[Kapelmuur]

I may have missed it but I’ve not seen this discussed here.

A (non cycling) message board I belong to has been in meltdown, ‘long delays to my journey’, ‘more accidents caused by drivers staring at their speedometers’,  ‘increased pollution caused by slower traffic and car engines being inefficient at 20mph’.

Also many of them signing a protest petition despite non of them being Welsh or living in Wales!

 

Topic

[chrisonabike]

Thanks for local observations
Thanks for local observations again.

Also again – keep us posted.

I’m not surprised to see all kinds of changes at the start. There will be a period of people getting used to this. *

This doesn’t help your immediate experience!

Apparently it did immediately have one “does what it says on the tin” effect eg. average speeds went down. Although of course because negative effects of collisions are not merely linear with increasing speeds bringing down the higher band of speeds is a key metric (and the actual KSI data! ).

(* There’s also “what the computer tells us to do”. Some smart people I know are remarkably ready to take suggestions based on online traffic info as truth. They might be right, just surprised to see their immediate acceptance of this.)

[Rich_cb]

The problem is that 20mph
The problem is that 20mph limits on that particular road lead to more traffic on nearby residential roads including mine.

If the dual carriageway is busy and you can only travel at 20mph on it why not switch to the residential roads which have the same limit.

In general I’m a supporter of the 20mph limits and my road has had one for quite a while.

The default limit switch appears to have had quite a few unintended consequences though.

[hawkinspeter]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

There’s already a bridge and 2 tunnels and a light controlled crossing. After the university it’s a pure dual carriageway, now at 30 mph. It’s not just the 20mph limits that were changed.

Well, I can’t add any local knowledge to this but I’m quite happy for as many roads as possible to be 20mph – YMMV.

[Rich_cb]

There’s already a bridge and
There’s already a bridge and 2 tunnels and a light controlled crossing.

After the university it’s a pure dual carriageway, now at 30 mph.

It’s not just the 20mph limits that were changed.

[hawkinspeter]

quiff wrote:

Rich is talking about the same road I posted above. There is a University on that stretch, and it’s congested, but it isn’t an obvious candidate for 20mph IMO. 

Maybe it’s the foot traffic from the University that has earnt it a lower speed limit

[60kg lean keen climbing machine]

Plenty of aggression from

Plenty of aggression from frustrated drivers and overtaking in inappropriate places?  Lots of rat running down side streets?  How much more of this is there than before?  Is it just that the change means people’s level of arousal has gone up and thus it’s now noticed where it wasn’t before?

I have never been overtaken in residential areas with such frequency, since the introduction of the 20mph limit, also being aggressively tailgated on a daily basis! (I passed my test in 1989!!)

In many towns and villages we in Wales have lots of NC roads and B roads that skirt or go up and around hills – valleys – rivers for example outside of our towns and villages, now it is either quicker or perceived to be quicker to use these roads (some are single track) than go into the 20Mph zones. This is happening now and is a common new driving route choice behaviour.

These are my observations as to how things have changed since the change to 20mph, and talking to a wide cohort of others, their experience, and observations also!

 

[quiff]

Rich is talking about the

Rich is talking about the same road I posted above. There is a University on that stretch, and it’s congested, but it isn’t an obvious candidate for 20mph IMO. 

[andystow]

quiff wrote:

There are definitely some questionable examples. E.g. in my neck of the woods, this stretch of road recently dropped to 20mph. I don’t particularly mind, but it’s not residential, and until a couple of years ago the speed limit was 40 (then dropped to 30 when surrounding roads became subject to one of the pilot 20 zones), so I can see why some might think it’s unnecessarily low.    

I see plenty of pedestrians on a pavement directly adjacent to the roadway with no protection, so yeah, 20 MPH seems appropriate.

Maybe the Welsh government could promise drivers they’ll raise it to 25 MPH if drivers can go two years without killing anyone.

[hawkinspeter]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

Dual carriageways have definitely had their speeds reduced in Cardiff. Western Avenue in Cardiff is now a mixture of 20 and 30 mph limits. Previously it was mainly 40.

That’s curious as I wouldn’t think that a dual carriageway would be counted as a residential road or busy pedestrian street. I wonder what the reasoning behind that is?

[Rich_cb]

Dual carriageways have
Dual carriageways have definitely had their speeds reduced in Cardiff.

Western Avenue in Cardiff is now a mixture of 20 and 30 mph limits. Previously it was mainly 40.

[quiff]

Absolutely – I suspect the 20

Absolutely – I suspect the 20 limit may be partly to improve flow.   

[hawkinspeter]

quiff wrote:

There are definitely some questionable examples. E.g. in my neck of the woods, this stretch of road recently dropped to 20mph. I don’t particularly mind, but it’s not residential, and until a couple of years ago the speed limit was 40 (then dropped to 30 when surrounding roads became subject to one of the pilot 20 zones), so I can see why some might think it’s unnecessarily low.    

With that amount of traffic on it, 20mph might be an aspiration

[quiff]

There are definitely some

There are definitely some questionable examples. E.g. in my neck of the woods, this stretch of road recently dropped to 20mph. I don’t particularly mind, but it’s not residential, and until a couple of years ago the speed limit was 40 (then dropped to 30 when surrounding roads became subject to one of the pilot 20 zones), so I can see why some might think it’s unnecessarily low.    

[chrisonabike]

Throwing no shade on your mum

Throwing no shade on your mum!

However:

Getting used to a dual carriageway being 20mph instead of 30mph (yes, I know the better solution to guide speed choice would be to rebuild it single-lane with curves, trees etc.) is just “change”, no?

Same goes for “having to concentrate on the speedo” when keeping to 20 as opposed to keeping to 30.  It’s just change.  We all learn habits, and do lots of things by “feel”.  Yes, it will take time to seem “normal”.  No particularly good reason why that won’t happen in time that I know of?  Unless everyone’s been issued with supercars with binary accellerators?

Some people are driving at 15mph?  Great!  It worked!  If Swansea’s full of commodious dual carriageways, and people feel you need to, surely just overtake them (at up to 20mph) if it is safe and appropriate to do so?

Plenty of aggression from frustrated drivers and overtaking in inappropriate places?  Lots of rat running down side streets?  How much more of this is there than before?  Is it just that the change means people’s level of arousal has gone up and thus it’s now noticed where it wasn’t before?

[hawkinspeter]

quiff wrote:

I think bikeman’s point is that the excepted roads shown in the Swansea area are a very small proportion of the roads – so many others are 20mph. Unfortunately (but perhaps unsurprisingly) it seems the map is not complete – only some highways authorities have marked various categories of road. 

However, I still don’t get the speedo obsession. Ok, there might be a small adjustment period as you acclimatise to what the reduced speed looks/feels/sounds like. But if you weren’t previously glued to your speedo to ensure you were doing 30, you won’t need to be glued to it now to do 20.  

It just seems to me that some of the complaints aren’t relevant as a dual carriageway is hardly a residential road. Is she misinformed about the scheme (likely) or is it that the Senedd had been overzealous and not entirely truthful?

[Author]

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