'There are roads were I don't feel safe' - call for 30km/h limit in urban areas

RTÉ News​

3 days ago

Earlier this year, speed limits on rural roads were reduced from 80km/h to 60km/h as part of the Government's campaign to reduce road deaths to zero by 2050.
The next phase of that plan was to reduce speed limits in urban areas from 50km/h to 30km/h -
a move favoured by members of the Love 30 Campaign group who are lobbying for the lower speed on city roads.
Eithne Dodd reports from Crumlin Road in Dolphin's Barn, Dublin, on what this change could mean for road users.
Mairéad Forsythe is a cyclist living near Crumlin in Dublin but she doesn't cycle on the Crumlin Road.
"I normally use back roads," she explained.
"I do not like this road."
As well as being a local, Ms Forsythe is also a member of the Love 30 campaign, a national movement to promote a reduction in speed limits in urban and built-up areas to 30km/h.
On 1 August, Crumlin Road in Dolphin's Barn became the first area in Dublin to have a static speed camera introduced.
Ms Forsythe said she thinks this will make people slow down but only to the speed limit of 50km/h.
"50 km/h is too fast for the community who live in this area.
"I manage my journeys around the city, I use whatever cycling infrastructure is there and then try and find quiet roads and there are particular roads that I avoid where I find the traffic too fast."
Dublin City Council has already made much of the city centre a 30km/h zone, in the areas between the Royal and Grand Canals.
The Crumlin Road becomes a 30km/h zone once a vehicle crosses the canal bridge but not before.
"Through Dolphin's Barn we have wide roads and high speeds," Ms Forsythe said.
"While I cycle happily through the city centre, there are roads where I just don't feel safe and this is one of them."
Reducing speeds on Irish roads is part of the Vision Zero initiative by the Government.
Vision Zero aims to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries on Irish roads by half by the end of the decade and having no serious injuries or fatalities by 2050.
Around speed limit reductions, three recommendations were made:
A reduction in the default speed limit on rural local roads from 80km/h to 60km/h.
The introduction of a 30km/h default speed limit in built-up and urban areas.
A reduction in the default speed limit on national secondary roads from 100km/h to 80km/h.
The first phase, a speed reduction on rural roads was introduced in February.
These roads are named with 'L' on maps and account for approximately 80% of all roads.
There is no data yet on the impact of this reduction.
For the second phase, reducing speed limits in urban areas, the Department of Transport told Morning Ireland, that this would be implemented by way of "special speed limit by-laws" rather than a default speed limit.
This is because it is harder to define a road in an urban or built-up area.
The Department said: "In respect of those roads in built-up and urban areas where local authorities propose to change existing speed limits, it will involve each local authority undertaking a statutory public consultation process and considering all representations, in accordance with the requirements of the Road Traffic Act 2004.
"As the making of 'special speed limit by-laws' is a reserved function, the speed limits on roads in built-up and urban areas will only be changed where a majority of the elected members vote to do so."
The Love 30 campaign is unhappy with this change.
Ms Forsythe said she believes it will lead to "enormous delays and a lot of hard work on the part of local authority officials".
"At the end of the day, the number of roads that will get special speed limits will be much reduced on what was intended by the legislation," Ms Forsythe said.
Professor Brian Caulfield, at the School of Engineering in Trinity College Dublin, peer-reviewed the Government's speed limit review in 2023.
Prof Caulfield said he would classify an urban road as "anywhere within our cities that are classified at 50km/h.
"It's where there's an awful lot of mixed use...cycle lanes, bus lanes, densely-populated areas."
Modelling data for Ireland shows that while reducing speed limits had a very moderate increase in journey times, it would result in fewer incidents happening.
Other countries that have adopted this approach including Finland, Belgium and Wales have all seen a reduction in road traffic incidents and fatalities after reducing speeds in urban areas.
Prof Caulfield said this has been observed in Dublin in the areas of the city centre that have already reduced speed limits to 30km/h.
"We do see that there are better safety outcomes, at lower speed limits," Prof Caulfied said, "and that's just common sense."
"Even if we do reduce the speed limits, [we need to] look at enforcement to see how often people are staying under the 30km/h.
"It's all well and good changing the speed limit signs right across the urban areas, but unless it's enforced, you kind of have to argue what's the point?"
Like Dublin, much of Galway city centre is already at 30km/h via local authority by-laws.
Lochlann Gallagher, chair of the Galway Commuters Coalition, also said that the city needs 30km/h to be the default speed in urban areas in order to be safe for road uses.
"Local authorities should have to have a good reason to be designating roads at higher speed limits within urban areas as opposed to having a higher default speed," Mr Gallagher said.
Mr Gallagher said that both speed limits and enforcement of those limits are a problem for Galway.
"There are very large stretches of roads in Galway that are that are unsafe to be on if you're a pedestrian, cyclist or if you're wheeling," he said.