Leeds plans 20mph zones in communities along its £29m "super cycleway"

Hang on what the hell are Leeds doing with all this money? There's a cycle lane from city centre to Bramley. A short bit missing then another lane towards Thornbury.

8 out of 10 people support it, isn't that like 8 out of 10 cats prefer whiskers, I support 20 zones, but I know from talking to other friends almost everybody I know is against it, its more like 2 out of 10 support it, perhaps I'm just friends with speed merchants.

Personally would like to see them as variable and not fixed, in the dead of night I can't see any reason to keep them at 20, put them back to 30 as the likelihood of it helping is very small.

If they enforce the blanket 20 limit with average speed cameras, then they have the added bonus of being able to remove all the traffic calming measures giving everybody a nice smooth ride and enabling emergency vehicles to travel faster.

Plus they can plug the cameras (which do automatic number plate recognition) into the Insurance, MOT and VED databases and send an alert to the nearest police vehicle with the details and location/direction so they can pull them over and take them off the road...

One of my biggest bugbears is the sheer number of untaxed, uninsured and unlicensed drivers out there on the roads getting away with it and only getting caught if they are unlucky to fall into a random trap.

@northstar: not 100% - I, for one, observe them when driving.

I ride through a 20mph on the way to work - it's a little difficult to tell whether it's the limit, the road layout or the speed cushions but I would say that more than 50% drive at or below 20mph.

The general move towards 20mph must be seen as a good thing.
Some time back, my doctor asked me how many units I drink a week, to which I answered 'about 20'. He pointed out that the maximum for men is 21 - it doesn't mean it's a recommended amount. Well, I think speed limits are exactly the same - a 30mph limit zone denotes the absolute maximum anyone should be travelling, but the recommended speed is often far less.

I assume this limit applies to cyclists too...

The funny thing about this is that they have painted these signs on the roads, one is on a corner covering the whole road and this is on one of the Sustran cycle routes!!! Would have been far better to create better bus lanes like on Kirkstall road where they could throughout Leeds.

Doing it legally?

“Overall, the identified schemes programme will deliver a 20 mph speed limit on around 60% of all urban streets in the city and surrounding communities by 2020".

Or alternatively, how about 100% by the end of next week? Just get some crews out to change every 30mph sign for a 20mph one. If there's a general consensus for change, then what's the problem?

There's also the issue of noise pollution, which is generally sidelined in favour of discussing 'pollution' pollution and... 'death pollution'. If that's conceptually sound.

Still, noise pollution an issue I've been picking up on more recently, and it's more meaningful than I'd imagined. You can hear a car from a mile away - literally. They fill residential areas with an ongoing aggressive cacophony, and even away from the road you can still hear the grumbling buzz of motor traffic in the distance. We have forced the notion of 'peace and quiet' out of most of the places where we live, walk, and play, and the atmosphere suffers as a result. You can't hear the birds sing when cars are nearby; nor hear the trees swaying in the breeze, or people chatting, or the sound of anything simply living.

It's another ongoing reminder of who 'owns' the roads (and hence 90% of public space), and that the pace of towns - and therefore of our lives - is dictated by loud, large and anonymous machines, rather than simple, honest, un-augmented human beings.

Of course, reducing the speed limit won't solve this entirely, but I think the drop in volume would be appreciable, and - fluffy as it may sound - I think you're much more likely to feel 'part of your environment' at 20 than 30, and therefore more responsible for it.

It's certainly an intuitive way of 'levelling the playing field', and calming the angry rivers of steel that carve up the places we live.

Also, in response to the idea that 'the 30 zones should simply be policed'; dropping the speed limits to 20 would no doubt reduce the average speed to... well, 30 or less, which is exactly the same result - and far more likely to actually work. And besides, I'd rather they were policed at 20 than 30. This is at least a step in the right direction.

The whole point of 20mph is to get people to drive below 30mph - rather than the usual 35-40mph in a 30moh zone which has become accepted behaviour over the past 20 years.

The death rate being hit below 30mph is markedly less than above 30mph.

Once enough drivers are creeping along at 25-30mph in residential areas then they stop the speeders doing more by weight of numbers.

Beg to differ all you like but the current limit isn't working and in the absence of a better solution - you can call me old fashioned - but I'm all for reducing cars to the pace of a dangerously fast horse and cart around my neighbourhood. Better fuel use, fewer deaths, traffic moving more smoothly... What's not to like?

We created this self entitlement nightmare and it's time for change.

You'd be lucky to even get up to 20mph with the state of some roads they are so bad! Anyway I can ride faster than 20mph so I am not in favour either for cyclists or drivers perhaps except around schools or hospitals. Just enforce the current 30mph or any other speed limits and properly penalise drivers who break them. End of.

Well once again, i beg to differ.

Ah yes, 20mph limit (zones) which are ignored routinely by 100% of motorists.

I wonder if (Labour controlled) Leeds will have the same problems as (Green Controlled) Brighton in getting this passed?