ePetition details

Council response

Our aspirations to create a liveable city through the delivery of Active Travel Zones are set out in the Connected Southampton Transport Strategy 2040. These zones will include a mixture of measures such as physical traffic calming features and area-wide speed restrictions. The delivery of three Active Travel Zones in St Deny’s, the Polygon and St Mark’s are being accelerated through the Transforming Cities and Active Travel Fund programmes. The Council’s commitment to supporting the creation of Active Travel Zones, including 20mph speed limits, is further highlighted in the Corporate Plan (2021-2025). To support the delivery of these, the Council announced an additional £500,000 road safety budget, including the delivery of 20mph speed limits, in the July 2021 Council budget.

In order to propose to change the speed limit to 20mph on any road in the city, and therefore the Traffic Regulation Order, the Council is required to consult with other agencies e.g. the Police and formally propose and advertise this through the legal process, during which there is a full legal and public consultation process for a period of 21 days. If the Council received objections, these would have to be reviewed. If introduced, the legally required 20mph signage would need to be put in place to indicate the change from the default 30mph limit for urban areas. Depending on the length or size of area of the speed restriction, repeater 20mph signs are also required to remind drivers of the speed limit. 30mph signage is then required upon leaving the designated 20mph limit road/zone.

Due to the legal process and signage measures required, to simply introduce 20mph speed limits on all residential streets in the city, would be a lengthy and costly exercise. Beyond our planned schemes being brought forward under Active Travel Zones, Transforming Cities and other road safety initiatives, the council will be adopting a reactive approach to additional schemes and will respond to where there is evidence of significant demand from local residents. We will shortly be setting up a process for formal requests to be made to the council. The strength of local support, support from ward councillors will be considered alongside other matters such as road safety statistics to come up with a list of schemes to progress, drawing upon the new £500,000 budget allocation.

Alongside the introduction of any new 20mph speed limits, consideration also needs to be given to the introduction of physical traffic reduction and calming features where the existing road layout and characteristics may encourage speeds above 20mph and this can be reviewed on a site by site basis. The council has successfully bid for central government funding to introduce Active Travel Zones (ATZ) in the city, where physical measures are used to bring down traffic volumes and speeds to create the conditions needed to enable greater uptake of walking and cycling for shorter trips and to create more attractive neighbourhoods.

You can find out more about the ATZ projects for St Denys and Woolston on our Transforming Cities Fund Webpage here… Transforming Cities (southampton.gov.uk) and for Polygon and St Marks (Shirley) on the Active Travel Fund webpage here… Active Travel Fund (southampton.gov.uk). Going forward, we will continue to work with residents, community groups and ward Councillors to prioritise areas for speed limit reductions and any necessary traffic calming measures.