Driving is not nearly as nippy a way of getting around a city as the average car ad suggests. In most of the UK, the speed limit in a built-up area is 30mph – but on what the government refers to with the zippy name of “urban classified local ‘A’ roads”, the actually existing average speed in England hovers instead just above the 16mph mark. In central London, it’s 9mph, a figure that’s led the satnav company TomTom to describe the capital as “the world’s slowest city”, as if anyone in their right mind is driving there in the first place. All in all, you might think reducing urban speed limits to 20mph would be a pretty uncontroversial idea.
You would, of course, be wrong: from the response to Welsh Labour’s 2023 moves to make 20mph the standard speed limit in urban Wales, you’d think the party had announced plans to erect signs reading “Monmouthshire: it’s basically England”. Polling from YouGov found that 72% of Welsh voters opposed the plan, 50% strongly.
Opposition was fiercest among Tory voters, who opposed it by a landslide of 93%. This might explain why the Welsh Tories spent most of their general election campaign banging on about something that, as a devolved matter, Westminster had no powers to change – but not a single party could point to majority support for the plans. Less than a year into the policy, Welsh Labour has already partially rowed back on it: on some roads, says the magnificently named Welsh transport minister, Ken Skates, a 30mph restriction is now being reinstated.
A few weeks ago, though, this particular front of the culture war pushed its way across Offa’s Dyke. In August, the transport secretary at Westminster, Louise Haigh, told a podcast that, while “local authorities will have my full support” to roll out traffic-calming schemes, ultimately it was a matter for councils not national government. That, though, was enough. The words “Labour’s war on motorists” were suddenly everywhere, from the Mail and the Express to the desk of former Tory MP John Redwood.
You’d think, reading the coverage, that Haigh had announced plans to personally swap innocent voters’ vehicles for e-bikes in the middle of the night. But as anyone who has ever expressed a tentative opinion in favour of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) somewhere on the internet could tell you, cars drive people mad. “Labour’s 20mph speed limit plans are very worrying,” wrote one Evening Standard columnist. You might say the same about reading comprehension in certain quarters.
So no, Labour is not declaring war on the motorist – but as so often when that phrase is wheeled out, I found myself thinking: “Well, they bloody well should be.” Reducing speed limits in populated areas gives drivers more thinking time and reduces collisions (they’re way down in Wales): aside from fewer avoidable accidents being a good thing in itself, that encourages healthier options such as walking and cycling. Lower speed limits mean smoother journeys, too, which reduces wear and tear for vehicles (better for drivers), and particulate emissions (better air quality for all). All that, and the impact on the time it takes to complete most journeys is so small as to be negligible.
Why then do so many people oppose such plans? Perhaps it’s because, whether through exposure to too many US road movies, or something more primal about the feeling you can go where you want without permission, many people equate driving with freedom, and not the being motionless in traffic it so often really involves. Partly, too, we should probably credit the poor quality of public transport or cycling infrastructure on offer in so much of the country, and governments’ long history of cutting stuff without providing alternatives. So many bus routes have been scrapped over the past two decades that buses now cover almost 25% fewer miles than they did in 2010. It’s not entirely irrational to fear that, in a country designed around the car, a limit on driving could translate to a limit on mobility.
But just because a worry is rational, that doesn’t mean it’s well founded. Despite what the papers say, the transport secretary has no plans to do for England what the Senedd did for Wales: leaving the decision to local authorities means many won’t bother, because of ideological opposition or cost. (One of the few that has, hilariously, is the one containing parliament.) But the right is already squawking. If Haigh really wants to make a difference, perhaps she should do the thing her opponents are going to blame her for anyway.
Jonn Elledge is an author and former assistant editor of the New Statesman
