{"id":116267,"date":"2025-05-20T05:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T05:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/116267\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T05:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T05:35:09","slug":"west-midlands-road-safety-commissioner-quizzed-on-effectiveness-of-more-20mph-roads-in-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/116267\/","title":{"rendered":"West Midlands Road Safety Commissioner quizzed on effectiveness of more 20mph roads in Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having declared a road safety emergency last summer, the Labour-run city council<\/a> confirmed towards the end of 2024 that it is exploring the possibility of introducing more 20mph speed limits<\/a> on city roads.<\/p>\n

Councillor Majid Mahmood, the cabinet member for transport, said at the time that slower speed limits on appropriate roads would reduce collisions and save lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor this reason, our Birmingham<\/a> Transport Plan sets out that 20mph should be the speed limit in residential areas and where footfall is high,\u201d he said. \u201cOther types of roads will remain unaffected.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cApproximately one third of the city\u2019s roads are already subject to a 20mph speed limit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to expand the number of roads subject to this speed limit where appropriate and are currently exploring opportunities to carry this out.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an approach backed by Mat MacDonald, an NHS doctor who was recently appointed road safety commissioner by West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Birmingham councillors at a transport meeting this week, he said he and active travel commissioner Beccy Marston were looking at ways to support local authorities to make changes such as 20mph zones.<\/p>\n

He went on to say that evidence showed that such zones have a \u201csignificant impact\u201d on reducing collisions and those seriously injured or killed.<\/p>\n

Discussing the impact of lower speed limits in Birmingham, Superintendent Gareth Mason, head of roads policing at West Midlands Police gave the example of Chester Road, where the speed limit was slashed from 40mph to 30mph.<\/p>\n

\"BirminghamBirmingham City Council House<\/p>\n

But he acknowledged there had been very little change \u201cjust by changing the signs themselves\u201d when it came to speeds on the road.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Birmingham councillor Raqeeb Aziz (Labour, Bordesley Green) questioned whether more 20mph zones in Birmingham would actually have an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mention Chester Road where the average speed has reduced by a few miles per hour,\u201d he said. \u201cBut 38mph is still a lot higher than it should be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fear if we don\u2019t have enforcement, even if we roll out 20mph zones, it\u2019s not going to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Culture of bad driving\u2019<\/p>\n

Mat MacDonald acknowledged that the numbers from Chester Road were \u201cdisappointing\u201d.<\/p>\n

But he continued: \u201cFor every mile per hour that the average speed is reduced, the chance of a collision goes down by six per cent.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo even when you\u2019re looking at average speed reductions of 2-3mph, there is still some significant benefit to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the way 20mph speed limits work best is when they are established as a norm over a wide area because that has the biggest impact on driver behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr MacDonald went on to say: \u201cI can appreciate the sentiment that \u2018what\u2019s 20mph going to do to someone who really doesn\u2019t care and is doing 60 or 70mph on a residential road\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s a really valid point.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it is evidence-based as an intervention to significantly reduce the average speed at which vehicular traffic travels at.\u201d<\/p>\n

On how they can change a \u201cculture of bad driving\u201d in Birmingham, he said a combination of enforcement, physical measures and signs that create \u201cdifferent cultural expectations and shifts behaviours\u201d will ultimately make a difference.<\/p>\n

Mr MacDonald added the police were doing a \u201cfantastic job\u201d of removing the most dangerous drivers off the city\u2019s roads and carrying out a \u201clot more work\u201d to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n

Supt Gareth Mason echoed the idea that the critical issue of road safety needed to be tackled in a number of ways, saying: \u201cDrivers will generally drive at the speed they think the road is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we make sure we review the roads appropriately, do the appropriate speed surveys and where necessary make engineering alterations, then it will reduce the speed on the roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply just changing signs themselves, sometimes will, but normally won\u2019t have an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that enforcement will have an impact too but added: \u201cThe first thing we should be trying to do is get roads that people naturally feel that they need to comply with the speed limits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plans to introduce more 20mph limits in Birmingham would have to go through consultation first.<\/p>\n

Cabinet member Coun Mahmood said last year that \u201cslower speeds are less intimidating towards those who walk or cycle\u201d.<\/p>\n

He went on to describe these as \u201cactivities that we need to encourage more of if we are to reduce the number of harmful emissions and traffic levels in the city\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the council\u2019s recently adopted road harm reduction strategy, Coun Mahmood also said an investment of \u00a310 million had been provisionally allocated towards the \u201cconsolidation and expansion\u201d of average speed enforcement cameras in Birmingham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having declared a road safety emergency last summer, the Labour-run city council confirmed towards the end of 2024…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,8823,379,12,285,1263,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-116267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-ldrs","13":"tag-local-hubs","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-transport","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114538540111575020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}