ABD Local co-ordinator: No-one at present. Join us
October 2010
20mph Speed Limits
York City Council is considering 20mph speed limits. This is despite the council's 20mph speed limit page admitting that police do not routinely enforce 20mph speed limits. There are several reasons for this:
- Roads that genuinely need a 20mph limit are so narrow that there is usually no room for a speed camera van.
- Roads that genuinely need a 20mph (or lower) limit are generally self-enforcing. Drivers adopt such speeds anyway.
- The number of vehicles using such roads is low and the police cannot justify the resources.
- If the police prosecute lots of people for travelling at say 25mph, they will meet widespread derision.
The ABD advocates option 1. Speed limits must be appropriate to the particular road. The imposition of blanket 20mph speed limits for political reasons does not reduce accidents, and incites contempt for the law — they actually encourage drivers to ignore other speed limits that may be reasonable.
Much of the support for 20mph speed limits is being driven by a lobby group called "20's plenty", not by the people of York.
If you live in York, be sure to tell the council your opinion.
The Ring Road
York has two ring roads:
- a southern one — the A64 — which was built properly as a dual carriageway with grade seperated junctions (shame they didn't extend it to Scarborough but that's another story)
- a northern one — the A1237 — which was built on the cheap as a single carriageway
The northern one can't cope with the volume of traffic. This comes as no surprise to anyone except the bureacrats responsible for this inane decision. Traffic jams on the northern ring road are often so bad that traffic diverts through the city to avoid them — an insane situation that underlines the incompetence of road planning in Britain.
Parking
We don't need to tell you about the parking problems in York, because the local paper is already doing a sterling job, see below for a complete guide to their articles about the council's attempt to wage war on the people who voted for them:
Elsewhere on the ABD website:
External Links:
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