Safe Speed Forums

Londoners On Speed

(22 Mar 05)

Research commissioned by Mayor of London Ken Livingstone and conducted by MORI suggests that Londoners are in favour of 20mph speed limits on the city's residential streets, and consider speed cameras to be one of the more preferable ways of persuading people to drive more slowly.

As with all polls, it's worth knowing some of the background. In this case, speed limits and enforcement methods were the subjects of two questions in a much larger survey, and the statistics are based on the replies of 1000 residents.

On the first topic, Londoners were asked: "The current maximum speed limit in many areas such as residential streets and outside schools is 30mph. For each of the following, can you tell me to what extent do you support or oppose the introduction of a 20mph speed limit?" In the case of residential streets, there was significant acceptance, with 43% strongly supporting and 17% tending to support such as introduction.

For lower limits outside schools, the strong support option was very much more popular, reaching 70%. Only 6% remained strongly opposed to the idea.

The next question was this: "Which one of the following measures, if any, would you prefer for reducing traffic speed?" The options were speed bumps, chicanes and speed cameras, and while chicanes were definitely the third option there was more or less equal support for the other two - especially in the case of roads outside schools, where both received 36% support.

Transport for London's road safety programme budget includes £7 million for the introduction of 20mph limits on residential roads in both 2004/2005 and 2005/2006.

As far as I can discover, the population of London in 2001 was 7.1 million, thus the survey is of approx 0.014% of the populace.