Reduce the speed limit to 20mph where people live and work

Lead Petitioner: Stephen Kinsella

Status: new > draft > rejected > accepted > collecting signatures > waiting submission > submitted to council > Pending owner response > closed > withdrawn

Petition

The petitioner asks Bristol City Council to adopt 20mph as the default speed limit for residential and urban roads.

Background Information

A 20 MPH BRISTOL: WHY?

Most of us want to live in a quiet, pleasant street. A safe street in which children can play out alone; a friendly street in which you can meet your neighbours.

No one wants to live in a hostile street that you cannot walk across thanks to a fast-moving traffic; a noisy street that is an occasional race track.

We call for Bristol to bring traffic speeds down to 20 miles per hour across the city, as part of a wider vision for creating the kind of streets in which we really want to live.


LIVING STREETS

Communities grow where the streets belong to people, not just to vehicles. City streets can and should be lively, vibrant places which everyone can enjoy. Streets should be places in which you can hear yourself speak above the constant noise from vehicles; in which you can safely walk or cycle with your children.

Our streets should not be grim thoroughfares serving only fast-moving vehicles. Our streets should include everyone and allow a range of uses. Our streets should be a truly shared space in which shoppers and residents, pedestrians and cyclists, young and old, do not take a second place to people in cars.

Reducing vehicle speeds is the single most important factor in creating living streets. There is strong and growing evidence to support a maximum speed limit of 20 mph in our towns and cities. The government supports the introduction of 20 mph, and the Conservatives now support 20 mph ‘in all urban areas’.

We believe that the benefits of 20 mph should be felt throughout Bristol, in the streets where we live, shop and stroll.


DRIVER PSYCHOLOGY

At 20 mph, drivers make eye contact with and engage with the people in the street they are passing through. This contact really matters: people in the street know they’ve been seen. It also makes drivers less inclined to bully their way along ‘their’ road, and more inclined to share the space.

At speeds over 30 mph, drivers begin to become disassociated from the area they are passing through – treating it principally as a traffic thoroughfare for getting quickly from A to B, rather than a space for people to enjoy.


WHAT IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD?

The 2003–04 British Crime Survey asked the public what they perceive to be the worst ‘anti-social behaviour’ problems where they live. By far the biggest problems related to the effects of motor traffic – 43% reported fast traffic as a ‘fairly big’ or ‘very big’ problem, and 31% felt the same about cars parked inconveniently or illegally.


SOME FACTS ABOUT ROAD TRAFFIC SPEEDS:

Perhaps the most surprising fact about reducing speeds from 30 mph to 20 mph is that vehicles get across cities quicker the slower they go. According to transport planners, in a city where the limits are 20 mph not 30 mph, there is less need for traffic signals and the queuing that traffic lights cause. Slow-moving cars require fewer controls and allow a more efficient city. There’s little sense in speeding from one queue to the next as we do at the moment. Slower speeds make it easy for motor vehicles to merge with ease, for cycles to co-exist with motor vehicles, and for pedestrians to cross roads.


DID YOUR KNOW?

• Hit by a car at 40 mph, a pedestrian has an 85 per cent chance of being killed while at 20 mph the risk falls to 5 per cent. (Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety)

• When traffic is slowed down to 20 mph, there is a 70 per cent drop in accidents to child pedestrians. (Transport Research Laboratory)

• Children from disadvantaged families are five times more likely to be killed on the roads than the better off. (Department for Transport)

• Children’s deaths and injuries could be reduced by 67 per cent if 20 mph were the speed limit on residential roads. (Health Development Agency)

• The proportion of children walking to primary school in Britain has fallen from 61 per cent in 1993 to 53 per cent in 2003, with an increase from 30 per cent to 39 per cent in the numbers driven to school over the same period. (National Travel Survey)


FIND OUT MORE at the websites for 20’s Plenty for Bristol and 20’s Plenty for Us:

http://www.20splentyforbristol.org.uk and http://www.20splentyforus.org.uk