Better Transport

You might wish to do some or all of the following to get a 20mph limit on local streets.

Use the plans and processes already in place
No matter how good an idea is, it won’t become reality in a vacuum; it needs to be argued for within, and become part of, the processes that the local authority already follows.

• The community strategy

Find out which councillor is responsible for the community strategy – often the leader – and ask to meet with that person to discuss how your traffic-calming ideas could fit into the strategy.

If the community strategy hasn’t been finalised, work to influence the draft. Meet with members of the local strategic partnership, who create the community strategy. Talk to them about your ideas and how they could be incorporated into the community strategy. Meetings of the local strategic partnership are held usually quarterly and are open to the public. Minutes are often posted online.

The strategy is funded through a three-year local area agreement. A local area agreement has four blocks of policy fields into which funding is allocated: ’children and young people’; ‘safer and stronger communities’; ‘healthier communities and older people’; and ‘economic development and enterprise’. Your plans for slowing down traffic could easily fit into one of these blocks, such as the ‘safer and stronger communities’ block.

• The local development framework

Meet with your local planning officer about the local development framework to see how your plans could be incorporated into it. While the framework is a long-term framework, it is reviewed every year and the ‘evidence base’ for the framework is also reviewed. For example, you may be able to get traffic surveys put into the evidence base as a way of supporting your argument for the need to reduce traffic.

How to influence local development frameworks, on the Planning Help website

• Local transport plan

Read what it says in the local transport plan for your area. Your traffic-calming plan may help to meet an objective in the plan. Every year, the local highways authority issues a progress report; you should read these too. Local transport plans are five-year plans (2006-2011), setting out transport policies and programmes.

The plans are prepared by the local highways authority – the county council or unitary authority. They contain strategies for specific areas, which are developed with the help of district councils and should complement polices in the local development frameworks. These plans are given Government funding. The local highways authority puts out an annual progress report on the local transport plan by 31 August. The Government uses this report to decide whether funding for the next year needs to be altered.

You can find the local transport plan on the website of your unitary authority or county council.

Council websites

Get to know your local authority
Understand what they are aiming to do. You’ll probably find you share many aims. If they understand that you understand them, they’ll be more likely to listen to you.

• Read the council minutes
• Attend council meetings. Grab agendas in advance. Try to arrange to speak at relevant meetings
• Contact your local council and arrange for several of you to meet with officers to discuss why you want a 20mph speed limit. Speak to your local councillor as well as the councillor with responsibility for transport and try to get their support. Try to establish a good relationship with councillors and officers, because they will often support your objectives Prepare for the meeting by arming yourself with the facts about why 20mph speed limits are needed in your area, your council’s policy and its track record on 20mph limits and zones.

Locate your council, through the DirectGov website or through a search engine

Look at your local authority’s budget. What is it spending money on? Funding for 20mph projects are usually within the traffic management budget, but schemes can also be paid for through section 106 funding (so-called because it was created through section 106 of the old planning act), so ask your local planning officers what section 106 agreements are in place and how you can submit your traffic-calming project for section 106 funding. A 20mph zone in Grove Park received section 106 money:

“Funding for the scheme detailed in this report has been secured by Brent Council through Planning Agreements linked to local developments in these areas. The funds are agreed under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to implement works beyond the development sites and in these cases to mitigate the impact of the developments on the surrounding Public Highway.” (Brent Council highways committee report)

Local politics is party-dominated so get to know the parties. Read the local party manifestos. Manifestos are often prepared a few months before a local election. If the timing’s right, you could try to influence the manifesto so that it contains clear promises to calm traffic.

Find out what other authorities are doing. Authorities of similar size and complexity may be doing more than your authority is to slow down traffic. If so, use those examples of good efforts as a way to try to raise the bar for your authority.

Create a vision
Draw up some plans for how you’d like to see things improved. These will come in handy when you are speaking to councillors, local residents and journalists.

Get a local paper to run a speed campaign
Lincolnshire Echo ran a Slow Down campaign to get drivers to cut their speeds, particularly around schools. The campaign has resulted in 20 mph speed limits being trailed outside some Lincolnshire schools. Advisory signs, highlighted by flashing lights, were used to deter speeding at dropping-off and collection spots.

Good idea: Barry from Ipswich and East Suffolk Campaign for Better Transport says you should befriend your local newspaper and radio station: "It's possible to get a foot in the door if you find out who to contact and keep your tone positive."
Barry has several good campaigning tips

Gather evidence
You may find it helpful to carry out some surveys to support your campaign demands:

• Survey local people to see if they want a 20mph speed limit and use the results in a press release
• Survey locals to find out the impact of traffic. For example, is traffic making it hard for children to play in the streets or is it disturbing people’s sleep?
• Collect information about how many people on foot and bicycle are using the streets and the problems they have as pedestrians. You can do this by selecting a particular point on a street and counting the number of people that walk or cycle past. You could also time how long people are delayed by traffic when trying to cross the street. Counting for five minutes in each hour will give you a good sample to base a short report on

If your local authority agrees to investigate the need for traffic calming or a lower speed limit, it will begin with a traffic survey to determine the range of speeds, the average speed and the numbers of vehicles on the roads under investigation. The survey will be carried out at specific times of day and at specific places. Talk to council officers to make sure the survey includes those sections of road that you are most concerned about. For example, measuring the speed of cars on a bend doesn’t tell you how fast cars approach the bend.

If you are concerned the local authority is not going to survey adequately, organise your own traffic survey and publish the results in the local paper.

More about conducting your own traffic surveys