A default speed limit of 20mph should be implemented in all built-up areas, and enforced by time-over-distance cameras, according to the Government’s road safety advisers.
The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (Pacts) is calling on the Department for Transport to issue ‘clearer and stronger’ guidance to local authorities on implementing 20mph zones in urban areas, as part of its vision to improve road safety. With the exception of cities such as Portsmouth (Surveyor, 7 June 2007) and Hull, the roll out of 20mph zones has been ‘sporadic’, Robert Gifford, executive director of Pacts, said. This was compared to parts of mainland Europe, where 80% of the network in Munich and 85% in Stuttgart were low-speed zones.
But Pacts also recommends a flexible approach, in which a 20mph limit can be increased to 30mph at times of lower road use activity.
The DfT said it encouraged councils to introduce 20mph limits, but was not in favour of a blanket policy. But Gifford said the DfT ‘shouldn’t be in favour of the current 30mph blanket policy then’.
In its report, Pacts calls on the Government to approve time-over-distance cameras for use in 20mph zones. The cameras are still to be ‘type approved’ by the Home Office, but Gifford was confident this would happen next year.
A press officer at Transport for London also told Surveyor ‘there might be movement on this next year’.
The report, Beyond 2010 – a holistic approach to road safety in Great Britain, also says the new round of local transport plans should advise local authorities on applying the shared-space principles advocated in Manual for streets. And, to allay concerns over cycling and walking amid heavy traffic, it recommends that the DfT provides KSI (killed and seriously injured) data per hour and per trip.
‘Compared with the rate of KSI per billion kilometres travelled by car occupants, pedestrians are 16 times more likely, and cyclists 22 times more likely to be killed or injured,’ the report states. ‘However, a more helpful measure of relatives risk would be to compare casualties per trip and per hour.’
To better co-ordinate the machinery of government, it recommends that indicators for safer roads within local areas are established via the Local Area Agreement process.
http://www.pacts.org.uk
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