Birmingham pushes to cut speed limit to 20mph across the entire city
1 December 2024, 12:55 | Updated: 1 December 2024, 13:43
Birmingham city council have proposed a city-wide 20mph speed limit.
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The speed limit would enforce a 20mph speed limit across Birmingham.
The proposed reduction, which would affect 1.1 million residents, will be considered by Birmingham council on Tuesday.
The council has asked the Department for Transport for permission to place signs at the city's boundaries, warning motorists of the city-wide limit.
Last year, the Welsh government were the first to introduce a 20mph speed limit on residential and built-up areas, sparking controversy and a petition signed by 460,000 people.
Rod King, a campaigner who founded the group '20's Plenty For Us', spoke to The Sunday Times: "Setting 20mph as an urban/village default is the way to go.
"The administration process and signage regulations are expensively rooted in 1990s thinking when a 20mph limit was a rare exception."
Birmingham City Council effectively declared bankruptcy in September 2023, and was advised to make £300 million in savings.
Earlier this year, London was named the 'slowest city for drivers' due to widespread 20mph speed limits.
Journeys of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) in central London took an average of 37 minutes and 20 seconds last year, technology company TomTom said.
This was up by one minute compared to 2022 and was the longest time recorded among 387 cities across the 55 countries analysed.
It comes after Transport for London lowered speed limits to 20mph on an additional 65km of roads in the south of the capital in the final four months of 2023.
However, a spokesperson for the mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said the study is “misleading”.