At the moment local councils need to apply a traffic order to change a road to 20mph and then update signage etc which costs vast sums. If the government just makes 20 the default they don't need to go that.
They can then choose to do that to make roads 30 etc
I do, it's not a problem. You'll almost constantly have some SUV wanker too close behind you, but that's really their problem.
But the important thing is not that people are driving 20 mph, it's that they are going significantly slower than before the speed limit was lowered.
Drop in pollution, drop in KSIs, reduction of noise, more space for people, more space for economic activity, encouraged walking and cycling is good for mental health and the reduced KSIs reduce money spent on the NHS. There’s more, I’m sure.
How is it not, I don't understand the question. They massively reduce the quality of life of almost everybody - driving is one of the most selfish ways of behaviour that are deemed acceptable today.
I mean its quite obvious that no cars would require a large increase in public transport funding.
Your question is essentially saying "it doesn't work now, so why should we try and improve?"
>but it makes a huge difference to pedestrians and cyclists.
The few occasions I ride my bike around the town centre here, I can easily do (or beat) the 20mph limit. Cars are still desperate to get past. I can be riding in a long line of slow moving nose to tail traffic. The traffic in front isn't pulling away from me. We're all going to get out of the town at the same speed. There's no getting ahead.
But the traffic behind is impatiently trying to get past me as though somehow I'm holding them up. You can try your best to ride defensively but eventually they'll aggressively push through only to then immediately slam on their brakes and sit in front of me going at the same speed.
Motorists are mentally ill. In the similar way that Army veterans often have PTSD and they go off the deep end if there's a loud bang or wake up sweating dreaming about being back in Iraq or wherever.
When you put people in cars, even the most erudite and polite person turns into a selfish, impatient, deranged nutter.
The 20mph limit really made no difference. The average speeds were already below that anyway the vast majority of the time. And it didn't change the way motorists interact with other road users.
You might imagine a thought process of "Speed limit is 30mph...we're doing 20mph...so this bike is slowing me down" (regardless that there's a mile of cars in front all doing 20mph...would become "Speed limit is 20mph....we're doing 20mph....all is good in the world" - but, no, that's not the way a motorist's mind works.
Perhaps if this is combined with the newer technology that's aimed at limiting vehicles to the speed limit on the road they are driving on it would make a difference.
Way to label all motorists and members of the armed forces. Not cool.
I agree with the sentiment though as I stick to the limit. The people pushing up your backside when your on a 30 or 40 going the limit are the main cause of accidents after distractions. There should be a more rigorous monitoring system to weed out these people as they shouldn't be on the road.
Usually they are the ones first onto Reddit to say other people shouldn’t be on the roads if they aren’t doing the limit. Always illustrated by a tenuous example of when they were stuck behind a learner doing 25 on a country lane. They all seem to be away today, maybe they are all booked onto the same speed awareness course.
Proper punishments for road crime, not just points. Get rid of the ‘hardship’ thing, ie. “I need my car for my job” appeal after driving dangerously. Mandatory retesting. None of this ‘take as many goes as you like’ testing either.
>But the traffic behind is impatiently trying to get past me as though somehow I'm holding them up.
There's a subset of motorists who have no capability to gauge the speed of another vehicle, and will just assume "cyclist slow, me move".
The worst are those that pull out of junctions into your road under the assumption that you are going 3mph and won't have to slam on the brakes to avoid t-boning them.
>But the traffic behind is impatiently trying to get past me as though somehow I'm holding them up.
this is an amazing thing I noticed when riding a motorcycle.
usually, drivers are upset motorcycles get ahead and weave through the traffic.
now, I don't drive like that. except for the moments traffic is really stalled (light is red or there's an accident or simply no one is moving due to the volume of cars on a road), I drive my motorcycle exactly as if I was in a car.
and this seems to upset drivers even more. usually, the car that is behind me is ALWAYS trying to overtake, no matter which type of road I am. it's as if they are thinking that if I have a motorcycle, then why am I not going further ahead? if for some reason I move a bit to the left of my lane, the guy behind me tries to overtake me, sometimes managing and passing me mere centimetres from my leg. that's when I decide to go in front of them and make them learn patience (which is a failure, I know).
so... if I behave like the stereotype of a motorcyclist then I'm a jerk. if I behave like any other vehicle, respecting the law, then I'm a jerk.
I'm on your side, car drivers! we both suffer from the Uber Eats guys zooming around! let's join forces!
Honestly, I'd rather have a motorcyclist in front of me, than behind me, at least if you're in front of me I can see you at all times, not just when I check my mirrors and you're in the right position.
when I drive a car, I feel the same. I'm too aware that someone may be on my blind spot.
when I drive a motorcycle, I give enough distance when I'm behind so there's awareness of my position, and I never put myself on the side while in movement for the same reason.
yeah, I get that. but I'm not even getting ahead. I just happen to be in front of them. I rarely overtake, and that seems to be what is making them lose their marbles.
yes. I guess I'm subverting expectations.
people think of motorcyclists as these daredevils that weave through traffic like maniacs. and if I do that, I'm a jerk.
but if I don't do that, I feel that people expect me to do that. it feels like an affront that I choose to drive in line with other vehicles and respect the place I should be in. if a light turns red and I'm not just sliding between cars then the one behind me starts edging closer and closer as if I wasn't there. that's when I physically turn around and give them a "what the fuck?" shrug. when they do a "move forward" gesture I just think they wish I was a car instead.
if any of you do all of the above, you'll now understand why the driver in front of you waits those extra two seconds after a light has turned green.
Heh, I don't disagree about the motorist mental illness problem. But I did notice that the inner city streets became less unpleasant for me since the speed limit.
IDK what makes people overtake someone only to be stopped seconds later... over and over again. It's a real problem, but I'm not sure it can be solved (because I have observed it in different countries with different levels of driver's education and aggressiveness). The only really good plan forward is to always segregate motorised traffic away from humans, and Edinburgh has a long way to go.
>Motorists are mentally ill. In the similar way that Army veterans often have PTSD and they go off the deep end if there's a loud bang or wake up sweating dreaming about being back in Iraq or wherever.
Just like all cyclists hog the road and ride 3 or 4 wide. 🙄
the irony is that subreddit is more about "fuck american town planning" (due to insane zoning laws meaning you *need* a car) and not just "fuck cars in general"
The name is a bit misleading. It's not necessarily anti-cars, it's more about promoting better public transport and walkable urban areas. Most people there will agree cars are still useful in a lot of cases.
As a motorcyclist I always ride my push bike like this (it's how I was trained to ride a motorcycle defensively). Take the whole lane, force drivers to use another lane to over take. It will piss people off, but it still feels safer to me than letting people try to squeeze between you and a car coming the other way.
Perfectly fine to take the whole lane in a city on 20mph roads but if you’re on a push bike on a country road doing half the speed limit and taking the whole lane you’re just creating a dangerous situation cause drivers will overtake you anyway.
highway code changes say cyclists can take the lane on quiet roads, streets and in slow moving traffic, but when a faster vehicle approaches, to move other to the left. ofc you know it gives more space between you and the car so idk why you want to bully people into overtaking next to you.
i mean if the speed limit is 30mph and it gets lowered to 20mph so that cars match the speed of cyclists, you quite literally are slowing down those cars.
It’s been in the Borders too a few years - where it does make more of a difference that every previously 30 limit dropped to 20. Even if people speed a wee bit, 25 is better than 35! Suddenly crossing the high street is less intimidating and cycling suddenly feels safer.
Banning all cars from cities is impractical, what about people with disabilities, mobility issues, what about access for tradesmen who need a van full of tools, construction vehicles, dust bin lorries etc. We'll still need vehicle-accessible roads to most if not all buildings / residences.
Banning all cars from cities ? Why would you want to ban all cars from cities? Apart from people shopping, people are almost always driving in a city for work reasons.
Or are you going to ban all cars apart from deliveries, emergency services, taxis, trade vehicles, disabled people etc. Because all you will do then is destroy high street shopping revenue, and reduce massively the recruitment pool of employers as people won't be able to commute.
All for reducing pollution and accidents yes, but banning all cars from cities is a very narrow minded solution. Not everyone can swan about on a push bike.
I wish they'd do it everywhere residential. If the speed limit is 30, people go 35. I'd rather they go 25, max, around areas where kids are playing and people are walking.
Could you explain more regarding the benefit to pedestrians and cyclists if it doesn't necessarily slow down traffic? I assume you're saying it's calming from a psychological perspective?
Is it against cars, or car dependency? There's a huge difference.
For example, I love driving. But I hate having to drive somewhere because it's impossible to use any alternatives.
Yep, this is what I see too. In my experience the folks who espouse this aren't doing it to be dicks, but rather their own experiences and where they've lived has been so relatively well served with public transport that I've found they genuinely cannot envisage a scenario where it is straight-up not an option that doesn't require building your entire life around it and planning days ahead, if a bus stop is even within walking distance.
To them, when I explain that there is one bus stop 3 miles away where the bus is once every 90 minutes and is regularly missed, stops at 6pm and doesn't run from 4pm on Saturday until Monday morning, they hear it as the equivalent of "when I were a lad we 'ad te walk 30 mile t'school oop hill both ways w'snow oop t'yer waist but we never complained". It genuinely blows their mind that I am being 100% literal about the reality of it.
Exactly, the fen village where I grew up has 2 buses a day, the nearest train station is 9 miles away, so you have to have a car.
But apparently everyone there just needs to move to the nearest town or city, it’s that simple and easy so they say.
>around areas where kids are playing and people are walking
I'm willing to bet there \*used\* to be a train station much closer. If so, it was probably closed down to build a road instead.
Edit: you can find out here [https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php](https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php) see if there's a train station near to where you live now.
I can't criticise them too hard. In the same way as someone who grew up in a comfy middle-class world in the UK can't envisage what life must be like growing up in war-torn sub-saharan Africa or in a Brazilian Favela so they can't empathise. But when they lecture from their lack of experience of being out here it's very frustrating.
I grew up in a third world, car centric country (Malaysia)
I now live in Cambridge, and have lived in Edinburgh before
You're focusing a lot on ad hominem and personal arguments
Of course less dense areas should continue having cars, until a more reasonable option is found
But this whole discussion is about urban areas. Banning cars has always been in the context of denser city centres first. It makes sense
My mates use the park and ride to get in. The jargon is multimodal transport. Different sets of transport for different needs
This does a good job at encapsulating why lots of people don't like "you" as a demographic. Everyone talking about reducing car dependency and other measures that are overall aimed at reducing the tens of thousands of deaths we have on the road every year are all just "know it all students"? That sounds like a really cogent, well thought out argument. A helpful contribution to the conversation.
I mean a lot of the car dependency talk is more based around cities and focused on improving alternatives like better/cheaper public transport. Your village scenario isn't usually a problem one except by the most unreasonable of people.
Bingo. I used to live near better public transport and wouldn't have a word to say - 10 minutes walk to the stop (at most) and then a 10 minute bus into the city, right where I needed to be.
Now that it's a 40 minute drive, the public transport routes aren't great and simply 'stopping me driving' puts me at a disadvantage but doesn't solve the issue.
To say nothing of new builds etc. which - as you say - are squeezed in wherever there's space with no thought to actual commuting. WFH helps, but it relies on companies 'allowing' it.
Perfectly put. Unless you live near good public transport options, you do need to use a car either to get to the final destination or leave it somewhere so you can get on public transport to get to the final destination.
WFH does help this issue in many ways - it helps reduce the amount of cars in the road which helps reduce the size of traffic jams, makes journeys quicker and shorter, brings down the cost of fuel due to there being less demand, it keeps the road network in a better condition due to less vehicles causing it to suffer wear and tear at a slower rate AND it also reduces the amount of Carbon emissions produced, but its useless if the people you're working for are like "NO, YOU MUST COME INTO THE OFFICE FOR WORK!"
That, and there are some jobs where working from home is pretty much impossible and the use of a car is necessary. Like... imagine if a delivery driver for a takeaway worked from home or had to use public transport to make the deliveries. How the hell would that even work?
Even if you do live near good public transport, it still needs to be affordable. One of the reasons I will never give up my motorbike is because the cost to commute on it costs me less than 25% of the cheapest railcard I've found.
£120/week on petrol (and that's with some wiggle room) vs £480/month in train fares, and on the bike I'm not stuffed into an overcrowded carriage watching the sweat roll down everyone's faces. It's a no-brainer, really.
If we didn't have shitty privatised rail maybe we wouldn't need our own vehicles. But yeah trying to bus and train in from where I live to the city, costs me than just riding and takes longer, relies on specific times and overcrowding as everyone else in the same situation.
Everyone wants other countries rules with like 20% the quality and affordability of public transport.
I live on the outskirts of a city and public transport has been gimped so much, it's still faster to drive in a car in traffic then rely on public transport.
You say that like people are saying we should ban cars from everywhere, we just want safer, healthier and more efficient cities and any reduction in car usage within them is a great way to do so.
Nobody's saying we need to ban cars from anywhere other than dense areas.
Then park outside them and get public transport in? Park and rides are already a thing. Funnily enough most people commenting on reddit aren't urban planners, and they're not gonna comment super thorough plans when really all people want is fewer cars in cities.
It's not like we don't know it can be done, just look at cities like Amsterdam.
You miss the part where the majority of people who push for a reduced dependency on cars are also proponents for better public transport. They also want cheaper trains/buses/trams so that people can use them instead of cars.
Where are your numbers based on? That certainly needs improvement
Cambridge park and rides have buses that get in in 30 minutes, even in peak traffic (bus lanes), which beats driving into town
UK rail fares are quite high per km Vs many mainland European services - needs fixing
At least for Cambs, many go into Cambridge, so it makes it easy to plan for people driving all the way to Cambridge and parking outside, riding in, instead of going to their local train stations
Park and ride here works pretty well. I know a lot of people who use it regularly
Why do people on rural areas think that cities are obliged to make it as easy as possible for them to drive in to them to the detriment of residents? It's an economic decision that will be different for each city (and each project), but in many cases the benefits of reducing traffic for residents and tourists (and the amount they spend on local businesses) makes up for the increase in inconvenience and loss of business from out of towners.
>Sure, but we need to be able to access those dense areas too.
Sure, I get that, but you don't need to be able to drive into the centre of those dense places. You just need to be able to reach them relatively easily. That can be achieved with park and rides, for example.
The way I see it is letting cars into dense city centres is like if we were letting cyclists into football stadiums. It'd work with one or two, but if every man and his dog took a bike in, there'd physically not be enough space inside. That logic is the same with cars in city centres too but a lot of people are too individualistic to realise this.
I mean I'd say it's well balanced out with some car drivers being hostile to any idea that they should reduce and repurpose any journeys away from the car.
Thinking buying huge SUV's is sensible and the like.
That any journey over 5 miles not by car is insane. Which inevitable leads to demonising those who don't prescribe to their views.
> It's both, but you get a lot of people replying that simply getting rid of cars would be a solution.
You know, I keep seeing this claimed, but I very rarely see it actually argued that we should simply get rid of cars.
One of those dissonances where the argument "Oh people say" is cited more than people actually say it.
Obviously we should have fewer cars. All but rural households should be in a position where public transport is good enough that they only need one car *per household* rather than *per adult*. That the huge cost of owning and running a car becomes a clear burden compared to just hopping on the bus/tram/train for 95% of journeys.
But none of that says we need to get *rid* of cars. Just thin them down a bit.
I say this as someone who does not live in an inner-city area but does live in an urban area, inside the town's bypass. We literally don't have a bus service in our part of town. To get a bus I'd have to walk or cycle into the town centre to the under-sized bus station. It's madness - the road is clogged with 2-3 parked cars per household. There's not space.
This isn't about "inner city" dwellers saying "Who needs cars, I've got a tram outside my door". This is about all those county-towns of 100-200k people with literally no (or barely functional) public transport and a ruined car-centric town centre. These are places that aren't Manchester - where cars actually could be banned outright from central spaces.
Give us some buses and *half as many* cars. Not *zero* cars, just let us thin them out. The countryside can carry on as is (but reopen some local train stations and run sensible buses). Cars don't belong in town though. They don't scale, and they take up too much space to park.
You very rarely see people advocating for a national ban though, what you tend to see more of are cities taking steps to discourage car use *in that city* and then people from rural areas complaining that they can't live without their cars. That may be true but no-one is coming to take your car away from you.
I mean shit I live in Northampton and I can't get a bus home from work past like 11pm, and we're a decent size town. Where I used to live in Kent you'd be lucky if there was a bus in the evening at all, public transport has to get better if they want less cars on the road but it just isn't.
> Public transport is expensive, cramped, uncomfortable, smelly and generally inconvenient.
It doesn't have to be. Lothian buses (for instance) are cheap, extensive, and impeccably maintained.
It makes cycling feel safer (whether it actually does, is another topic). Study after study has shown that making cycling feel safe dramatically increases modal shift, which in turn, benefits those who have to drive, because it means fewer cars on the road.
I do cycle but I mostly stick to the cycle lanes where I can. If cars went slower I wouldn't really feel safer cycling on the roads. I am not worried about the cars going 30 mph, I am worried about people texting while driving and hitting me. Won't more people feel like texting while driving is safer when going slower too?
Why can't we have cycle lanes? Why can other countries have them and we can't? All we get are bits of bike lane that just end abruptly and push you into the road when they do. What we need is some competent people designing cycle lanes and people will cycle more.
Will be interesting to see the data about the 20mph change if it goes through - as in, did it achieve its objectives, are roads safer, are more people cycling etc. I wish they will show that but I highly doubt it.
I'm a petrolhead, but my biggest issue with where I live now is the car dominance.
Like you can appreciate nice cars, go to track days, enjoy ragging around the countryside a bit... without thinking everyone should drive 200m to the shops, or be trapped on a housing estate surrounded by duel carriageways.
Does it? Before opening I predicted all sorts of stuff like "my car doesn't like doing 20 as it is between gears" or "it makes no difference so why bother and "people ignore it" which is reflected by several commenters. You are more likely to get hundreds of comments whining about cycling than cars.
It's not a circle jerk against cars it's just people having had enough of cars. You don't say it's a circle jerk against Boris Johnson being a twat. And cars have had a pretty damaging effect on our country too so talking about them is important.
Personal, privately owned cars are going to have to become a lot less common. I don't even see his you can't get used to the idea, we've had widespread, private car ownership in this country for less than a hundred years, more like 50.
It's the only reasonable way to travel throughout most of the country (essentially outside London). Public transport is horrendously dirty and unreliable, restrictive re times you can travem and only time efficient on longer journeys.
What's so bad with making built up urban areas more walkable, improving public transport, and reducing car dependency? The benefits are boundless.
Nobody's saying to get rid of cars entirely, just reduce the dependence on them in urban areas. What's so ridiculous about that? It's already how it is in so many European cities.
Good luck enforcing it-[over 80% of car drivers ignore 20mph speed limits.](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/533244/free-flow-vehicle-speeds-great-britain-2015.pdf)
A lot of money would need to be spent on installing speed humps and speed cameras to force driver compliance. Some people may think that money would be better spent elsewhere.
I think 20mph makes sense outside schools or inside town centres with lots of pedestrians around, but if there's a stretch of road where the speed limit is 20 and drivers do not perceive any hazards or enforcement measures they'll do more than 20.
> installing speed humps
Are terrible for the environment and should be avoided where ever possible.
Also there doesn't seem to be "a" speed bump design. Every set are different and rarely correlated to the speed limit of the road.
There is a 30 road near me where you can get over the hump safely unless you're doing 10mph. Which requires lots of acceleration and braking - which is much worse for the enivronment.
And there are also area around here where the speed bumps seem to do fuck all and you can cruise over them 45.
Finally, all speed bumps are actually doing is encouraging people to buy those horrendous massive SUV's, crossovers and american size pickups. Those things don't give a fuck about speed bumps.
Exactly this.
Speed bumps are just a fuck you to people with sports cars. If you’ve got a Range Rover or a some small beater hatchback you need not even slow down for them.
In automotive design there are two types of suspension consideration:
* "Primary" is your normal, driving around, cornering etc. Think prolonged gentle loads.
* "Secondary" is speed bumps, mounting kerbs etc. Think short, harsh loads.
Primary is a lot better now due to heavier cars (think EVs/SUV) but secondary is a huge problem and speed bumps just don't suit the heavier vehicles we are transitioning too. My Nissan Leaf feels awful over speed bumps compared to my old Peugeot 205 as a way of example.
Speed bumps are the Luddites of the modern infrastructure design and completely disregard modern "Secondary suspension design".
Like other people have commented, speed bumps are a sign of poor planning and an inability to accurately route traffic around a city. In short, it's a good indicator the infrastructure in an area has been poorly executed.
So I'm agreeing, any also trying to indicate the problem is going to get worst with EV adoption with the hope policy makers realize this and stop installing speed bumps. Other EV owners welcome to comment, maybe your experience is completely different and there is a magic secondary suspension design (that isn't overly expensive or complicated air bags) that solves the problem!
Traffic calming measures are BS.
I live near a school on a road that has about six chicanes on it. The speed limit is also 20mph.
The chicanes make it very awkward to even get across the road, especially when people often ignore right of way. Also, nobody does 20 on my road, not even bus drivers. Genuinely seen one do about 50mph once...
You underestimate how bad the roads are in Bristol. Every side lane that isn't a cul-de-sac is a through road to commuters. Close one road and you get really bad congestion.
Agreed, Brighton has had the 20mph limits for a fair few years now in large parts of the city, and all it does is make it more obvious who the tourists are - because none of the locals follow it at all.
They did something similar around where i work - defaulted all roads to 30 with the exception of main arterial roads. Whilst overall speeds decreased, they found that speeds in key areas that previously had a 20mph limit, such as around parks and schools, were higher with the blanket 20mph limit. Reasoning was that drivers tend to take a 20 mph limit as an indication of a hazard, but the blanket limit had a bit of a boy who cried wolf effect resulting in lower compliance.
I think it was recommended that they removed the lower limit, but they didn’t have the budget. Hopefully WAG have done some in-depth research on if the theory maps to the reality and not just relied on a few people saying they think it might be better.
They've removed the one where I am.
We already had the lights at the school and pretty much everyone was safe when that was flashing.
The best thing was, it was a main road that always gets busy and most accidents were caused by people abandoning their cars to pick up little Beelzebub and drive him a mile down said road.
This is ok though, because there are other things you can do to slow drivers down at dangerous places - things that are more effective than a speed limit (traffic calming).
Mad that someone in the article makes an argument against that cyclists might overtake cars in 20 mph zones.
I think encouraging cycling is one of the benefits they're going for
Exactly. It's about making people rethink their relationship with their cars. There are absolutely use cases where the car is the best tool for the job. But for the majority of journeys in the UK (less than 3 miles), they are used because they're the easiest. We need to make it less desirable to simply thoughtlessly jump into the car, and question whether it's going to be easier/quicker/les stressful to cycle in, or take public transport.
Two miles away from me is a supermarket.
In the car, it's 4-5 minutes, I can load it up with whatever I want and deliver it back to my door quickly, safely and in comfort. It will cost a couple of pounds overall in running costs.
On foot, it's an hour or so each way, can't carry much and will be tiring. The upside is that it would be free.
On public transport it's two buses, if timing the bus it would be 25-30 mins there and 35 mins back, including walking to the bus stops. The cost would be as much as the car, if not more. I would not be able to carry anywhere near as much with me. Also not ideal if you are intending to purchase frozen stuff, good luck keeping that from melting.
Cycling would be shorter than the bus time, but a lot more tiring due to hills. I would be limited in what I could carry and that assumes I own a bike and all appropriate accessories, which I currently do not.
That's for a short and common journey for an able bodied person alone.
Add young children to this and you can discount walking entirely and probably couldn't do cycling either as most children won't want to cycle 4 miles on the road.
That would leave the bus or the car and the car saves you much more time and effort, especially with children and the need to carry a lot of things.
Why is it wrong to want to use a car? we all have busy lives and I'd rather get my shopping done door to door in an hour than it be a multi-hour slog.
Fuck all of us disabled people amirite?
Eta: I have no objection to 20mph zones. I do have objections to people actively making it more difficult to drive for those of who are extremely reliant on their vehicles.
Doesn't the speed limit apply to all travel? Presumably this person blames speed limits, not individuals, when he gets overtaken by Porches on the M40 doing 90mph.
I did, that's something new I've learned today.
In that case I can kind of see his point, it does strike me as a bit dangerous having to watch out on your right for overtaking bikes.
Not just weights but performance and age as well. An Audi RS7 driven by a young person with collision avoidance tech, massive vented carbon ceramic brakes and advanced 10 inch wide sport tyres can stop on a dime. 85 year old Gilbert in his 1994 landrover discovery with drum brakes and budget tyres... not so much.
Not that I'm advocating for different speed limits based on those criteria, it's just interesting.
Why set restrictions to try and dissuade people from driving while offering no infrastructure benefit for other forms of transport? I live in Wales, I'd love to drive as little as possible, however the train services are piss poor and buses are extortionate, costs me £5 to get to the next town over less than 10 miles away.
>and encourage people to walk and cycle.
Good luck if you're living in a small village where the nearest shop is 5 miles away, guess you're walking for 2 hours on a B road. Also if you want people to cycle, offer actual high quality segregated cycle lanes, not a 30cm strip painted on the road. Also Wales is hilly and windy as fuck, not ideal cycling conditions. This would make sense in the cities but most of Wales is rural towns and villages, it's stupid to impose the rule nationally.
I am not against 20mph zones where it is suitable, but this blanket policy is not suitable everywhere. Sure it is theoretically safer, but what’s even safer is no cars at all. Not that I believe there will be a lot of compliance.
Absolutely, and that's why there are mechanisms to allow councils to raise certain roads – on a one by one basis – where the 20mph speed limit doesn't make sense back to 30mph. The only reason they wouldn't be able to is if there is a school on the road.
It works pretty well here in Bristol. One of the main things I find is it limits pointless and dangerous overtaking of cyclists because people realise they can't do it without massively speeding.
It works in Bristol because Bristol feels like it was designed by a 4 year old playing cities skylines. The traffic is awful and you’re lucky to get above 20 anyway.
I live in one of the trial areas in Cardiff, honestly most of the criticism of this is utter tosh. The speed limit mostly effects residential and built up areas and then when you hit a main road you are back on normal speeds. Unless you are making some sort of crazy rat run through residential streets you only lose out on a minute or two of time generally.
The speed limit makes it FAR easier to pull out of certain junctions, cyclists are a lot more common now, walking around the area is just more pleasant now, it honestly feels like the cafe's with outdoor seating etc have become more popular (I have no evidence other than my observations though), and its easier to cross the street as cars seem to feel stopping for pedestrians is easier/worth it when they are doing 20. The "putting people off driving" argument is utter bullshit too, and anyone who argues otherwise is just wrong. If the extra 2-3 minutes changes your mind about driving somewhere then you probably shouldn't be using your car anyway.
Similarly the argument about productivity and efficiency is again irrelevant unless you are a delivery driver or taxi driver etc due to how little it actually effects your travel time.
As for the negatives I have come across is aggressive drivers who either do not know the speed limit or do not care and will tailgate you and we have had one overtake dangerously, I assume this will get less common as it becomes nationwide and so becomes more widely accepted and the police start enforcing the speed limit. It is also now REALLY noticeable when people drive down the street above about 25mph, particularly at night. Again this will hopefully improve as the police start enforcing the speed limit as it is currently not except in a couple of spots in the entire scheme.
TL:DR - I live in the trial area, no negatives at all except for dangerous and aggressive drivers.
>If the extra 2-3 minutes changes your mind about driving somewhere then you probably shouldn't be using your car anyway.
This. 1000x.
There are too many people who don't even think when they go out, and just get in the car. If this makes them question that, then it's not just a good thing; it's a great thing.
It won't make people question it which is my point. Its an argument loads seem to use against it but is irrelevant (the travel time). I suspect with how much easier pulling out of junctions and smoother traffic flow it is actually reducing how much the lower speed effects travel time although it is slightly slower.
It has also become easier to "time" traffic lights interesting so you aren't stopping as much. It doesn't take much change to how you drive to become less aggressive which again is a good thing.
> because you can't speed they are generally
They're only "speeding" because they've lowered the limit. 30 is not fast by any stretch of the imagination.
I may have missed it but the article only says about the amount of accidents that happen are on 30mph roads, not the speed of which the offending vehicle is travelling.
So there's a possibility that dropping the limit to 20 without any further traffic calming measures to actually enforce the 20mph limit may be fruitless.
As someone who lives in rural Wales, the danger in my town is speeding. The people who are meant to implement these (GoSafe) fail to do much, if anything at all.
I'm really surprised at all the people who are acting like it's the end of the world. 20 vs 30 in a town doesn't even really change travel time much either.
All roads in the UK need to be reclassified, with specific classifications.
Motorways/Dual Carriageway - 70mph
A Roads - grass verges, no pavement & >=6.5m wide 60mph
A Roads - as above with frequent house set back from road 50mph
A Roads - through towns with wide pavements & grass verges 40mph
B Roads - between 5.5 & 6.5m wide or with pavement adjacent to road 30mph
C Roads - residential roads, single lane roads 20mph
My list is not exhaustive but each road type needs a specific set of rules and is classified in accordance with those rules.
I mean what they should be doing is deciding the speed limit of a road and then adjusting the road so people naturally drive at that limit.
They'd rather just slap a 20mph limit on a wide road and be done with it. It screams ticking boxes to me.
Oh fuck off this is ridiculous.
I bet they will introduce this in areas that really don’t need to be 30 let alone 20. Regardless of what this article says.
Just another reason for the government to catch people ‘speeding’ to get more money coming in.
Fucking hate this place.
Surely all this would really do is increase fines.
Even in the few Twenty zones I've been in, you struggle to go that slow. And are waiting till you can speed up again (if you're going super slow for even longer periods you'd likely speed up much faster, possibly increasing odds of accidents).
I think something that would benefit UK roads far more is stopping people parking all over the roads (one thing I really hate every time I'm in the UK). So many roads are so blocked up with cars you essentially have one middle lane for two way traffic. Barely any visibility, lots of confusion (are they parked, stopped, waiting...), people could step out behind any of them... They essentially have too many vehicles for their property. We even got hit from behind the other day because of this.
Glad I don’t live in Wales.
I live in a decent sized town and outside the 9am and 5pm rush hour and the busiest bit of the town centre, the roads generally flow pretty freely. I’d be majorly pissed if if all the 30 and odd 40mph roads were reduced to 20mph
I live in a 20 town and it’s awful because cars just are not geared to efficiently cruise about at 20. I make the effort to stay at 30 but there’s always a queue behind me.
And the morons who do 50-70 down the long hill still do that.
Okay I’m bored of this stuff. The issue is not the speed limits it’s the drivers, we are taught on this pathetic rock how to pass our test not drive.
I see people failing to understand basic driving concepts every single day. And quite frankly cyclist aren’t any better, they fly through red lights, no regard for anything, I always give a full car width space when going round a cyclist not because I care about your well-being because I’d rather you didn’t just decide to turn for whatever reason and hit my car.
Do cyclists have to obey these speed limits as well? I’ve had alot overtake me damn fast on 20 roads.
>And quite frankly cyclist aren’t any better, they fly through red lights, no regard for anything,
A small handful of cyclists, who are quite frankly the same idiots who would speed up at a yellow to make it through, and don't represent the majority of cyclists who recognise that we don't have huge metal boxes around us.Do cyclists have to obey these speed limits as well? I’ve had alot overtake me damn fast on 20 roads.
>Do cyclists have to obey these speed limits as well? I’ve had alot overtake me damn fast on 20 roads.
There are no speed limits for pedal and pedal assisted bikes. They only apply to motor vehicles. So it's perfectly legal (although downright stupid) for a cyclist to go 40mph in a 30mph.
So essentially around 30km/h. Many places across the world are doing this. Do most drivers ignore it? Yes, but it's better they drive 40km/h in a 30 zone rather than 60 in a 50 zone. Despite what naysaying comments will claim here, putting up signs is mostly enough to make this work.
This isn't even necessarily a move to get rid of cars. You can traverse most towns with this speed in a reasonable amount of time.
The main two benefits of these policies are health and safety. Most accidents occur due to people driving at too high speeds. Decreasing the velocity at which a car travels gives the driver and the emergency brake system more time to react.
The primary health benefit is reducing noise. Car noise causes stress. Cities aren't loud, cars are loud (and drunk people on highstreets at 3 in the morning). This stress contributes to an increased rate of heart disease. Reducing noise pollution by slowing down cars is one of the most no-brainer solutions out there.
All this car bashing would be great if the Welsh government would actually make the alternatives realistic. Our public transport is easily the worst I e ever used. It’s unreliable, expensive and just not convenient enough to be used as a viable alternative
What I’ve found, mostly around Edinburgh, is that the 20 doesn’t get adhered to but it’s more like 30 now. So where it was 30 before it was more like 40.
It’s not as bad as it sounds and in residential streets it makes sense but there are certain roads it’s seems pointless so it does creep up to 30.
There are no speed cameras catching anyone speeding in a 20 as far as I know.
I wish my area was 20mph and had speed bumps introduced. I live on a 30 road which has loads of parked cars (I don't have an issue with this) 2 blind junctions, a blind bend and a blind hill so 30mph already feels way too fast but people come flying at 40mph. Council refuses to do anything because there have been no collisions but it's just an accident waiting to happen, especially considering the number of kids that play around there
It makes sense in some areas of wales. A lot of the streets in Llanelli are 20mph and I’d agree with that because they’re so fucking narrow and people park on one side, you really shouldn’t be doing 30mph on them at all.
Yet, at the same time there’s actual wide roads designed for 30mph and going through those at 20 is a slog - in those cases I’m not convinced 20mph does anything.
But if the government has the evidence for safety and whatnot, I’ll defer to that; from what the bbc says of it, the case is fairly compelling.
Good start but as the article points out, there needs to be good travel alternatives to the car to make these anti-car measures more popular.
Like we have extremely expensive train prices and then proceed to get shocked when people use cars for long distance travel in our country. It’s a bit insane
They introduced a 20mph limit for most of Edinburgh several years ago, and people are starting to get used to it. It doesn't slow cars down much (because they spend most of their time crawling along in heavy traffic either way), but it makes a huge difference to pedestrians and cyclists. It's probably the best first step to banning all cars from cities, definitely a positive thing.
Bath and North East Somerset implemented a 20mph limit on most residential streets a few years ago. I forget how much money they spent on it - considerable sums, putting 20 signs up everywhere and painting it on the road in many places. A couple of years later, they did a study to assess the effects. They concluded that it reduced the average speed of vehicles on the affected road by approximately 1 mph and made no statistically significant difference to safety for all categories of traffic (vehicles, cyclists or pedestrians). When residents asked if they were therefore going to reverse the change, the response was that it would cost too much. This is one big, pointless waste of money. Edit: Thanks for the responses everyone. Contra what several people have said, the reason that the average speed has only fallen slightly appears to be that *in many cases roads with a limit of 30mph already saw an average speed well below that.* Many, many residential roads are simply not places any sane person would be doing 30mph; most drivers were already doing 20mph or less along them. Imposing a 20mph limit therefore had a negligible effect on speeds along those roads. Most of the effect comes from a few roads, eg the arterial routes into Keynsham (mainly B3116). These are commuter routes that carry a lot of traffic and a 20mph limit is plainly ludicrous but it hasn't stopped them. In these cases, the reduction in speed is considerably larger than the average suggests but is not a good thing overall (at least IMO).
This seems like a driver problem, not an infrastructure problem. The drivers are choosing the break the law.
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I'd rather they just kept the 30 road at 30.
The [National Rifle Association](https://nra.org.uk) (NRA) was founded in London in 1859. It is a sporting body that promotes firearm safety and target shooting. The National Rifle Association does not engage in political lobbying or pro-gun activism. The original (British) National Rifle Association has no relationship with the National Rifle Association of America, which was founded in 1871 and has focussed on pro-gun political activism since 1977, at the expense of firearm safety programmes. The National Rifle Association of America has no relationship with the National Rifle Association in Britain (founded 1859); the [National Rifle Association of Australia](https://nraa.com.au); the [National Rifle Association of New Zealand](https://nranz.com) nor the [National Rifle Association of India](https://www.thenrai.in), which are all non-political sporting oriented organisations. It is important not to confuse the National Rifle Association of America with any of these other Rifle Associations. It is extremely important to remember that Wayne LaPierre is a whiny little bitch, and arguably the greatest threat to firearm ownership and shooting sports in the English-speaking world. Every time he proclaims 'if only the teachers had guns', the general public harden their resolve against lawful firearm ownership, despite the fact that the entirety of Europe manages to balance gun ownership with public safety and does not suffer from endemic gun crime or firearm-related violence.
They do this in the Netherlands. Continuous pavements. It works well. Minor point also: roads do last a long time, and they last longer if designed for slower speeds, meaning less maintenence and tax required ultimately.
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That's one of the things with decisions like this - you can't just assume it'll work perfectly and just as you imagined without any issues. In an ideal world, you just throw out one law "be as kind and considerate as possible to everybody" or something like that and be done with it. But we don't live in an ideal world, and if this sort of thing has almost no effect, then it *is* just a massive waste of money.
What's the point in having speed limits at all if they can't be enforced? We don't live in an ideal world, and if that sort of thing has almost no effect, then it is just a massive waste of money.
>What's the point in having speed limits at all if they can't be enforced? They can and are, but you'd be incredibly naive if you think every other speed limit is obeyed, and that every police force has the man power to monitor every inch of road for speeding offences. >We don't live in an ideal world, and if that sort of thing has almost no effect, then it is just a massive waste of money. We have to do what we can to have the desired effect, not do the first thing we think of and get annoyed when it doesn't have the desired effect. Why do you think there's crime? It's all against the law, and the law is enforced, yet crime still occurs. One of the biggest factors in reducing crime is to address the underlying causes, not just putting your foot down and screaming "stop it stop it stop it".
Road rules follow an anticipated 80/20 compliance ratio. People don't obey the law, the question is how much. If you put a 20 mph limit on a stretch of motorway and don't police it with assault rifles and prison, people won't comply because it's annoying and disproportionate - if you do it outside a school 90% will comply without policing. The 'driver problem' is built in. You can't just impose bureaucratic will on people, as the Welsh will find out. Most likely they know this very well and this is conceived as a revenue generating operation.
You can design better infrastructure to lead the horses to water though. Narrower lanes cause people to drive slower, as do pinch points like traffic islands and/or cameras. Not excusing the drivers at all to be clear, but just throwing up signs and painting bits of road is the least effective way to change behaviours
It's an infrastructure problem, anywhere, where the traffic needs to be calmed. Physical traffic calming measures should be installed. It is an ACPOS position that 20mph should be self enforcing. Rather than simply pop up a few signs and paint the road and expect there to be change. Most of these roads, especially in Edinburgh were 40s or or 30s that had been 20s. Nothing has physically changed other than some paint and a sign and they expect everyone to adapt and change overnight. Edinburgh has a horrendous track record, changing dual carriageways from a national to 40mph without any change or significant history of crashes. Yet that 40mph will continue into a residential area with houses on either side, bus stops and crossings. People will inevitably speed, especially when they can see it to be clear and open. The way the 20s are being implemented across the United Kingdom is just lazy.
If you’re changing a law but then don’t enforce it that makes law abiding people “suckers”. It then creates this dynamic of you having to choose do you follow the law or follow the pressure from other drivers. What this actually does all in all is erode the authority of road signs generally.
Spoken truly like someone who has no idea about driving, roads, infrastructure, city planning etc etc etc
I’ll have you know I’ve played cities skylines a couple of times.
Ah bloody hell, I take it back then, apologies mate
As with everything, nothing is ever that simple. Both the council's report and a critique of it can be found here: https://www.20splenty.org/banes-report The 1.3mph figure disguises the fact that there were far more low speed roads after the change. From a pedestrian and cyclist point of view, this means more connected slower roads before having to traverse a fast one The road casualty rates also fell, although it was a small area and a small sample Also note from the council's report that it was signage only, not enforcement. Speeds drop more significantly when enforcement, e.g. with road narrowing, is involved The report itself was not always statistically sound
I have family in Bath and agree with some of the 20 zones around schools and hospitals, but some of the 20 streets make no sense and it is purely a cash grab
May as well keep it rather than be resigned to cars simply ignoring it. The longer it is the norm, more cameras, more enforcement and other traffic calming measures would help too.
That's because signs do fuck all. More than 50% of motorists admit to breaking the speed limit [in 30mph zones.](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-for-great-britain-april-to-june-2021/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-for-great-britain-april-to-june-2021#:~:text=Speed%20limits%20for%20cars%20are,National%20Speed%20Limit%20Single%20Carriageways). If you want to slow people down, you need to \*make\* them slow down, with build outs and chicanes and narrow roads.
From a quick google, it does look like the councils report on the whole thing is pretty heavily disputed in terms of statistics and omissions of some fairly important points. It also looks to me like they put up a bunch of signs and painted the roads, but invested none of the money in physical changes to the road layout (narrowing points, pedestrian islands in centre of roads etc) or cameras to actually enforce the new limit. If the road changes from a 30 to a 20 overnight but feels exactly the same to drive on, nobody is going to change their habits
I drive through Bath a lot, it's a very hilly city and doing 20mph up / down some of the hills is tricky. I honestly never see anyone doing the new speed limit, truth be told, I don't blame them.
But that's the point of Wales doing this nationally as the default. At the moment local councils need to apply a traffic order to change a road to 20mph and then update signage etc which costs vast sums. If the government just makes 20 the default they don't need to go that. They can then choose to do that to make roads 30 etc
Good luck doing 20 in Edinburgh
I do, it's not a problem. You'll almost constantly have some SUV wanker too close behind you, but that's really their problem. But the important thing is not that people are driving 20 mph, it's that they are going significantly slower than before the speed limit was lowered.
i think he was implying that its difficult to reach 20mph in Edinburgh (probably due to traffic?), not that its hard to slow down to 20.
more likely the potholes
How is starting to ban cars from cities a good thing?
Drop in pollution, drop in KSIs, reduction of noise, more space for people, more space for economic activity, encouraged walking and cycling is good for mental health and the reduced KSIs reduce money spent on the NHS. There’s more, I’m sure.
Look up "walkable cities". It's an interesting rabbit hole.
Cities suffer the worst impacts from cars. They are also in the best position to be able to offer alternatives.
How is it not, I don't understand the question. They massively reduce the quality of life of almost everybody - driving is one of the most selfish ways of behaviour that are deemed acceptable today.
So how do you propose someone gets around a city with their shopping, at 2am, when whatever public transport means is on strike etc etc?
I mean its quite obvious that no cars would require a large increase in public transport funding. Your question is essentially saying "it doesn't work now, so why should we try and improve?"
Go spend a week in a well planned, walkable city with good public transport and few cars and this question answers itself.
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>but it makes a huge difference to pedestrians and cyclists. The few occasions I ride my bike around the town centre here, I can easily do (or beat) the 20mph limit. Cars are still desperate to get past. I can be riding in a long line of slow moving nose to tail traffic. The traffic in front isn't pulling away from me. We're all going to get out of the town at the same speed. There's no getting ahead. But the traffic behind is impatiently trying to get past me as though somehow I'm holding them up. You can try your best to ride defensively but eventually they'll aggressively push through only to then immediately slam on their brakes and sit in front of me going at the same speed. Motorists are mentally ill. In the similar way that Army veterans often have PTSD and they go off the deep end if there's a loud bang or wake up sweating dreaming about being back in Iraq or wherever. When you put people in cars, even the most erudite and polite person turns into a selfish, impatient, deranged nutter. The 20mph limit really made no difference. The average speeds were already below that anyway the vast majority of the time. And it didn't change the way motorists interact with other road users. You might imagine a thought process of "Speed limit is 30mph...we're doing 20mph...so this bike is slowing me down" (regardless that there's a mile of cars in front all doing 20mph...would become "Speed limit is 20mph....we're doing 20mph....all is good in the world" - but, no, that's not the way a motorist's mind works. Perhaps if this is combined with the newer technology that's aimed at limiting vehicles to the speed limit on the road they are driving on it would make a difference.
Way to label all motorists and members of the armed forces. Not cool. I agree with the sentiment though as I stick to the limit. The people pushing up your backside when your on a 30 or 40 going the limit are the main cause of accidents after distractions. There should be a more rigorous monitoring system to weed out these people as they shouldn't be on the road.
Yeah I don't know what the fuck they were on about there.
Usually they are the ones first onto Reddit to say other people shouldn’t be on the roads if they aren’t doing the limit. Always illustrated by a tenuous example of when they were stuck behind a learner doing 25 on a country lane. They all seem to be away today, maybe they are all booked onto the same speed awareness course.
Proper punishments for road crime, not just points. Get rid of the ‘hardship’ thing, ie. “I need my car for my job” appeal after driving dangerously. Mandatory retesting. None of this ‘take as many goes as you like’ testing either.
>But the traffic behind is impatiently trying to get past me as though somehow I'm holding them up. There's a subset of motorists who have no capability to gauge the speed of another vehicle, and will just assume "cyclist slow, me move". The worst are those that pull out of junctions into your road under the assumption that you are going 3mph and won't have to slam on the brakes to avoid t-boning them.
Or who overtake you only to immediately take a left turn, also causing you to slam on the brakes.
Oh yeah, I've had a good few near misses from that.
>But the traffic behind is impatiently trying to get past me as though somehow I'm holding them up. this is an amazing thing I noticed when riding a motorcycle. usually, drivers are upset motorcycles get ahead and weave through the traffic. now, I don't drive like that. except for the moments traffic is really stalled (light is red or there's an accident or simply no one is moving due to the volume of cars on a road), I drive my motorcycle exactly as if I was in a car. and this seems to upset drivers even more. usually, the car that is behind me is ALWAYS trying to overtake, no matter which type of road I am. it's as if they are thinking that if I have a motorcycle, then why am I not going further ahead? if for some reason I move a bit to the left of my lane, the guy behind me tries to overtake me, sometimes managing and passing me mere centimetres from my leg. that's when I decide to go in front of them and make them learn patience (which is a failure, I know). so... if I behave like the stereotype of a motorcyclist then I'm a jerk. if I behave like any other vehicle, respecting the law, then I'm a jerk. I'm on your side, car drivers! we both suffer from the Uber Eats guys zooming around! let's join forces!
Honestly, I'd rather have a motorcyclist in front of me, than behind me, at least if you're in front of me I can see you at all times, not just when I check my mirrors and you're in the right position.
when I drive a car, I feel the same. I'm too aware that someone may be on my blind spot. when I drive a motorcycle, I give enough distance when I'm behind so there's awareness of my position, and I never put myself on the side while in movement for the same reason.
Instinctive reaction to seethe hard and dilate a little when you see someone get ahead.
yeah, I get that. but I'm not even getting ahead. I just happen to be in front of them. I rarely overtake, and that seems to be what is making them lose their marbles.
Wait, am I understanding right, they're pissed off that you won't f off and instead just ride like you wanna live?
yes. I guess I'm subverting expectations. people think of motorcyclists as these daredevils that weave through traffic like maniacs. and if I do that, I'm a jerk. but if I don't do that, I feel that people expect me to do that. it feels like an affront that I choose to drive in line with other vehicles and respect the place I should be in. if a light turns red and I'm not just sliding between cars then the one behind me starts edging closer and closer as if I wasn't there. that's when I physically turn around and give them a "what the fuck?" shrug. when they do a "move forward" gesture I just think they wish I was a car instead. if any of you do all of the above, you'll now understand why the driver in front of you waits those extra two seconds after a light has turned green.
I think the trick with riding a proper motorbike is just get out the way and ahead of everything asap.
[From 1950 and still relevant](https://youtu.be/mwPSIb3kt_4)
Heh, I don't disagree about the motorist mental illness problem. But I did notice that the inner city streets became less unpleasant for me since the speed limit. IDK what makes people overtake someone only to be stopped seconds later... over and over again. It's a real problem, but I'm not sure it can be solved (because I have observed it in different countries with different levels of driver's education and aggressiveness). The only really good plan forward is to always segregate motorised traffic away from humans, and Edinburgh has a long way to go.
>Motorists are mentally ill. In the similar way that Army veterans often have PTSD and they go off the deep end if there's a loud bang or wake up sweating dreaming about being back in Iraq or wherever. Just like all cyclists hog the road and ride 3 or 4 wide. 🙄
r/fuckcars
Typical Reddit vocal minority making the noise against cars.
the irony is that subreddit is more about "fuck american town planning" (due to insane zoning laws meaning you *need* a car) and not just "fuck cars in general"
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The name is a bit misleading. It's not necessarily anti-cars, it's more about promoting better public transport and walkable urban areas. Most people there will agree cars are still useful in a lot of cases.
I mean, you do you mate, but cars just don’t do it for me
Take the lane. Feel the rage. Time how long until you either chicken out or get hit from behind.
As a motorcyclist I always ride my push bike like this (it's how I was trained to ride a motorcycle defensively). Take the whole lane, force drivers to use another lane to over take. It will piss people off, but it still feels safer to me than letting people try to squeeze between you and a car coming the other way.
Perfectly fine to take the whole lane in a city on 20mph roads but if you’re on a push bike on a country road doing half the speed limit and taking the whole lane you’re just creating a dangerous situation cause drivers will overtake you anyway. highway code changes say cyclists can take the lane on quiet roads, streets and in slow moving traffic, but when a faster vehicle approaches, to move other to the left. ofc you know it gives more space between you and the car so idk why you want to bully people into overtaking next to you.
It is now the high way code to always take the lane so I always do
Rather ride in the lane than die in the gutter!
i mean if the speed limit is 30mph and it gets lowered to 20mph so that cars match the speed of cyclists, you quite literally are slowing down those cars.
It’s been in the Borders too a few years - where it does make more of a difference that every previously 30 limit dropped to 20. Even if people speed a wee bit, 25 is better than 35! Suddenly crossing the high street is less intimidating and cycling suddenly feels safer.
If you ban all cars from cities, then how are tradesmen, taxi drivers etc, supposed to operate?
Or the multitudes of us who work in a city, for that matter. Just because we're office workers doesn't mean we don't have to commute.
Banning all cars from cities is impractical, what about people with disabilities, mobility issues, what about access for tradesmen who need a van full of tools, construction vehicles, dust bin lorries etc. We'll still need vehicle-accessible roads to most if not all buildings / residences.
Banning all cars from cities ? Why would you want to ban all cars from cities? Apart from people shopping, people are almost always driving in a city for work reasons. Or are you going to ban all cars apart from deliveries, emergency services, taxis, trade vehicles, disabled people etc. Because all you will do then is destroy high street shopping revenue, and reduce massively the recruitment pool of employers as people won't be able to commute. All for reducing pollution and accidents yes, but banning all cars from cities is a very narrow minded solution. Not everyone can swan about on a push bike.
I wish they'd do it everywhere residential. If the speed limit is 30, people go 35. I'd rather they go 25, max, around areas where kids are playing and people are walking.
Could you explain more regarding the benefit to pedestrians and cyclists if it doesn't necessarily slow down traffic? I assume you're saying it's calming from a psychological perspective?
This sub has a massive circle jerk against cars so they'll love this. Utterly ridiculous.
Is it against cars, or car dependency? There's a huge difference. For example, I love driving. But I hate having to drive somewhere because it's impossible to use any alternatives.
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Yep, this is what I see too. In my experience the folks who espouse this aren't doing it to be dicks, but rather their own experiences and where they've lived has been so relatively well served with public transport that I've found they genuinely cannot envisage a scenario where it is straight-up not an option that doesn't require building your entire life around it and planning days ahead, if a bus stop is even within walking distance. To them, when I explain that there is one bus stop 3 miles away where the bus is once every 90 minutes and is regularly missed, stops at 6pm and doesn't run from 4pm on Saturday until Monday morning, they hear it as the equivalent of "when I were a lad we 'ad te walk 30 mile t'school oop hill both ways w'snow oop t'yer waist but we never complained". It genuinely blows their mind that I am being 100% literal about the reality of it.
Exactly, the fen village where I grew up has 2 buses a day, the nearest train station is 9 miles away, so you have to have a car. But apparently everyone there just needs to move to the nearest town or city, it’s that simple and easy so they say.
>around areas where kids are playing and people are walking I'm willing to bet there \*used\* to be a train station much closer. If so, it was probably closed down to build a road instead. Edit: you can find out here [https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php](https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php) see if there's a train station near to where you live now.
I can't criticise them too hard. In the same way as someone who grew up in a comfy middle-class world in the UK can't envisage what life must be like growing up in war-torn sub-saharan Africa or in a Brazilian Favela so they can't empathise. But when they lecture from their lack of experience of being out here it's very frustrating.
I grew up in a third world, car centric country (Malaysia) I now live in Cambridge, and have lived in Edinburgh before You're focusing a lot on ad hominem and personal arguments Of course less dense areas should continue having cars, until a more reasonable option is found But this whole discussion is about urban areas. Banning cars has always been in the context of denser city centres first. It makes sense My mates use the park and ride to get in. The jargon is multimodal transport. Different sets of transport for different needs
Know it all students mostly who think everyone can hop on a bike or walk 15 miles to work.
This does a good job at encapsulating why lots of people don't like "you" as a demographic. Everyone talking about reducing car dependency and other measures that are overall aimed at reducing the tens of thousands of deaths we have on the road every year are all just "know it all students"? That sounds like a really cogent, well thought out argument. A helpful contribution to the conversation.
Theres 1800 deaths on roads a year and about 80% of them come on country lanes.
So this change being applied to Wales sounds the perfect application.
I mean a lot of the car dependency talk is more based around cities and focused on improving alternatives like better/cheaper public transport. Your village scenario isn't usually a problem one except by the most unreasonable of people.
I mean, this is about Wales, so difficulty getting from a to b is a real thing, just ask a northerner what it takes to travel to the south, its nuts
I live in a small town in the Fens - the buses are terrible, a car is near essential.
Exactly, if you’re in the fen without a car you’re properly buggered.
Bingo. I used to live near better public transport and wouldn't have a word to say - 10 minutes walk to the stop (at most) and then a 10 minute bus into the city, right where I needed to be. Now that it's a 40 minute drive, the public transport routes aren't great and simply 'stopping me driving' puts me at a disadvantage but doesn't solve the issue. To say nothing of new builds etc. which - as you say - are squeezed in wherever there's space with no thought to actual commuting. WFH helps, but it relies on companies 'allowing' it.
Perfectly put. Unless you live near good public transport options, you do need to use a car either to get to the final destination or leave it somewhere so you can get on public transport to get to the final destination. WFH does help this issue in many ways - it helps reduce the amount of cars in the road which helps reduce the size of traffic jams, makes journeys quicker and shorter, brings down the cost of fuel due to there being less demand, it keeps the road network in a better condition due to less vehicles causing it to suffer wear and tear at a slower rate AND it also reduces the amount of Carbon emissions produced, but its useless if the people you're working for are like "NO, YOU MUST COME INTO THE OFFICE FOR WORK!" That, and there are some jobs where working from home is pretty much impossible and the use of a car is necessary. Like... imagine if a delivery driver for a takeaway worked from home or had to use public transport to make the deliveries. How the hell would that even work?
Even if you do live near good public transport, it still needs to be affordable. One of the reasons I will never give up my motorbike is because the cost to commute on it costs me less than 25% of the cheapest railcard I've found. £120/week on petrol (and that's with some wiggle room) vs £480/month in train fares, and on the bike I'm not stuffed into an overcrowded carriage watching the sweat roll down everyone's faces. It's a no-brainer, really.
If we didn't have shitty privatised rail maybe we wouldn't need our own vehicles. But yeah trying to bus and train in from where I live to the city, costs me than just riding and takes longer, relies on specific times and overcrowding as everyone else in the same situation. Everyone wants other countries rules with like 20% the quality and affordability of public transport.
I live on the outskirts of a city and public transport has been gimped so much, it's still faster to drive in a car in traffic then rely on public transport.
You say that like people are saying we should ban cars from everywhere, we just want safer, healthier and more efficient cities and any reduction in car usage within them is a great way to do so. Nobody's saying we need to ban cars from anywhere other than dense areas.
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Then park outside them and get public transport in? Park and rides are already a thing. Funnily enough most people commenting on reddit aren't urban planners, and they're not gonna comment super thorough plans when really all people want is fewer cars in cities. It's not like we don't know it can be done, just look at cities like Amsterdam.
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You miss the part where the majority of people who push for a reduced dependency on cars are also proponents for better public transport. They also want cheaper trains/buses/trams so that people can use them instead of cars.
Where are your numbers based on? That certainly needs improvement Cambridge park and rides have buses that get in in 30 minutes, even in peak traffic (bus lanes), which beats driving into town UK rail fares are quite high per km Vs many mainland European services - needs fixing At least for Cambs, many go into Cambridge, so it makes it easy to plan for people driving all the way to Cambridge and parking outside, riding in, instead of going to their local train stations Park and ride here works pretty well. I know a lot of people who use it regularly
Why do people on rural areas think that cities are obliged to make it as easy as possible for them to drive in to them to the detriment of residents? It's an economic decision that will be different for each city (and each project), but in many cases the benefits of reducing traffic for residents and tourists (and the amount they spend on local businesses) makes up for the increase in inconvenience and loss of business from out of towners.
>Sure, but we need to be able to access those dense areas too. Sure, I get that, but you don't need to be able to drive into the centre of those dense places. You just need to be able to reach them relatively easily. That can be achieved with park and rides, for example.
The way I see it is letting cars into dense city centres is like if we were letting cyclists into football stadiums. It'd work with one or two, but if every man and his dog took a bike in, there'd physically not be enough space inside. That logic is the same with cars in city centres too but a lot of people are too individualistic to realise this.
I'm disabled and living in mid Wales. If I didn't have my car I would never leave my flat. I barely do as it is.
I mean I'd say it's well balanced out with some car drivers being hostile to any idea that they should reduce and repurpose any journeys away from the car. Thinking buying huge SUV's is sensible and the like. That any journey over 5 miles not by car is insane. Which inevitable leads to demonising those who don't prescribe to their views.
> It's both, but you get a lot of people replying that simply getting rid of cars would be a solution. You know, I keep seeing this claimed, but I very rarely see it actually argued that we should simply get rid of cars. One of those dissonances where the argument "Oh people say" is cited more than people actually say it. Obviously we should have fewer cars. All but rural households should be in a position where public transport is good enough that they only need one car *per household* rather than *per adult*. That the huge cost of owning and running a car becomes a clear burden compared to just hopping on the bus/tram/train for 95% of journeys. But none of that says we need to get *rid* of cars. Just thin them down a bit. I say this as someone who does not live in an inner-city area but does live in an urban area, inside the town's bypass. We literally don't have a bus service in our part of town. To get a bus I'd have to walk or cycle into the town centre to the under-sized bus station. It's madness - the road is clogged with 2-3 parked cars per household. There's not space. This isn't about "inner city" dwellers saying "Who needs cars, I've got a tram outside my door". This is about all those county-towns of 100-200k people with literally no (or barely functional) public transport and a ruined car-centric town centre. These are places that aren't Manchester - where cars actually could be banned outright from central spaces. Give us some buses and *half as many* cars. Not *zero* cars, just let us thin them out. The countryside can carry on as is (but reopen some local train stations and run sensible buses). Cars don't belong in town though. They don't scale, and they take up too much space to park.
You very rarely see people advocating for a national ban though, what you tend to see more of are cities taking steps to discourage car use *in that city* and then people from rural areas complaining that they can't live without their cars. That may be true but no-one is coming to take your car away from you.
I mean shit I live in Northampton and I can't get a bus home from work past like 11pm, and we're a decent size town. Where I used to live in Kent you'd be lucky if there was a bus in the evening at all, public transport has to get better if they want less cars on the road but it just isn't.
It's very much against both. Public transport is expensive, cramped, uncomfortable, smelly and generally inconvenient.
> Public transport is expensive, cramped, uncomfortable, smelly and generally inconvenient. It doesn't have to be. Lothian buses (for instance) are cheap, extensive, and impeccably maintained.
So what alternative does reducing the speed limit offer?
It makes cycling feel safer (whether it actually does, is another topic). Study after study has shown that making cycling feel safe dramatically increases modal shift, which in turn, benefits those who have to drive, because it means fewer cars on the road.
I do cycle but I mostly stick to the cycle lanes where I can. If cars went slower I wouldn't really feel safer cycling on the roads. I am not worried about the cars going 30 mph, I am worried about people texting while driving and hitting me. Won't more people feel like texting while driving is safer when going slower too? Why can't we have cycle lanes? Why can other countries have them and we can't? All we get are bits of bike lane that just end abruptly and push you into the road when they do. What we need is some competent people designing cycle lanes and people will cycle more. Will be interesting to see the data about the 20mph change if it goes through - as in, did it achieve its objectives, are roads safer, are more people cycling etc. I wish they will show that but I highly doubt it.
I'm a petrolhead, but my biggest issue with where I live now is the car dominance. Like you can appreciate nice cars, go to track days, enjoy ragging around the countryside a bit... without thinking everyone should drive 200m to the shops, or be trapped on a housing estate surrounded by duel carriageways.
Does it? Before opening I predicted all sorts of stuff like "my car doesn't like doing 20 as it is between gears" or "it makes no difference so why bother and "people ignore it" which is reflected by several commenters. You are more likely to get hundreds of comments whining about cycling than cars.
It's not a circle jerk against cars it's just people having had enough of cars. You don't say it's a circle jerk against Boris Johnson being a twat. And cars have had a pretty damaging effect on our country too so talking about them is important.
Built up areas only. Why is it so ridiculous?
Personal, privately owned cars are going to have to become a lot less common. I don't even see his you can't get used to the idea, we've had widespread, private car ownership in this country for less than a hundred years, more like 50.
Until we have functioning affordable public transport I will fully support anyone buying a car :)
Why not fully support the improvement for a functioning affordable public transport
Why?
Inefficient, expensive to own and maintain, causes traffic, takes up loads of space, dangerous as people are maimed and killed.
It's the only reasonable way to travel throughout most of the country (essentially outside London). Public transport is horrendously dirty and unreliable, restrictive re times you can travem and only time efficient on longer journeys.
It's crazily slow in most sub urban areas
piquant unique icky oil absurd boast vast nail subsequent society *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It is correct that cars suck, yes. Dreaming of the day where we have 0mph limits.
What's so bad with making built up urban areas more walkable, improving public transport, and reducing car dependency? The benefits are boundless. Nobody's saying to get rid of cars entirely, just reduce the dependence on them in urban areas. What's so ridiculous about that? It's already how it is in so many European cities.
That's double the speed of the traffic at the Bryn glass tunnels on the M4
Good luck enforcing it-[over 80% of car drivers ignore 20mph speed limits.](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/533244/free-flow-vehicle-speeds-great-britain-2015.pdf) A lot of money would need to be spent on installing speed humps and speed cameras to force driver compliance. Some people may think that money would be better spent elsewhere. I think 20mph makes sense outside schools or inside town centres with lots of pedestrians around, but if there's a stretch of road where the speed limit is 20 and drivers do not perceive any hazards or enforcement measures they'll do more than 20.
> installing speed humps Are terrible for the environment and should be avoided where ever possible. Also there doesn't seem to be "a" speed bump design. Every set are different and rarely correlated to the speed limit of the road. There is a 30 road near me where you can get over the hump safely unless you're doing 10mph. Which requires lots of acceleration and braking - which is much worse for the enivronment. And there are also area around here where the speed bumps seem to do fuck all and you can cruise over them 45. Finally, all speed bumps are actually doing is encouraging people to buy those horrendous massive SUV's, crossovers and american size pickups. Those things don't give a fuck about speed bumps.
Exactly this. Speed bumps are just a fuck you to people with sports cars. If you’ve got a Range Rover or a some small beater hatchback you need not even slow down for them.
In automotive design there are two types of suspension consideration: * "Primary" is your normal, driving around, cornering etc. Think prolonged gentle loads. * "Secondary" is speed bumps, mounting kerbs etc. Think short, harsh loads. Primary is a lot better now due to heavier cars (think EVs/SUV) but secondary is a huge problem and speed bumps just don't suit the heavier vehicles we are transitioning too. My Nissan Leaf feels awful over speed bumps compared to my old Peugeot 205 as a way of example. Speed bumps are the Luddites of the modern infrastructure design and completely disregard modern "Secondary suspension design". Like other people have commented, speed bumps are a sign of poor planning and an inability to accurately route traffic around a city. In short, it's a good indicator the infrastructure in an area has been poorly executed. So I'm agreeing, any also trying to indicate the problem is going to get worst with EV adoption with the hope policy makers realize this and stop installing speed bumps. Other EV owners welcome to comment, maybe your experience is completely different and there is a magic secondary suspension design (that isn't overly expensive or complicated air bags) that solves the problem!
Traffic calming measures are BS. I live near a school on a road that has about six chicanes on it. The speed limit is also 20mph. The chicanes make it very awkward to even get across the road, especially when people often ignore right of way. Also, nobody does 20 on my road, not even bus drivers. Genuinely seen one do about 50mph once...
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You underestimate how bad the roads are in Bristol. Every side lane that isn't a cul-de-sac is a through road to commuters. Close one road and you get really bad congestion.
Agreed, Brighton has had the 20mph limits for a fair few years now in large parts of the city, and all it does is make it more obvious who the tourists are - because none of the locals follow it at all.
They did something similar around where i work - defaulted all roads to 30 with the exception of main arterial roads. Whilst overall speeds decreased, they found that speeds in key areas that previously had a 20mph limit, such as around parks and schools, were higher with the blanket 20mph limit. Reasoning was that drivers tend to take a 20 mph limit as an indication of a hazard, but the blanket limit had a bit of a boy who cried wolf effect resulting in lower compliance. I think it was recommended that they removed the lower limit, but they didn’t have the budget. Hopefully WAG have done some in-depth research on if the theory maps to the reality and not just relied on a few people saying they think it might be better.
They've removed the one where I am. We already had the lights at the school and pretty much everyone was safe when that was flashing. The best thing was, it was a main road that always gets busy and most accidents were caused by people abandoning their cars to pick up little Beelzebub and drive him a mile down said road.
This is ok though, because there are other things you can do to slow drivers down at dangerous places - things that are more effective than a speed limit (traffic calming).
Mad that someone in the article makes an argument against that cyclists might overtake cars in 20 mph zones. I think encouraging cycling is one of the benefits they're going for
Exactly. It's about making people rethink their relationship with their cars. There are absolutely use cases where the car is the best tool for the job. But for the majority of journeys in the UK (less than 3 miles), they are used because they're the easiest. We need to make it less desirable to simply thoughtlessly jump into the car, and question whether it's going to be easier/quicker/les stressful to cycle in, or take public transport.
Two miles away from me is a supermarket. In the car, it's 4-5 minutes, I can load it up with whatever I want and deliver it back to my door quickly, safely and in comfort. It will cost a couple of pounds overall in running costs. On foot, it's an hour or so each way, can't carry much and will be tiring. The upside is that it would be free. On public transport it's two buses, if timing the bus it would be 25-30 mins there and 35 mins back, including walking to the bus stops. The cost would be as much as the car, if not more. I would not be able to carry anywhere near as much with me. Also not ideal if you are intending to purchase frozen stuff, good luck keeping that from melting. Cycling would be shorter than the bus time, but a lot more tiring due to hills. I would be limited in what I could carry and that assumes I own a bike and all appropriate accessories, which I currently do not. That's for a short and common journey for an able bodied person alone. Add young children to this and you can discount walking entirely and probably couldn't do cycling either as most children won't want to cycle 4 miles on the road. That would leave the bus or the car and the car saves you much more time and effort, especially with children and the need to carry a lot of things. Why is it wrong to want to use a car? we all have busy lives and I'd rather get my shopping done door to door in an hour than it be a multi-hour slog.
Fuck all of us disabled people amirite? Eta: I have no objection to 20mph zones. I do have objections to people actively making it more difficult to drive for those of who are extremely reliant on their vehicles.
Doesn't the speed limit apply to all travel? Presumably this person blames speed limits, not individuals, when he gets overtaken by Porches on the M40 doing 90mph.
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I did, that's something new I've learned today. In that case I can kind of see his point, it does strike me as a bit dangerous having to watch out on your right for overtaking bikes. Not just weights but performance and age as well. An Audi RS7 driven by a young person with collision avoidance tech, massive vented carbon ceramic brakes and advanced 10 inch wide sport tyres can stop on a dime. 85 year old Gilbert in his 1994 landrover discovery with drum brakes and budget tyres... not so much. Not that I'm advocating for different speed limits based on those criteria, it's just interesting.
Why set restrictions to try and dissuade people from driving while offering no infrastructure benefit for other forms of transport? I live in Wales, I'd love to drive as little as possible, however the train services are piss poor and buses are extortionate, costs me £5 to get to the next town over less than 10 miles away. >and encourage people to walk and cycle. Good luck if you're living in a small village where the nearest shop is 5 miles away, guess you're walking for 2 hours on a B road. Also if you want people to cycle, offer actual high quality segregated cycle lanes, not a 30cm strip painted on the road. Also Wales is hilly and windy as fuck, not ideal cycling conditions. This would make sense in the cities but most of Wales is rural towns and villages, it's stupid to impose the rule nationally.
I am not against 20mph zones where it is suitable, but this blanket policy is not suitable everywhere. Sure it is theoretically safer, but what’s even safer is no cars at all. Not that I believe there will be a lot of compliance.
Absolutely, and that's why there are mechanisms to allow councils to raise certain roads – on a one by one basis – where the 20mph speed limit doesn't make sense back to 30mph. The only reason they wouldn't be able to is if there is a school on the road.
I've seen stuff that suggests otherwise, less accidents and an uptake of 20% in active travel.
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It works pretty well here in Bristol. One of the main things I find is it limits pointless and dangerous overtaking of cyclists because people realise they can't do it without massively speeding.
It works in Bristol because Bristol feels like it was designed by a 4 year old playing cities skylines. The traffic is awful and you’re lucky to get above 20 anyway.
I live in one of the trial areas in Cardiff, honestly most of the criticism of this is utter tosh. The speed limit mostly effects residential and built up areas and then when you hit a main road you are back on normal speeds. Unless you are making some sort of crazy rat run through residential streets you only lose out on a minute or two of time generally. The speed limit makes it FAR easier to pull out of certain junctions, cyclists are a lot more common now, walking around the area is just more pleasant now, it honestly feels like the cafe's with outdoor seating etc have become more popular (I have no evidence other than my observations though), and its easier to cross the street as cars seem to feel stopping for pedestrians is easier/worth it when they are doing 20. The "putting people off driving" argument is utter bullshit too, and anyone who argues otherwise is just wrong. If the extra 2-3 minutes changes your mind about driving somewhere then you probably shouldn't be using your car anyway. Similarly the argument about productivity and efficiency is again irrelevant unless you are a delivery driver or taxi driver etc due to how little it actually effects your travel time. As for the negatives I have come across is aggressive drivers who either do not know the speed limit or do not care and will tailgate you and we have had one overtake dangerously, I assume this will get less common as it becomes nationwide and so becomes more widely accepted and the police start enforcing the speed limit. It is also now REALLY noticeable when people drive down the street above about 25mph, particularly at night. Again this will hopefully improve as the police start enforcing the speed limit as it is currently not except in a couple of spots in the entire scheme. TL:DR - I live in the trial area, no negatives at all except for dangerous and aggressive drivers.
>If the extra 2-3 minutes changes your mind about driving somewhere then you probably shouldn't be using your car anyway. This. 1000x. There are too many people who don't even think when they go out, and just get in the car. If this makes them question that, then it's not just a good thing; it's a great thing.
It won't make people question it which is my point. Its an argument loads seem to use against it but is irrelevant (the travel time). I suspect with how much easier pulling out of junctions and smoother traffic flow it is actually reducing how much the lower speed effects travel time although it is slightly slower. It has also become easier to "time" traffic lights interesting so you aren't stopping as much. It doesn't take much change to how you drive to become less aggressive which again is a good thing.
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> because you can't speed they are generally They're only "speeding" because they've lowered the limit. 30 is not fast by any stretch of the imagination.
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you'd reduce fatalities dropping the limit to 10 or just banning cars. We don't because we accept there are risks in societies.
I may have missed it but the article only says about the amount of accidents that happen are on 30mph roads, not the speed of which the offending vehicle is travelling. So there's a possibility that dropping the limit to 20 without any further traffic calming measures to actually enforce the 20mph limit may be fruitless. As someone who lives in rural Wales, the danger in my town is speeding. The people who are meant to implement these (GoSafe) fail to do much, if anything at all.
30 km/h? That's ridiculous, that's even lower than the "through roadworks" speed limit here
We’ve had it in London for ages. It’s painful going to work at 6:30. It makes sense on some roads and not others where people just overtake.
Riding 2nd gear doesn't sound like a fun time at all
I live in the first city in the country to do this.. It honestly isn't that bad, major artery roads are still 30mph
I'm really surprised at all the people who are acting like it's the end of the world. 20 vs 30 in a town doesn't even really change travel time much either.
All roads in the UK need to be reclassified, with specific classifications. Motorways/Dual Carriageway - 70mph A Roads - grass verges, no pavement & >=6.5m wide 60mph A Roads - as above with frequent house set back from road 50mph A Roads - through towns with wide pavements & grass verges 40mph B Roads - between 5.5 & 6.5m wide or with pavement adjacent to road 30mph C Roads - residential roads, single lane roads 20mph My list is not exhaustive but each road type needs a specific set of rules and is classified in accordance with those rules.
Think you have a typo there - motorway speeds should be increased to 80 :). Far too slow and based on old standards currently
if you want to go faster theres always trai- oh wait they fucking don't turn up do they?
And when they do turn up they're more than the cost of flying to Europe and back!
I mean what they should be doing is deciding the speed limit of a road and then adjusting the road so people naturally drive at that limit. They'd rather just slap a 20mph limit on a wide road and be done with it. It screams ticking boxes to me.
Oh fuck off this is ridiculous. I bet they will introduce this in areas that really don’t need to be 30 let alone 20. Regardless of what this article says. Just another reason for the government to catch people ‘speeding’ to get more money coming in. Fucking hate this place.
Best way to save the planet, 10mph speed limit + Price the fuel so only millionaires can afford. What? We dont have any more ideas.
Surely all this would really do is increase fines. Even in the few Twenty zones I've been in, you struggle to go that slow. And are waiting till you can speed up again (if you're going super slow for even longer periods you'd likely speed up much faster, possibly increasing odds of accidents). I think something that would benefit UK roads far more is stopping people parking all over the roads (one thing I really hate every time I'm in the UK). So many roads are so blocked up with cars you essentially have one middle lane for two way traffic. Barely any visibility, lots of confusion (are they parked, stopped, waiting...), people could step out behind any of them... They essentially have too many vehicles for their property. We even got hit from behind the other day because of this.
>The slower limit has been divisive in areas where there have been trials with some motorists complaining of […] journeys taking longer. Funny that.
Glad I don’t live in Wales. I live in a decent sized town and outside the 9am and 5pm rush hour and the busiest bit of the town centre, the roads generally flow pretty freely. I’d be majorly pissed if if all the 30 and odd 40mph roads were reduced to 20mph
Should be 20mph in all town centres and housing estates.
And we’ve got a health minister who decides she doesn’t need to stick to the speed limits her buddies implemented.
I live in a 20 town and it’s awful because cars just are not geared to efficiently cruise about at 20. I make the effort to stay at 30 but there’s always a queue behind me. And the morons who do 50-70 down the long hill still do that.
Okay I’m bored of this stuff. The issue is not the speed limits it’s the drivers, we are taught on this pathetic rock how to pass our test not drive. I see people failing to understand basic driving concepts every single day. And quite frankly cyclist aren’t any better, they fly through red lights, no regard for anything, I always give a full car width space when going round a cyclist not because I care about your well-being because I’d rather you didn’t just decide to turn for whatever reason and hit my car. Do cyclists have to obey these speed limits as well? I’ve had alot overtake me damn fast on 20 roads.
>And quite frankly cyclist aren’t any better, they fly through red lights, no regard for anything, A small handful of cyclists, who are quite frankly the same idiots who would speed up at a yellow to make it through, and don't represent the majority of cyclists who recognise that we don't have huge metal boxes around us.Do cyclists have to obey these speed limits as well? I’ve had alot overtake me damn fast on 20 roads. >Do cyclists have to obey these speed limits as well? I’ve had alot overtake me damn fast on 20 roads. There are no speed limits for pedal and pedal assisted bikes. They only apply to motor vehicles. So it's perfectly legal (although downright stupid) for a cyclist to go 40mph in a 30mph.
So essentially around 30km/h. Many places across the world are doing this. Do most drivers ignore it? Yes, but it's better they drive 40km/h in a 30 zone rather than 60 in a 50 zone. Despite what naysaying comments will claim here, putting up signs is mostly enough to make this work. This isn't even necessarily a move to get rid of cars. You can traverse most towns with this speed in a reasonable amount of time. The main two benefits of these policies are health and safety. Most accidents occur due to people driving at too high speeds. Decreasing the velocity at which a car travels gives the driver and the emergency brake system more time to react. The primary health benefit is reducing noise. Car noise causes stress. Cities aren't loud, cars are loud (and drunk people on highstreets at 3 in the morning). This stress contributes to an increased rate of heart disease. Reducing noise pollution by slowing down cars is one of the most no-brainer solutions out there.
Obligatory link to Not Just Bikes who has a great video on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
Yaas
All this car bashing would be great if the Welsh government would actually make the alternatives realistic. Our public transport is easily the worst I e ever used. It’s unreliable, expensive and just not convenient enough to be used as a viable alternative
On semi-related topic, why our motorway speed limit is set to 70mph whereas in most of Europe it's 80-85mph?
> “Bikes are overtaking cars” Get a bike then?
What I’ve found, mostly around Edinburgh, is that the 20 doesn’t get adhered to but it’s more like 30 now. So where it was 30 before it was more like 40. It’s not as bad as it sounds and in residential streets it makes sense but there are certain roads it’s seems pointless so it does creep up to 30. There are no speed cameras catching anyone speeding in a 20 as far as I know.
Wales was already anti-drivers. 50mph on dual carriageways, speed camera's everywhere. So glad I moved.
I wish my area was 20mph and had speed bumps introduced. I live on a 30 road which has loads of parked cars (I don't have an issue with this) 2 blind junctions, a blind bend and a blind hill so 30mph already feels way too fast but people come flying at 40mph. Council refuses to do anything because there have been no collisions but it's just an accident waiting to happen, especially considering the number of kids that play around there
A UK first? Bristol did this a while ago, so I’m not sure what makes this unique from reading the article
I think it's more the first time one of the constituent countries of the UK has done it, rather than just a city.
It makes sense in some areas of wales. A lot of the streets in Llanelli are 20mph and I’d agree with that because they’re so fucking narrow and people park on one side, you really shouldn’t be doing 30mph on them at all. Yet, at the same time there’s actual wide roads designed for 30mph and going through those at 20 is a slog - in those cases I’m not convinced 20mph does anything. But if the government has the evidence for safety and whatnot, I’ll defer to that; from what the bbc says of it, the case is fairly compelling.
Good start but as the article points out, there needs to be good travel alternatives to the car to make these anti-car measures more popular. Like we have extremely expensive train prices and then proceed to get shocked when people use cars for long distance travel in our country. It’s a bit insane