On Tuesday, 16 September 2014, something out of the ordinary happened in Croydon. A debate took place in the Council chambers on the merits of introducing a measure that would make our streets safer, cut the number and severity of casualties and slash the costs of bloody incidents that in 2013 cost us dearly, in both human and financial terms.
That magic bullet is 20 mph.
According to campaign group, 20’s Plenty for us, other London boroughs, such as Camden, Islington and the City of London have adopted 20mph as their speed limit on all their roads. Hackney Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark have voted to follow suit and, subject to consultation, Haringey will join them. Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich are adopting policies to make 20mph the limit on residential roads. There are similar developments around the country.
What’s in it for Croydon?
Right now, our borough has the dubious distinction of having more people die last year due to what New York City transport officials label “traffic violence”, than were murdered.
Using the UK Department for Transport’s method of putting a price “on all aspects of the valuation of casualties, including the human costs, which reflect pain, grief, suffering; the direct economic costs of lost output and the medical costs associated with road accident injuries”, we can calculate that last year the “value” of the 13 people killed and 1079 hurt (of which 58 had “serious injuries”), was in excess of £61 million pounds.
If this carnage were down to drugs or gangs, we could expect universal condemnation and calls for swift and decisive action. Unfortunately, because it is happening on our roads, a proven means of tackling this crisis has met in some political quarters with, at best, suspicion and cynicism, at worst, outright hostility and half-truths.
In preparation for the meeting and its main agenda item, the chair of the council’s Scrutiny Committee, Councillor Sean Fitzsimons (Labour, Addiscombe) travelled with council officers to Portsmouth. This is a city seen as comparable in size and population to Croydon, and provided them with the opportunity to meet local council officials to see what impact their scheme, introduced in stages since 2007, has had. According to the resulting report by the Head of Highways & Parking, Steve Iles, it has led to a modest reduction in overall average speeds and a 21% decrease in road casualties.
A much-longer term study was referred to at the meeting by campaigners in favour of a reduced limit. This was the research published in 2009 in the British Medical Journal, “Effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London, 1986-2006: controlled interrupted time series analysis”. What this detailed 20-year analysis found was that 20mph zones were associated with a reduction in casualties and collisions of around 40%. Specifically:
● numbers of killed or seriously injured children were reduced by half
● injuries to pedestrians were reduced by just under a third
● a reduction in casualties among cyclists
● casualties involving riders of powered two wheeled vehicles declined by just under a third
● those of car occupants fell by half
Numerous organisations support 20mph: AgeUK, Brake, British Medical Association, National Institute for Clinical Excellence, Public Health England, Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the UK Health Forum, to name but a few. And it’s not just them. The Department for Transport reported in July 2013 that 72% of the public are either in favour or strongly in favour of 20mph being the speed limit in residential streets; only 11% were against.
Surprisingly, the RAC’s 2014 Report on Motoring said that 64% of Londoners agree that ‘20 is plenty’ in streets where people live, and that the majority of motorists are generally happy with a 20mph speed limit in urban area zones.
Councillors heard presentations of evidence from a number of interested parties, including 20’s Plenty for Us, Alliance of British Drivers, Croydon Cycling Campaign, Institute of Advanced Motoring, Living Streets, the Metropolitan Police and local man Peter Morgan. Questions were raised and answered and points made. By all accounts, it was a well-chaired if marathon meeting, and by the end councillors resolved to take the matter forward through the relevant internal channels and move towards public consultation.
It’s not all plain sailing. Conservative councillors seemed keen that individual streets should be able to opt out of 20mph, but council officers pointed out that this would lead to an impractical and undesirable “patchwork” effect. Some roads are likely to remain outside the 20mph, it being felt this would “impact severely on local transport and movement of goods and services” (ignoring that main roads under Transport for London control in, for example, the City of London, have been made 20mph).
And then there is the important distinction between zones and limits. A 20mph zone is where the speed limit is enforced through various physical measures; indeed, the local police representative pointed out, in such zones the legally enforced limit is still 30. A 20mph limit is a system reliant on speed limit signs being observed by drivers or enforced by the police – it is much cheaper to introduce.
Previously, police forces around the country had indicated that they would do little, if anything, to enforce these lower speed limits. However, following intervention in late 2013 by Transport Minister Norman Baker and members of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, the Association of Chief Police Officers signalled a get tougher approach, and this is now being put into effect. For example, in August 2014, more than 80 drivers were caught speeding in 20mph zones across the Avon and Somerset Police force area.
Reaction in the borough has been interesting. At the council meeting, Labour councillors reminded each other that 20mph had been a manifesto commitment. The Conservatives were much more cautious at the time, wondering if the money to fund this – estimated by some at £300k – could be better spent on other things (contrast that with the £3 million recently spent on removing cycle lanes for more car parking in a newly paved South End that has no proper pedestrian crossings at its junction with the High Street).
Somewhat worryingly, Cllr Sara Bashford, Deputy Chair of the Scrutiny Committee and now joint Deputy Leader of Croydon Conservatives, has since commented on her blogon the party’s website that it would cost “£1.5million to make Croydon a 20 MPH zone”. This is at odds with the report to the Committee, which concluded “in summary, this means the total costs over a 10 year period for implementing such a scheme would be in the region of £100,000”.
The Croydon Advertiser declared in an editorial that the “20mph zones plan for Croydon is a no-brainer”.
Perhaps the most intense response came from the United Kingdom Independence Party. In a series of tweets, seemingly from Winston McKenzie and local UKIP groups, Twitterati were told that “it is wrong to make traffic go as slow as 20” (TfL say the average motor traffic speed in London is less than that) and that it “threatens major towns” (no evidence supplied). In an astonishingly cynical and disrespectful outburst, “Winston” declared that “We know that 2 of the 13 deaths were on Coulsdon Rd where pedestrians just walked out into the road recklessly”. This was their way of describing how Julie Maudsley, 51, and Robert Prescott, 38, died in 2013, close to the junction with Cearn Way. In fact, at their inquests, the Coroner, Dr Roy Palmer, said he would consider writing a Prevention of Future Deaths report to get Croydon Council to take action at the spot, which is close to two bus stops but has no proper crossing facility. It was said at the inquests that neither driver was travelling above the speed limit of 30 miles per hour – perhaps a tragically ironic way of making the case for 20mph.
Through a series of tweets from Peter Staveley, the UKIP activist for Croydon Central, it turns out that “all twitter accounts in LB Croydon (except @UKIPCroydonCent) are run by Peter Morgan. Funnily enough, Peter appeared at the Scrutiny Committee meeting without revealing his party political credentials, and that he is also a local and regional organiser for the Association of British Drivers. Perhaps hw was shy about this, given that their Roger “bonkers” Lawson was also presenting “evidence” to councillors.
Let’s be clear though, 20 mph is not sufficient. We need Croydon to go further by adopting a Vision Zero strategy which has seen Stockholm have a third of the road death rate that we had last year in our town. The country that, through Volvo, pioneered safer cars for the world is now leading the way on making streets safer for all, not just those inside cars. We also need “space for cycling”, so that people who would cycle if it were safe and easy for them can have real transport choice, and are not by limited by car dependency and supremacy.
The concluding words go to Jonathan Swift. “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” Sadly, it is all to evident that there are some dimwits driving the politics (and their vehicles) on Croydon’s roads. May good sense and the genius of “20’s plenty” prevail.
An edited version of this post first appeared in Inside Croydon on 22 September 2014
@0 is plenty fast enough and we need to campaign against motorists getting too close to cyclists.