Local authority officers have been in discussions with the Department for Transport about relaxing the strict criteria for introducing 20mph zones.
Mike Ashworth, CSS (County Surveyors’ Society) road safety chair, said the discussions drew on Portsmouth, where the city council has introduced a blanket, signed-only 20mph zone on all residential roads.
However, department guidelines call for 20mph zones to be accompanied by engineering measures.
In its response to the DfT’s latest road safety strategy, A safer way, the CSS said enforcement and public acceptability would remain ‘crucial’ to the success of 20mph zones, ‘otherwise they will only be feasible through extensive and expensive engineering measures’. It called for more work from central government to strengthen local authorities’ ability to learn from each other in order to ensure best value. This would apply to engineering measures, but also in combination with education and enforcement The CSS urged the DfT to note the volatility of the number of fatalities at local level, and therefore, not to regard this as a local target separate from those for killed and seriously injured casualties.
It also called for the strategy to give more prominence to motorcyclists, recognising that they raise some very different issues from other road-users. ‘They also raise, alongside some other user groups, issues around inappropriate speed and how this can be tackled.’
CSS believes that local determination of speed limits is right, and does not support a blanket 50mph for unrestricted speed limit signs.
The results from local authorities conducting speed limit reviews ‘have been generally positive,’ Ashworth said.
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