Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Trial 60 MPH motorway limits to reduce polution

The beginning of the end.......again.

Massive 30mph zones just been Put in place local to me. Absolute joke. Virtually impossible.

What real benefit will this 60mph zone do when lorries produce 90% of the NOx gassed at 56mph.

Soft target again

Alan, thanks for the working link.

Round my neck of the woods we have the M25 and it's variable speed limit, more designed I think to keep the carpark moving. Also Richmond-upon-Thames have introduced a blanket 20 mph limit on all the old 30 areas - even A roads in some cases!

As Peter says it just bunches up the local traffic making it hard to exit minor roads and I'm sure adding to and not reducing the pollutants. Covid has also given the excuse to stick up a whole lot more road signs, cycle paths and other assorted "art work".

God save us from politicians.

I know it's a bit of a drift but have you guys noticed a logarithmic change in the numbers of "new" weaving cyclists on the roads at present, it's pretty dire of a Sunday down here on our tiny roads.

Last Sunday I was safely (as I thought) overtaking an old fart and as I pulled parallel with him as we were going uphill he lost drive wobbled and fell into the side of the Fiesta, his pedal left a mark on the front alloy and the bodywork marks polished out.

My worry was if he had dropped off in the front of the car the damage all round would have been a bit more serious.

Bl@@dy politicians. They have just introduced a new revision of the rules of the road here in Italy. A move in the right direction is to legislate that the minimum time for an orange(yellow?) traffic light will be 3 seconds. There is however concern that local councils may reduce longer periods to 3 seconds. In the past there were some unscrupulous councils that had shorter times to make money on red-light cameras (one got me in a time it was impossible to stop before crossing the threshold - Very dangerous!)

More controversial is provisions that will allow a lot more speed cameras, to allow electric bikes and even those little electric scooters to use public transport lanes, and to allow bikes to go the wrong way on one-way streets in 30 kph zones (ie. City centres).

Bikes already disobey all the rules so rather than enforce the rules let's change them to allow bicyclists to do whatever they like.

Speed management has a double edged impetus. Both the Speed Kills and Eco lobbies put forward arguments that Politicians are too afraid to criticise. Hence the restrictions being introduced.
I wish Planners would do the same!
Our road system has been tinkered with over the years to try and cope with higher volume. It has, inmost cases, been compromises with too narrow a view of impact. New bypass, motorway will attract traffic but the feeder areas are changed to rat runs and congestion hotspots.
The M4 at Port Talbot ,raised section above the houses, has always been a 50 zone due to noise issues raised at concept. It is approached by traffic at 70 which then gets compressed, added to by the stupid slip roads, speed cameras. It was part of my commute and in the evening you would be on stop on it. A bloody motorway designed to bypass the town to aid traffic flow where the norm is being stationary! The zone has been extended West to Llandarcy over the Briton Ferry bridges and average speed cameras replacing the fixed. The slip roads remain. Locals objected to closing them as they wanted to hop on then off to cross town. Effectively using a by pass as a rat run. My evening return commute took at least 30 mins more . 1 hour in morning to 90 mins minimum in evening, that stretch being the cause.
Locally there have been housing projects that feed extra traffic into a solitary, narrow road. Poor traffic lights stopping flow, school runs causing even more congestion. There are more houses being built to add to the problem.even using local knowledge fails at peak times. There is no option to do a major road replacement to ease congestion. During lockdown there was a huge improvement in air pollution as the road was clear.
The solutions that are proposed are paying lip service to the Speed/Eco lobbies whilst penalising the transport sector.