Welsh 20mph default limit remains unpopular after first year, despite safety evidence

THE FIRST YEAR of the 20mph default speed limit on Welsh restricted roads in urban areas would make an interesting research project for a student in transport – but equally for one on a journalism or media studies course. By the end of those twelve months, there is emerging evidence of a large improvement in road safety – with corresponding savings for the healthcare sector – but the public’s general impression seems to be that the change in speed limit has been an unwelcome fiasco.

Despite the frequent accusations that the new limit is a ‘blanket’ one, it was actually designed to be applied flexibly. Local authorities were, and still are, free to except sections of road from the 20mph default limit. Those sections received 30mph reminder signs, while 20mph reminders on pre-existing 20mph were removed. ‘Restricted roads’ are generally regarded as those which are 30mph by default, usually in built-up areas.

While this was theoretically a pragmatic approach, it did depend on the 22 Welsh highway authorities who manage local roads running effectively with the ball that was thrown them. The result was a wide variety in the percentage of restricted roads which were excepted, with North Wales councils generally more reluctant to except than elsewhere.

This was despite the government and Transport for Wales providing, and refining, an exceptions process tool for local authorities. The tool took into account the proximity of each road to schools, hospitals and community centres, as well as the number of residential and retail properties with an address along the road. Roads which did not meet any of the criteria should then usually be candidates for exemption from the 20mph default limit.

The other much misunderstood core fact about the scheme is that it was initiated by general political agreement within the Senedd back in 2017 (see timeline overleaf), but has since been the subject of highly politicised position-taking.

By now, drivers have become accustomed to the 20mph limit, but some still organise protests, and on 24 September the Conservatives tabled a motion in the Senedd calling on the government to repeal the default 20mph limit and work with local authorities to deliver a targeted approach (the motion was defeated). A YouGov survey in August found 72% of respondents opposing the 20mph default limit, including 50% “strongly” opposing it, while only 24% supported it.

One of the many reasons for the prevailing attitude is that negative stories inevitably gain more traction in the media – in both its on line social networking and traditional forms – than positive ones. When the first evidence was published of a dramatic road safety improvement following the change in the default limit, journalists were invited to an online off-the-record briefing with officials. Only two journalists took up the invitation: a WalesOnline reporter and me. The story consequently received relatively little coverage.

A similar briefing shortly before the speed limit changed had attracted a large crowd of journalists, from UK and Welsh news organisations, mostly preoccupied with writing about the 20mph enforcement and fines.

Crucially, there was a time lag between the 20mph negative and positive outcomes: slower journeys were immediately apparent when the default limit changed on 17 September, but it wasn’t until nine months later in June this year that police statistics revealed a 32% reduction in casualties on restricted roads in Wales in the final quarter of 2023 (compared with the same quarter of 2022). In the intervening nine months, the narrative of negativity had become ingrained, and 470,000 people had signed a petition calling for the default limit to revert to 30mph.

Ministers and officials then had to caveat their welcoming of the casualty reduction by acknowledging that the statistics were for only one quarter, whereas conclusions would usually be based on three-year ‘before’ and ‘after’ periods – a long time to wait for a good news story.

However, the first quarter’s statistics looked less like a potential blip when Welsh police statistics for the first quarter of 2024 were published, showing a 26.1% reduction in casualties on restricted roads. The combined statistics for the two quarters – approximately equating to the first half-year of the 20mph default limit – reveal a 29.4% reduction in casualties (compared with the same quarters a year earlier) on restricted roads and a 17.3% reduction on all roads. Collisions data shows a similar trend: 26.8% lower on restricted roads and 17.2% lower on all roads.

Also of note is that across these police statistics, there has meanwhile been a trend of small reductions in collisions and casualties on roads with limits of 40mph and higher, when comparing with the same periods a year earlier. Although it is too early to draw firm conclusions, it is arguably already apparent that the policy has not introduced a problem of people driving recklessly on non-restricted roads to recover minutes they’ve lost on 20mph roads, as some opponents of the new default limit had claimed.

The police statistics strongly indicate that there are people alive in Wales who would be dead by now had the default limit not changed to 20mph, and many more who are currently fit and healthy who would otherwise have suffered injury causing paralysis, brain damage or numerous other life-changing conditions. However, the stories of those people obviously cannot be told. Nobody can appear at a press conference and give thanks for not having been killed by a vehicle at a specific place and time, thanks to the 20mph default limit.

Where a novel medical treatment has saved, extended or transformed someone’s life, it is not uncommon for the beneficiary to tell his or her story and express gratitude, thereby cementing the validity of the treatment and the work of the professionals involved. Conversely, this identifiability can be used by campaigners to increase pressure on healthcare bodies to approve or fund drugs, treatments or procedures. The beneficiaries of the 20mph policy are not there to tell a similar story

In fact, however, one driver did come forward. In August 2023 that motorist revealed that he had avoided hitting a 12-year-old boy in St Dogmael’s, Pembrokeshire, because he was complying with the village’s 20mph pilot speed limit in April 2023. The child’s mother said the driver had stopped just a foot away from her son, having been “able to brake and basically save his [the boy’s] life and not hit him because he was doing 20mph”. It is rare indeed for such a specific instance of the safety benefit of 20mph to be identifiable, and even when it is, the people are involved are unlikely to go public about it.

Lee Waters was the minister in charge of bringing in the scheme until he quit

During the nine-month wait for the first police statistics, the then Transport Minister Lee Waters, a key architect and proponent of the scheme, and the Welsh Government leadership generally had to respond to the barrage of negativity. It did so by acknowledging that mistakes were made in the implementation process, ordering a review led by specialist transport and traffic consultant Phil Jones, and producing new guidance to give local authorities more confidence to except sections of local road from the default limit without fear of legal repercussions. A “listening exercise” over the summer enabled thousands of residents to give their opinions to local authorities and the government.

Waters had by then gone as minister in charge, resigning ahead of the arrival of a new First Minister when Mark Drakeford stood down in March this year. Waters had suffered considerable criticism in the media, in online comment, and in the Senedd, and the issue was part of the politics of choosing Drakeford’s successor. In the event, the new First Minister Vaughan Gething was elected but only lasted a few months before Eluned Morgan replaced him, but new Transport Minister Ken Skates has held the transport portfolio under both.

The opinion polling a year ago that indicated a majority against the scheme.
Source: https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/majority-of-welsh-voters-now-oppose-new-20mph-speed-limit/

The Jones review, reporting back in May, noted that Swansea, Edinburgh and Bristol all had comparable proportions of restricted roads limited to 20mph. Smaller market towns which the team had analysed in Oxfordshire and the Scottish Borders had retained only a few 30mph roads, and the smaller towns reviewed in Wales were mostly not dissimilar. This indicated that Wales did not need extensive changes to bring speed limits in line with other places where wide-area 20mph limits apply.

In some places “low-cost physical adjustments could be made to justify/support an increase in the default 20mph speed limit to 30mph, or to modify the road characteristics to signal that this is a 20mph environment”. For example, where most criteria support an increase to 30mph on a section of road except for the presence of a secondary school with its entrance fronting onto the road, “consideration could be given to relocating the school entrance to a side road and providing a protected pedestrian crossing on the main road”.

Safe segregated provision and protected crossings for active travel were also suggested as potential measures to reinstated 30mph limits without adverse impacts. The report also suggested – as had bus operators long before September 2023 – that new bus priority measures be implemented on certain routes to counterbalance the impact of new 20mph limits on bus journey times.

Changes to speed limits – which could include some locally requested 20mph limits where they were not introduced last year – are being consulted on over the coming months and intended to be implemented locally by next spring. Whether coincidentally or not, in March police chiefs will review whether to reduce the threshold for enforcement from 26mph to the more usual 24mph (10% above the speed limit + 2mph).

Having driven a car, or been a passenger in a road vehicle, in all regions of Wales this year, my perception is that most sections of road where the speed limit reduced to 20mph last September align with the aims of the Senedd’s policy on 20mph. However, there are numerous sections where there is no obvious benefit from 20mph being in place instead of 30mph, for example where the same road has a 30mph speed limit further along and there are no significant changes in road width, layout of footways, traffic volume and density of adjoining buildings.

In some places, this gives the impression of laziness by the local authority, which simply replaced 30mph entry signs with 20mph ones in September 2023, instead of erecting new 20mph entry signs at the start of the built-up area and placing 30mph reminder signs in the intervening section.

Those sections of road could prove useful in allowing local authorities to be seen to put the speed limit back to 30mph in the next few months at certain locations, while leaving most of the 20mph limits in place. This could partially placate criticisms about the blanket nature of the scheme without reintroducing safety risks.

However, Lee Waters, the government’s transport minister when the default speed limit changed, is concerned that the messaging around 20mph remains negative and that people believe the scheme is being unwound. “We’re still hearing about how imperfect it was, how unpopular it is,” he says.

“I’ve had taxi drivers say to me, ‘It’s all changing in September so we don’t need to bother sticking to 20’, and that’s the wrong message – but that’s the message that they’re hearing.”

He fears that the “middle group” – people who aren’t strongly pro or anti the 20mph default limit – could be influenced to drop their 20mph compliance. He says that changes to driving rules always provoke resistance, as evidenced by the original introduction of Belisha beacons, traffic lights and drink-drive limits, but cites a “staggering” casualty reduction since the 20mph default limit was introduced in Wales. “There’s a danger we get the worst of both worlds. We’re going to try to placate people who are never going to be placated, and we end up abandoning people who want to support this policy, and they’ll gradually start to drive faster, and speeds will start to creep up again.

“We need to hold firm, to hold our nerve: this policy is working. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it’s unpopular. Some implementation has been imperfect. It was never going to be perfect – we said that from the beginning – but it’s working. It is saving lives.”

Wales’ new First Minister, Eluned Morgan, gave her take on the subject on the first anniversary of the 20mph default limit. “The 20mph is still an issue – I don’t think we can duck that fact – but there has also been a drop in accidents, and that should also be recognised on this anniversary,” she said in the Senedd on 17 September. “In relation to that, I think what’s important is that we listen, we learn, and then we ensure that there is local delivery so that we get the right speeds on the right roads.

“I’d like to thank all those thousands of people who’ve written in to their local authorities, who’ve told them which roads they think should be exempted under the new guidance, and I know that the transport minister - [now Ken Skates]- will be following that in real detail, making sure that, actually, local government is responding to the voices of those local communities, but making sure that, of course, safety is an important factor in all of this.”

Police statistics aside, the paucity of monitoring of outcomes of the 20mph default limit has not helped the government to counter negativity. The most recent publicly available statistics on compliance with the speed limit relate to January, around the time when full enforcement in 20mph areas had only just began. The pre-change statistics were, apparently, gathered in only 10 areas, which dictates that only 10 areas are being monitored for comparative purposes post-change.

As well as the road safety outcomes, other issues from the 20mph scheme have included impacts on bus service speeds and consequent operating costs and on diversion of trips to different roads – as explained in the accompanying panel.

Many critics have also voiced an opinion that vehicles emit more pollution when travelling at 20mph than at higher speeds. To look at this consultant Jacobs has undertaken monitoring of air quality for Transport for Wales before and after the limit changed. However, this work relates to only four locations in the preliminary 20mph pilots, and the results are viewed as inconclusive for a variety of reasons.

There are many lessons which policy makers and transport professionals could learn from the first year of the 20mph default speed limit. A public backlash against slower speeds was inevitable, but could the backlash have been better anticipated and reduced in severity? More consultation and explanation in local areas ahead of the change could have helped. Some local authorities kept their 20mph details hidden until summer 2023, and the online data map showing how road speeds would change wasn’t user-friendly or obvious to the general public.

The backlash was particularly severe for Waters, who had to have a police patrol passing his house in autumn 2023. However, the change in the default limit had been backed by the Senedd since 2018, and featured in the manifestos of Labour and Plaid Cymru in 2021. While Waters was – and remains – a passionate advocate of the 20mph default limit, he just happened to be the transport minister at the time the law was changed.

Arguably, the Welsh Government and TfW should have been more proactive when it emerged that some authorities were planning to only except 1% or less of their restricted roads. Those authorities would still have been free to determine local speed limits, but might have excepted more roads had they received specific government reassurance and been encouraged to discuss exceptions, well in advance of September 2023, in line with those authorities which planned to except around 10% of restricted roads.

Traffic displacement: do we understand the responses?

Monitoring of the 20mph default limit does not cover displacement of traffic where 20mph limits make alternative routes more attractive, through the real or perceived changes in the relative journey times. I asked the officials about this before and after the change in the default limit, but the question was met with a shrug of shoulders. The practicalities of gathering data on displacement were mentioned. Wales has no equivalent of England’s National Travel Survey in which a question about displacement could have been asked, perhaps with a related question about modal shift as a result of the 20mph default limit.

A real-world example of displacement which I’ve come across is that of a pensioner in Colwyn Bay who used to drive to Llandudno along coastal roads but switched to using the A55 and A470 when 20mph limits were introduced on sustained sections of the coastal route. The AA Route Planner now advises using the A55 and A470 trunk roads for that trip, with an estimated journey time of 16 minutes and distance of 8.0 miles. The coastal route is significantly shorter, 5.9 miles, but is now estimated to take 20 minutes.

It’s likely that online route planners and sat-nav systems have recalculated routes and times in the same way for many trips in Wales. However, there is no means of evaluating the extent of displacement and whether or not it is beneficial.

In road safety terms, the displacement is almost certainly positive. Collisions and casualties on roads with speed limits of 40mph and above have decreased slightly since September 2023, so there is no emerging pattern of hazard being transferred from restricted roads to other roads.

The environmental outcomes of traffic displacement are less clear-cut, however. The Colwyn Bay pensioner’s route to Llandudno is now 36% further and involves driving at higher speeds than on his previous coastal route. This pattern increases energy consumption for all vehicles and emissions from petrol or diesel cars.

Reductions in air and noise pollution for communities on the coastal route are offset by increases in air and noise pollution for residential areas alongside the A55 and A470. It’s fallacious to assume that trunk roads and bypasses are sufficiently separated from homes, schools, workplaces and other buildings for localised pollution not to affect significant numbers of people. Some of the worst air quality is alongside trunk roads, and construction of bypasses has often been followed by development of adjacent land.

There is an argument that journeys should be made on trunk roads and bypasses wherever possible, to reduce community severance by traffic and, thereby, encourage more active travel for local trips – particularly to and from schools. On the other hand, congestion occurs more often on the A55 and A470 – including at their intersection – than on the coastal route, a pattern replicated at many other places in Wales. Congestion itself has financial and environmental costs, and leads to pressure for road building or widening.

... and what is the real impact on buses?

My pensioner friend in Colwyn Bay is entitled to free travel on Arriva’s frequent bus services to Llandudno but, like many people of his generation and background, always drives in his car. None of the bus routes uses the faster A55 and A470 roads. All use roads where the default speed was reduced in September, resulting in additional bus journey times and, on one route, a frequency reduction. The main bus route is timed to take 36 minutes between the town centres, and a less frequent one 25 minutes.

This is one example of the general pattern across Wales of the new default speed limit having a greater effect on bus passengers than on car drivers. Slower bus journey times could reduce bus patronage or prevent it growing, especially where coupled with frequency reductions. At the same time, bus operating costs have increased because each vehicle and driver is less productive where the reduction in the speed limit has had a significant impact on journey times. Arriva is among the operators that have added vehicles to some routes to avoid reducing service frequencies.