20mph Recommended for Beech Grove but no Traffic Calming
Highways officers from North Yorkshire Council (NYC) are recommending that Beech Grove be made 20mph, but with no traffic calming.
The principal problem on Beech Grove is not high vehicle speeds, but close passes on a carriageway narrowed by parked cars.
NYC’s proposal is therefore inadequate and ill-adapted. It will do next to nothing to make it safer and more pleasant for cycling.
It will not enable modal shift to cycling. The majority who are put off cycling by bad driving and traffic danger will remain put off.
NYC has extremely challenging targets to reduce car miles and increase active travel, in order to decarbonise transport.
The council will not meet those targets by tinkering around the edges, but fundamentally preserving the car-dominated status quo.
20mph for West & South Harrogate
The 20mph proposal for Beech Grove emerges from a report on a proposed 20mph zone which is to be considered by the NYC Highways and Transportation Executive on Monday 18th December 2023.
Some residential roads can simply be signed 20mph, according to the report. Where mean speeds exceed 24mph, traffic-calming features such as speed humps or chicanes are required.
Streets that need traffic calming are:
- Yew Tree Lane
- Green Lane
- Pannal Ash Road
- Oatlands Drive
NYC officers do not want to make what they describe as strategic roads, marked in red on the map, 20mph. They are:
- Leeds Road
- Wetherby Road
- Hookstone Road and Drive
- York Place
- Leadhall Lane
The report says that under NYC’s 20mph policy, Category 2 roads should not be made 20mph.
It admits (para 4.8.3) that Leadhall Lane is Category 3b, like other streets that are included in the 20mph programme (Yew Tree Lane, Cold Bath Road and Green Lane).
On the face of it, Leadhall Lane would be suitable to be made 20mph, but the report comes up with some excuses not to follow NYC’s 20mph policy.
It states (para 5.8) that there are ‘no schools or specific community destinations situated on this road’.
That is a disingenuous argument which ignores the fact that people need to use Leadhall Lane in order to reach schools and community destinations, and there are often no alternative routes.
If the council only makes safe the streets which actually have schools on them, it will fail to make safe the journey to school.
Self-Enforcing
The report (para 4.9) refers to the DfT’s Circular 01/2013 on setting speed limits. Apparently it says 20mph limits should only be set where they are “self-enforcing”, i.e. mean traffic speeds are already compliant with the speed limit.
‘To achieve compliance there should be no expectation on the police to provide additional enforcement beyond their routine activity unless this has been explicitly agreed’.
quote from dft 01/2013
This is a very odd proposition.
Should we also check how many people are murdered in a given area, and if there are more than a certain number of killings per year, make murder legal?
‘Signing and Lining’ on Hookstone Drive/Road and Wetherby Road
Instead of making Hookstone Drive and Road and Wetherby Road 20mph, NYC Highways is
‘recommending that the current signing and lining on Hookstone Drive and Road is reviewed, and improvements are implemented where required.
Officers have met on site with representatives from the primary school on Wetherby Road and have committed to a review of the existing signalised crossing locations, any improvements to lining and signing will also be considered. Any improvements will be introduced where required’.
para 5.3.2 of the 20mph report
If painted white lines and signposts could make active travel safe, they would have done so by now.
The reality is that they don’t, and this is recognised in the government’s Cycle Infrastructure Design guidance.
We are getting gold-plated nonsense from NYC, who put forward these non-solutions because fundamentally they are not interested in making walking and cycling safe, and only want to prioritise cars.
There is, though, a commitment (para 5.5.1) to introduce a pedestrian crossing between the Oatlands bridleway and the park on the other side of Hookstone Road.
Timetable
NYC officers have given themselves a very generous amount of time to implement the 20mph programme.
They are not building the Taj Mahal, but taking some relatively simple steps. Nevertheless, to try to ensure that they are not held to account when they inevitably fail to meet the milestones and deadlines in the timetable, they are calling the implementation programme ‘indicative’.