West Midlands Road Safety Commissioner quizzed on effectiveness of more 20mph roads in Birmingham

Having declared a road safety emergency last summer, the Labour-run city council confirmed towards the end of 2024 that it is exploring the possibility of introducing more 20mph speed limits on city roads.

Councillor Majid Mahmood, the cabinet member for transport, said at the time that slower speed limits on appropriate roads would reduce collisions and save lives.

“For this reason, our Birmingham Transport Plan sets out that 20mph should be the speed limit in residential areas and where footfall is high,” he said. “Other types of roads will remain unaffected.”

He continued: “Approximately one third of the city’s roads are already subject to a 20mph speed limit.

“We would like to expand the number of roads subject to this speed limit where appropriate and are currently exploring opportunities to carry this out.”

It’s an approach backed by Mat MacDonald, an NHS doctor who was recently appointed road safety commissioner by West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker.

Speaking to Birmingham councillors at a transport meeting this week, he said he and active travel commissioner Beccy Marston were looking at ways to support local authorities to make changes such as 20mph zones.

He went on to say that evidence showed that such zones have a “significant impact” on reducing collisions and those seriously injured or killed.

Discussing the impact of lower speed limits in Birmingham, Superintendent Gareth Mason, head of roads policing at West Midlands Police gave the example of Chester Road, where the speed limit was slashed from 40mph to 30mph.

But he acknowledged there had been very little change “just by changing the signs themselves” when it came to speeds on the road.

With this in mind, Birmingham councillor Raqeeb Aziz (Labour, Bordesley Green) questioned whether more 20mph zones in Birmingham would actually have an impact.

“You mention Chester Road where the average speed has reduced by a few miles per hour,” he said. “But 38mph is still a lot higher than it should be.

“I fear if we don’t have enforcement, even if we roll out 20mph zones, it’s not going to make a difference.”

‘Culture of bad driving’

Mat MacDonald acknowledged that the numbers from Chester Road were “disappointing”.

But he continued: “For every mile per hour that the average speed is reduced, the chance of a collision goes down by six per cent.

“So even when you’re looking at average speed reductions of 2-3mph, there is still some significant benefit to that.

“But the way 20mph speed limits work best is when they are established as a norm over a wide area because that has the biggest impact on driver behaviour.”

Mr MacDonald went on to say: “I can appreciate the sentiment that ‘what’s 20mph going to do to someone who really doesn’t care and is doing 60 or 70mph on a residential road’ – that’s a really valid point.

“But it is evidence-based as an intervention to significantly reduce the average speed at which vehicular traffic travels at.”

On how they can change a “culture of bad driving” in Birmingham, he said a combination of enforcement, physical measures and signs that create “different cultural expectations and shifts behaviours” will ultimately make a difference.

Mr MacDonald added the police were doing a “fantastic job” of removing the most dangerous drivers off the city’s roads and carrying out a “lot more work” to tackle the issue.

Supt Gareth Mason echoed the idea that the critical issue of road safety needed to be tackled in a number of ways, saying: “Drivers will generally drive at the speed they think the road is.

“If we make sure we review the roads appropriately, do the appropriate speed surveys and where necessary make engineering alterations, then it will reduce the speed on the roads.

“Simply just changing signs themselves, sometimes will, but normally won’t have an impact.”

He said that enforcement will have an impact too but added: “The first thing we should be trying to do is get roads that people naturally feel that they need to comply with the speed limits.”

Plans to introduce more 20mph limits in Birmingham would have to go through consultation first.

Cabinet member Coun Mahmood said last year that “slower speeds are less intimidating towards those who walk or cycle”.

He went on to describe these as “activities that we need to encourage more of if we are to reduce the number of harmful emissions and traffic levels in the city”.

In the council’s recently adopted road harm reduction strategy, Coun Mahmood also said an investment of £10 million had been provisionally allocated towards the “consolidation and expansion” of average speed enforcement cameras in Birmingham.