County towns to go 20mph?
Saturday 25th April 2009, 10:50AM BST.
Speed limits could be cut to 20mph in every town centre in the Shropshire Council area within five years, under a review announced today.
The authority is reviewing the 30mph limits in each of the 11 towns in its catchment area which do not currently have the lower restriction to determine exactly where the zones would cover.
Currently Shrewsbury, Cleobury Mortimer, Ludlow and Broseley are the only towns to have a 20mph limit within their centre, while Wem is due to have one in its High Street.
The changes are being considered as part of a wide-ranging review which could also see speed limits on at least a dozen rural roads cut from 60mph to 50mph.
And the speed limits in Sundorne Road, Battlefield Road, Ellesmere Road and Whitchurch Road, in Shrewsbury, could all be set at 30mph.
Limits are also under review in 55 villages and any proposed changes will go out to consultation. The results of the reviews are expected later this year.
Phil Crossland, assistant director of strategic highways and transportation at Shropshire Council, said: “Shropshire has a very good safety record and over the last ten years we have exceeded government targets and achieved on average a 60 per cent reduction in killed and seriously injured casualties. The government target was 40 per cent by 2010.”
The only fresh proposal for residential areas is Vicarage Road in Meole Brace, Shrewsbury, which is due to have a 20mph speed limit.
The council has allocated £70,000 for urban speed management for this year, excluding the new limit for Wem High Street, a further £90,000 for rural roads and several hundred thousands of pounds for villages.
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That’ll be a 200% increase in the speed that it’s currently feasible to travel in most of Shropshire’s town centres, then. Yay.
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More waste of taxpayer’s money and bowing to the Government’s, propaganda.
Let’s look at this logically, how many high streets can you , or would you exceed 20MPH when the shops are open?….none I would guess.
How many lives will it save?…none I would guess.
How many people get killed in High streets?….none I would guess.
What’s it all going to cost us?….a great amount, I would guess.
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And when will men walking in front with red flags become compulsory again?? It would definitely reduce the number of accidents so why are the fools not considering that too?
Oh and by the way I travel all over the country, approx 60% motorway driving, and I progress as quickly as is possible given other traffic and speed limits. And my average speed in the last year…….35mph !!!
For people who need to use the road system on business it is becoming beyond a joke.
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How many drivers know there is a 20mph limit in Shrewsbury town centre and how many of those that do actually adhere to it?!! Very few and certainly none of those that tailgate me around Town Walls millimetres from my bumper and gesturing into my rear view mirror.
It would be nice to see some police enforcement if only for the safety of those like me who suffer abuse for following the limit!
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Just another reason not to patronise town centre shops. Little wonder out-of-town shops do so well. I was born and lived in Shrewsbury in the 1940s and 50s and don’t live there now thank goodness, I avoid the place as much as possible !.
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If you get hit by a car doing a seemingly harmless 35mph, you have a 50% chance of surviving.
By reducing the speed to 20 mph only 1 in 40 of us would be killed.
Pedestrians and cyclists have just as much right to feel safe on the streets where they live as car users.
Cars travelling at 20 mph hit 60% fewer people, kill far fewer of those they do hit and don’t scare kids so much that they’re afraid to play outside.
This is a good idea.
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I don’t see why lowering the speed limit in towns is such a big deal to people. If you are going through a town centre, you’re probably doing a local trip. So you get to your destination a few minutes later, big deal. It’s safer, for most cars it’s more fuel efficient (if you’re in the right gear), and I don’t see how it’s going to cost a ton of money as many people seem to assume it will. Do all the commenters on here work for some sort of government project pricing company? The money has already been allocated, if it’s not spent on this, it will be spent on something else which you will probably disagree with as well. If you don’t like it, run for a seat on the Council and do something about it. (No, I don’t work for the government)
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Bellvue,
Cars are far LESS fuel efficient at 20MPH than 30MPH. Cars doing 30MPH will be in fourth gear at low revs, 20MPH will mean lowering a gear and probably more revs, so more fuel used per mile travelled…not good for fuel efficiency or the atmosphere, I’m afraid.
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bellevue
What a shame you appear incapable of seeing the situation from anyone else’s perspective.
While it is true if you are only doing a very local journey, the 20mph limit will make little difference to your journey time, not everyone uses their car in this way. Indeed if you do, perhaps you should be asking yourself whether you actually need to use a car for such short journeys.
I for one travel long distances on business and pass through 30 or 40 towns/villages on the way. The constant reduction in limits, often unneccesary, add more than a few minutes onto my day.
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I’m confused.
I watched a government ad on TV no less than a year ago that stated (in a child’s voice) that if I were to hit said child at 30, there was an 80% chance that said child would live.
Yet now, reading the consultation paper, that’s no more than 50%.
Has 30mph become faster than, well, 30mph recently???? Or do all these pedestrian-friendly features built in to new cars count for nought?
If I stick rigidly to 20mph, can I just arbitrarily mow down pedestrians as I choose in the knowledge that – for the most part – they’ll be fine? I hope I can. It’ll serve them right for stepping out in front of a moving car without observing the Green Cross Code.
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I’ve been driving through Shrewsbury and most other
Shropshire towns,for the past 36 years.In that time i have had many different vehicles.
Never have i been able to get into fourth gear due to the road speed being low.Try lowering the engine speed if using second or third and you will get good fuel economy.
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Salop Sparky,
Even when I had driving lessons all those years ago, I was told to get into top gear(we only had four gears then) as soon as possible and as that was entirely in an urban area I can’t see how I used to be able to drive in fourth gear then and you can’t now.
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Stepping aside from the gearbox debate for a moment, we should all recognise that many children in this country would love to be able to cycle to school if their parents let them.
The problem is that parents think the roads are currently too dangerous.
This 20mph speed limit will therefore be popular with kids and parents, because it will make the streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians, and make kids less dependent on Mum and Dad’s car.
British children recently came 24th out of 29 in the European Well-Being Index in a study conducted for the Child Poverty Action by York University researchers ( BBC, ‘UK ranked low on youth wellbeing’ 20 April 2009).
Dutch kids came top.
According to Sustrans, Dutch children living in Britain were asked what they thought the difference was between here and Holland.
One of the differences was getting about by bike to school, to play and to see friends.
Living in the UK, that freedom to get about independently is not there.
Instead kids have to rely on parents for lifts or for money to catch buses.
The 20mph move is a step in the right direction.
Well done to Shropshire Council for promoting this idea.
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Huw,
the 20MPH zones they are talking about are in the Town’s high streets, how many schools are in high streets?
British kids don’t walk to school any more because they are too lazy. As a kid I used to walk about a mile to school and home for lunch and back again.
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British kids are hardly different from Dutch kids, brian2.
They just live in different countries, which have different transport and planning policies.
The Dutch introduced most of the measures which you complain about on a daily basis years ago, and luckily for us in the UK, we are starting to make the same sort of positive changes.
These changes will render our town centres more pleasant and our communities more cohesive.
Where Walk-to-school schemes have been set up around the UK, they have been popular with parents and kids alike, and they are being expanded.
The next nationwide Walk to School week is from May 18th-22nd 2009.
If there are any kids reading this, who resent being called ‘lazy’ by supporters of the unrepresentative Drivers’ Alliance (see http://www.shropshirestar.com/2008/06/13/group-to-air-views-of-drivers/ ), it would be great if you could say what you think of 20mph limits in town centres (brian2 was wrong to say it was just high streets).
Dutch kids living in this country think British kids would be happier if they were less dependent on their parents’ car and were able to get around independently and safely by bike, as Dutch kids do.
What do you think?
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Huw, I think that you will find that the town centres of Wem, Bridgnorth, Broseley etc are just High Streets but as you have shown before you have little local knowledge so wouldn’t have known that.
As for a walk to school week, mine started in september 1961 and continued to june 1974.
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Someone with local knowledge would know that a 20 mph zone covers most of Shrewsbury town centre, several residential streets in the town and the approaches to schools.
It is NOT just the High Street, as brian2 falsely states in #2 and #14.
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Huw Peach,
I can’t really follow your argument and see what point you are trying to make in No. 17!!
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Well done ,Huw.
I am glad that living in Shrewsbury has taught you that you have a 20MPH limit in the Town Centre.
However the Towns that this article is about are places that you have probably never heard of, let alone visited. That being the case I can inform you that places like Wem, Broseley, Cleobury Mortimer, Much Wenlock, Bridgnorth and the towns that this article relates to, which are GOING TO HAVE their limits in the Town Centre lowered, are little more than High Streets. They aren’t talking about Shrewsbury having its centre limit lowered because IT ALREADY HAS BEEN LOWERED.
That being the case, these towns are not going to benefit with roads outside schools being lower just because their TOWN CENTRES are being lowered….are you with me now?
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Huw
Do you really think that 20mph speed limits will result in more children in this country cycling to school???
British kids may not be very different to Dutch kids but any kid can tell you Holland is flat and ideal for cycling, and Britain is somewhat hilly. Also, the density of traffic in Holland is far far lighter than in the UK, roads are flatter, straighter, clearer and wider.
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would suggest you buy vehicles with automatic gearbox if you find changing gear a problem or possibly buying a tortoise pulled car-cart.
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