I’ve mentioned before that Nottingham City Council (NCC) seems to be out to ruin this city. Nottingham is filthy. There is litter everywhere, the roads are full of potholes, and white lines are barely visible on most of them. Designs for new office buildings only seem to be acceptable if they’re submitted in wax crayon by local children, and no new building is permitted to bear even the slightest resemblance to any previously approved design, even if the two are going to be adjacent (or even connected) to one another. Symmetry is out, and the non-glass parts are painted in light colours which look dirty after the first storm (magnolia seems to be the favourite choice), and which start to peel after a year or so. Many have gaudy plastic facades designed to fade dramatically on first exposure to sunlight or pigeon shit. The preferred asymmetry provides ample nesting space for pigeons, who move in before the tenants do. Buildings are only let to companies which allow their employees to stick crap all over the windows on the inside. And at least 80% of any new builds must be student accommodation.
But this still isn’t enough for them.
A while back I wrote about the NCC’s proposals for a “blanket” 20mph speed limit on urban roads. I made the point that 20mph is far too slow in most places.
In the absence of any clear reason for introducing them so widely, NCC came up with the following idiotic list:
- streets more cycle and pedestrian friendly
- greater community ownership of streets and parks
- improved air quality
- safer road junctions
- reduced traffic noise
- minimal effect on journey times
- potential reduction in number and severity of accidents
As you can see, in NCC’s eyes 20mph limits are pretty much able to turn base metals into gold. In reality, these reasons range from the stupid (i.e. “community ownership”) to the downright wrong (driving at 20mph instead of 30mph may result in 8% fewer emissions, but the car is present for 30% more time; and journey times take 30% longer). However, at the time it was merely “a proposal” – which is council prat-speak for something which has already been decided, and it was only after they realised that they’d better do it properly that “a formal consultation” was arranged. I duly completed this and sent it back.
Before I continue, let’s understand that 20mph speed limits directly outside schools make perfect sense. But virtually anywhere else – and I include many roads quite near schools, and certainly sixth form colleges (where the attendees are technically adults) and shopping areas – they are completely unnecessary. They’re yet another manifestation of the nanny-state mentality of the very naive people who worm their way into politics and highly-paid council jobs.
What I didn’t realise when I completed the consultation was that identical ones tailored by area were being conducted in many other locations. More on that later.
Now, no one in their right mind – and especially if they drive a car – would ever agree to a blanket 20mph speed limit on roads. On the other hand, the kind of people whose brains turned to mush the instant they became parents, those who don’t (or can’t) drive, and certain people with a spandex fetish who favour two wheels would quite probably agree to it without question. It would not surprise me in the least to discover that the council deliberately targeted these groups when it sent out its consultations, but even if it didn’t I would be extremely dubious about the council’s claims concerning the response. As I say, they had already decided to introduce 20mph speed limits, and even if 100% of respondents were against the idea it wouldn’t have changed things.
Bearing this in mind, here is the council response sent out a few weeks ago announcing the “result”:
Dear Sir / Madam,
Having provided feedback as part of the formal consultation process previously I am now writing to inform you of the decision made by the Portfolio Holder of Planning and Transportation regarding the 20mph speed limit proposals for the [named] area.
The consultation period for these proposals ran from the 1st November 2013 and concluded on the 22nd November 2013 and the advertisement ran from the 15th October 2014 to the 12th November 2014. All comments and objections received during this time were forwarded to the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation to enable a final decision to be made on the future of the scheme. All of this information has now been considered by Councillor Urquhart and on balance it was decided that the scheme be approved and implemented accordingly.
All A and B roads in the area will remain at their existing speed limits. This includes the [named road], [named road], [named road] and [named road]. Please see the enclosed plan which shows these roads highlighted in black. Furthermore all private roads will retain their existing limits. Please be assured that we will continue to monitor accidents on all roads within the area and consider additional road safety measures where appropriate.
All remaining roads on the attached plan will be included in the 20mph speed limit.
Yours sincerely,
The Road Safety Team
Just to clarify: the “Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation” is Jane Urquhart. I’ve mentioned her before, and I will mention her again when I get on to the subject of the tram and other road works in subsequent articles.
The idiots had already started introducing 20mph speed limits before the consultation was even initiated, and I am certain that it was negative public reaction to these suddenly springing up which made them decide that they’d better “consult” over it. They started putting in those traffic monitoring devices on all the roads where they planned to cut the limits. The supposed purpose of this was to try and fit real data into the RoSPA guidelines for where 20mph limits are recommended, one of which is that roads should already have average speeds below a certain level. The irony here was that the council’s complete and utter incompetence over the tram extension and “ring road improvements” had already caused virtual gridlock throughout the city, and any average speed measured now was completely non-representative of normal traffic flows. Many of the roads being monitored were at a standstill for large parts of the day during the monitoring period, whereas previously they had been free-flowing. In summary:
- the council was going to introduce a blanket 20mph limit anyway
- following criticism, it set out to retrospectively obtain data to support that decision
- the data were flawed since they did not represent normal traffic flows
- the council made the the decision that it was going to make in the first place
I was only aware of the changes in my area, and I hadn’t allowed for the size of the “blanket” the imbeciles were planning to throw over the city. Having ignored (I am sure) true public response, as of March 2015 it is impossible to drive for more than a few minutes without encountering a 20mph zone. And this is where the unforeseen problems arise.
First of all, drivers only discover that a road in any area outside the one they were “consulted” about has a 20mph limit imposed by driving on it – and only then if they notice the signs. For someone like me, who (and I don’t mean this to sound big-headed) is an experienced professional driver, it comes as a bloody great surprise to turn into a road I have driven hundreds of times before only to discover it is now 20mph, and I will not disguise the fact that I have been caught out several times – including on lessons – where roads that were 30mph in the morning (and had been for the last 30 years) were suddenly 20mph in the afternoon. God only knows how other drivers will handle it (and judging by how many of them overtake me and my pupils every day, we have a good idea on what the answer to that one might be).
Secondly, their stupid “blanket” has a lot of holes in it. If you take North Gate/Haydn Road in Basford/Carrington/Sherwood as an example (a single straight road about a mile long), you encounter a 20mph sign as you turn in, a 30mph sign at the first junction, a 20mph sign a few hundred metres after the second junction, and a 30mph sign at the end. If you turn off into any side street while you’re on the 30mph stretch then you encounter a 20mph sign. A more complex route on several roads – turning left, right, left, right, and so on – can easily present a speed limit change at virtually every turn. It is dangerous beyond belief.
Then there is the appalling inconsistency of the signage. NCC – being peopled by idiots similar to those I used to work for – appears to have separate highways departments for putting up the big signs (at the start of a zone), putting up the posts they’re fitted to, putting up the small repeater signs (which appear throughout the zone), and for removing the old ones. In almost every case they erected the repeater signs before the main ones, and they didn’t take the old ones down immediately. On The Wells Road, for example, the old 30mph sign just after Ransom Road remained for several weeks after all the others had been put up (and it might still be there, as I haven’t been that way for a while). Similarly, on many roads it was weeks before the main signs went up after the repeaters had. There was absolutely no coordination and no haste. The Wells Road example (and it wasn’t the only one I encountered) caused massive confusion for my pupils on several lessons until I realised what they had done.
The “blanket” – however many holes it has in it – is huge, and the number of new signs required must run into the thousands. Apart from the cost, and the already mentioned confusion for drivers at the myriad changes on a once simple journey, the chances of there being a signage error are now that much greater.
To the best of my knowledge, the police have said that they will not enforce these limits. They hardly have enough personnel to enforce the existing ones, so covering these 20mph ones is pretty much a non-starter. But if they did, the danger created by having drivers forever on guard for the next change would be enormous.
The icing on the cake is that, certainly at the present, the “blanket” policy only applies to the city area – the boroughs haven’t applied it. Now, don’t think that “city” means a small circle in the middle and “borough” means a bigger one outside. Nottingham’s boundaries are far from symmetrical, and Clifton – which is about 5 miles from the centre – falls within the city limits, whereas West Bridgford – half the distance away from the centre – is part of a borough. Furthermore, unless you have a suitable map, you would never know where one boundary ends and another begins, as they are political and not geographical. None of West Bridgford’s side streets are marked as 20mph, but virtually all the city ones (and many of the larger roads) are. This detail means that the chance of meeting multiple or confusing speed limits on a short journey is higher still.
Then we come back to the matter of 20mph as a speed in its own right. It is too slow. It is not easy to adhere to it in the first place on a wide and clear road – even if you’re trying – and especially not over extended distances. If you drop below it by a couple of mph, half of the drivers in the city are trying to get past or sounding their horns at you (and although they are still in the wrong, you can understand their frustration). If the police ever did enforce it, they would catch a lot of people who weren’t actually “speeders”, but who were still technically speeding. Assuming that the they followed the ACPO guidelines of 10% + 2mph, a speed of 24mph would get you a ticket, but from what I can gather Nottinghamshire police do not use the ACPO guidelines. That means even 22mph could get you a ticket, points, and perhaps a ban if you’re a new driver who has already got one violation against your name. I have no doubt that at some stage we will see the tap on this particular cash cow turned on, especially since very few people appear to be making even the slightest attempt to stick to 20mph in these areas. NCC will be anxious to avoid having to do a u-turn over its policy, so enforcement is the next logical step for them.