How 20's Plenty For Us began

Earlier this week I received an email froma Living Streets campaigner who asked hpow the 20's Plenty for Us campaign started. Hence it seemed a reasonable first post to make on this blog.

Well if confessions are in order then I would have to explain that 20’s Plenty for Us was born out of an interest in cycle campaigning. From 2000 I was an active member of Warrington Cycle Campaign and in 2004 went on a cycle trip to our twin town Hilden, Nr Dusseldorf, to compare their cycle facilities with those of Warrington. As Hilden made 23% of in town trips by bicycle I was expecting superb cycle facilities. Instead I found that they were rubbish and far inferior to Warrington’s. But the key to their success in modal shift was the fact that in the 1990’s they had implemented a 30 kph (18.5 mph) speed limit on all residential roads and those with shared usage.

Hence Hilden became my personal road to Damascus (sorry a biblical reference to Saul rather than a Bob Hope film!) and from then on I realised that segregation and expensive cycle facilities were merely enabling motor vehicle speeds to remain high and did little to reduce cyclist danger. From then on I started campaigning for lower speeds in residential and urban roads as a cyclist.

The more I campaigned, the more I realised that with pedestrian deaths 4 times those of cyclists then a very similar case existed for lower speeds for their benefit. And as soon as I adopted a “mode independent” campaign then suddenly I was no longer a “whinging cyclist” but was representing the young, the old, the disabled, the walkers and the cyclists. Doors opened which previously had been closed.

And so in 2007 I founded 20’s Plenty for Us. Whilst many organisations (including Living Streets) had 20’s Plenty “on their radar” no-one had it “in its sights”. I realised that a single issue campaign could transcend familiar prejudices and provide a clear way forward without being sullied by factional interests, dogma or ideology. 20’s plenty for Us started to work with pedestrian and cycling organisations alike. Work by 20’s Plenty for Us in 2008 included the co-hosting of the “Streets Ahead” cycle campaigning conference with Warrington Cycle Campaign which focussed on mutually beneficial campaigns which would bring together all vulnerable road users, including pedestrians and even horse riders. The conference was an absolute success with more attendees than any previous conferences and we included presentations from not only 20’s Plenty campaigners from Norwich and Oxford, but also Lucy Abel of Living Streets and Josh hart who had just completed post graduate research into the effect of traffic volumes on social cohesion in Bristol.

Later on that year Josh joined Living Streets as their Network Development Manager. From those associations and the synergy between Living Streets and 20’s Plenty for us policies increased, and I was delighted when Living Streets launched their own campaign for setting 20 mph as the default speed limit for roads just last month.

The real opportunity with 20’s plenty as a campaign is that it forces a re-consideration of the way in which roads can be shared. It goes beyond simple (but very important) road safety and starts to effect “quality of life” as communities realise the heavy price that their children and residents pay in reduced independent mobility when people are too scared to walk or cycle on our roads due to the speed of traffic.

At 20’s Plenty for Us we do not advocate a blanket speed limit of 20 mph. Only that it should become the default and that any local authority can set a higher limit where it believes that there is reduced danger to vulnerable road users.

The best approach to gaining change is not actually through council officers. By experience we have found that the best way is to build up community aspirations for safer roads and enabling modal shift. Once councillors realise that this is what their constituents want then they tend to put pressure on officer to work out “how they can” rather than suffer their traditional “why we can’t”. There is already strong support for 20’s plenty with over 70% of drivers in a recent British Social Attitudes Survey.

Of course, the background to all of this is that our culture has actually changed. Both at community level and at establishment level it is being realised that the “pace and haste” of motor vehicles on our roads does very little to reduce journey times but does a great deal of harm in death, injury and fear of using our roads. “Speed becomes greed” when it stops children and adults from choosing the method of independent transport they wish. Far from being a victimless crime, excessive speed on our roads is creating an environment where millions of parents drive their children to school, with all the cost and health consequences. Millions more old or disabled stay imprisoned in their homes because they cannot drive and fear to walk. 20’s Plenty is not just about reducing road deaths or appeasing cyclists. It has become the pivotal campaign in deciding whether our roads exist as spaces between houses for motorists or public benefit.

In Portsmouth, Newcastle, Oxford, Leicester, Norwich and Islington, councils either have or are in the process of making 20 mph the default speed limit for their residential roads without traffic calming. Many more authorities arte well on their way with large scale implementations planned or pilots in progress. 20’s Plenty for Us has had huge success in the last two years and we now have local campaigns throughout the country. We have also been asked to present in Brussels, Stormont (to Northern Ireland Assembly Members) and to many local public meetings and conferences around the country.

We are at a cross roads between sinking into the same auto-obsessed culture as in America or developing the same values as our Northern European neighbours. Our urban and residential speed limits are 60% higher at 30 mph than those in most Northern European towns. A road fatality in Britain is almost twice as likely to be a pedestrian as in the Netherlands, Germany or Scandinavia. Our skewing of road deaths towards pedestrians is the worst in western Europe, with only Poland and Lithuania being worse in the whole of Europe.

The time for 20’s Plenty has come. I trust that you and your colleagues can help it arrive in your town as well.

Best regards

Rod