There is evidence that 20mph zones do save lives and injuries even if people don’t obey them. This is because they still drive slower than they would in a 30mph zone.
I would agree, however, that if the limit is set to 20mph then the road design needs to be changed to match that, making it uncomfortable for drivers to exceed the limit. Unfortunately the UK is quite institutionally poor at this kind of traffic calming design compared to some of its neighbours.
You misunderstand the statistic. The 90% compliance measures cars that were driving into a future LEZ area. There was no need for any of those vehicles to be compliant at the time of measurement. The measurements were performed to analyse the impact that the new LEZ would have when introduced.
Additionally, I think it’s extremely misleading to say that you need to buy a new car every eight years. In this case, you might need to buy a used car that is already eight years old (or much older if petrol). They are not expensive compared to new cars. In the case of London there has also been a scrappage scheme to assist people, though this probably isn’t available everywhere.
Where is there an LEZ that forces you to buy a ‘new car’? The ones I’m aware of require compliance with either fairly or very old emissions standards.
For example, in London, the ULEZ requires that petrol cars be Euro 4 (every UK vehicle since 2006 complies automatically) and diesel cars to be Euro 6 (mandatory for new cars since mid-2015). So, worst case, the vehicle needs to be newer than eight years old. More than 90% of vehicles driving into the expanded ULEZ area were already compliant before it became active.
Your suggestion is that people experiencing antisocial behaviour that affects their health and wellbeing should just move to a new house? Where the same thing can easily happen again? And that we, as a society, should do absolutely nothing else about it?
Deranged take, worthy of a ‘libertarian’ teenager.
Selfish behaviour, wasting public money because they don’t like a scheme created to improve the health of normal Londoners.
A single loud exhaust can wake up 10,000 people. The impact on mental and physical health if this happens a few times a night is immense.
Motorists had their chance to not ruin the world for everyone else, and they failed the test. Time to intervene.
Car-centric cities waste tonnes of space on parking which sits empty most or all of the time. Improving them requires less knocking stuff down and more filling in the gaps.
Luckily your city doesn’t have to pay for this - since property developers will do it for you to make money for themselves. You just need to fix the regulatory barriers: remove parking minimums and legalise mixed-use zoning.
If you want to accelerate the process, your local government can adopt the Japanese model: build rail or light rail and then develop dense areas around or above it. This is generally profitable but requires taking on a decent amount of initial risk.
So it can be done. But sitting around grumbling about how a better future is impossible because everything has to stay how it is right now won’t get us there.
There are quite a few nuclear power stations operated by private companies without incident around the world already.
I think the bigger concern is construction costs spiralling out of control and landing on the taxpayer.
EVs don’t fix congestion, don’t fix particulates from tyres, don’t fix tyre noise (which dominates above 30mph), don’t fix crash deaths, don’t fix road damage, don’t fix energy usage and don’t fix cars contributing to sedentary lifestyles.
Perhaps we should also be looking at some other solutions while we transition to from ICE vehicles EVs.
It does seem like things are getting slowly better in the sense that, ten years ago, this post would probably end with them being completely ignored or receiving some kind of legal threat. But it would be much nicer if companies could just stop. leaking. personal. data.
Missed opportunity to call it a premake