BBC under fire over programme about "how best to share" the roads, titled... "Should cyclists stay in their lane?"; Cycling campaigns urge government to "hold their nerve" on 20mph speed limits + more on the live blog

Cycle lanes are very expensive. Said by the Dutch bloke and the presenter. No challenge and no concept of how much a road or roundabout costs.
War on motorists asserted with no challenge.
Of course he had to finish with the words road tax.

You shouldn't need any cycle lanes at all, and wouldn't do if people could drive safely.

The anti-cycling guy - with a full set of unevidenced tropes and some (frankly) lies - was a Reform UK (Brexit Party) candidate in the 2019 election.

BBC did not remark on it.
 

Right whingers moaning about 20mph limits, cyclists and 'woke' are numbskull snowflakes IMHO.

If there’s anything in nominative determinism, Ken Skates should be great for active travel.

I understand the intuition that a lower speed limit is safer. However, when a council measures a non-compliance rate of 99.4% as they did in Rogiet, that's not a few right-wingers, that's speed limits being brought into contempt. And the measure is advocated by the very people speed limits are meant to protect, when speed limits are set properly you'll find it's the same people who break speed limits are the most likely to tailgate, run red lights and generally drive like twats, you only draw attention away from them by prohibiting the behaviour of people doing speeds well below 30mph even when clearly safe to be doing so under the prevailing conditions.

In some cases lowering a speed limit can make a road safer and in others raising it can. The DfT stated that raising "unrealistic" speed limits has little to no effect on average speeds and may even cause speed to drop, while giving vulnerable pedestrians a more realistic expectation of the actual traffic speeds causing them to take more care while crossing. There either seems to be the expectation that people only drive 5 or 10mph over the posted limit or people simply need time to get used to it. Traffic speed is induced far more by the a road's design than by speed limits, limits are most effective when they match the design of the road or are set just slightly below the design speed.

Think we've been here several times now! I would agree things are not black and white. But the effect in Wales has been measurable, shouty voices regardless.

This appears to be the same old viewpoint as we've had for decades and hasn't advanced the plot. Plus something ideological about "but contempt for the LAW!" For speed limits - sorry to inform - that horse has long bolted... I think we're at a low ebb for enforcement on the road. Again while "police it better" is one of the less effective interventions, if there is *no* feedback for lawbreaking (no fear of being caught) few systems are going to work...

I think some adjustments are acceptable but they should actually be *building* on this and working on more safety measures (eg. New Road and street designs going forward, more active travel measures in tandem).

The idea that higher speed limits are "giving vulnerable pedestrians a more realistic expectation of the actual traffic speeds causing them to take more care while crossing" is new to me. Sounds like that could use some evidence!

I agree as usual with best practice being to make the infra guide behaviour eg. design streets and roads to cue behaviour such as speed. Strangely though wherever this is mentioned a *plan* for doing so is not. Even enthusiasm for overhauling existing rules so new roads and street designs change seems absent, never mind how to persuade the "hard-pressed motorist" to supply the extra billions to retrofit this to all our existing infra.

I remain unconvinced that raising the speed limit will make things safer or even (IIRC from one complaint) lower speeds(!)... However again there *is* direct evidence - even from Wales (as covered by the Beeb, plus evidence from other studies) - that just changing the numbers on signs often does make a difference. That is slightly surprising but it is real.

Unfortunately the Wales experiment seems to be somewhat reduced now.

A sad state of affairs that Wales didn't have didn't have the cojones to stick with the original implementation of the 20mph plan, unlike Edinburgh which has not only almost entirely done so, but has expanded those plans since they came into force. Roll on the 'war on motorists' if thats what the motons insist on calling it.

Edinburgh is a nightmare to drive around anyway. Who'd want to take their car into the centre?

Well - I drive there seldom but actually to drive *around* it (outside rush hour - agree that can be a different story) isn't a drama (because ring road). Visit parts round the edges and you'll find they're "car towns" (eg. Portobello, bizarrely).

Too much traffic, but still not enough to win any "war on the motorist".

My recollection is of it being a parking nightmare to the point of no one knowing where, or how to get to, a car park that was clearly marked on Google Maps and much the same for the hotel I stayed where the car was left on the street overnight some 2-300m away. Most certainly not car friendly in my book.

I kind of want to say "Glad to hear that!"

There are certainly parking complaints. However parking 200m from the hotel doesn't sound like oppression exactly either. OTOH there are places (like where I used to live) where I'd be concerned to leave a car overnight - or even for an hour.

I guess it's expectations - to what extent do people visiting a "historic city centre" (with "narrow cobbled streets" even) expect to drive? (Lots of places - some even in the UK - I wouldn't think to do so). To what degree should be accommodated?

There's also the "how". Although the area of flats I live in has a fair amount of parking it's behind the flats. So there's a constant presence of people "justing" and delivery vehicles - on the pavement and cycle path. (This is several miles from the centre - in general there is also plenty of "casual" parking). Should there be an allowance for that (probably )? But if so how do you stop those spaces getting filled by those who just want to save walking 50 metres or can't be bothered to check a map / drive round a corner?

Wales did put out a report stating that average speeds decreased by 4mph however I think is looking at all speeds. So if one car goes at 20 and there's a line of 9 cars following behind it counts as 10 cars going 20mph. Then you have the problem of vehicles bunching together, which increases accident risks. It's not just an increase in vehicle speeds that increases accident risks, it's if your speed differs substantially from the mean speed of traffic.

The Atkins study looked specifically at the reduction in speeds of free-flowing vehicles and measured it at 1.3mph. Also, most schemes that looked at are in towns and cities that kept a network of main roads at 30mph while in Wales you now have it 20mph on side streets and much wider main roads.
Look how they didn't exempt Lloyd George Avenue even though that's meant to bypass Bute Street and now they both have the same speed limit. The exceptions in Cardiff are so few and far between it makes a mockery of speed limits.
Even if average speeds go down that says little about the 95th or 99th percentile of speeds, these are the people who are overwhelmingly the most likely to do harm.
The most recent example of a lowering of a speed limit causing speeds to increase was Alcester Road in Stratford, after the limit was lowered from 40 to 30mph the average speed went up by 1mph, the 85th percentile speed went up by 2mph and the 95% percentile speed went up by 1.3mph.
I think it should be intuitive as to why if the limit goes up but actual speeds stay substantially the same, then the road will be safer. I've seen roads with 40mph limits report lower average speeds than some roads with 20mph limits. And the compliance statistics from some urban 40-limit roads are almost the mirror opposite of the worst 20-limits, with compliance levels as high as 98-99%, compared to less than 1% compliance and a higher average speed. This is where the safety aspect becomes obvious. People are generally more likely to follow and make an effort to follow rules they perceive as reasonable. Look up the Pygmalion Effect.
That's not to say urban roads should have 40mph limits; it was originally applied to higher-standard roads with 85th-percentile speeds over 35mph.

You will probably find that my exempting more main roads means that 20mph limits will work better on roads where they do make more sense.

ajuk.uk [at] gmail.com wrote:

Wales did put out a report stating that average speeds decreased by 4mph however I think is looking at all speeds. So if one car goes at 20 and there's a line of 9 cars following behind it counts as 10 cars going 20mph. Then you have the problem of vehicles bunching together, which increases accident risks. It's not just an increase in vehicle speeds that increases accident risks, it's if your speed differs substantially from the mean speed of traffic.

The Atkins study looked specifically at the reduction in speeds of free-flowing vehicles and measured it at 1.3mph. Also, most schemes that looked at are in towns and cities that kept a network of main roads at 30mph while in Wales you now have it 20mph on side streets and much wider main roads.
Look how they didn't exempt Lloyd George Avenue even though that's meant to bypass Bute Street and now they both have the same speed limit. The exceptions in Cardiff are so few and far between it makes a mockery of speed limits.
Even if average speeds go down that says little about the 95th or 99th percentile of speeds, these are the people who are overwhelmingly the most likely to do harm.
The most recent example of a lowering of a speed limit causing speeds to increase was Alcester Road in Stratford, after the limit was lowered from 40 to 30mph the average speed went up by 1mph, the 85th percentile speed went up by 2mph and the 95% percentile speed went up by 1.3mph.
I think it should be intuitive as to why if the limit goes up but actual speeds stay substantially the same, then the road will be safer. I've seen roads with 40mph limits report lower average speeds than some roads with 20mph limits. And the compliance statistics from some urban 40-limit roads are almost the mirror opposite of the worst 20-limits, with compliance levels as high as 98-99%, compared to less than 1% compliance and a higher average speed. This is where the safety aspect becomes obvious. People are generally more likely to follow and make an effort to follow rules they perceive as reasonable. Look up the Pygmalion Effect.
That's not to say urban roads should have 40mph limits; it was originally applied to higher-standard roads with 85th-percentile speeds over 35mph.

You will probably find that my exempting more main roads means that 20mph limits will work better on roads where they do make more sense.

If you want to look at random speed limits, better you look at the english implementation, not Cymru. Now that's random and most certainly not a measure we should aspire to. Given the confusion I'm led to believe the english have with bilingual signs, I struggle to see how they will cope with the ever changing urban speed limit signage in england, probably explains why many cities see people sit at 20mph... Just in case, like.

We have many (25-30) years of data showing the effectiveness of 20mph speed limits for improving rad safety.

There is a ROSPA Factsheet collating a lot of it.

There appears to be a 100% compliance rate in reducing speeds, one of the objectives, and the majority seem to be sticking to the limits https://www.ukroed.org.uk/wales-speed-compliance-rates/, but you may be able to link alternative data.

I'd be interested in seeing how increasing a speed limit makes roads safer for anyone not in a vehicle (car, van, truck, etc.).

I stand with all of my original statement.

Do you live in the Netherlands ?!

I did some extracts from a twitter thread and put it somewhere in drivers and their problems. Basically as you put but ended up with a star destroyer and death star !

I imagine that the Star Destroyer isn't very convenient for getting to the shops - very few parking spaces a mile long… 

You reckon? I'd suggest that creating a moderately sized parking space should be a minor challenge for something capable of annihilating entire celestial bodies.

Well, you can always find a parking space, but then the shops aren't there any more...

Since when have logical considerations like that been relevant?

It may have been a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but that doesn't change logic.  Or are you saying the Dark Side is seriously deleterious to reasoning as well as morality?