The County Council is planning to introduce a 20mph speed limit across the historic centre of Cambridge on a trial basis, following a review of the Council’s policy on 20 mph speed limits.
The central area of Cambridge has particularly high levels of cycling and significant pedestrian activity, and following various 'core scheme' changes, there is now very little through traffic in the City Centre, so a 20mph limit seems wholly more appropriate than on, for example, Mill Road.
The plan below shows the area covered by the new limit. Note - as it’s environment is very different to the rest of the Core area, Victoria Avenue has not been included.
The public notice advising of the proposal was placed in the Cambridge Evening News on Friday, November 20th. If you wish to object or comment on the proposed 20mph limit please contact the County Council by December 14th 2009.
Once the trial is running, monitoring will be undertaken to assess the impact on speeds, casualty levels and user attitudes, as well as gauging public perception of the trial and assess whether vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists have benefited from it. There will be an on-line “before” and “after” surveys to assess how people feel about conditions on street before and during the trial, which will be conducted over a 12 month period.
I think it will be particularly interesting to know if the 20mph limit actually reduces the number of vehicles driving at high speeds likely to cause serious injuries to pedestrians and cyclists in a collision, or if various road users still carry on driving much as before.
Further information on the trial can be found at www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/transport/20mph
3 comments:
Bollocks: the reason Victoria Av has been excluded is because it is the only site within the boundary with a speed camera and they haven't yet been approved for 20mph zones. Bang goes another Police cash cow... I'm surprised you've fallen for this one Chris, if the police were serious about tackling City Centre speeding they'd have mobile speed units out at random on major taxi routes on Friday & Saturday nights. I'm not holding my breath.
Hopefully the police will be armed with new speed guns - only one firm that I am aware of makes guns that detect speeds as low as 20mph.
Have to say the wording I wrote on the reason for Victoria Avenue being excluded was pretty much from the officer info supplied, you may be right - the whole question of how enforceable 20mph limits are is an interesting one - on the one hand I think there is little point in sticking up 20mph signs if people can just ignore them, on the other hand if you start issuing tickets at say 28mph, there is going to be a lot of drivers who could be driving really very safely in specific circumstances, who are going to be very annoyed at getting a ticket.
Which is why I am a sceptic of 20mph zones generally - even in central Cambridge where I don't have any problem with asking drivers to stick to 20mph, there are real problems with the implementation.
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