The Welsh parliament has passed a law bringing down the speed limit on all residential roads and busy streets to 20 mph (30 km/h). Not everyone is pleased.
  • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • ByteWizard@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

      Bingo. But they don’t care who they hurt in the process. “Fuck cars = fuck lives”

      • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Not in the slightest, which is part of my point. It’s going to slow down cars and frustrate people, while not having the intended benefit.

        • theplanlessman@feddit.ukEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          From the Welsh government’s FAQ again: “The evidence from around the world is very clear – reducing speed limits reduces collisions and saves lives.” The intended benefit is to reduc the risk of collisions and to reduce injuries in the case of collisions. Lowering the speed limit will result in both of those things, and so we will be seeing the intended benefit.

          • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            A road with a large number of accidents over the last few years is one that campaigners have been begging the Welsh government to fix, but it’s been ignored, and is one of only five roads in the area to stay at 30mph. It’s also a road that the local government has been using as a showpiece to say that they’re working on transportation problems.

            This whole exercise feels more like they’re trying to show that they’re doing something, rather than actually doing something useful.