On January the 6th this year the Northcote Leader reported that following a reduction in the High Street Northcote/Thornbury speed limit from 50 to 40 km/h in June last year, the number of collisions in the July to November period was 68. This compares to 45 for the same period the previous year. Incidents involving pedestrians almost doubled from 5 to 9.
Now it seems that buoyed by their "success" the council now wants to spread the 40 km/h joy to all streets in the council area. The reason - people are using residential side streets where they can do 50 rather than High Street where they are restricted to 40. Really? I'm shocked. The rest of the article goes on to outline the benefits to pedestrians of a lower speed limit (without actually linking this to the councils reasoning). Specifically it cites the benefits for cars to be limited to 30 km/h. I guess this means that once the side streets are 40km/h, High Street will be headed towards 30. I'm sure we have all gone mad.
Councils have some great ideas sometimes. The thing is that they are now trialing in europe 30km speed limits and finding it to be successful. If this happens you can be sure that Australia will adopt these findings into our own system. Why don't they just tell everyone to leave their cars at home and walk. If it keeps going the way it is it will probably be quicker.
ReplyDeleteThe way we are going, walking, or better riding, will be quicker. The problem is that:
ReplyDelete1: according to the Leader's figures, the result of the last change was exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve.
2: The implementation of the last change was not thought through. As a person who used High St. often, it took me about 1 minute to realise that there was a faster parallel back street, yet this seems to be a surprise to the council.