Letters: Bring on the 20mph default speed limit in residential areas

Thanks to the Sunday Herald for its support for the bill being proposed by Mark Ruskell to make 20mph rather than 30mph the default speed limit in residential areas (Revealed, public overwhelmingly back 20mph in Scottish towns and Twenty definitely is plenty, News and Editorial, August 13). As a member of a group campaigning for road and cycle safety in the Greater Glasgow area, I have been involved in promoting 20mph. Over the last two or three years we have engaged in conversations on this subject with Glasgow City councillors and officials. While it is clear that both the politicians and council officers agree that 20mph is desirable and an aspiration for the city, the implementation of 20mph has been very slow, and at current rates will take three to four decades to complete. The reasons are complex and inevitably hinge around money, but also the ambiguous possible interpretations of the existing rules for implementing 20mph zones.

Mark Ruskell’s ongoing consultation on a 20mph Members Bill is thus to be warmly welcomed. By changing urban 20mph from a local to a national issue it will provide clarity on the criteria that must be satisfied before 20mph areas can be created, particularly in obviating the common requirement for traffic-calming measures. The latter, while locally useful, should never be used as a blanket speed reduction measure. To install it on all roads would be both unwanted by drivers and a huge waste of money. Simple changes in signage cost only a tiny fraction of traffic-calming features. In the event that Mr Ruskell is successful in his bill, driver behaviour will change as they will no longer be confronted by a complex patchwork of 20mph zones within a nominally 30mph town or city. The uniformity of speed limit will also make policing easier, particularly when the message gets out that speeding at 30mph is breaking the speed limit by 50 per cent and thus likely to result in significant driver penalties.