I think, extremely cynically, that motoring is just *so* convenient that it would take a phenomenal shift in both carrot and stick incentives to stop people wanting to do it. Let's be honest, even if fuel was £5 a litre, motorway NSL was 40mph and all city roads had traffic calming but there was a bus service two streets from your house every 15 minutes, I'm willing to bet that 95% of the motoring populace would still own their cars and drive them nearly as much.

As such, it's a great economy-driving cash cow. Not only in terms of direct tax/duty and all the money spent on motor retail, servicing etc. but all the people involved in collecting data, deciding on new speed limits, manufacturing signs and SPECS/Gatsos, installing them, prosecuting people who defy them and so on.

In short: pernickety nannying keeps loads of people busy and the economy turning over.

Incidentally, my suggested 'solution' is that every member of the population has access to a renewably powered, self-driving vehicle. It's the future!

Meanwhile, in Poland, the motorway speed limit is about to rise to 140km/h and the expressway limit to 120km/h. We also still have the 50km/h daytime, 60km/h nighttime limit in place, with plenty of urban roads having 70 or even 90 limits.

Just a shame the road surfaces here are awful!

Just driven along the A36 between Bath and Warminster and there are bagged up 50mph signs on the Somerset side of the border with Wiltshire. I just hope the Beckington Bypass isn't included as this is an important overtaking spot.

Has anyone heard anything from the new government about whether these speed limit "reviews" are to be stopped or (cue flying pigs) reversed? If the war against the private motorist is supposed to be over, surely this should be considered.

Some of the middle of Gloucester hasn't long been slowed down to 20. There are also some residential streets around the rugby ground that have been slowed to 20 as well, such as the Dean's Walk/Dean's Way road, which has HUGE 20 repeaters along it, for example, like this one below.

I have written to Philip Hammond asking him that very question, amongst others – it will be interesting to see if I get a reply and if so, what he says. Whether he is really going to "stop the war on the motorist" has to be judged by deeds, not words.

Incidentally, it is good to see Norman Baker has been kept away from anything to do with roads at the DfT, and the job of Roads Minister has gone to Mike Penning who comes across as a fairly hard-nosed character. He also achieved the biggest swing from Labour to Conservative in the country at the last general election.

yep, it would be interesting to see how many worthless beaurocrats would be walking the streets and how much safer our roads would be , if we could return to the 70's and 80's road schemes with less ridiculous speed limit cuts and no speed cameras.

Saw two new speed limits today:
A40 west of Stokenchurch between M40 J5 and B4009 - NSL to 50
B430 north of Weston on the Green - NSL to 40

I thought speed limits in Oxfordshire were already bad enough

Somebody's got money to burn for making signs! Where do they get it all from?

Might still be faster than the A34 / M40 at times, though, which can crawl through at that speed or less at peak times.

Manchester City Council have just reduced the entire length of the unclassified Ringway Road near the airport from a mixture of 50/40 to 30 throughout

The previous 40 section at the eastern end is partially built up, but the section that was 50, shown here, has no development or property frontages whatsoever. Absolutely unbelievable.

Incidentally, if you nose around on StreetView, you will see the limit shown as 30, as it was temporarily reduced for construction works 2/3 years ago. The boundary between the 50 and 40 zones was here.

Again, somebody has some spare cash for signs and roundels. Or maybe somebody's listening to my (not too serious) idea of trying to set a speed camera off on a pushbike.

Did you ever get a response?

I just got a standard letter.

The problem with this is it's road regulation with an anti-car agenda , rather than with a genuine interest in road safety. In many cases its led to a perverse situation where a road with good geometry and visibility will have a 40 mph speed limit, whilst the national speed limit on neighbouring narrow, twisty, country lanes allows people to drive up to 60mph. This kind of backward mentality is the sort of “New Realist” thinking that is encouraging the Clarksonist contempt and lack of respect for speed limits and all of the other measures that are vandalising and disfiguring our streets and highways with acres of hatching, bollards, signs, traffic lights etc. It also sends the wrong message that its ok to barrel down a country lane, round blind bends, with the risk of hitting pedestrians, cyclists, horesriders and tractors (because the limit said so), and not ok to drive safely at 55-60mph on a quiet stretch of A-road that happens to have a stupidly low limit.

There are places where speed limit reductions are justified and where traffic calming is needed, provided that it’s done properly with due consideration for the character of the road or street. However, the overzealous and politically driven approach means that drivers no longer see speed limits or other restrictions being set for safety. It’s because this New Realist approach is seen as crying wolf. People coming up with this mental idea of making motoring as miserable as possible almost everywhere only have themselves to blame for the lack of respect and perversely the greater danger of ignorance that some drivers express in response to this so called 'war on the motorist'.

I've put a similar post to his in the Gonadian

Birmingham City Council have resurfaced this road with brand new silky smooth low noise asphalt. At the same time they've also slashed the 40mph limit to 30 and this time there are none of the "new limit 30" signs so I wasn't aware the limit had been cut until I noticed all the 40 signs had gone

Given the level of development that Google shows, 30 does not seem unreasonable there.

This, on the other hand, I have been saying should be at least 40 for nearly 8 years:

http://g.co/maps/vtzer

It's good that this topic has been bumped as I noticed a speed limit cut near me just yesterday...

The unclassified C-Road between Full Sutton and Fangfoss (between Stamford Bridge and Pocklington, to the east of York) is now 50 instead of NSL...

I was up that way the other night (popped into the Bishop Vesey for ) and noticed the road was closed for resurfacing.

Its absurd that this road is 30 mph, whereas monmouth drive (unclassified s2) runs parallel to it and the speed here is still 40.

I suspect that might be next in line for a cut. Tamworth Road seems to have been cut to 30 also.

This has recently been cut to 40.