Parisian motorists will soon have to adapt more their speed on streets or neighborhoods they pass through. Large crowded areas will, by the end of June, concerned by this measure, which will limit the speed to 30km / h, for example, in the Avenue de Clichy (18th arrondissement), Rue de la Pompe ( 16th arrondissement), the rue Oberkampf (11th arrondissement), but also the Saint Charles (15th arrondissement). Paris has currently 70 areas with a 30 km/h speed limit, and this number will increase to 100.

Another measure announced: 21 new limited to 20 km / h zones should soon be implemented in addition to the existing five . These so-called meeting areas are in the vicinity of shopping areas, schools, colleges or high schools. These are areas where pedestrians have priority and are not required to walk on the sidewalks. Drivers (cars, motorcycles, trucks) and must give way to pedestrians and cyclists.

Finally, in September, the city will have a total of 560 km of limited speed zone, or 37% of all channels.

Priority for cyclists

Additional new developments in areas 30 will be generalized as “the yield cyclists passing fire.” Already experienced in the 10th district since April 2012, new panel “give way” give the permit cyclists to cross the red light to turn right or go straight, while respecting the priority given to pedestrians or cars coming from the left.

These are great news for everyone who is campaignung for safer streets. What can be done in Paris will also be suitable for Warsaw, Fankfurt, Berlin, Rome, Athens, Brussels etc. It is important to know that the will of the mayor of Paris to adapt the speed of motorists is based on experience – not just on ideology. The European Citizens´ Initiative will help to encourage more cities and pave the way for the smooth implementation.

Source: Directmatin, 3.6.2013

30 km/h:        Why do you support the demand for 30 km/h as standard in cities?

Limbourg:      This is for two reasons:

Firstly, for safety considerations. I am thinking of children’s safety on the one hand, but also that of senior citizens. By the way, elderly people are not just pedestrians, but more and more of them are car drivers.

Secondly, the forest of signposts should be cut back. It’s a matter of fact that more and more 30 km/h zones are being introduced, making up larger parts of our road networks. Always the same: “enter the zone – leave the zone – enter ….” – this is simply confusing.

It would be much better to implement 30 km/h as the default and then define reasonable exceptions and signpost just these. This would mean an efficient reduction of the numbers of signposts in our cities and towns. Should someone miss a 50 km/h sign and continue driving at 30 km/h, well this would not be a great problem (if that ever happens though…..)

30 km/h:        Many critics, like the ADAC (German automobile club), suggest that 30 km/h in residential roads, plus school zones would be enough.

Limbourg:      But it’s not only children or school zones that have to be considered.

It’s also about senior citizens, for example. Scientific research has proven that they behave very much like children and therefore are able to cope much better with speeds of 30 km/h than 50 km/h. They often can’t manage to immediately assess risky situations. Their reactions are slower, and as pedestrians or cyclists, they cannot get out of trouble quickly.

Defining school zones as 30 km/h zones is not enough. Senior citizens move around everywhere and at all times of the day. Maybe they’d like to go out eating, then they’re going out in the afternoon and in the evening as well, to the cinema, or the theatre. Policies must be adapted to them.

Elderly people are also car drivers of course. As they cannot react very quickly any more, they can cope much better with a 30 km/h speed limit than with 50 km/h. 30 km/h makes it easier to get into the right lane, to notice traffic signs etc. The risks decrease considerably if 30 km/h is everywhere people live.

I don´t understand the ADAC. They should be interested in having people grow older and keeping their driving licences longer as well. And there are definitely quite a lot of elderly people among their members.

30 km/h:       Why do you recommend acting on a European level when it comes to implementing a regular 30 km/h speed limit?

Limbourg:      Demographic change is not a single German phenomena, but is happening across Europe.

Also, a large number of people are travelling through Europe as tourists – and you can orientate yourself much more easily and adapt if there are basic rules consistent with those in your home town and country. Small town politics is not helpful for foreigners.

By the way, 70 km/h used to be the standard speed limit years before, and people were convinced that lowering the limit to 50 km/h would never work. But when 50 km/h was introduced in the fifties, people quickly got used to it.

30 km/h:        How did you come across the issue “30 km/h for urban mobility”?

Limbourg:      This was just by chance. Actually, I am a child psychologist. When there was an enormous amount of accidents involving children at the start of the seventies, nobody could understand why. Experts investigating the causes were traffic psychologists, but didn’t have much knowledge of child psychology. This was when one of my colleagues – I was then at the University of Tübingen in Germany – asked me to join their team. “But I don’t know anything about traffic”, I protested. – “No problem,” he replied, “we just need someone who knows a lot about children. This was how I began to believe in a 30 km/h speed limit because the high speed of cars turned out to be one of the main causes of the children’s fatal accidents.

Well, I then continued working on this issue, and pushed for an urban 30 km/h limit for many years. But the politicians didn’t seem to show any interest for a very long time. But I feel that eventually something now seems to be moving.

All my recent studies at the University of Essen, suggest that senior citizens themselves welcome slower speeds. Not only as pedestrians but also as car owners and drivers.

Professor Dr Maria Limbourg is Professor Emeritus for educational science specialising in mobility and traffic. She worked as an academic at the university of Tübingen from 1972 to 1993. In 1994, she was dedicated a chair of educational science at the University of Duisburg/Essen, with the focus on “accident prevention”, “mobility education” and “traffic psychology”.

Her work includes major international research focusing on Latin America as well as various training programs for teachers on traffic education. That several of her graduates have won prizes for traffic safety is testimony to her teaching.

Why is this important? In those cities that have imposed a 30 kph limit cycling and walking have made a big comeback. This is important if we are to make active modes of transport bear the brunt of modal shift from the car. Here are two stats that provide the potential that we have to bring about this shift

• More than 30 % of trips made in cars in Europe cover distances of less than 3 km and 50 % are less than 5 km[1]
• A US study showed[2] that there are 60% of people “interested but concerned” when it comes to taking up cycling

If we could make cities and urban areas more attractive for people who currently use their cars we can get them onto bikes quicker. There is a huge number of trips that are taken by car that should not be done, we can estimate that 30-50% of trips in urban areas could be transferred from the car to bikes and walking. And it seems that people could be prepared to do it. That 60% represents a huge potential. However a large proportion of the reasons why people do not cycle come down to safety issues.

A major shift to active forms of transport that we see in cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam is not such an impossible task. However it will require the stick of reducing and taming current motorised transport while providing the carrot of making the streets safer to those who are interested but wary of making the leap to biking. Making our urban areas 30 kph zones would help achieve this transformation, and would be a cheap transformative tactic, to boot.

It would make the streets look safer, it would make the streets actually safer and would give advantages to biking and walking over other modes of transport. Of course there are many other benefits. A decrease in air pollution, a decrease in CO2 emissions, less congestion leaving the roads freer for those who have to use motorised transport, increase public health benefits etc. Who knows, it may even be ‘fun’ to commute to work every day.

About The Author

Ceri Woolsgrove is the ECF Policy Officer for Road Safety & Technical Issues. He is from the UK and has worked extensively in London, Brighton, Liverpool (UK), Hang Zhou (China) and now in Brussels. His previous employment was for an organisation representing the transport industry in Brussels. Ceri has a Master’s degree in Globalization and International Policy Analysis from the University of Bath, and Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex

30kmh.eu: Which speed in town do you think is the most appropriate?

Knoflacher: Walking pace.

If you go any faster, you immediately have the disadvantage that you need artificial aids, such as the car, which then use much more energy. But using them doesn’t mean that you really experience or achieve more, just that you can travel further in the time.

People move best when on foot and transport planning for the future is based upon this. Of course there are exceptions for disabled people, who need their cars to travel around the city. And for deliveries too: goods that can’t be transported otherwise.

The problems begin when we make something too easy. This includes driving a car. In a car, you need half, a quarter or even just one-sixth of the energy someone walking at a slow, medium or fast pace needs, but you cover 10, 20 or 30 times the distance in that time. People tend to naturally favour the easier option and so we usually spontaneously chose to drive.

But this then involves travelling at speeds exceeding what our bodies have evolved to cope with, speeds beyond our perception. The sensory abilities of people are only optimised for walking speed.

30 kmh.eu: Let’s talk about the difference between the two speeds: 30 and 50 km/h

Knoflacher: When 50 km/h was introduced, it was a purely arbitrary decision. But there are physical, biological arguments for 30 km/h. The human body is designed so that it can reach a speed of 30 km/h when running fast: indeed the world record is around 37 to 39 kilometres. At these speeds, also in a car, we are still able to process the information our brain is receiving. This allows us to respond to unforeseen events quickly enough to avoid accidents, by swerving out of the way, for example.

But anything faster than that is asking for trouble. The current speed limit of 50 km/h or more, exceeds our evolutionary development, it goes further than our perception. We are covering distances that though they are technically possible, we cannot mentally cope with them. So the risk of accidents increases. If the authorities allow higher speeds, they cannot then blame the individual motorist. Just as you cannot make a blind man responsible for his actions if he did not see something in time – as it is impossible for him to do so.

But the Highway Code does exactly that: It demands that everyone can adequately react at 50 km/h. As I said, this is biologically impossible. This is paramount in public transport, in a closed system in which one individual has given up his or her responsibility. Public transport then needs the right environment, involving complicated external information and safety systems to ensure that people and goods can be transported safely.

But if a person can travel at 30 km/h, this is an optimal speed.

30kmh.eu: Slowing down is not necessarily the most obvious choice for a traffic scientist. How did you reach this conclusion?

Knoflacher: Early on in my career, I got the jobs that no-one else wanted. In 1968, I planned the first phase of the pedestrian zone in the centre of Vienna. The idea then was that the whole of the city centre should be car-free by the mid-1980s.

In 1973/74 I had planned all the Viennese districts to have a speed limit of 30 km/h, but this was opposed by the authorities. One of my employees even resigned in despair over this! I was accused of wanting us to return to the Stone Age.

In 1975, I was still involved in the development of a traffic concept for Vienna. I was the youngest of four professors and once again, got all the tasks the others didn’t want: public transport planning, park planning, pedestrian traffic, road safety. That gave me the chance to put my principles into the concept. I really wanted bicycles to be a part of all this. At that time, there were a few recent graduates of mine on the city council who knew what I was getting at. That was really helpful.

In 1984, Vienna chose a new mayor, Helmut Zilk, and I was able to persuade him to support a 30 km/h speed limit, as well as to champion bicycles in the city – two things that I had been ridiculed over for the previous eight years. We gradually established small 30 km/h zones in the Viennese districts. Once again, it was helpful that my students were sitting on the administration, as well as in the engineering department- so we could redesign the existing roads.
That’s the way you do it nowadays: it’s essential that you build up the right staff.

Mayor Zilk wanted 30 km/h even then on the main roads, but he was immediately “shot down” by the media. He was ahead of his time. As a compromise, he went for a speed limit of 40 km/h.

Like I said, the media was absolutely against 30 km/h, although I told the journalists to at least give it a try, but they were so anti. Finally I persuaded them to let me take them through the city. First we drove along the side streets at 30 km/h and that went quite well. Then came the ultimate test: they wanted to drive on main roads. So we did so, and of course it was like I’d always been saying, it works: all the journalists were really impressed with how smooth our progress was through the traffic. That was an important victory.

But in the last 500 meters before the radio station where the trip was to end, I sped up to 50 km/h and there was instantly a shout of fear from the back-seat, “Herr Professor, isn´t that too fast?”

So you see, it’s that easy to get used to driving more gently. The media war against Mayor Zilk was over from that point onwards.

1983 was a pivotal year, as the first 30 km/h zone was established in Buxtehude in northern Germany. We’d finally got a successful pilot project! This was very inspiring for all of us.

However, we’ve only been progressing slowly. What is implemented in Vienna transport planning today, still comes from that original transport concept from 1975. It’s obviously paid off though: the city has become a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was named as the city with the best quality of life.

30kmh.eu: A speed limit of 40 km/h, as championed by the mayor of Vienna, Zilk, is also touted as a compromise today. What’s your view?

Knoflacher: Well, it is simply beyond the human ergonomic capacity. A traffic planner just can’t take the responsibility for having these speeds where people live. It’s the same when we’re talking about speed limits for bicycles.

30 kmh.eu: Are there any examples in Austria, where 30 kmp/h on the main roads already works?

Knoflacher: In a place called Neumarkt am Sattel/Steiermark, there’s a maximum limit of 30 km/h on the main roads, which are used by all the transit traffic. This was brought about by a citizens’ group more than ten years ago, and it works, thanks to the use of surveillance cameras. Since then, traffic noise and a poorer quality of life are no longer the issues they were in Neumarkt.

30 kmh.eu: It is often argued that the traffic would simply transfer to residential areas.

Knoflacher: Well. It’s simple enough to stop this by, for example, increased regulations and not allowing the traffic to turn off the main roads.

Our ambassador for the European transport initiative “30 km/h, making the roads worth living!”

Professor Dr. Hermann Knoflacher, is Professor Emeritus and Director of the Institute for Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering at the Technical University of Vienna. He has been working in transport planning since 1963 and and right from the start has put people as pedestrians, cyclists and passengers of public transport at the centre of his work. Professor Knoflacher is well-known for his concepts for Vienna, as well as in Graz and German cities too. He developed pedestrian zones, brought in trams and championed cycle lanes. And he is a staunch supporter of the European Citizens’ Initiative for a 30 km/h speed limit!

You can sign the European Citizens´ Initiative here

If you wish to help us finance our campaign you can donate here

ECF has been supporting and will continue to support the 30 kmh citizens’ initiative .  The initiative seeks to force the European Commission to looking into the possibility of making 30 kph the default speed in urban areas.

There are many reasons why we are doing this and why, along with many other organisations across Europe, we support such a scheme.

Currently road speeds in European built-up urban areas are limited to around 50 kph though of course there are many exceptions where limits are lower. Recent analysis of cycle deaths in London found that virtually all fatal collisions occurred on roads with a speed limit of 48kph (30mph) or higher[1]. Excessive speed is a direct factor in about a fifth of all collisions and is a major contributory factor in a third of all road deaths.

The likelihood of a fatality when hit by a car at different speeds has also been estimated[2]:

• Hit at 40mph (64.4 kph), 90 per cent of pedestrians will be killed
• Hit at 30mph, (48.3 kph), 20 per cent of pedestrians will be killed
• Hit at 20mph, (32 kph), 3 per cent of pedestrians will be killed

30 kph works

A Norwegian study[3] has shown that a 10% reduction in the mean speed of traffic will result in a 37.8% reduction of the number of fatalities

The British Medical Journal[4] found that the introduction of 20mph zones (32 kph) over a twenty year period from 1986 – 2006 significantly improved road safety for users of all modes and ages. Particularly with regard to children, with children under 15 years old being killed and seriously injured reduced by half in areas where the speed limit is reduced to 20mph (32kph)

Looking specifically at one city Graz is the perfect example.  Graz was the first city in Europe that introduced a city wide 30 kph zone. Around 800 km’s of a total 1000 km’s of city streets have been calmed[5]. The results? After the first 6 months there was a 24% reduction in serious accidents.

But what is also interesting is that the city had an increase in cycling and other active forms of transport.

Strong enforcement and implementation of 30 kph was important for this to work but seems to have provided real beneficial results without resorting to more expensive infrastructure. If the roads are free of fast moving traffic then this encourages more cyclists to get on their bikes while also providing a safer environment. The perception of risk was decreased as was the actual risk, both essential for cycling promotion.

This will become more important in how we find new and better ways to provide citizens with more liveable and sustainable cities and living environments. Our transport systems are and are going to play a pivotal role in this. It is our transport systems that are the biggest threat to our lives within urban areas. More than crime or fire or industrial accidents and yet it is also our transport systems that we depend on for everyday living.

30 kph can be a useful tool to deal with the motorised vehicles in urban and residential areas. There is no need to be doing any more than 30 kph, we need to put the emphasis on active forms of mobility to combat health problems, road safety issues, congestion and to provide more pleasant liveable areas to grow and live.

I started campaigning for 20mph/30kmh speed limits after a cycle trip to Hilden in North Rhine-Westphalia. There 23% of their in-town trips were by bicycle after implementing a 30kmh speed limit on almost all of their roads in 1991. It was cutting the relative speed between motor cars and cyclists that was seen as the single most important thing that could be done to make cycling safer and more comfortable. And for a cyclist at 22kmh the relative speed difference with a 40kmh car is 18kmh which drops to just 8kmh if the car is doing 30kmh. That means more than twice the distance and time for avoiding each other.

Livable streets

But there is much more than this which makes 30kmh as a default for urban and residential streets so important for cycling. It’s the fact that such a policy benefits pedestrians and drivers as much as cyclists. It’s a policy which provides universal benefits to the majority of the population rather than just the minority who cycle. It’s a policy that can dramatically improve the liveability of our streets with particular benefits for the young and old who may lack the mental acuity to assess the speed of vehicles or the physical agility to move quickly.

It is also a policy which questions our values about streets and how they are public spaces to be shared for the good of the whole community rather than simply roads for car drivers. It questions the benefits of driving at 40kmh+ in residential and urban roads and puts them against the wide public benefits that come from lower speeds with safer walking and cycling, quieter streets, less polluted streets and a far greater civic amenity.

Benefits for all

Of course lower vehicle speeds inevitably requires a change in behaviour and this can best be done when it provides benefits to the people whose behaviour we need to change. The driver is the father of the child who wants to walk or cycle to school, or is the daughter of the elderly person who wants to keep on walking to the shops regularly. It’s about the driver as a citizen creating better communities by understanding the benefits that driving slower brings to those communities.

Most importantly, by focussing on a single and widely beneficial initiative it brings together cyclists, pedestrians, children, elderly, disabled and civic amenity groups all in mutual support for behaviour change. It becomes the catalyst for a fundamental review of how we share our public spaces for transport.

Of course this does not displace the need for properly designed cycle facilities, but does provide a foundation for safer and more equitable transport policies in our communities.

But the universal benefit of 30kmh speed limits and the desire for change goes far beyond a single country and can be harnessed across a complete continent. And that is the purpose of the European Citizen’s Initiative which is looking to gather and show support across the EU. Cyclists can make a huge difference for not only themselves but the whole of society by supporting this important initiative.

About the Author

Rod King founded 20’s Plenty for Us in 2007 to UK support community campaigners who wanted slower speed limits on their streets. It now has 189 local branches campaigning for mandatory 20mph speed limits in their communities. Many of the UK’s towns such as Liverpool, Oxford, Cambridge, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Brighton, together with many more have adopted a mandatory 20mph limit for most streets. In fact nearly 10m people now live in such communities.

See www.20splentyforus.org.uk @20splentyforus

EU initiative could see 20mph lower limit in place by next year
Jonathan Brown; Wednesday, 2 January 2013

Therefore, please sign up today and tell all your family, friends and colleagues to do so too.

see signature forms

Source: El País, PATRICIA R. BLANCO,  24.october 2012