cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/7658487
For more detailed information: https://www.gov.wales/introducing-20mph-speed-limits-frequently-asked-questions
That’s cool. One of the advantages of lower speed limits is that while they slightly improve safety, they massively improve the perception of safety. When people feel safe walking and cycling, they’re more likely to do it. So, lower speed limits decrease the subjective desire to drive, and thereby reduce car dependency.
Do you have numbers on this?
I saw a study a long time ago, but I’m afraid I can’t find it now! I think it was UK-based, possibly by TfL or the DfT.
I wish my neighborhood would do this. 25mph feels really fast on my street. I usually hover around 15-20 when I’m not paying attention to my speed.
Edit: I am surprised that this was my third most controversial comment since I’ve joined
It’s been surprising to see just how many pro-car users seem to lurk on these anti-car/pro-alternative transport communities.
Fuck cars is regularly in my “everything” feed. And most of these measures aim to reduce traffic, which ultimately benefits the remaining car drivers.
I live in a super rural area and would have an almost impossible time working, buying groceries or getting medical care without a car and even I think the vast majority of the arguments against this are dumb as fuck and the epitome of car brained.
They’re probably imagining me as that Prius or something slowing them down in traffic. My neighborhood is basically one lane when people are parked, and there are a lot of kids, so if they drove the road they’d understand.
for all it’s worth carbrained people all hate each other, too, but boy are they good at rallying around a common enemy
Also lowering it from 30 to 20 realistically means people will now drive 30 instead of 40.
This will hopefully ensure less people get hit by cars when the fights inevitably break out on the roads near pubs after Wales lose to Fiji and Australia and exit in the group stage of the Rugby World Cup this month
Also way to make money from the shitload of speeding tickets lol
I do not get the 20mph speed limit here. E-Bicycles get to do 15.5mph in Wales, apparently. On a perfect, no traffic, no obstruction 1 mile stretch of road the speed difference here would save you, what, 30 seconds at most?
Exactly, so it’s incentive to get rid of your car and get a bike
not going far enough there is my point
I also agree they should just ban cars
I do like the idea of not banning cars but instead make them horribly embarrassing to use through regulation and legislation, its just really funny to me
Cars are allowed but you have to get the horn replaced with a clip of somebody sarcastically saying “ohhh look at me I think I’m so much more important than everybody else”
Limit cars to 10 mph by mandating every person pulls into the dmv so a clown with a big comedy screwdriver can turn the screw that turns off turbo mode :'(
I like your idea of incorporating clown technology. Maybe we can invest in giant turnkey technology so you have to get out and rewind your car every couple minutes.
And you have to have at least 14 passengers in it.
Ride Scaring
Fuck cars
While it sounds good on paper, in practice, they’ve screwed it up. They’re putting the new speed limits in place on every 30mph road in Wales before they’ve put the public transport alternatives in place.
There’s currently no reason for someone to switch to public transport, especially if the buses are going to be stuck at the same speed as the cars, but stopping regularly too. Our roads are too narrow to install bus lanes, and barely have enough room for single file traffic through lots of the towns and villages. The trains are being upgraded, but that’s not scheduled to finish until at least next year, and at the moment they’re slow and very unreliable. It feels like every week the trains are cancelled and an inadequate replacement bus service is put on.
I’m disabled, and have to travel from my town, Aberdare, to the main hospital in Cardiff, UHW, on a regular basis. If I had to leave now, it would take 42 minutes by car, or 2 hours and 6 minutes by public transport. The shortest journey is tomorrow morning and would take 1 hour and 31 minutes, more than double the time of the car journey. The closest inpatient hospital is 22 minutes by car, or over an hour by public transport. The difference the new speed limits are going to make is negligible compared to how slow public transport is here.
All this is going to do is annoy and upset people, and turn them off the idea of using public transport, and push a lot of people towards voting for the parties who were against this. Out of the main parties, that mainly seems to be the Conservatives, so that’s going to be bad for all of us.
Will this prevent you from using your car though?
Not in the slightest, which is part of my point. It’s going to slow down cars and frustrate people, while not having the intended benefit.
From the Welsh government’s FAQ again: “The evidence from around the world is very clear – reducing speed limits reduces collisions and saves lives.” The intended benefit is to reduc the risk of collisions and to reduce injuries in the case of collisions. Lowering the speed limit will result in both of those things, and so we will be seeing the intended benefit.
A road with a large number of accidents over the last few years is one that campaigners have been begging the Welsh government to fix, but it’s been ignored, and is one of only five roads in the area to stay at 30mph. It’s also a road that the local government has been using as a showpiece to say that they’re working on transportation problems.
This whole exercise feels more like they’re trying to show that they’re doing something, rather than actually doing something useful.
So you agree they aren’t going far enough lol
No, I don’t. I think they’re going about it all wrong.
An almost blanket conversion of 30mph roads to 20mph does little to help. A better idea would have been to change the speed limits on roads where people live or regularly walk, and leave the others. Once the public transport has been updated, and people are used to the lower speed limits, then look at making them universal.
Give drivers a viable alternative, as opposed to the current system where buses are unreliable, trains are worse, and neither go where you want them to.
Once people start using public transport, then push for it more.
At the moment, public transport is still worse than driving at 20mph here, so all that’s going to happen is that drivers get frustrated, and spend even longer on the road than they usually would. When the next election comes around, they’re going to vote for whoever they feel isn’t ‘attacking motorists’ again.
You think maybe all the other people without disabilities might see some other options here which in turn would free up more road for you, a person actually needing to drive a car, for it?
Here’s a reply I made to someone who asked a similar question:
'Our cities are quite small, and have decent cycling infrastructure as far as I can remember, but it’s been a while since I’ve been to a city centre.
A large portion of South Wales is small towns and villages built on hills and mountains, so it’s difficult to cycle from place to place for most people. Mid Wales tends to be very spread out and hilly, so again, difficult to cycle around unless it’s for pleasure. If you cycled to work, you’d probably be very sweaty by the time you got there.
Have a look at Google Street View to see how steep some of our hills are. They’re great for a challenge, but you definitely wouldn’t want to tackle them on a cold, wet, Welsh morning on the way to work.’
Because of the obstacles I described in that reply, it’s hard to walk particularly far too. There’s physically not enough room for anything bigger than buses, like trains, even if the budget was there. There are some areas where trains used to run for the coal mines, but they’ve been converted to joint footpaths and cycle paths, which would have to be ripped up to convert back.
A decent rail system running through and around Wales is a desperately needed start, but, again, our geography is a massive obstacle. Even the main road going north to south through the country is a single lane in each direction for the majority of it. It’s only near the capital that it becomes a dual carriageway.
A large portion of South Wales is small towns and villages built on hills and mountains, so it’s difficult to cycle from place to place for most people.
The Taff trail forms a convenient path from Pontypridd to Cardiff that doesn’t require travelling over steep hills. Further into the South Wales valleys past Ponty, each valley has their own cycle trail that links to the Taff Trail. Commuting around the valleys and to Cardiff is only tough going if you follow the motorways instead of pre-existing cycling infrastructure.
The main problem is travelling between valleys since you’re either going over hills or circling 'round to Ponty but this is also a problem with public transit infrastructure which uses Ponty as hub so if you’re going say Merthyr to Maerdy you have to catch a bus or train to Ponty and then a bus to Maerdy.
A large portion of South Wales is small towns and villages built on hills and mountains, so it’s difficult to cycle from place to place for most people. Mid Wales tends to be very spread out and hilly, so again, difficult to cycle around unless it’s for pleasure. If you cycled to work, you’d probably be very sweaty by the time you got there.
E-bikes have been invented for a while now
Have a look at Google Street View to see how steep some of our hills are. They’re great for a challenge, but you definitely wouldn’t want to tackle them on a cold, wet, Welsh morning on the way to work.’
This is just bog standard “It wouldn’t work here” stuff. It gets cold and wet elsewhere and it doesn’t stop people from cycling
Even the main road going north to south through the country is a single lane in each direction for the majority of it.
That’s a policy choice not an inherent condition of geography. Switzerlands full of mountains and they have good trains.
All this is going to do is annoy and upset people, and turn them off the idea of using public transport, and push a lot of people towards voting for the parties who were against this.
Bingo. But they don’t care who they hurt in the process. “Fuck cars = fuck lives”
“Fuck cars = fuck lives”
are cars sentient where you live
Shidding and farding over a 1 minute increase on my commute through a residential area
oh fuck off you hysterical dipshit
Get fucked car lover lmfao
Completely deranged
It was funny watching this get passed, because the main opposition to it in the Senedd has been Andrew RT Davis, a Tory MS who campaigned for it in a few years back in Penarth and is transparently against it because it’s a Welsh Labour policy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Welsh parliament has passed a law bringing down the speed limit on all residential roads and busy streets to 20 mph (30 km/h).
Wales will introduce a default speed limit of 20 mph (30 km/h) in built-up areas from next year, in a bid to lower road collisions and noise pollution, as well as encourage people to walk or cycle.
The Welsh parliament voted on Tuesday to back the plan, which will bring down the speed limit currently set at 30 mph (50 km/h) on most busy streets and residential roads.
Both Labour and Plaid Cymru, who have a cooperation agreement and hold almost three-quarters of the 60 Senedd seats, backed the plan, but it has been met with criticism too.
Reasons for opposing the scheme ranged from concerns it could “annoy” drivers to an increase in journey time and congestion.
“They are quite rightly very concerned as they believe that pollution is increasing because cars have to drive in a lower gear and wait longer at traffic lights, there have also been more accidents,” he said.
The original article contains 609 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It could “annoy drivers”? Believe me, so many things do.
Also, it’s very likely that due to lower speeds, less congestion will happen and so, travel time will actually be shorter.
Amazing news, can imagine how much quieter Wales will become as a result of this
Try that shit in Burgerland and watch government buildings burn for the sake of the vroom vroom treats.
It happened with even the mildest covid restrictions. It would definitely happen with such strict speed limits.
You joke (probably not), but I was once complaining to my group chat about getting stopped by my job in a “sting” type thing, saying I was on my phone (i wasnt and the thing was dropped). Anyway, my chud friend was so close, complaining how these traffic laws are just ways to suck money from.working people a lot of the time. However, his solution was something along the lines of remove traffic laws, make it harder to get licenses, this will separate the wheat from the chaffe, and the rest can get “bus passes with all the other knuckle draggers.”
I was in complete awe at his stupidity and yeah, called him out on that dog whistle.
What I’m saying is, you’re right… we’d never accept this lol
his solution was something along the lines of remove traffic laws, make it harder to get licenses, this will separate the wheat from the chaffe, and the rest can get “bus passes with all the other knuckle draggers.”
This fits squarely into the the common brainworms of the car is the best transportation there is if all the other schmucks couldn’t drive one. Car drivers all hate each other, too
100% what’s the Carlin quote, everyone behind you is a moron everyone ahead of you is an asshole.
This deadly combo of feeling invincible and being in a competition.
Yes, for bicycles too. But there is no mechanism to enforce speed limits for them.
Mph. It says so right in the title
good on them for using real units of measurement for their speed limits.
Make cars use more gas by having operate at speeds they aren’t meant to operate at constantly. Check.
Make people sit in cars longer resulting in longer commutes and more pollution. Check.
Claim that some number printed on a sign magically saves lives. Check.
Do literally anything to actually address the issue at hand. Not check.
Do literally anything to actually address the issue at hand. Not check.
enlighten us
Make people sit in cars longer resulting in longer commutes and more pollution. Check.
I agree. The longer time people spend on the road, the more pollution and traffic you get. The obvious logical solution will if course be to abolish all woke speed limits and instead mandate that motorists drive as fast as humanly possible at all times.
Literally the “more people will die but others will get to work faster, raising productivity” argument
Lower speeds gets better gas mileage.
Lower speeds means spreading out when people arrive, improving traffic.
The concept of more velocity being equal to more force is a pretty simple and fundamental concept in physics (if you really want to be a pedant the force required to overcome the decelerative forces to maintain a constant velocity at higher speeds)
Too bad they can’t just complain about people doing something instead of nothing on the internet like you.
Go eat some grass nerd lmao
Imagine being unable to comprehend the point of this law
Wouldn’t this, in the end, make cars have to shift to a lower gear, thus keeping about the same RPM, and thus eating about the same amount of fuel, which results in about the same volume of the sound produced by the car?
This feels like a terrible fix.
A lot of cars can cruise at 20-25mph just idling in Drive, foot completely off both gas and brake. The RPMs don’t get much lower than that.
While this is a point the naysayers brought up, the slower speeds during the trial period reduced accidents, the severity of accidents, and the slower speeds encouraged more foot and bicycle traffic on those roads
if the cars are designed to use the same fuel for less useful output power, then they’re very badly designed.
i’m sure they might be less efficient in terms of miles per gallon. but they surely can’t be so bad as to waste absolutely more fuel at lower speeds.if they are, fuck them.
Most cars, at least in NA, have excessively large engines. It is crazy that we use 2L engines to carry one person around, when their own legs would suffice.
Wouldn’t this, in the end, make cars have to shift to a lower gear, thus keeping about the same RPM, and thus eating about the same amount of fuel
That’s not how cars work, they definitely don’t use the same fuel in different gears at the same RPM. See this Wikipedia article for a discussion of speed vs fuel economy.
And as pointed out by the the FAQ, that’s doesn’t not factor in acceleration:
Will driving at 20mph mean I use more fuel?
No. Fuel consumption is mainly influenced by the way we drive – driving at a consistent speed is better than stopping and starting. Accelerating up to 30mph can take twice as much energy as speeding up to 20mph.
A default 20 mph limit and a smooth driving style, can help avoid unnecessary speeding up and slowing down, saving fuel.
afaik most of the sound comes from the tires, not necessarily the engine or the exhaust. obviously not the case for every car, but for most commuter cars it is. the faster the tires are rolling, the louder the sound.
i think at higher speeds the wheel and road noise drowns out the engine noise, but at lower speeds its the engine, especially during acceletation.
in the region of 20-30mph i’d think the engine is probably the louder part.
