Plan to put brakes on motorway drivers is anti-car nonsense

AS reported (Yorkshire Post, January 7), the Highways Agency is proposing to reduce the speed limit from 70 to 60mph on a 32-mile stretch of the M1 in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, claiming that this will reduce air pollution in that area.

This proposal is in direct conflict with the Conservative Party’s declared aim, while in Opposition, to end Labour’s war on the motorist, and indeed to raise the motorway speed limit to 80mph.

I suggest that the air pollution argument does not stand up. The worst polluters must be the vehicles with the biggest engines and these are the heavy goods vehicles which are already governed to 56mph and often form the largest proportion of vehicles using the road.

Advances in technology have made modern private cars cleaner than they have ever been, as, year by year, exhaust emissions come down with every new model and I suggest that a speed reduction to 60mph will achieve little or nothing in pollution terms.

What it will do is to increase dangerous “bunching” of car traffic, increase congestion and extend journey times to the detriment of business and the economy, and again in direct conflict with the apparent aims of the Government to revive the British economy.

There are also safety implications in that a speed of 60mph on a clear motorway (as it can be sometimes) in a modern car, is unutterably boring and soporific, leading to significant dilution of driver attention to the road and observation of traffic behaviour.

This is the thin end of the wedge. How long before such a policy is extended throughout the motorway system on the dodgy and unproven premise of pollution reduction? We shall finish up with all our expensive, beautifully-engineered three-lane motorways clogged with traffic creeping along at a speed well below the design capacity of the road – and for what purpose?

I suggest that this is another attempt by the professional anti-car brigade to find yet another way to make life difficult for the motorist and to make a lot of money out of the driver through technical monitoring and the imposition of fines. This is a nonsense proposal that needs nipping in the bud.

From: David Gray, Liversedge.

THERE is much talk about the proposed reduction of speed on 32 miles of the M1 motorway to relieve pollution. Obviously we all wish to alleviate that effect.

However, I wonder if the calculations of the reduction of pollution per minute of a lower speed have been matched alongside the extra time each vehicle will be present within the set area. Reducing speed from 70mph to 60mph will increase the time each vehicle pollutes the 32-mile space by 4.6 minutes or 16.7 per cent. If the more practical view is taken that in a controlled 60 limit the compliance will be greater and thus the effect will be to bring speeds down from the existing 75 to 60, an increase in time of 23 per cent. A reduction of 80 to 60 would mean a 30 per cent extra time present.

Do the pollution emissions decrease in greater proportions than those measures, especially in the increasingly modernised vehicles? The inference of the issue I have raised is that it could be less polluting to go even faster. I do not suggest that at all, as safety must be observed above all issues.

From: Terry Morrell, Willerby, East Yorkshire,

THERE seem to be lots of transport problems across the county (Yorkshire Post, January 9). Leeds trolley buses, York traffic, Hull-York rail line reinstatement and HS2 have all been mentioned.

York traffic is a nightmare, and until someone grasps that a one- way system around the city walls is the only way to keep traffic flowing, the gridlock will continue.

The Hull-York rail line debacle with East Riding Council can 
only be solved by retaining the existing track bed and installing a “guided bus” system capable of diverting into as many villages as necessary and yet have its own expressway between points.

I would suggest that East Riding of Yorkshire Council go and take a look at what is happening in Cambridge with such a system running from St Neots via Huntingdon to Cambridge and is currently being extended to Peterborough.

With reference to HS2, again this is something which I think is over the top and should be replaced with a scheme to stimulate business in the provinces.

All this is not rocket science, simply straightforward common sense.