I'm in favor of lower speed limits, but this will result in a temporary uptick in speeding tickets, followed by loss of interest by local police, which yields no net change. Lowering the speed limit is a band aid fix. It's quick. It's cheap. But it can, by no means, be seen as a permanent solution. If you want people to slow down, you need to make a road that will make people want to slow down. So yeah, I like lower speed limits, but they cannot and do not work alone. It's a step in the right direction, but more should be done.

I wish my neighborhood would do this. 25mph feels really fast on my street. I usually hover around 15-20 when I'm not paying attention to my speed.

Edit: I am surprised that this was my third most controversial comment since I've joined

While it sounds good on paper, in practice, they've screwed it up. They're putting the new speed limits in place on every 30mph road in Wales before they've put the public transport alternatives in place.

There's currently no reason for someone to switch to public transport, especially if the buses are going to be stuck at the same speed as the cars, but stopping regularly too. Our roads are too narrow to install bus lanes, and barely have enough room for single file traffic through lots of the towns and villages. The trains are being upgraded, but that's not scheduled to finish until at least next year, and at the moment they're slow and very unreliable. It feels like every week the trains are cancelled and an inadequate replacement bus service is put on.

I'm disabled, and have to travel from my town, Aberdare, to the main hospital in Cardiff, UHW, on a regular basis. If I had to leave now, it would take 42 minutes by car, or 2 hours and 6 minutes by public transport. The shortest journey is tomorrow morning and would take 1 hour and 31 minutes, more than double the time of the car journey. The closest inpatient hospital is 22 minutes by car, or over an hour by public transport. The difference the new speed limits are going to make is negligible compared to how slow public transport is here.

All this is going to do is annoy and upset people, and turn them off the idea of using public transport, and push a lot of people towards voting for the parties who were against this. Out of the main parties, that mainly seems to be the Conservatives, so that's going to be bad for all of us.

Amazing news, can imagine how much quieter Wales will become as a result of this

That's cool. One of the advantages of lower speed limits is that while they slightly improve safety, they massively improve the perception of safety. When people feel safe walking and cycling, they're more likely to do it. So, lower speed limits decrease the subjective desire to drive, and thereby reduce car dependency.

Try that shit in Burgerland and watch government buildings burn for the sake of the vroom vroom treats.

It happened with even the mildest covid restrictions. It would definitely happen with such strict speed limits.

Fuck cars

Finally some good news!

I thought this said whales for a second, and I was very intrigued how whales were causing the speed limit to be lowered. Maybe a whale carcass nearby at risk of exploding? Maybe a bridge that whales like to spout on?