Category Archives: 20 Mph Limits

Croydon Pushes Ahead with 20Mph in Zone 2

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Following my previous article on Croydon Council rejecting objections to a wide area 20 mph scheme in North Croydon (despite the public consultation vote clearly being rigged), they are now pushing ahead with a similar consultation in North-East Croydon (Addiscombe, Ashburton, Woodside, Shirley, Heathfield, Fairfield, parts of Selhurst and South Norwood).

Those who live in that area should make sure they respond to the public consultation. Those who do not, or only use roads in the area will of course be ignored but you could write directly to Croydon Council in that case).

How much will this cost? Probably about another £300,000 of your taxpayers money if they manage to get enough support for it. That will certainly be wasted when it could have been spent on real road safety measures instead.

Roger Lawson

Scrutiny Committee of 20mph in Croydon

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Last night Croydon Council held a Scrutiny Committee to review the councils decision to go ahead with a wide area, signed only, 20mph scheme in North Croydon. It had been requested by 14 Conservative councillors who were concerned about the cost. You can see a video recording of the event here: http://www.croydon.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/215561.

I spoke to support the “call in” and in opposition to the proposal. To save you wading through the whole video, here is what I said:

“Objections to a Wide Area 20 Mph Scheme for North Croydon – Scutiny Committee Speech

I understand the call-in has taken place because of concerns about the cost of the proposed 20 mph wide area scheme in North Croydon. At a cost of £300,000 it is certainly likely to be a waste of money.

The main arguments for 20 mph schemes have always relied on the benefits to road safety. In other words that accidents and injuries will be reduced. But this is a mirage and is not borne out by the evidence available to date. Claims for such benefits are wrong and that is why the Department of Transport has commissioned more research into this topic. The latest part of London to introduce a wide area 20 mph scheme was the City of London and the initial evidence there is that injury accidents rose afterwards.

The other claims such as “improving liveability” are basically just hot air with no substance in reality. Introducing a 20 mph speed limit does not encourage more people to walk or cycle – there is simply no evidence for this.

So in reality nothing much will change but you want to spend £300,000 of taxpayers money on just one part of Croydon to prove how pointless it will be. If you have £300,000 to spend on road safety it would be much better spent on other road safety initiatives, or point solutions.

It is most regrettable that these proposals have been put forward by those ignorant of the facts, and supported by a rigged public consultation exercise.

That is all I wish to say, but I hope Councillors will see sense on this matter and not pour £300,000s of taxpayers money down the drain.“

Neither I nor local resident Peter Morgan who also spoke were given the opportunity to challenge many of the erroneous comments and “facts” presented by the supporters of this proposal, and none of members of the Scrutiny Committee apart from Conservative Councillors on the Committee (who spoke well incidentally in a reasoned and measured way, unlike some of their Labour opponents) took up any of the points I made or asked for more information. They prefer their own blinkered view of the wonders of such schemes rather than the facts – rather like adherents to a religion who will believe anything even though the facts undermine their beliefs.

One point not brought out though was that only residents within North Croydon were consulted (any responses from outside the area were ignored, so the views of those who drive through the area on the roads were sidelined).

As expected the motion to “call in” the proposal was rejected so the scheme will go ahead in North Croydon. Whether they will be able to push it through for other parts of Croydon, particularly if they see the results in the North Croydon first, remains to be seen.

Roger Lawson

Mayor’s Transport Budget

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When you wish to see what is happening in London, and what the priorities for transport will be in future, one of the key documents to look at is the Mayor of London’s Transport Budget. His new budget for 2016/2017 has just been published. Here are a few comments on it:

Improving bus journey reliability is a key objective. But guess what, bus journey times have been negatively impacted by the “Road Modernisation Plan” (which includes on-going “improvements” to a number of major road junctions and lots of cycle lanes which have removed road space). As a result “bus mitigation schemes” are required. What does that mean? Probably a lot more bus lanes in essence.

The Road Modernisation Plan is actually costing £4 billion although some of that will apparently go on improving or maintaining existing assets – such as strengthening the Hammersmith Flyover and upgrading the Fore Street tunnel. It will also include “transformational” projects to replace the Wandsworth town centre gyratory, the Vauxhall Cross Gyratory, and projects for the Euston Road, King’s Cross, Highbury Corner and Croydon Fiveways.

For cycling projects there will be £913 million spent through to 2021/2022 which includes the Cycle Superhighways, a number of “Quietways” (cycle routes on minor roads) and numerous smaller projects.

Money will be spent on replacing obsolete wet film speed cameras by digital cameras (amount to be spent not declared), on financing 20 mph schemes, and a trial of “mandatory Intelligent Speed Assistance” (note the rebranding from the former “Intelligent Speed Adaptation”!).

You can see the real priorities by looking at the proposed split of the capital expenditure budget for 2016/2017. This is £1,673m (47%) on Rail and Underground, £1,299m (36%) on Crossrail, £435m (12%) on Surface Transport, with the balance of 5% on “Corporate” (the latter includes commercial development and ticketing projects). In other words, the road network is yet again to be starved of funding in comparison with rail/underground projects despite the road network being used for many more journeys (counting bus trips, private cars, cycling, etc). Indeed if you consider the expenditure on cycling and buses alone, there is surely not much left for other improvements to the road network.

So now you know where the money goes.

Roger Lawson

Accident Statistics – An Inconvenient Truth

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A very good analysis of the road traffic accident data in London is present on this web page: http://www.londonbusroutes.net/miscellaneous/Accident_trends.htm. It has only recently been brought to my attention but it is definitely worth reading if you care about road traffic casualties.

It tackles the question of whether traffic calming, and in particular 20 mph speed limits, have the benefits claimed or are cost effective. One table in the report which I reproduce below is based on an analysis of the accident reductions in different boroughs with differing levels of traffic calming (it gives all the underlying data based on TfL figures if you want to check out your own London borough):

Level of traffic calming Reduction for
Deaths KSIs All
Low 42.21% 62.32% 38.71%
Moderate 53.54% 62.01% 37.11%
High 43.97% 57.07% 33.49%

 

As the report says, the correlation is the reverse of that normally claimed. It notes they are statistically significant although correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

The author of the report apparently has a keen interest in buses (most of his web site is about bus routes in the capital), and also says that most of his travel is by rail. So this is not the normal profile of a person who opposes traffic calming – indeed he seems most concerned about the delays to buses from wide area 20 mph schemes. But it is a very intelligent analysis of some of the issues and well worth reading.

Roger Lawson

Croydon 20 Mph Speed Limit – Council Pushes Ahead

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The London Borough of Croydon is pushing ahead with a wide area 20 mph speed limit in North Croydon, and has now published their formal public notice for its plans. But it is still not too late to stop this misconceived proposal. If you live in the area, or drive through it, make sure you submit something in writing to the council. simply send an email to mailto:parking.design@croydon.gov.uk  quoting reference PS/CH/Y86 before the 24th December!

Note that the public consultation that the council undertook on this scheme was the subject of fraud which is very obvious from the differing responses via the web and via post – the councillors have ignored complaints on that issue and are pushing it through regardless. It is very clear that without the fraud, the majority of residents are opposed to a 20 mph limit.

Roger Lawson

Ealing 20 Mph Zone

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The London Borough of Ealing is proposing a wide area 20 mph speed limit in Acton. You can read more about it and respond to the consultation (which ends on the 18th December so you need to get your comments in quickly) here: http://www.ealing.gov.uk/info/200628/current_consultations/2059/acton_20_mph_speed_limit_trial_consultation

This is a “trial” scheme, but if successful is likely to be rolled out across all of the borough. From past experience such trial schemes are rarely rolled back simply because of the money spent on implementing them.

We have consistently opposed wide area 20 mph schemes because there is no evidence of road safety benefits. In fact the council are pre-empting a study which has been commissioned by the DfT on such schemes, but evidence from existing ones make any benefits appear to be very unlikely. Indeed in some schemes, accidents have increased. Although traffic speeds may be reduced by 1 mph (on average) in such schemes, that is hardly noticeable by most people.

But it can add significantly to journey times and put you at risk of collecting a speeding fine for driving at what you might consider a safe speed. The council’s supportive arguments are full of dubious claims, such as that it will reduce traffic congestion – that is simply nonsense as there is no evidence whatsoever to support that. Likewise they say lower speed limits will encourage cycling and walking, which might be beneficial if it was true, but again there is no evidence of such effects in existing schemes.

The council does not tell you what this scheme will cost in the consultation material, but it will be expensive. And it will be a waste of money that would be better spent on other road safety projects.

So please make sure you object if you live in the borough, or drive through it.

Lambeth 20 Mph Scheme

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Lambeth Council are pushing ahead with a borough wide 20 mph speed limit. See http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/parking-transport-and-streets/streets-and-roads/lambeth-goes-20mph-guide#how-you-can-get-involved for the details.

Anyone who has any views on this should send them to Barbara Poulter at the Council (email address: bpoulter@lambeth.gov.uk ) . Here’s some comments this writer has already sent her (and the initial results from the 20mph speed limit in the City of London covered in another recent blog post show what a waste of money such schemes are and can actually increase accidents not reduce them):

Please note that we are not opposed to 20 mph speed limits in all locations – for example where the natural speed of traffic is near that speed. In many residential streets that is the case. However we are opposed to blanket wide area 20-mph limits because they are not a cost effective road safety measure, are not likely to be complied with and needlessly slow traffic.

  1. Let me first refer to your published document entitled “Lambeth Goes 20mph -Guide” which unfortunately contains a lot of inaccuracies.

For example, it states that “driving slower on residential roads has been proven to reduce traffic accidents,……”. Unfortunately there is no such evidence. Perhaps you could care to produce the evidence on that which is of course not supplied in the document concerned. Furthermore you say that “By reducing speeds to 20mph, it will reduce the number of casualties in the borough, improve pedestrian safety, encourage more confidence among cyclists and cut the number of incidents around schools”, but again there is no evidence for those claims.

  1. The facts are these:

a – In general the benefits of 20 mph signed area wide area schemes are grossly exaggerated. The average reduction in the speed of traffic is typically about 1 mph (assuming that there is no bias in the collection of data or other influences that might affect traffic speeds which is a dubious assumption).

Such a speed reduction is not likely to have a significant or measurable impact on road traffic accidents and not have any impact on the general environment of the roads concerned. Neither is it likely to encourage cycling or walking or discourage driving so the general health benefits will be nil – indeed there is no good evidence yet available for any such positive benefits (cities such as Bristol have claimed such benefits but their evidence is statistically dubious in the extreme).

b – The suggestion that a reduction in traffic speed translates into a significant reduction in collisions is not borne out by the real world evidence but is based on a biased analysis of traffic speeds on different types of roads. There has been no proper “controlled” trial of the use of signed only speed limits. The results in Portsmouth (which are mentioned in your document who claim an 8% reduction in collisions) do not provide firm evidence that there is any real benefit. Indeed KSIs in Portsmouth actually rose. I wrote this article on the bias inherent in the claims by Portsmouth that gives more information: http://www.freedomfordrivers.org/Portsmouth_20Mph_Zones.pdf

You also refer to data from Nottingham which only covers one year and any road safety engineer will tell you that one year is too short a time to be significant, particularly as there tends to be a short-lived reduction in accidents if the road environment is changed. And as you are no doubt well aware, it is more normal to only consider 3 year before and after periods as showing any significant change.

c – There is no good evidence that 20 mph sign only schemes provide any real, statistically significant, and below trend accident reduction. It is also worth pointing out that the Department of Transport (DfT) have recently commissioned a three year study into the effectiveness of 20 mph schemes as they suggest that current evidence is “inconclusive”. It would be rash of Lambeth Council to spend large amounts of money on any 20 Mph, signed only, schemes before more evidence is available on their financial benefit and effectiveness.

  1. There is no cost/benefit justification provided for the large expenditure of £700,000 on these proposals, money that would be better spent on other road safety measures. The key question is whether the benefits of that expenditure outweigh the costs, i.e. that it is a superior cost/benefit ratio to spending that money on other things.
  2. More evidence. Historically there was a 20-mph speed limit across the whole of the UK before 1930 when accident figures were much higher. Accidents fell after it was removed.
  3. In general the evidence put forward by those who support 20 mph wide area speed limits as a road safety measure is dubious and I would welcome the opportunity to contradict any that you receive. They often rely on selection of the data while ignoring other factors that might affect the results. In practice, their understanding of statistical evidence and the scientific method is weak in the extreme.
  4. So the key question, is whether spending £700,000 on such a scheme is worthwhile, or whether it would not be better to spend it on other road safety measures! Regrettably a proposal to reduce traffic speeds looks both simple and attractive which is why politically it can appear to be sensible. But road safety is a much more complex matter that is not amenable to simplistic solutions. Smaller, focused road safety schemes would be likely to create much more benefit than putting up 20 mph signs everywhere (which will of course be ignored by many road users who will consider it an inappropriate speed for many roads in Lambeth). Imposing a speed limit that is lower than necessary will slow traffic of all kinds, and will not be adhered to unless there is massive expenditure on enforcement (which of course has to be taken into account in the cost/benefit calculations as has the cost of increased travel times).

Finally, let me say that these proposals are being put forward by those who have little understanding of road safety or how to reduce accidents. In reality it is “gesture politics” of the worst kind. It it likely to result in fewer reductions in road casualties, and hence possibly more deaths, by wasting money that would be better spent on other road safety measures.

Roger Lawson

City of London 20 Mph Scheme – First Results

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The City of London has produced the first report on the wide area 20 mph scheme that was introduced in July 2014. It covers the whole City other than the A3211 (Lower/Upper Thames Street), but that has been slowed to a crawl anyway by the new Cycle Superhighway and associated road works.

Average speed has been reduced by 1.5mph which is higher than most such schemes (1 mph is more normal). But whether this was a result of the speed limit or more congestion generally is unclear. TfL have been complaining about more congestion from larger number of private hire vehicles in London and the Cycle Superhighway works and redevelopment of Aldgate have had wider impacts on congestion in the City also.

Provisional casualty data up to June 2015 suggest that there has been a continued increase in the number of slight injuries to people walking and cycling, according to the report. Increases in such accidents were one justification for the imposition of this scheme. The report argues that without the scheme, accidents might have increased even more, but that is a somewhat dubious statement is it not?

More data on accidents is not yet available (3 years before/after is the best measure of course although interpreting the data because of other changes in the City may not be easy).

The police have been quite vigorously enforcing the 20 mph limit and reported 370 traffic offences in the last 12 months which has resulted in 180 fixed penalty notices and 99 court summons.

The overall cost of this scheme was originally estimated at up to £150,000, and surely it has been a complete waste of money based on the evidence to date.

Croydon 20 – Consultation Results Rigged

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Croydon Council have released the results of their consultation on a wide area 20 mph scheme for North Croydon. As readers may know we distributed a leaflet in the area and otherwise made representations on what we considered a very biased consultation. The council reported that 50.4% of residents were in favour with 45.0% opposed (non-residents were ignored of course despite the fact that many will be using these roads).

But looking at the results more closely it is very apparent that there has been an attempt to rig the result. The main method of response to the consultation was via the councils web site as with most public consultations nowadays, but for the few people not on the internet they could phone in to get a paper form. The council did not distribute a paper response form themselves.

The results of the consultation split between on-line submissions and paper show a very different story. They give 42.5% FOR versus 53.1% AGAINST on the on-line submissions (total 2824 submissions) but 90.7% FOR versus 4.0% AGAINST in the paper submissions (total 535). Now anyone who has been involved in public consultations knows that it is very rare, if not impossible, to get a response of more than 90% in favour of anything. And clearly the paper responses swung the overall vote. Why should the results be so different on paper responses to on-line?

How was this achieved on the paper responses? Allegedly by some councillors and their supporters actually taking masses of paper forms and getting personal signatures on them by canvassing. One way to rig the result is simply to discourage those opposed from signing, or to discard those completed by those not in favour. Or of course it could be by simple submission of fraudulent entries which is a lot easier to do on paper than on-line.

Councillor Bee said “I am delighted that a majority of residents in the north of the Borough want to see reduced speed limits on their roads to make them safer” – surely an inaccurate statement in more than one way (most of the residents did not respond to begin with).

We are writing to the Council Leader and Chief Executive to challenge the probity of this consultation and the apparent rigging of the result. There will be a further formal public consultation on this matter and we will be making representations to that also. Clearly if the Council does not reconsider this matter then when it comes to any future consultations of a similar nature in Croydon, we will know exactly how to get the right result.

Roger Lawson

20mph in Hammmersmith & Fulham

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The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham is proposing to introduce a borough-wide 20mph zone. The only exceptions will be two Transport for London (TfL) controlled roads – the A4 Great West Rd/Talgarth Rd and the A40 Westway/Western Ave.

If you live in or work in the borough, please respond by the 31st July to oppose the proposal.

The following page links to the council’s very one-sided consultation document and some counter-arguments, and has a link for responding online: http://www.fairdealforthemotorist.org.uk/saferhandf.htm

(Please pass it on to anyone you know who might be able to respond).

If you are just an occasional visitor to the borough (e.g. to Chelsea FC, the Queens Club (tennis), the Hammersmith Apollo theatre or Olympia), you can still email a personal objection to 20mph@lbhf.gov.uk.