A campaign group in North Yorkshire have made renewed calls to the council to implement a blanket 20mph zone across the county where people live, work and go to school.
Its members are part of the national group ‘20s Plenty For Us’, who want a 20mph zone to be the norm in English cities, towns, villages and residential areas - like the scheme that will launch across Wales in September.
But champions of the scheme in North Yorkshire have faced push back from council executives, who believe the blanket speed limit is not the right approach for the region, which is the largest in England with a road network spanning 5,753 miles.
Ian Conlan is the Leader of 20s Plenty For Us in North Yorkshire and says the reduced speed limit has shown to reduce road traffic-related deaths and injuries, reduce air and noise pollution and encourage more people to walk and cycle.
He told GB News: “Our roads are getting busier and busier and it’s getting more and more difficult in our towns and villages to cross the road safely, so 20mph is the right speed limit.
“It’s much safer and you’re much less likely to have collisions and 28 million people in the UK already enjoy a default 20mph limit signed policy.
“We recently surveyed the whole county and we got 70 per cent support [out of 239 replies, with 171 votes in favour of the proposal, 64 votes against, and 4 who did not know], which is similar to national surveys done by the government.
“People actually want this in their communities, and they want to feel safer crossing their roads and they know it’s do-able as well.”
The initiative is also supported by schools in the area.
Amanda Carpenter, Lead for Active Travel at Malton Primary Academy said: “Children don’t have that perception of how fast a car is going and it is vitally hard on this road sometimes to actually judge myself whether it’s safe [to cross].
Campaigners say the speed limit change would be safer
GB News
“10mph lower would make it a little bit safer, would make me able to cross the road and help children cross the road more than anything really.”
But due to the cost implications and size of North Yorkshire, which roads could reach India if laid end to end, the council say a 20mph should not be imposed as a blanket restriction as called for by the 20s Plenty For Us campaign group.
Councillor Keane Duncan, North Yorkshire Council Conservative Executive Member for Highways and Transportation said: “To do a signed only 20mph limits across North Yorkshire we think could cost upwards of £10,000,000.
“That’s a significant amount of money and we think that could be much better spent, much better targeted at improving road safety, reducing accidents and casualties on North Yorkshire’s roads.
“What we’ve seen elsewhere in the country is where you have signed only 20mph limits, that actually the reduction in speed is very marginal, sometimes just 1mph.
“We’re not going to give in to a vocal minority that want to see 20mph in every location. We want to be much more tailored and make sure we get coordinated, effective action to improve road safety.”
Cllr Duncan was recently chosen as the Conservative Party candidate in the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire election next year.
GB News also spoke to people in Malton, North Yorkshire, about what they think to the 20s Plenty scheme.
One man said: “A blanket 20mph is not really appropriate, it depends on the circumstances of the town or village that you’re driving through.”
This was echoed by a woman who said: “I always like the idea of slowing people down and keeping everyone safe, but I think probably a bit of flexibility is needed.”
Another woman thought the proposal would do more harm than good.
She said: “People don’t really take any notice of it [20mph] and if they made it a 20mph limit it would just put everybody in more danger because people would ignore it and there would be more accidents probably.”
This was also the sentiment of one man who said: “Definitely not, 20mph is too slow. It will get people agitated.”
One woman did support the scheme and said: “The cars just go by, they don’t care to slow down for pedestrians to go past, so I think it will be a great idea.”
North Yorkshire Council has pledged to review speed limits across the county in the coming months and years.
The council’s transport scrutiny committee meet this week to hear from councillors who “called in” a decision by the authority’s executive to not support area-wide or default 20mph speed limits.
This will determine if the committee wants to refer the decision back to the council’s executive for reconsideration or to the full council.
