Road safety campaigners have called for a radical plan by the City of Edinburgh council to impose a 20mph speed limit on the vast majority of the capital’s streets to be rolled out across all of Scotland’s urban areas.



The £2.2m scheme, the first of its kind in Scotland, will affect more than 80% of the city’s roads, with drivers able to travel at higher speeds only on a handful of “arterial” routes. The Scottish capital will effectively have 20mph as the default speed for its urban areas (the council’s interactive map is available here).

The council announced on Wednesday it is delaying its implementation by three months to give more time for objections to be heard: it will now begin to come into effect from April 2016 to allow residents to lodge objections, with the changes set to be completed over two years.

Opponents have decried the plans as a blanket approach to traffic management, but supporters say the new limit, which targets residential and shopping areas, will reduce collisions, prevent pedestrian fatalities and cut pollution in the city.



SLOW DOWN: Edinburgh city centre streets affected by new 20mph speed limits: only streets in orange and red will allow higher speeds. Photograph: City of Edinburgh council/Ordnance Survey

Rob King, director of the organisation 20’s Plenty For Us, said the reduced limit offered a number of benefits.

The thing that really makes it attractive is the number of boxes it ticks.

Of course, there are benefits in terms of road safety - particularly to cyclists, children, the elderly and disabled people. But it also makes the area much more pleasant to be in, and the consequences to drivers are minimal because journey time in cities is dictated by how often you stop rather than the speed you travel at.”

Edinburgh was one of several cities which had attempted to significantly reduce speeds, he added.

Edinburgh’s plans are ambitious in terms of the size of the area affected, but if you look at some of the UK’s iconic cities, London, Manchester, Liverpool, York, Oxford, Bath and others have all rejected the idea of default 30mph limit. And in Europe, cities like Paris, Barcelona, Milan and much of Norway and Sweden are adopting 30km/h (18.6mph) limits. There’s a growing consensus that 30mph just isn’t fit for purpose in a built-up area.

Campaign groups have called for other cities to follow Edinburgh’s example. In Glasgow, cycling organisation Go Bike has called for the city’s council to adopt a similar approach.

But King argued that a more effective approach would be for the Scottish Government to make 20mph limits the norm in towns and cities across the country.

At the moment you have a default limit of 30mph with signs indicating areas where you have to drive more slowly. If, instead, you make 20mph the standard and identify the areas where it’s acceptable to go faster, it means you don’t have to invest in so much new signage. It makes it cheaper to implement, and it’s also a more consistent approach.



Edinburgh’s council said the plans, drawn up based on feedback from residents, community groups and public transport operator Lothian Buses, would target streets shared by pedestrians, cyclists and motor traffic which had previously seen a high number of accidents.

On its website, the council also cited a 2010 study by the Department for Transport which found that 5.5% of accidents at 30mph resulted in pedestrian fatalities, compared with less than 1% of accidents at 20mph.



But the move has angered some road users in the capital. Jerry Deas, a member of the Edinburgh Taxi Association, said some cab drivers were worried about the effect the changes would have on their work.

One of our worries is that it will just put people off using taxis. It seems like a very big stick to solve something that’s a serious problem, but not a large problem. Edinburgh doesn’t have a huge number of road casualties. We also worry about the fact that this will be a 24-hour measure. A lot of our members work overnight when the roads are clear and there are no pedestrians about. In those circumstances it’s not dangerous to go over 20mph, and if we’ve got inebriated passengers they might not like the fact that we’re driving so slowly.

A small group of cab drivers had recently held a procession through the city’s Old Town, calling on the council to scrap the proposals, he added - although a council spokesperson said that only around 11 vehicles had taken part in the protest.



Neal Greig, policy and research director at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, also expressed concern at the move. He argued that the proposals amounted to a city-wide limit that didn’t address specific problematic roads:

It’s a blanket approach. On some streets, 20mph is a speed that you might aspire to rather than need to limit yourself to. But there are others where it looks and feels safer to go over 20, and that’s potentially confusing because drivers take their cue from the environment. If you look at the evidence, what seems to work is measures like speed bumps and narrower roads. Covering whole areas in one 20mph limit and putting up some signs is a cheap way to do it. We’d rather see investment made in dealing with the streets where there will be the most benefit.

Another point of conflict is the environmental effect of a reduced speed limit. Those in favour argue that lower speeds would result in a freer flow of traffic, reducing the amount of braking and accelerating that can contribute to urban pollution. But opponents contend that many vehicles don’t run efficiently at 20mph, which could result in greater concentrations of exhaust fumes.

But while the debate in Edinburgh continues, 20mph limits elsewhere in the country have received backing from the Scottish Government. Transport minister Derek McKay said: