20 zones – devizine.com

Let’s face facts, they’re not referring to their average age here, are they?! Today’s topic is belting through town like a headless chicken escaping Colonel Sanders. I’ll give credit where it’s due, Gazelle and Herod’s whippersnapper reporter Justin reported the proposal for speed limit reduction from 30 to 20mph in Devizes town centre. And what I’m going to say might shock you, but I’m with the town council on this one……

The crucial article stated Wiltshire Council proposals to create 20mph zones from the A360 from Northgate Street to Long Street, via The Market Place and St John’s Street, as well as other roads in and around the town centre.

It goes on, “the scheme has been supported by members of the town council during consultation, with councillors “pushing for a reduction” for some time,” and quoted Devizes Guardian, Cllr Jonathan Hunter, who believes the change would, “have a positive impact on both road safety and air quality in the town centre.”

Yet, it’s the comment section, yeah, where keyboard warriors usually fire off blanks from their spud-guns, where we find questionable responses. Mostly piffle, as you could imagine, but some raise an eyebrow, so rather than they go unchallenged, I thought I’d point them at Cllr Jonathan Hunter directly.

The only one bang on the money goes under the handle ‘Miker G,’ who, if memory serves me righty had an excruciating 1986 chart-topper with DJ Sven, rapping over Madonna’s Holiday. He gives it, “I’d love to know how to get through Devizes going as fast as 20mph;” Showstopper! Nice one Mike, for no matter how you ring-reng-a-dong for a holiday, you’ll probably only get as far as Ocean City on New Park Street! The others left their sense of humour behind, let’s concentrate on them.

Award for the most ill-informed goes to ‘Synical Sam,’ without getting cynical I’m presuming he means cynical, and he called out Jonathan as a liar, twice in the same sentence! “Tell the truth Cllr,” he suggested, “it is a cash cow, we all know it so tell the truth.”

Using caps lock I think I can handle this one lone. Jonathan is a TOWN COUNCILLOR, and the TOWN COUNCIL do NOT get revenue from speeding fines, silly sausage! “I have zero connection with Wilshire Council,” Jonathan confirmed, “I’m not involved in any of the actual decision making. It’s just the fact we’re applauding it. We’re a local group, saying we’d like to see this in more areas. The fact people are thinking Wiltshire Council are gonna suddenly put cameras on to try and get revenue is just an absolute ridiculous myth!”

Even if, as I did waffle on the idea, using St Edith’s Marsh’s 30mph as a shiny example where they love to sit masticating on onion bhajis, the police can rock up on the day of the changes and hand out tickets like nightclub owners hand out flyers, Devizes Town Council won’t get so much as a bite of their samosa. Jonathan dismissed it promptly. “The police would have to comment on that, that’s not a council affair.” Though it opened a Pandora’s box on the way he envisioned those who accidently went over the speed reductions should be handled. “Anybody can make a mistake and we should have a tolerant society; we shouldn’t have a forensic kind of measurement of everything we do.”

It’s the environmental issue we need dwell, the only rational point in the comments. Ingeniously named ‘Newsfan’ typed, “for my layman’s, unscientific mind, please tell me how air quality is improved by vehicles crawling through at 20mph. Especially as this will more than likely mean being in at least 3rd gear if not lower. I’m sorry but the pedestrian is not King no matter how much you penalise the motorists or quote ‘green improvements’.”

This made me ponder if there was any truth in this, though Miker G might rap it matters not, getting up to 20mph in Devizes town centre is a dream. In response ‘Jimmy Hilly’ took from an extensive study by TFL, “20mph zones do not appear to worsen air quality and they dramatically reduce road danger. They also support a shift to walking and cycling, generate less traffic noise and reduce community severance.”

Jonathan dismissed it too, and we’ve fact-checked what he says with Sustainable Devizes. “I think there’s a lot of people, you know, sat somewhere on a keyboard with some made-up kind of human knowledge about whatever, without any facts, and you know, it’s life isn’t it? Life is full of lots of different views. The scientific facts for drivers of internal combustion engine powered vehicles are the more you press that accelerator the more fuel you will burn, the more emissions that you will create, obviously. The more environmentally friendly the vehicle is, as in its CO2 emissions are lower the less impact that will have, but even going from 30 to 20 is significant. When you multiply that by X amount of thousands of cars going through Devizes or wherever it happens to be……”

“We’ve a constrained traffic situation and not helped by the fact if you want to go to Salisbury or Andover or Swindon, you’ve gotta go through Devizes. It’s a mediaeval town and 21st century traffic, but if, and this is the point I made in The Gazette, if everything is in sync, if everything is going to 30, it doesn’t make any difference if everything’s going to 20. Because you’re in sync it will have an impact, and obviously on safety as well.”

Twenty, thirty, forty, makes no odds, you will always have spanners who ignore it, but if it makes the average moralistic motorist slow it can be no bad thing. Once the twenty limit is normalised, as it already is across many other towns and villages locally, you won’t contemplate it, as was the backlash against drink driving rules or seatbelts in the eighties; watch this video, redneck! How bizarre in reflection, and if boy racers complain about a meagre ten-mph reduction after some time, your argument will seem as absurd.

Twenty is plenty, get used to it, and climate change denialists, you should want to slow down; too fast on a disc-shaped planet and you’ll drive straight over the edge… do us all a favour!!