20mph in Wales - why???

[Flpwer]

I don't understand why Mark Drakeford has done this - surely this will just cause more road rage??? Is this a money-making ploy because they know a lot of people will probably drive over it as 20mph feels so unnatural.

I live in a busy suburb and loads of the roads around here are now 20mph. However because there are so many, nobody sticks to the speed limit. 20mph is so slow and there's just no need for it on most of these roads.

They’re not changing the national speed limit so this won’t affect rural roads. It will only affect roads in built areas with a 30mph limit (either indicated or due to the presence of street lights).

I am not aware of what is going on in Wales however I support a 20mph limit on small enclosed residential areas. There is barely any time saved by doing 30mph.

There are a lot of misconceptions about it.

Firstly, it's not every road, broadly it's ones with street lights and even those will have some exceptions put in place by local councils. They'll be reviewed too.

It's been 20mph where I live for some time. It's quieter, safer for kids and the sky hasn't fallen in. A few idiots go faster, but in the main, drivers have adapted. It'll be like smoking and seatbelts fairly soon.

The deputy environment minister has shared this image, which is the most compelling reason I've seen - and pointed out that children don't just go out around schools and hospitals (to counter the argument that it should be 20mph only around schools & hospitals).

@Kaaardiffgalnow that's a powerful image

I'm fully in favour of reducing speed limits

I live in rural Wales too.

In the village itself the road past the primary school has been 20mph for some time and it has made things much safer for families to walk their children to school.

The only parts of our village that will change to 20mph (i.e. weren't already) are small stretches at either end which are currently 30mph. The roads outside the village are currently 60mph and will still be 60mph tomorrow.

In our nearest town (where I work) there are bigger stretches that will change from 30mph to 20mph, but to be honest most of the time the traffic doesn't flow at 30mph anyway so I expect very little difference. I've seen studies that show that continuous traffic flow is better at 20mph than 30mph anyway, so with the reduction in time spent actually having to stop completely I can't see there will be much change.

The only place where I'm anticipating much of a change is on longer journeys (50 miles +) that pass through a lot of towns and villages where the speed limit has been reduced. This will add time on to longer journeys. But I don't do these types of journeys frequently enough for it to make a difference.

In my opinion a lot of the people currently moaning about the change are going to be very surprised tomorrow when they realise that it really doesn't make that much difference to their normal day.

the 'on average' thing is a completely ridiculous statistic because there is no way of working out how long the "average journey" is. If you were making a thirty mile journey on roads that were all 20mph, a journey that would previously take you an hour would now take an hour and a half. so for journeys to only take a minute more seems to assume the average journey is only about 3 minutes/1 mile long!
(obviously not an exact measurement because a lot of longer journeys will take place on faster roads).

So yes if you're giving the kids a lift to school down the road it might only take a minute longer, and will likely be a lot safer - and if that leads people to think fuck this I may as well walk, even better.

But if you're trying to do a quick turnaround as a carer in a rural area where your clients are 10 miles away from each other, crawling along on 20 mph with no cars, houses, or anything other than the odd sheep around of course it's a) going to add a significant amount of time to your overall journey b) feel frustrating and c) not feel like there's any discernible improvement.

Plus the cost. Welsh NHS is in a dire state, schools aren't much better, yet we can fund £32 million on this? (not to mention all the additional charges when more councils bow to pressure and start submitting requests to change roads back again).

They should have encouraged councils to proactively identify more ideas that would be suitable for 20mph areas themselves, offering incentives if needed, rather than a blanket change.

I grew up in Sussex. Plenty of people bomb about on the narrow country lanes, but that doesn’t mean it is safe - we have pedestrians and horses hit by cars who’ve whizzed round a corner too fast, all the time.

They aren’t turning the M4 and dual carriageways to 20. Just smaller roads, and it is no hardship to slow down on those.

I don't mind 20 is plenty. A lot of boroughs in South London are 20 mph, as well as other places.

In rural Scotland, going from the M74 at Abingdon to Edinburgh, you have to go through quite a few villages, and they have 20 mph limits, and then again within the city limits.

There are lots of speed limits in South Wales, eg much of the M4 being 50 mph, some because of twisty roads, and others because of pollution control. Swansea doesn't have a lot of speed cameras, but they slow you down with mind-numbing traffic lights.

I just set my speed limiter to 20 and don't get stressed about it.

Why would it cause more road rage? Since when does sound something more calmly and safely make it more stressful? You don’t see people getting angry at walking or cycling because it’s slower than driving.

Are the idiots out of towners incapable of reading road signs and baffled by why you're driving so slowly?

You'd hope that when the 20mph hits everywhere the idiots will still speed but they won't blame the people abiding by the speed limit personally as in your experience.

But if you're trying to do a quick turnaround as a carer in a rural area where your clients are 10 miles away from each other, crawling along on 20 mph with no cars, houses, or anything other than the odd sheep around of course it's a) going to add a significant amount of time to your overall journey b) feel frustrating and c) not feel like there's any discernible improvement.

Given the size of Wales, they are not all going to be ten miles apart. Within a ten mile radius, maybe. Twenty mile radius even. But not ten miles separating each call, unless you have just the one single carer covering everywhere between Anglesey and Ruthin.

On R4 earlier today, some road safety expert said that the risk of fatality when a pedestrian is hit at 30mph is 5 times that compared to being hit at 20mph. That sounds like a pretty good reason to me.

Our town centre and the roads on outlying estates have had 20mph limits for a fair few years now, and it really doesn't take any longer to get across town than it did before. And outside of peak times, there seems to be less congestion.

But if you're trying to do a quick turnaround as a carer in a rural area where your clients are 10 miles away from each other, crawling along on 20 mph with no cars, houses, or anything other than the odd sheep around of course it's a) going to add a significant amount of time to your overall journey b) feel frustrating and c) not feel like there's any discernible improvement.

But it's very unlikely that those roads with no cars, houses or anything other than the odd sheep are going to have 20mph speed limits.

The 20mph speed limits will be on roads which are currently 30mph.

Rural roads in between villages are usually either 50mph or 60mph and will still be tomorrow.

Arterial routes can be kept at 30 or higher if local authorities think it would be better, there's a mechanism for this. Where I live just over the border lots are 20 including wide, unconjested arterial routes, Bath in particular!

My worry is that there are so many roads with steep gradients in the Valleys. It’s going to burn some clutches….

Because Welsh Labour is just an advanced form of the braindead Westminster government. More stupid and generally a worse version. Making roads slower has nothing to do with safety. It has everything to do with not wanting to invest because this country’s economy is broke. And Wales public finances are in even more trouble, being run by grandpa Drake.

The UK’s has an unofficial population of around 90 million, because of low skilled mass immigration. Economic growth has been close to 0 for years now. We need new roads, new towns, over and under passes, tons of new infrastructure to cope with this population explosion. But much like the general population, central and devolved governments are run by morons. Thickos who couldn’t run a bath. And corrupt to boot, embezzling public funds at every given opportunity.

So instead of building new roads, they come up with these kind of hare brained schemes and the idiotic public falls for it. Hook, line and sinker.

Actually in my rural area (West Wales) there are several areas that are currently national speed limit where 20mph is being introduced - think through roads going past small clusters of housing. So people will literally be slowing from 50-60 mph down to 20 for about 100 metres and then back up to national speed limit.

I don't have any problem with 20mph in urban areas and residential areas, but to be honest some of this is nuts.

Some of the signage is already in place, and I tried to drive one bit this morning, up quite a steep hill and it was really quite difficult to keep to 20mph.

Hopefully some common sense will prevqil and the Councils over time will introduce more exemptions on through routes to return to 30mph ...

I'm in two minds, rationally I understand it. But being in a commuter area near the M4, the 20mph lead up to the motorways just become huge convoys for some reason (not sure why it doesn't happen at 30mph, genuinely!). I see a lot more frustration too.

But then nearly every day there's reports of fatal crashes in the county, so I know I'd prefer my loved ones to come home of an evening.

Andrew RT Davies? Is that you?

I live in Wales and on balance, I’m in favour of the speed limit going to 20 in built up areas but I just wanted to say I can’t stand Mark Drakeford. That’s all.

I’m in one of the areas that had this introduced a year ago, from September the bus frequency is reducing and routes amended as they can’t make the old timetable work with the lower limit (unless they buy more busses/employ more drivers). That can’t be good. If we want to entice more out of cars and onto buses/bikes we need more public transport (and cheaper) not less.

20 is really really slow. The people that are doing it generally did 30 anyway, slower as necessary - the idiots racing round in cars and on trail bikes ignored the 30 zones, and now overtake everyone even more dangerously at ridiculous speeds (apart from a day a month when the camera van is out on my road collecting revenue from the people doing 23mph).

I really feel for people who drive for work - carers, taxi, trades etc.

I love how somehow a discussion on lower speed limits has been blamed on immigration! Along with the idiotic public falling for things 😂

It's a stupid idea but thankfully one that has pissed off even the most die hard Labour voters who have had enough of the way Wales is being run.

@cheerypip agree with you. I live 11 miles from the nearest town, 7 miles of that drive is 30mph due to sporadic housing (no schools, village greens and no point at which the housing is on both sides of the road). 20mph is too slow for these conditions.