I'm in favor of lower speed limits, but this will result in a temporary uptick in speeding tickets, followed by loss of interest by local police, which yields no net change. Lowering the speed limit is a band aid fix. It's quick. It's cheap. But it can, by no means, be seen as a permanent solution. If you want people to slow down, you need to make a road that will make people want to slow down. So yeah, I like lower speed limits, but they cannot and do not work alone. It's a step in the right direction, but more should be done.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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They're not just lowering the speed limit. From the FAQ:
Will the roll out involve money being spent on speed bumps?
There is no plan to include traffic calming (including speed bumps) as part of the change to speed limits. There are other ‘softer’ measures that might be introduced, such as using buffer speed limits, removing the centre line, narrowing the carriageway visually, using planting etc.
These 'softer' measures (which definitely are traffic calming) will be essential to make this plan a success. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada is going through a similar process of lowering speed limits in residential areas. The planning staff said they needed the speed lowered so they could implement these traffic calming measures, otherwise the speed limit would be higher than the street design can accommodate.
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I wish my neighborhood would do this. 25mph feels really fast on my street. I usually hover around 15-20 when I'm not paying attention to my speed.
Edit: I am surprised that this was my third most controversial comment since I've joined
It's been surprising to see just how many pro-car users seem to lurk on these anti-car/pro-alternative transport communities.
They're probably imagining me as that Prius or something slowing them down in traffic. My neighborhood is basically one lane when people are parked, and there are a lot of kids, so if they drove the road they'd understand.
for all it's worth carbrained people all hate each other, too, but boy are they good at rallying around a common enemy
This community regularly makes it to the front page of Everything. It's really not that isolated from the rest of Lemmy
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While it sounds good on paper, in practice, they've screwed it up. They're putting the new speed limits in place on every 30mph road in Wales before they've put the public transport alternatives in place.
There's currently no reason for someone to switch to public transport, especially if the buses are going to be stuck at the same speed as the cars, but stopping regularly too. Our roads are too narrow to install bus lanes, and barely have enough room for single file traffic through lots of the towns and villages. The trains are being upgraded, but that's not scheduled to finish until at least next year, and at the moment they're slow and very unreliable. It feels like every week the trains are cancelled and an inadequate replacement bus service is put on.
I'm disabled, and have to travel from my town, Aberdare, to the main hospital in Cardiff, UHW, on a regular basis. If I had to leave now, it would take 42 minutes by car, or 2 hours and 6 minutes by public transport. The shortest journey is tomorrow morning and would take 1 hour and 31 minutes, more than double the time of the car journey. The closest inpatient hospital is 22 minutes by car, or over an hour by public transport. The difference the new speed limits are going to make is negligible compared to how slow public transport is here.
All this is going to do is annoy and upset people, and turn them off the idea of using public transport, and push a lot of people towards voting for the parties who were against this. Out of the main parties, that mainly seems to be the Conservatives, so that's going to be bad for all of us.
The FAQ in OP's link tells you that it is not all 30mph roads, but rather all restricted roads, with a link to a map of all 30mph roads that are staying 30mph as well as the option to see which restricted roads will change to 20mph. "Restricted Roads" is a classification of roads in law that is defined by the lamppost density, so this change won't affect larger and more rural roads where lampposts are more sparse.
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The Tories originally supported the proposal which is quite hilarious seeing how much stink they are throwing currently.
I do agree public transport needs more funding but they are in a pretty tricky situation where the Gov has very little money to improve the service (partly due to Wales transport funds being spent on HS2) and at the same time bus usage is down and not recovered after lockdowns. I hope the 20mph limits will encourage more onto busses, but I am not confident.
The Tories are bullshitting to gain support? That's not like them 🤔🤥
At this point it sounds like me on my E-bike would be the fastest thing on the road. It does 25mph/40kph
Which would mean that you would also be speeding, since e-bikes in the UK are required by law to be capped at 15.5mph (technically 25kph).
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Amazing news, can imagine how much quieter Wales will become as a result of this
I mean. Before this all you could hear was crazy "oooooooo" "oooooooooooo" sounds under the water. Wasn't that bad.
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That's cool. One of the advantages of lower speed limits is that while they slightly improve safety, they massively improve the perception of safety. When people feel safe walking and cycling, they're more likely to do it. So, lower speed limits decrease the subjective desire to drive, and thereby reduce car dependency.
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Try that shit in Burgerland and watch government buildings burn for the sake of the vroom vroom treats.
It happened with even the mildest covid restrictions. It would definitely happen with such strict speed limits. 
You joke (probably not), but I was once complaining to my group chat about getting stopped by my job in a "sting" type thing, saying I was on my phone (i wasnt and the thing was dropped). Anyway, my chud friend was so close, complaining how these traffic laws are just ways to suck money from.working people a lot of the time. However, his solution was something along the lines of remove traffic laws, make it harder to get licenses, this will separate the wheat from the chaffe, and the rest can get "bus passes with all the other knuckle draggers."
I was in complete awe at his stupidity and yeah, called him out on that dog whistle.
What I'm saying is, you're right... we'd never accept this lol
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Fuck cars
Finally some good news!
I thought this said whales for a second, and I was very intrigued how whales were causing the speed limit to be lowered. Maybe a whale carcass nearby at risk of exploding? Maybe a bridge that whales like to spout on?
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