20mph limit needed to make county residential areas safer

Dear Clive and Lee,

As you will have heard, Shrewsbury Town Council has now called on Shropshire Council to look at bringing in an area-wide 20mph speed limit for residential areas.

Councillor Dean has written before about New Street in Shrewsbury where residents are rightly worried about safety, but we are yet to see any decision following a feasibility study, apparently completed last winter.

Meanwhile, residents have contacted Councillor Vasmer about speeding traffic in Underdale Road and the roads between it and Monkmoor Road along with the Dale/Riverdale Road area.

Of course there are plenty of other local concerns over speed and safety: Long-standing stories such as Sutton Road, which has seen the introduction of a chicane, which was then moved, then removed, then replaced with humps, and now there is a dispute about whether the humps are effective. Then there are villages such as Ruyton XI Towns where locals have become weary with trying to do something about vehicle speed. I’m sure you and your staff will be aware of many more examples.

Each local concern takes staff time and council money to investigate and to consult on. Any engineering works that are agreed then also take time and money.

Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler, and cheaper, to look at an area-wide scheme to make our towns and villages safer and that doesn’t need all the humps and signs and chicanes? The current approach leads to multiple bits of engineering and speed limit changes that annoy drivers whilst failing to change our habits (yes – we are drivers, too!) the way that an area wide scheme could, such as the one now covering the whole of Lancashire. It’s worth remembering that the 30mph limit came out of thin air in the 1930s and was based on no research. Organisations from Public Health England to the World Heath Organisation back 20mph/30kph limits because the research shows that the lower speed hugely increases time to think and react, and that is why it saves so many lives, reduces serious injuries and makes life so much easier for other road users. This is why councils covering 20 per cent of the country’s population have now adopted this. Isn’t it time for Shropshire to join in this growing movement?

Yours Sincerely,

Councillor Julian Dean (Porthill)

Councillor David Vasmer (Underdale)

Peter Gilbert (Sustainable

Transport Shropshire)