Speed Limits on a Downward Trend?

[Ascender]

Edinburgh has rolled out 20 mph limits over the last few years, but luckily I don’t have to go in to the city much these days. However, in the last couple of weeks, there seems to be a new initiative being rolled out to the surrounding areas. A lot of the local villages and towns are now blanket 20mph limits with the roads joining them down from 60 to 40.

I guess the frustrating thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any interest in evaluating each area as to whether it needs to have a lower limit or if its actually fine as it is. Its just a blanket limit applied and that’s it. There’s one town now where the main country road between it and a village which is nice and wide with a wide path, is now a 40. But the first mile or two leading in to the town is also still a 40. There’s also now a few places where you end up with 100 yard segments of 30s in between 20s and 40s. And there seems to be more signs going up on other country roads round here too.

[duncs500]

In England there was definitely a push 5 or 10 years ago to slow things down. Great swathes of twisties which were pure countryside got converted from NSL into 40mph limit.

It was a sad time.

[mik]

[mention]scotta[/mention] was complaining of this recently over in EastCoastLand.

Unfortunately now that reducing speed limits = reducing local pollution levels means they will feel empowered to do so as a public service - no need to consider safety or other justifications.

[Mito Man]

Madness to think that you can drive one road at 60 one day and the next you’re a child killing widow making criminal the next isn’t it
All of London’s 20 now, most of the country roads in Kent in 50 or 40 - during the day it doesn’t really matter, the former is packed with traffic and the latter is packed with 35 mph cunts. At night it doesn’t matter too much either as I just do the appropriate speed, just the risk goes up eh.

[Ascender]

@scotta was complaining of this recently over in EastCoastLand.

Unfortunately now that reducing speed limits = reducing local pollution levels means they will feel empowered to do so as a public service - no need to consider safety or other justifications.

Also, is it just me, or is 20 mph really slow?! Its taking some getting used to and is downright strange when you're doing that speed on a wide, quite road... with wide pavements on both sides and nobody around.

[mik]

Centre of Glasgow now all 20mph and it feels like walking-pace. Particularly when you can see the green light ahead and you’d prefer to get through.....

[Rich B]

I didn't stick to the speed limits when they were 60,along them 40 doesn't change anything.

[GG.]

Yep just madness over the last few years. There are some very large roads covered by 20 limits in central London - one between Denmark Hill and Herne Hill is 4 lanes! Two bus lanes on the outside and two for normal traffic - so bigger than the south circular where it passes by us. Absolutely no reason to be a 20.

It now means that most people do 25-30 rather than 35 but that now means 25-30 everywhere - including by schools where people did used to slow to 20. So you've taken 5-10mph off areas that don't need it and added 5-10mph where it was needed.

Add into that that you occasionally come across the kind of person who is pathologically afraid of breaking the limit who is then doing 17mph. With the best will in the world I'm not sitting behind someone going slower than a bike so I will pull out past them - having people overtaking is hardly safer than people doing 30mph.

Not to mention the Dulwich Village NIMBYs are out in force in coalition with the council and are basically putting east-west and north-south roadblocks in through the village causing traffic chaos to all surrounding areas.

[mik]

Add into that that you occasionally come across the kind of person who is pathologically afraid of breaking the limit who is then doing 17mph. With the best will in the world I'm not sitting behind someone going slower than a bike so I will pull out past them - having people overtaking is hardly safer than people doing 30mph.

I was stuck behind one of these in an NSL at the weekend doing 45-50 mph. As they entered the 40-limit they possibly triggered their ABS with the panic-breaking down to 32mph.

[Ascender]

Add into that that you occasionally come across the kind of person who is pathologically afraid of breaking the limit who is then doing 17mph. With the best will in the world I'm not sitting behind someone going slower than a bike so I will pull out past them - having people overtaking is hardly safer than people doing 30mph.

I was stuck behind one of these in an NSL at the weekend doing 45-50 mph. As they entered the 40-limit they possibly triggered their ABS with the panic-breaking down to 32mph.

The other thing I've noticed is that there's definitely more cars now doing 20-30 in the 40s because they persumably haven't noticed the change having left the village and they know there's another one coming up.

[V8Granite]

Didn’t they do this on a part of London and the extra congestion made them turn it back to what it was ?

Or was that some other traffic idiocy ?

Dave!

[Mito Man]

It’s all still 20. A lot of traffic problems in London were due to those cycling lane upgrades which halved road capacity,
Most of London’s traffic problems more recently were due to the lack of working bridges. There weren’t many in the first place, then a few got closed to road traffic and now the rest seem to be severely restricted due to them all being neglected and needing maintenance at once. Then Covid came and they closed half the roads. Then the councils started making all side streets residents only access so you could only use main roads.
The most recent shit show is that they’ve closed a section of Sloane street towards Knightsbridge and made it one way only (The Danish embassy through to Harvey Nichols) - I can’t find a mention of it but I reckon it’s due to those fucking idiots who would use that bit as a drag strip (that’s where all those supercar videos are filmed). They’ve also shut entire roads due to covid to give people more space but they’ve not been particularly busy roads ever and much of London’s pedestrian traffic was due to tourism anyway.
It’s almost like the rules are being made by idiots.

[Jobbo]

Warwickshire changed all of its NSL single carriageways to 50 limit about 10 years ago, which I think was a very early beginning of this. The motorway limit reductions in four places to reduce emissions which was recently announced will be more annoying, since I suspect it will be enforced.

[Ascender]

Even more have gone up around here in the last week... I can see it being a blanket 40mph max speed in almost every direction from the house at this rate.