In defence of 20

EDIT: I posted a link to this on the latest story about the 20 zones on the EEN pages. The only reply thus far is, "FFS, that is NOT a balanced viewpoint!" I'll let you make your own minds up, but I've asked which bits are not balanced, and offered to amend if necessary - I'll update if any response is forthcoming.

Recently I have decided that getting embroiled in online discussions around the city's 20mph zones is fruitless. Those against the zones have started indulging in transport 'facts' that Sean Spicer would be embarrassed to give voice to. We have reached peak Trumpism. And no matter what you say it means you're some sort of left-wing liberal tofu-knitting pinko cyclist.

I am a cyclist of course (and I quite like tofu, though I've never tried to knit it); but I also drive, have had a licence for 23 years, and have two cars, one a 'hot' modern vehicle, the other a fun little classic. My views have been formed through reading up on things before espousing them as facts; while observing those against my experiences of cycling, walking, driving, and being a public transport passenger around Edinburgh. I use all of these transport options on a regular basis.

Doing all I stick to the rules. I remain within speed limits; I stop at reds; I don't park on pavements (a real bugbear of mine); nor cycle on them (unless it's designated shared use of course). Frankly I'm a right goody-two-shoes when it comes to transport. It does wonders for your blood pressure.

What I'm trying to get at is that this isn't coming from a position of understanding one transport mode and not another. I'm not exclusively a cyclist or a driver or a pedestrian. I have no particular love of one more than the other (it shifts about, at the moment driving my little Classic Mini gives me the most pleasure). But I don't like disingenuous 'fact' stating. I don't like unbalanced hatred.I don't like unwarranted, and un-needed personal attacks. And I've been to cities that do this stuff properly, and have seen how wonderful they are.

So here we have my take on the most common arguments against 20mph zones (and I've started with an absolute classic).

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I have to stare at my speedo

Frankly, if you have to stare at your speedo to maintain a speed then you shouldn't be driving. It's interesting to hear people say that 30mph is what we've become accustomed to, and so 20 requires more concentration. It makes me wonder, if we're so attuned to 30mph over anything else, how people cope with the many 40, 50, 60 and 70 zones in the country. In fact if you include the bypass all of those limits can be found in Edinburgh itself.

So why does 20 require speedo staring, but not the other limits? Obviously the simple answer is that it doesn't. It's an argument that's used to create an impression that 20 zones actually make the roads more dangerous (see "They don't reduce 'accidents'" later). Given safety is one of the key considerations for the zones, this therefore is attacking the very heart of the premise.

But it's a position rooted in that contradiction. That somehow 20mph is a 'magic' speed that needs all attention diverted to the speedo. That 20 can't become the new 'normal' (see "Pedestrians leap out in front of me" later for a further deconstruction of the apparent difference in malleability of normal between drivers and pedestrians).

Certainly from my experience I don't find myself staring at the speedo to drive at 20. I do what I do at any other speed, I glance down every now and then to make sure I'm still there. I adjust accordingly. The speedo is, after all, a few inches below the windscreen. Heck, you don't even have to move your head. You could give me a speed limit of 37mph, or 53mph, and I'd deal with it the same way.

I may be missing one important aspect of course.Maybe the people who need to stare at the speedo really are poor drivers who shouldn't be on the road. Maybe I'm just a better driver than them all, a fact I miss because it's just 'my' normal to be able to adapt. Maybe that's it. If you can't drive at 20 without staring at the speedo, but I can (whether in my modern or classic car), why is that?

They're okay around schools

So. 20mph zones increase danger. They divert drievrs' attention away from the roads. Away from looking out for other traffic and people. They make incidents more likely.

And yet.

"They're okay around schools, but not on other roads". It does seem to be the case, so often, that those who tell us 20mph zones are dangerous are also those who say they're okay around schools. The latter argument is one where, either deliberately or subconsciously, they're trying to make themselves look 'reasonable'. "Look at me, I'm not against 20 zones at all, I'm thinking of the children". Except you've told us they're more dangerous. And therefore you want to make the roads around schools more dangerous.

If you think one you can't have the other, so choose.

We shouldn't blindly follow rules

My last online discussion on the subject had this line from the antagonist. It's another little psychological 'trick' (whether conscious or not). You see fighting against the zones is sticking it to the man.We're into true Trump territory here. It's civil disobedience based on a 'right'. It's just one small step from being Rosa Parks.

It's not of course. Being able to drive at 30mph rather than 20mph is such a world away from racist segregation it's crass to even hint at such a struggle. But the implication is there.

It's another argument in which there lies a double standard however. The same people arguing that the zones should be abandoned because no-one is sticking to them, and encouraging others to drive in excess of the 20 limit, are often those who deride 'all' cyclists for riding on the pavement or jumping red lights. Of course by their logic the number of cyclists doing both should mean that they would support a change in the law to allow cyclists to do both things. But no. Cyclists should all be banned for doing such things. Whereas drivers breaking the law to make a point should be lauded, and should lead to a change.

Hypocritical? Oh most certainly.

They add an hour to my journey time

Edinburgh isn't a big city. This is to its credit in my view, but putting 'size doesn't matter' considerations to one side for a moment, it is essentially 10 miles across. I ride from Duddingston to Edinburgh Park for work every day, and the short route is 9.5 miles. Even taking a loop south only extends it to about 13 miles. So ten miles seems a decent approximation of the furthest distance you could be travelling between two points in the city.

At a 'constant' 30mph this translates to 20 minutes travel time. At 20mph this would be 30 minutes. That's if you didn't have to stop for traffic or lights. Both of those will actually compress the difference, and averaged out over a week of driving you'll lose, in rush hour, somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes on your journey. Oh, and main routes such as St John's Road, London Road, Willowbrae Road... They're still 30. Western Approach is still 40. That gap is compressing further as you don't have to stick to the 20.

That's travelling the entire width of the city. If your journey is five miles the difference in time begins at 5 minutes and drops from there. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever where people get the additional hour from. When I drive the journey to work, as I do from time to time, the whole thing is about an hour door to door (yes, I'm faster by bike, about 40 minutes or so). That hasn't suddenly become 2 hours with 20 zones. It hasn't become even an hour and 20. It's remained about an hour. No identifiable change for me driving, across the entire width of the city. None.

So I'm not sure where it has come from. Maybe they've got really weird commutes (and if it's on a five mile commute then that's just over an hour of a walk anyway, so they'd be better leaving the car at home). Or maybe the delays of that magnitude just don't exist and it's an excuse created to battle the sense of 'them' telling people what to do.

Pedestrians leap out in front of me

This really isn't caused by 20mph zones. It just isn't. It happened a little bit before they came into being, it happens the same amount now. As mentioned above I'll cycle and drive (and take the bus) across the entire city, and since the 20mph zones came into being I've not noticed any shift in lemming pedestrians. I travel on suburban side streets, main roads, city centre shopping streets, and business park routes. The whole gamut that could be offered up.

My suspicion is this being classic confirmation bias. People didn't really notice, or rather weren't that bothered by, people walking out before. Now someone walks out and because the driver doesn't like the 20 zones they immediately want to, and do, connect the two things. 2 plus 2 equalling 5. It's stated as fact, then more people think, 'oh yes, I was driving the other day and someone walked out in front of me, that must have been caused by the 20 zone'.

In the last week I've had two pedestrians walk out on front of me on the bike. Both were in the remaining 30 zones.

But it's a strange argument on another level. The reason people think it's happening is that pedestrians have effectively normalised 20 zones. They see the zones, they expect cars to be travelling at that speed. Given, as we've seen, drivers in the main ignore the new limits (i.e. wilfully break the law) how can people have normalised 20mph? Even stranger that drivers can't be expected to get used to 20 because they are so used to 30 (see 'I have to stare at my speedo' above), and yet pedestrians have automatically and immediately got used to 20 even though experience shows 30 is still the norm.

Are pedestrians more adaptable than drivers? Do drivers lack cognitive abilities that come naturally to pedestrians? Or is it made up nonsense?

They don't reduce 'accidents'

Statistics can differ on this, but that's mainly because of differences in implementation. Most 'successful' schemes have monitored over a lengthy period, and have enforced the limits, and seen the number of incidents (let's not call them accidents) reduce. Also, pure physics dictates that the severity of any incidents will be reduced.

Recently there was a lot of press coverage (including in the increasingly clickbaity Edinburgh Evening News) that Manchester had 'scrapped' its 20 scheme (see below for why that in itself is not right). The headlines in the Evening News (as well as the likes of the Daily Mail) focussed on the scheme having not delivered the results because the number of accidents had not fallen. So why had they not fallen? Because drivers were wilfully ignoring the limits, they were breaking the law, they were still driving at speeds more or less equivalent to before (there was an average 0.7mph drop).

THAT is why the accident rate hadn't dropped. But that is to be ignored. It hadn't worked. Pure and simple, and Edinburgh should learn and should drop its own plans. Because drivers are criminals. Basically.

Manchester has scrapped its scheme

No. No it hasn't. It has 'halted' the next phase of the implementation. The existing bits of implementation have been retained, and the halt is to give the council there time to rethink how to better implement the scheme. So it still plans to bring 20mph to the rest of its streets. It just might have to include better enforcement, or traffic calming measures.

The scheme has not been scrapped. The scheme has not been wound back. The scheme is still going ahead, once they've determined how best to stop drivers breaking the law.

Lesley Hinds is fat and ugly

I'm no fan of Lesley Hinds, but seriously, the amount of personal stick this councillor gets is an absolute disgrace. What exactly do her weight and looks have to do with the merits or otherwise of the 20mph scheme?

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What's interesting in all of this is how much contradiction, or double-standards, are present. I've said before (and hold to this) that if people simply stated, "I want to drive as fast as I want to, and don't like people telling me I can't," then I'd have less of an issue with the whole thing. At least that would be honest. Instead weird alternative facts are presented as a justification. Why? Because people are aware that there's a good societal reason for the change, and so realise that they need something else to cling to.

This is one change to the city that I think can make a massive difference for the better. That's a personal view. But my experience in other cities tells me that's a view that can be backed up. And my experience of the 20 zones in Edinburgh so far tells me I don't need to stare at my speedo, I'm not conditioned to drive at 30 only, I don't have pedestrians jumping in front of me, if they did I'd be more confident of stopping in time, and it makes practically no difference to my journey times.

Is it me who is the outlier? Are the online commenters the ones who are actually right? Are my twice daily traverses of the city some sort of twlight zone bubble? Will the recommencement of the Manchester scheme with additional controlling measures gain as much local exposure? Instinct tells me the answer to all of those questions is simply, "no".