Another email to councillors re 20 mph

After news of Portmouth planning a city-wide 20 mph I emailed all Gloucestershire County councillors and locally some District councillors and officers to tell them about Portsmouth - see more here re Portsmouth and my blog item on 2nd June (click here to also get previous correspondence and stuff re 20 mph).

Photo: 20mph at Callowell School with signs designed by local children

As I've said on many occasions travelling more than 20mph is inappropriate on many of our roads - the idea in Portsmouth is to promote a culture of tolerance and respect for children and the elderly in particular for whom it is their living space. There are many other advantages (see a recent letter of mine here).

The Portmouth scheme shows the importance of phasing in the system area by area, with support from local residents, and without the cost and inconvenience of road humps - there are better ways than humps to calm traffic. Its about reclaiming our streets as shared space, where people make eye contact with each other and can acknowledge each other as equal human beings.

The reaction from Portsmouth residents of areas where a 20mph speed limit is in place has been overwhelmingly in favour. I would argue that Gloucester city centre, Cheltenham centre and indeed even town centres like Stroud should automatically be 20 mph. Where this occurs in some countries like Norway the culture can be changed.

I was interested to see that the Speed Limits Bill supported by Lib Dems and others incl our local MP David Drew is due for a second reading on June 29 2007. See more here about that.

Anyhow it will be interesting to see any responses from councillors - at the moment I've only had a few questions to clarify what the Portsmouth scheme entails - have to say though that so far the County do not seem so interested - indeed todays SNJ has an article noting that Nailsworth Town Council's hope for a 20 mph on the rat-run Park Road has been dashed - yet anyone who knows this road (I used to live in Nailsworth) knows something needs to be done about speeding cars there.