The tragedy of Wales’ 20 mph speed limit, which is now to be relaxed, was that it took a good idea and ruined it by taking it to extremes. There are plenty of roads which do deserve a 20mph speed limit, but the Welsh government didn’t want to stop there: it had to impose the same limit on main roads with wide carriageways on which it feels absurd to be driving at 20mph.
When highways authorities impose an artificially low speed limit on through roads not only do they unnecessarily delay commercial traffic, they create a perverse incentive for traffic to divert onto minor roads, creating rat runs. If you are going to be stuck at 20mph on a main road – where the speed cameras are more likely to be – why not take the twisting but more direct route, where you are less likely to be caught?
The 20mph speed limit fiasco is a fascinating case study in devolution. Over and over again, the devolved administrations have felt obliged to go that bit further than the Westminster government. It allows them to claim they are being progressive, and helps to justify their own existence. What would be the point of a Welsh Assembly, they may fear people will start to ask, if it just copies the same policy of the national government? Hence during Covid we had the Scottish and Welsh governments imposing even pettier rules than Downing Street. We had Mark Drakeford calling for his ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown, Nicola Sturgeon trying to close the border.
When even the transport minister is admitting that his own family signed a petition against the 20mph limit it does underline how this policy was imposed on the public
For a while this pointless differentiation seemed to impress voters, but it is beginning to grate somewhat now. In the past week alone Scotland has had to abandon its 2030 carbon reduction target after the Committee on Climate said it was impossible to achieve (many might say the same about the UK government’s 2050 net zero target, but that is a problem which will have to be confronted another day). And now Wales has had to relax its blanket 20mph speed limit.
Welsh Labour has admitted that it didn’t consult sufficiently on the 20mph limit. When even the transport minister is admitting that his own family signed a petition against the 20mph limit it does underline how this policy was imposed on the public. How ironic that devolution, which was supposed to bring government closer to the people, has ended up taking it further away.
It is not just the 20mph limit. The Welsh government has also hampered its own economy by dropping plans for a motorway south of Newport, leaving Cardiff reliant on the narrow and congested section of the M4 north of Newport. Could that be the next U-turn?
Maybe Vaughan Gething will turn out to be a more energetic reformer than people give him credit.
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