20mph is good for all Londoners — it’s time selfish drivers stopped opposing it [Gareth Roberts AM]
by DisableSubredditCSS
20mph is good for all Londoners — it’s time selfish drivers stopped opposing it [Gareth Roberts AM]
by DisableSubredditCSS
34 comments
Just another WEF-sponsored Sadiq Khan plot to destroy London and implement Shakira law (hips be upon her)
bRinG oN tHe bOtS
As someone who has recently moved to London, 20mph is walking pace and literally hard to maintain in a car. Surely 30 is fine, I swear I overtake most cars on a fuckin lime bike.
It should be increases to 25mph. I have to constantly watch the speedometer while driving for 20mph
The good thing about 20mph is it means everyone goes 30mph which is better than a 30mph zone with everyone going 40mph.
The few times I’ve had to drive in London 20mph has been fine. My car is a manual and 20 is either slightly revvy in 2nd gear or tickover in 3rd so not hard. I’m one of the few actually doing it though, from experience.
piss of Gareth Roberts, although i’m in favour of tough laws on motorists, this one is a joke.
I can understand a 20mph near schools etc,but do 20mph on a time limited scale. Why should a long journey at say 2am need 20mph. Up it to 30mph after say 9pm until 6am.
20 is fine in proper inner city but out in the very outer boroughs it’s stupid. Barnet is fine as is on a 30 and they shouldn’t make a 20 city wide zone.
Given the average speed of a car in London is 11mph 20 seems like a perfectly reasonable limit. Not to mention how much nicer it makes existing in the city when not in a car. Easy to cross roads, much safer cycling or using other human powered modes of transport, lower emissions. There are really no downsides.
And anyone saying it’s hard to maintain 20mph in a car is either very bad at driving or full of shit. That’s low revs in second gear, no bother at all.
A 35% reduction of all collisions – from 2,560 to 1,715 however the control group showed a drop of 12% would have occurred anyway
Deaths fell from 15 to nine
The number of children killed dropped from four to one
No change was observed in motorcycle-related fatalities
Only the most selfish of drivers would object to implementing a system that achieved this.
A lot of roads should be 20, like side roads and the ilk. But there are a lot of good roads which are spacious with good places for people to cross safely which are just 20 for no reason
As someone who lives in a 30 suburb, but works in road safety in a 20 zone, it was tough and frustrating to adapt at first but I did so very quickly (at 20mph actually).
As he says, you can’t argue with the road safety data. Politicians have an obligation to keep traffic flowing but keep roads safe too and the latter is more significant. As drivers, we too should want the roads to be safer for us and for pedestrians. I’ve noticed a fair few serious accidents in my neighbouring town recently caused by speed and 20 is an inevitability, which will end this scourge. Just give it time – 20 will feel normal very soon, and it will guarantee your loved one will return home safely at the end of the day.
20mph is unreasonably slow. This country has a fetish with low speeds.
20 makes sense for busy and residential sections but nowhere else. Embankment has pavements wide enough for 2 buses either side and we still need to do 20 there? Nonsense.
Teaching pedestrians how to cross roads again would be a much better use of time. Just got to watch a busy junction to come to that conclusion.
What drivers don’t realise is that subconsciously you notice less of your surroundings when you go above 20mph, it’s a tunnel vision affect. The absence of that affect is part of the reason why it feels like you’re going oh so slower, but it makes for *dramatically* safer roads, and that’s more important than motorists’ feelings
It’s annoying to drive this slow but you can’t argue with the road safety results. 🤷🏻♀️
From my Home in Greenwich to my Mum’s in Hackney, I can use public transport I only need to cross 2 roads. Both in Hackney, and both are within a LTN zone. I use you drive on those roads, and they were really busy.
It’s so much nicer now.
For context, I am in a 2 car household.
We just purchased a brand new SUV. I’m not against cars at all. But lower traffic speeds is so much nicer to be around.
20 is Plenty
What London needs is thoroughfares. Very hard to get across the city. Only a few major roads like A40 and they don’t cover large parts of the city. Try going north-south anywhere between Kensington and Heathrow. There’s only one major north-south road, through Acton, and it ends at the Thames.
20 MPH is fine on neighborhood streets. But you need main arteries with higher limits to get traffic through. And that includes buses.
There’s a real lack of citywide planning. Like the street parking situation: a hodgepodge mess where every borough does their own thing. London traffic policy is asinine – forcing cars, bikes, and buses to all use the same lane makes everyone less safe.
In Haringey 20mph is not enforced. Drivers can go as fast as they dare. Green Lanes is a race track.
Why not reduce the speed limit to 1mph? After all, it’s safer. While we’re at it, why not mandate a man with a red flag to walk in front of every vehicle?
I like going 20, it gives me time to look out of the window and look around. It’s a lot let stressful and doesn’t actually cost any time.
My only issue with 20mph is you can’t clear a cyclist as quickly before turning left, or in some cases, you get undertaken by the faster cyclists and they’re completely unaware of blind spots etc.
I find driving at 30kph on the continent very relaxing. 20mph across cities in the UK sounds ideal.
I find it very odd that green run councils aren’t already all 20mph zones, they do love cats.
To be honest whilst I initially rolled my eyes at the potential inconvenience it seems to have reduced accidents which is obviously a good thing. Also on reflection the traffic is normally so bad in London that tbh I never really drove above 20 on most non A roads.
I fully support 20mph, especially in residential zones and mixed commercial areas where there is likely to be a lot of non-motorised traffic (think high streets, etc).
However, I don’t support the blanket and thoughtless implementation of 20mph on roads to score “wins” while other roads are left with higher limits that are completely inappropriate.
As an example, the A205 between Woolwich Ferry and Shooters Hill road is blanket 20mph – despite the fact that at the top end of the road, this wide 3 lane (2 lanes and a bus lane) red route (so no parking), with nothing on either side (common and forest) which doesn’t ever have a meaningful number of pedestrians is 20mph, meaning people crawl through a bit of road that has no reason to be limited to 20. Meanwhile, a large number of roads nearby with residential and commercial properties on both sides are 30mph.
I mean, yes, I’m bitter that I got dinged by the speed camera there doing 27mph at 2am coming back from hospital, but still. Make it make sense!
No. Definitely not. In the inner city it’s fine… but anywhere even slightly outside the centre and it’s silly.
As someone who drives a lot, I’ve noticed I get around faster. I’m rarely in standstill traffic anymore, because traffic is moving at a steady (but glacial) pace, it makes my arrival times more predictable even during rush hour.
I support this, the benefits are clear. Then, five years after implementation, it should drop to 10 mph, with an aim eventually to reduce it to zero i.e. make (at least inner) London a car free city.
I’d like Khan to be bolder on this.
Many councils have made their roads 20mph long ago and TfL keeps dragging their feet, with 30mph still being the límit at lots of their roads.
20 is literally crawling. Why are people so for this. If you can’t drive well at 30 you shouldn’t be driving at all
I was cycling down the mall yesterday on a Santander e bike at about 16mph (that’s basically as fast as they go), and a van close passed me (maybe 40cm away) at over 30mph.
It’s horrible, and if they did it at 20, it would have been weird but fine.
Where do these people live? Do they even venture out on the roads?
Story time:
I am a cyclist. The main road next to my street was 30mph.
However, we had maniacs who would drive at 40mph or even faster.
So I wrote to the council that they should put a couple of speed cameras in either direction as driving at high speeds was putting me, and other cyclists like me, in danger.
Now this is a Labour run council who are fans of 20mph.
They took this as an invitation to put speed bumps on the roads and reduce the speed limit to 20mph
Now there is always a long line of vehicles on that road going at a steady speed. Getting in and out of the side roads is a huge problem as there is hardly a gap in traffic.
It has also made my life as a cyclist slightly more dangerous when turning in as I have to wait in the middle and neither the oncoming traffic wants to let me in nor the traffic behind is willing to wait.
So ofttimes I will be stuck in the middle for a minute or more with traffic on both sides. I pray that I do not get between two lorries or two buses.
So, my suggestion is simple: keep the limit at 30. Install loads of cameras to fine people who go above and take away the licenses, and cars, of habitual offenders
it’s a big issue for big man babies
The main issue I have with the 20 limits is that in some areas they make a ton of sense and in others they are just daft.
Residential streets with parked cars everywhere, people crossing the road, tight places like properly in town or local high streets, basically, places where people are likely to just wander into the road, great idea.
When multi-lane roads with dividers are 20’s, like say most of Finchley Road, the roads around Kennington, or major thoroughfares like the South Circular I think it just trains people to treat it like a bit of a game and just slow down for the cameras.
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