City-wide 20mph speed limits move closer with new strategy

At a meeting of the council’s cabinet highways committee this Thursday, members of the ruling Labour group are set to agree to develop a “strategy for city-wide 20mph speed limits, starting with areas surrounding schools and following with other suitable residential areas.”

This differs from the council’s current – and more expensive – policy of allowing the city’s seven community assemblies to fund 20mph zones out of their own budgets.

Back in November 2009, Sheffield Council received two petitions asking for a 20mph limit to be introduced on all residential roads and on all roads contained within the inner ring road.

In July last year, members of the cabinet highways committee – which was then led by the Liberal Democrats – considered a report outlining the potential benefits and limitations of introducing a 20mph speed limit across “much of the city.”

Previously, eight 20mph zones had been introduced in different neighbourhoods in a bid to reduce the number of children killed or injured in accidents.

However, these schemes had been based around traffic calming measures such as humps and bumps, as opposed to the new 20mph zones which would be “self-enforcing” and use only road signs rather than speed bumps.

In September 2010, council chiefs asked the city’s seven community assemblies whether they wanted to progress with implementing new 20mph zones within their own areas.

As a result, the Stradbroke area within the East community assembly was chosen to be Sheffield’s first sign-only 20mph area, and more than 70 per cent of residents indicated their support for the scheme.

The 20mph limit in Stradbroke was introduced in March this year and was followed by another 20mph zone in Shiregreen in May.

Since then, community assemblies have been looking at implementing further sign-only 20mph zones in areas including Broomhill, Wisewood, the Hanover Estate, Darnall and Woodthorpe.

However, at Thursday’s meeting, Labour councillors are set to recommend axeing the current policy of allowing community assemblies to fund their own 20mph zones out of their own highway budgets, and instead come up with a new city-wide strategy to encompass all of Sheffield.

A total of £40,000 has been set aside in the 2011/12 budget to develop such a strategy for 20mph limits across the city.

In his report, which is set to go before Thursday’s meeting, Simon Green, Sheffield Council’s executive director for “Place”, says the current policy is “not consistent” and funding for it is “limited.”

He adds: “The forthcoming Streets Ahead highways maintenance private finance initiative may provide an opportunity for 20mph speed limits to be delivered across the city in a cost-effective way.”

Mr Green’s report acknowledges that a “short length of 20mph speed limit outside a school may result in drivers speeding up significantly once they have passed it” and says that, instead, the limits should be introduced “over an area consisting of several roads.”

Green Party councillors, however, have criticised Labour’s plans, saying that a default city-wide 20mph limit should be brought in rather than first introducing separate speed limits in areas around schools.

Coun Rob Murphy will be putting a motion to the full meeting of Sheffield Council in September, saying that the “piecemeal” approach would “not be cost effective and would lose the benefits of a default scheme.”

He said: “Road safety research shows the school journey is not high-risk, especially for young children, and we believe a city-wide scheme should begin in the areas with the worst accident statistics.”