Twenty is Pointless

Four year 20mph pilot scheme - but still no results

A TRIAL 20mph zone in a residential area is still under way without any full assessment of its results four years after it was launched.
Then Blackburn with Darwen highways boss Maureen Bateson announced the trial scheme in July 2013.
She was under pressure from borough Liberal Democrat leader David Foster and the Lancashire Telegraph’s ‘Slower Speeds, Safer Children’ campaign to bring the 20mph limits to all the borough's residential roads.

The Lancashire Telegraph is a rubbish rag at the best of times, but one of the things that bugs me most about them, is their desire to make the news rather than just report it, usually with some new virtue signalling 'campaign'.

Councillors should not be 'under pressure' to introduce legislation because of an ill conceived local newspaper campaign designed to sell more advertising space for the paper

But now it's a thing. And things brought in by the powers that be, never go away

Yesterday current council highways boss Phil Riley said: “The Mill Hill pilot is still continuing.
“It was not a short-term trial but a long-term study to see if introducing 20mph limits in residential areas across the borough would produce a worthwhile and measurable improvement in road and child safety.
“We are continuing to monitor and assess results and will complete a report when he have sufficient information.”

I have no doubt as to what that report will conclude: "The scheme has not seen any noticeable reduction in traffic accidents, so it must be rolled out to a wider area and combined with extra traffic calming measures and better enforcement". In other words, not working, more of the same please.

“The borough council is trying to kick this issue of 20mph limits into the long-grass and is not properly concerned about child safety on our residential streets.”

Meaning: I'm not arsed about properly assessing the results, I want a 20 limit imposed permanently, now

So it starts with a crappy newspaper campaign and ends with a useful idiot in power bringing more regulation. Same shit, different day