Government plans to raise the motorway speed limit from 70mph to 80mph look to have been consigned to the scrapheap with road safety being given a greater priority by the current transport secretary.
Philip Hammond, the former transport secretary, who advocated the move to a higher speed limit at the Conservative Party conference in 2011, said that the higher limit would benefit the economy by hundreds of millions of pounds due to faster journey times.
However, with Patrick McLoughlin now at the helm of the Department for Transport (DfT), he appears less than convinced, despite the roads minister Stephen Hammond telling a motoring forum last week that plans for the 80mph limit were still on track.
A DfT spokesman told Fleet News: “We have been working to assess the potential economic, safety and environmental impacts of trialling 80mph speed limits across a number of sites on the motorway network. That work is not yet complete and we would consult on the potential impacts before proceeding with trials.”
However, McLoughlin appeared to go one step further at the weekend when he told The Times: “You would have to do trials in certain areas, so it’s not something that’s a high priority.”
A source close to the transport secretary also told the paper: "This is not going to happen with Patrick McLoughlin as transport secretary. Safety is paramount to him and his view of how to run the roads and he would not be confident about how you would do it."
In addition, the business case argument also appears hard to justify. For example, a vehicle travelling 100 miles at 80mph would arrive approximately 11 minutes at its destination before a vehicle completing the same journey at 70mph.
However, driving at 80mph could use up to 20% more fuel than at 70mph, while Hammond’s plans also failed to understand that a large number of companies have their vans fitted with speed limiters.
The road safety charity Brake, which is part of the ‘No to 80’ coalition that opposes Government proposals to increase the speed limit, argues that if implemented it would also result in more violent deaths and injuries on the roads, increased carbon emissions and an increased financial burden on the public, the NHS and emergency services.
Instead Brake is urging the Government to invest in more variable speed limits on motorways, with a top speed of 70mph, as this a proven way to reduce crashes and casualties at the same time as reducing congestion.
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Gareth has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist having started his career in local newspapers in the 1990s. Prior to joining Fleet News in 2008, he worked in the public sector as a media advisor and is currently news editor at Fleet News.
Rob Chisholm, Applewood Vehicle Finance Ltd - 24/06/2013 15:01
So 'safety' is being rolled out yet again as the excuse for not doing something, even though the case for or against cannot be proven as no trials have taken place. Bit of a Catch 22. Anyone who blithely says that more accidents will result from a higher speed limit is ignoring the reality. Drivers travelling on a Motorway expect one thing from other road users when the limit is 70 but will expect something different, and therefore react differently, if we are all aware that the limit is 80. We simply don't know this yet because it hasn't been trialled. Furtermore it won't be trialled because the safety lobby don't want to know the result in case it blows their arguments out of the water. If they are so confident of their case why can't it be demonstrated? More attention needs to be paid to those travelling at 40mph ... everywhere!