I trust that this'll be the last post on 20 mph, for now.
After a 70 mph dash, the senedd petition against 20 mph has slowed to a 20 mph crawl. This has still passed 410,000 signatures and still rising. Demonstrating the strength of feeling, the next strongest petition had collected a mere 12,000. Both are over-optimistic in their intent, I'm afraid. There's more chance of a railway between north and south Wales (the second petition) than rescinding 20 mph. And the railway is nothing other than a pipe dream.
There have been as many 20 mph signatures in Clwyd West than for north-south rail in the whole of Wales.
Lôn Spiriol Isaf
Traffic speeds on Sunday 17th were generally at 20 mph. Many motorists stuck to it. We'd go as far as suggesting about 80 per cent of them. And, yes, it was busy in the afternoon. It seemed people were trying it out and perhaps even a little fearful of being caught. As the week progressed, so motorists have become more confident that they won't get nabbed. And perhaps more frustrated. We think traffic speeds have therefore begun to increase and quite alarmingly so. Those initially at 20 mph have nudged their speed up to 25 mph and more. We also think there are fewer exceeding 30 mph than a week ago but neither are many sticking absolutely to 20 mph.
We cannot claim our handful of 'surveys' to be scientific but by the middle of the week to yesterday this is what we think has happened. We picked sections of main roads only, where possible without features that might slow traffic: away from too many junctions and parked cars, for example. And we avoided peak and school times. In our estimation:
- About 15 per cent of drivers seemed to be running at 20 mph.
- We'd say a large proportion (about two-thirds) were at or about 25 mph, with some of these (perhaps many) nearer but not quite over 30 mph
- About a fifth (18 per cent) were over 30 mph, with over half of these blatantly ignoring any semblance of 20 mph.
Tags:
Traffic