No Need for Speed: 20’s Plenty for Us

Monday, August 30, 2010

No Need for Speed: 20’s Plenty for Us

Earlier this month, the New York City Department of Transportation announced plans to experiment with 20 mph zones -- replacing the city's default 30 mph speed limit in one pilot neighborhood. Whoever gets the first 20 mph treatment will see benefits that residents of British cities and towns have become increasingly familiar with in recent years.

In the UK, some 3 million people live in areas with 20 mph speed limits. The experience there shows that not only do slower speeds save lives, but lowering the limit to 20 mph improves the way local streets function in more ways than one. According to the 20's Plenty for Us campaign, the change has produced wide-ranging benefits, including less traffic, increased walking and biking, greater independence for children, the elderly and infirm, better health, and calmer driving conditions for motorists.

The mission of 20's Plenty For Us is to establish 20 mph as the default speed limit on all residential roads in the UK. I recently met up with the campaign's founder, Rod King, as well as other advocates in the towns of Warrington and York, to understand how the idea of slowing down traffic has spread so fast throughout the country.

Transcript Divas

Steve Hoyt-McBeth

I would love to see this in my hometown.

Right now, my understanding is that local authorities (in Oregon) don't have the right to change the speed limits on local streets below the designated 25 mph, unless it's a school zone. I know that our mayor has been considering adding this to the city's legislative agenda.
Andy

Wish it happened here too. I've been told by the traffic engineers that 30mph is the base limit, and they can make it lower for certain zones (schools or bad intersections) but they can't just change the city limit to 20. 20 would be a dream come true though. As someone that often drives with the "pace car" mentality (going 0-5mph under the speed limit all the time) I can attest to the many benefits of driving slower in these areas.
http://www.greenidea.eu Todd Edelman

Hooray!

It's interesting that the campaign does not prominently mention earlier campaigns and implementation of (slightly lower than) 20mph speed zones in cities in the Netherlands and Germany, amongst other places. I wonder if it because those are actually 30kph (!) limits (i.e. the number imagery would be confusing), or indeed to show that this is more British! (In other words, smartly avoiding "oh, those people are different and we cannot do that here" reactions).

Campaigners, activists and slow-oriented (rather than flow-oriented) city officials who want to make this happen in NYC (and beyond) ought to take heed of this last point, and give this a very New York-sounding spin and imagery.

To continue, the focus on equitable application of 20mph zones is great, but what really defines a "residential street"? I live on a 30-ish mph (50kph) traffic sewer in Berlin, and buildings and their residents are similar to those on the 30kph or slower side streets. Really, only our street is wider. So there is very much still a "speed class divide".

I hope that NYC's experimental 20mph streets include the possibility of legal contraflow cycling - playing off of Bike Snob's name for it, let's call this "farmed bike salmoning"

Finally, "20's Plenty" new Campaign Manager Anna Semlyen - featured in the video - is a rock star and I am sure they are proud to have her on board.
lee

Does that mean that a 20mph zone is effectively a 30mph zone, since presently a 30mph zone is effectively a 40mph zone?

everyone knows the unwritten rule of the 10mph of leeway before getting pulled over.

Prominent b.s. objections to the 20mph speed limit will be:
1. Increased congestion
2. increased pollution
3. noise pollution from honking
4. risk of road rage from impatient drivers
5. Arggh! I should be able to drive however I want!
http://www.livablestreets.com/people/urbanplanner45 Mike Lydon

If we are to achieve a successful 20 is plenty campaign in the US, a street's design speed, not just its posted speed, must reinforce the desired speed limit. Many of the examples in the video show just that.
gecko

Absolutely! 20 mph will be a major step improving safety and lots more.

And, 20 mph zones should stay effective 20 mph zones.
ChrisC

20 MPH is plenty for an urban street.

New York City is not like Vancouver or many European cities where there are no freeways cutting through the city. Every borough in New York City has freeways - even Manhattan up and down the East River. If you want to drive a longer distance and don't want to take forever to get there, you can take a highway for part or your route. There is no need to drive fast on city streets.
Bicycle Sheik

20 mph is plenty! It sounds so great, just rolls of the tongue.
Supp Suppinger

@ Lee point 5:
driving a car is not a human right!!!
to be able to life safe and healthy (no noise, no pollution, no speeding, nature, silence, etc) is one !!!
As we reduce cars, we should invest in public transportation! Some numbers: there used to be about 400.000 kilometres of railway tracks in the US, until they have been destroyed.
About 1 million people gets killed in car accidents each year worldwide. That´s more than any terrorism. So let´s start the war gainst this!
http://bikecarson.com Jeff Moser

Now that school is back in session, the morning route is full of speeding parents, running late, accelerating hard, and railing the corners. What's sad is that these same people probably don't feel comfortable letting their kids walk or ride to school...because the roads are unsafe! Bike lanes just aren't enough for the kids when they have to ride alongside 35mph traffic.
poncho

so why exactly can't cities make the speed limits slower than 30 mph? presumably there is some archaic high up rule that says this, could anyone point me to it? this point about much much lower pedestrian fatality at 20 mph would certainly be the key point to emphasize. then again our country values motorist convenience and entitlement to high speed travel over pedestrians and cyclists lives. so i'm doubtful it'll happen anytime soon.

i agree mike, if you have wide unobstructed streets but a 20 mph speed limit sign you know damn right it will be ignored. a road diet is essential in that situation or some other form of traffic calming.

the key is enforcing this. people in england are more polite and caring of others than here. in the US people get outraged if they have to apply their brakes or if they cant go 60 mph through a neighborhood. theyll just continue zipping through knowing they'll never get caught.
MJS

@poncho

"presumably there is some archaic high up rule that says this, could anyone point me to it?"

There is, and it's called the American Automobile Association and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety -- corporate lobby groups who seek to perpetuate car-culture and car-use at all costs.
poncho

so youre saying theres not a rule on the books, just powerful lobbying groups behind it?

and if so dont forget the trucking lobby.
gecko

@MJS,

At the beginning Kodak gave away free cameras to sell its film. Same would exist with oil except that automobiles are a little too expensive for that so the finance and insurance industries have part of the action.

If personal transport vehicles cost less than downpayments on cars finance would not be needed and currently $850 billion in credit is outstanding for the purchase of cars. Insurance would not be needed if transportation systems based on cars were safe.

Media and advertising also have a heavy dependency.

The oil industry is well set up do a lot better if it were to reinvent itself to address the dramatic changes that must happen if there is to be a future with its huge cash reserves and technologies as strategic advantages. And, the value of oil will likely go up for a long time in any case.
http://www.carfreebaltimore.com Mark

Lowering the posted speed will only do so much. The design speed also has to change, and until engineers stop designing roads for worse-case, end of the world, mass exodus from nuclear war scenarios, 35 will "feel" comfortable for drivers on residential/local streets.
Jim Weaver

Great video Rod. It makes a lot of sense. Environmentally it's a "no brainer" they say.
Best wishes, keep up the good work.
Jim
http://onlinetranscriptionservices.org/company.php Transcription Company

It's a good idea, but I just can't see this will happen.
http://crankmychain.com CrankMyChain!

Remove all the traffic flow devices, eg. stop signs and stop lights, and everybody will have to travel <17mph just so they can yield right of way.
http://crankmychain.com CrankMyChain!

oh, and great video! Thanks for producing it.
http://www.20splentyforus.org.uk Rod King

Hi

I would really like to thank you for all your comments. I thought it may be useful to enter a dialogue and perhaps explain a few additional points which may be of interest.

Democratic comunity debate

One of the most important aspects of 20mph limits is that they cannot be implemented in the UK with local city administration support. Hence there has to be a local democratic debate about whether to implement them. It becomes "community driven, but establishment endorsed".

This community debate on "how we share our roads" is an important factor in making comliance a lifestyle decision rather than simply a reaction to a road sign.

Driver benefits

Another important factor is the size of the area over which it is implemented. Drivers who live on a 20mph street themselves get the benefit for their children and family. An important "buy-in" when they drive through other peoples streets. This idea that where people are we slow down, is a vital paradigm shift in the way we relate to the roads. We are really debating whether our speed should be geared far more to the "presence of people" rather than the road width.

Research in the UK has shown that when implemented over a complete town then speeds on roads where previously the average was between 24 and 29 mph dropped by an average of 7mph. All of this being done by a "collective community commitment" to sharing our roads more equitably and a recognition that journey times are not influenced by "how fast you travel" but far more likely "how long you're stopped".

When speaking in towns throughout the UK at public meetings, I am always told that "our town is different". I usually reply by pointing out all the things which are similar rather than different.

If anyone has any specific questions to ask on the campaign in the UK then please do so, or email me directly at rod.k@20splentyforus.org.uk

My best regards and thanks to Streetfilms for all their work.

Rod King
20's Plenty for Us
http://www.ville30.org Patrice

Hello
We are also promoting 20 mph Cities (Ville 30 in french).
You'll find arguments and information about french cities experiences at http://www.ville30.org

Patrice
gecko

Patrice, re: http://www.ville30.org

Really nice website of 20 mph / 30 kph cities.

Very encouraging!

Thanks.
http://www.livablestreets.com/people/dornbiker Paul Dorn

Very inspiring. I really appreciated the commentator about how speed diminishes the quality of life for the non-driver, who doesn't believe he/she is having an impact.
Chris

I can see how this would be *really* nice if your neighborhood has it and others don't: You're likely to shift traffic over. I wonder what the effect feels like when huge areas have the limit, so you're still seeing as much traffic but it's slower.
http://www.greenidea.eu Todd Edelman

@Chris: If a whole huge area had it, there would be a mixture of slowing motorized traffic diverted to major roads and some mode shift from cars to other modes. Perhaps fewer trips in general. Delivery etc. vehicles would just go slower without additional measures.

It seems that anything with about a 20-25 mph or higher limit is a "road" as this makes motorized vehicles much faster than bikes and deadly in collisions to cyclists and pedestrians. Lower than 20-25 makes it a "street" as the space is safer but still primarily for vehicle movement (including bikes). If speeds go lower than 10 to 15 these spaces between buildings become places for all sorts of activities and not just movement.

But I think I a real or ultimate street is not just carfree, but one in which a baby can crawl across safely, and unsupervised. If you set this as the new standard it becomes really clear how much we have lost.
Albin Zatko

I wish to have 20 in Plymouth, UK too
Chris N

We need to learn from Germany, where residential areas are 30kmh by law, despite various states, different laws and greater communication problems than in the UK. Radical bicycle rider/protesters have seriously damaged campaigns to further improve this system. As such a perfect balance needs to be found to keep everybody happy. About 70% of drivers in Germany do not keep to the 30 limit, so there is still a lot of work to do. The most effective measures against speeders is to introduce measures which damage their cars, such as sleeping policemen and chicanes. Sadly cars appear to be more important than safety. I am a car driver, not a bike rider and I believe in keeping to the speed limits, as I could not live with knocking a child down, or anyone come to that.
http://www.facebook.com/rpvitiello Ryan Vitiello

Do you actually drive in Manhattan? The capacity of those roads are nowhere near what they need to be to get faster traffic off the avenues. Also the more you drive cars off of one road, the more you overload another.

The part I don't like about this study is they are talking about the "reduced traffic" on those roads, but that just means most of that traffic is not taking another road, thus making it more congested. You can't look at the individual roads, or even the residential roads in isolation from the rest of the city. That traffic is probably just going a different way now, and you may have simply moved the problem, or maybe even made it worse overall in the city.

This also completely ignores design speed and the "relaxing" of the requirement to have speed humps etc... is a bad idea. A posted speed limit is NOT a regulation device to restrict the speed of traffic, it is a guide sign to tell you what speed the road is designed to handle. Countless studies have showed if the posted speed limit does not match the design speed, Most people simply ignore it and drive the design speed anyway.A SMALL minority will drive the posted speed limit. You wind up with a great speed discrepancy then, and accident rates can actually go UP, form setting the speed limit too LOW! The average speed on highways in the US are about the same as in europe, even though the posted speed limits are lower, the design speeds are about the same.

When you have a place like say manhattan, you don't have room to have feeder roads, and main roads. The whole point of the street grid is to balance traffic load across the city. That is the reason some parts of the US have started banning cul-de-sacs, it overloads a few streets, and makes them dangerous, for the benefit of people on a dead end street. The worst bit of safety in manhattan is all the major tunnels and bridge crossings that come from highways, and just dump into surface streets across manhattan, and then go back to highways. You want to get cars off the surface streets, you need to build SOME kind fo highway route away from pedestrians to get across town. Many vehicles are not even trying to go to anything in manhattan, but are trying to get across it. their is only ONE highway that goes across manhattan. All the other proposed cross town roads were never built.
http://transcriptionplace.com/ Transcription Services

Very nice video.
KAI maroooooon

We need to learn from Germany and increase our motoway speed limit the Germans manage it with no problems
KAI maroooooon

Am I the only one who doesn't want a20mph speed limit its fine for schools at home time but a where else it's stupid it will just take hours to get anywhere it will be quicker taking the tortoise to work
Mel Globerman

How many of those advocating for lower speed limits have any knowledge, experience, or a traffic engineering education that qualifies them to advocate for an unreasonably low speed limit? Specifically the speed limit should be set at the safest speed that results in the lowest accident rate. The only way to do this is to follow the standards and their required methods in determining a speed limit. In Florida, the "Speed Zone Manual" states that it is "against the intent of the statute" to set a speed limit on "the basis of opinion by an individual or group"! This was placed in the manual to avoid "feel good" speed limits that are in fact not the safest speed!
susanmurphy

The United States can learn a lot from the 20's Plenty movement! Slower speed limits are imperative to the well-being of many neighborhoods. Yet we in the US think it is our God-given right to drive the "safest speed that results in the lowest accident rate"....even if it prevents the pedestrians, bicyclists and other neighbors from safely living in their neighborhood. It is ridiculous to think that a 20 mph speed limit through a small rural community (whether or not it is based on "the opinions of an individual or group" is somehow less safe than a faster speed limit that encourages speed and precludes the elderly and/or children from safely crossing a street. Madrid, New Mexico dropped the speed limit to 20 mph on NM 14 (from presumably 55 mph) and the resulting change in lifestyle is absolutely amazing. The UK is light years ahead of us in regards to relying on common sense and respecting the needs of a neighborhood instead of being forced to follow the dictates of regulatory agencies, traffic engineers and other ostensible experts.
Robert

I don't think it would be quicker to take a tortoise to work, however slow it would be to drive (I recognize the hyperbole there), but it might make cycling a viable and safer option, for instance.
The advocates are not saying that there are no places where a higher speed limit is appropriate, they're merely saying that on local streets, the speed limit should be 20 mph or less.
Robert

I must point out that 20 mph is safer for everyone than higher speeds- various studies show that the driver can see much better at that speed and simple physics show that crash energy to be dissipated at this speed is exponentially lower than higher speeds. It is safer. If you removed the fast motor vehicles from our streets, I would be shocked if the fatality rate on roads didn't collapse by something like 50% or more overnight.
Robert

They're not saying you cannot have a higher motorway speed limit in this video- because, really, how many houses have driveways feeding directly onto the motorway? How many people live directly on the motorway in this sense? If I were to guess, it would be precisely zero. They're merely saying this is what should be done on local streets.
Robert

We still have plenty of rail track mileage here in the US (~140,000 miles if I remember correctly), but 90+% of it carries no passenger trains- freight traffic only. Per capita freight rail usage in the USA is second worldwide only to Switzerland, and our freight rail is in good condition. The same cannot be said for passenger rail.
You're right: driving a car is a privilege, has been since the era of the Model T (when they discovered they needed to have licensing laws) and it will now always be a privilege. By contrast, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (which are hindered greatly by lots of speeding traffic) were spelled out in the US Declaration of Independence, and in other documents since then.
Robert

Building more roads won't fix any of those traffic problems; time and again, experience shows it will become worse after building them. The best thing to do would be a congestion charge-, to really alleviate traffic congestion long term, removing those freeways would help (look up San Francisco highway tearouts- namely the Embarcadero Freeway tearout with its resulting overnight traffic improvement).
Ryan Vitiello

NYC is not SF. The problem is actually reversed in Manhattan. There are no freeways to remove because they never built them! All that traffic is trying to use surface streets, and the traffic is not even trying to go to Manhattan. Drive down Canal Street in NYC. All the traffic on it is simply trying to go from NJ via the Holland tunnel across Manhattan to the Manhattan bridge into Brooklyn. If they buried that road like Boston's big dig, it would immediately improve that street for people that live there. Manhattan is not the city that's surrounded by suburbs. There are major parts of the NYC metro on either side of Manhattan that have no way to get between them other than going straight through Manhattan. Much of that traffic is also commercial. Unless you want stores to stop getting shipments of goods, and factories to stop getting supplies, something needs to be done. Unless you think all stores and factories should just close on long island.
Robert

I can only presume you mean that municipal council support is either not the only requirement or that said councils are hesitant to support it? Otherwise, I am afraid I do not understand what you are saying.
Dean

Cant Agree with this post enough! 20mph is just too slow. When its busy and congested people cant speed. I'd rather be looking out and driving safer than staring as my speedometer to not a get a fine.
Dean

What happened to common sense! 20 isn't plenty, it is only if you don't anywhere to be or a life to live. I would recommend rather than campaigning for ridiculous you go out and do something worth while.

Further more I would love to see unbiased and realistic supporting statistics. Statistically roads which are 70mph have the least accidents so shouldn't that be we should campaign for. (not really) Common sense says there is a happy medium in speeds 30mph is fine for residential areas. 60mph is fine for national and 70mph is slightly on the slow side 80mph would be safe but I'm not going to waste my life trying for that as it will have little impact.

Road safety has very little to do with speed. Its about time people understood about road safety and tried to make the roads better not just slower. Speed is one factor but if its unrealistic no one will stick the limit. Most 30's people go faster but there are not constant accidents. reducing to 20 will just mean people break the law more.

I strongly urge these groups to be more realistic and either learn to drive yourself to a higher standard where 20 isn't the max speed you feel safe to do or realise that other people have the ability to drive to a safe limit of 30 and not kill/injure anyone.
Dean

is this a serious comment? Road safety isn't only about speed. 20mph is just too slow and unrealistic. I recommend you take some driver training to understand what causes accidents.
Dean

"s someone that often drives with the "pace car" mentality (going 0-5mph under the speed limit all the time) "

You sir are the problem with modern times. causing congestion and frustration among other road users. Drive safe not selfish. I suggest taking some lesson in road safety to learn that speed is only one factor.

Streetfilms