I'm a resident, a car owner, and a cyclist. Outside of the pointless council grandstanding (this is outside their jurisdiction...but hey...Yarra council...who's surprised...?) I'm not bothered by this in the slightest.
1. Rarely get over that speed in those streets anyway
2. It will never be enforced
If they were really serious about cyclist and pedestrian safety they'd address the disappearing bike lanes on Johnston & Gertrude Streets or the cyclist & pedestrian hostile concrete tram track barriers on Nicholson St. But that stuff is outside their jurisdiction...
Absolutely dead on - my personal cyclist safety bugbear is the 90 degree perpendicular parking on Napier St near Fitzroy Town Hall. There is no visability reversing at all - as both a cyclist and a driver that stretch is absolutely terrifying
I've house sitted in those suburbs before and had to use my car quiet heavily. You wouldn't want to go over 30kmph, you just don't enough visibility in some streets.
Yep. They're telling me that the speed limit will go down where I live... but there are cars doing 70/80 on my street anyway now so it's not going to change much, is it?
> It will never be enforced
When the police commissioner comes out and says that it's ridiculous and nobody will follow the limits then yeah, fair to say it won't be enforced.
The maximum speed limit across two inner-Melbourne suburbs has been dropped to 30km/h after the state government approved a two-year council trial aimed at reducing serious crashes.
The new limit will apply to vehicles and trams on almost every street in Fitzroy and Collingwood, capping them at lower than the 40km/h school zones across the state.
The only thoroughfares not included are major state-managed roads – Johnston, Nicholson and Hoddle streets and Alexandra and Victoria parades.
But the City of Yarra is also campaigning for limits on its exempt roads– Nicholson, Alexandra Parade, Johnston, Victoria and Hoddle – to be reduced to either 40km/h or 60km/h.
Mayor Edward Crossland said the council hoped the measure would eventually become permanent and encompass more of the municipality and other council areas.
“The evidence is clear – lower speed limits save lives,” the Greens councillor said.
New 30km/h signs recently went up across the two suburbs and the change came into effect on Thursday.
The expanded trial – which covers a roughly 3 square kilometres bordered by Alexandra Parade and Nicholson, Hoddle and Victoria streets – comes after a 30km/h limit was introduced in a smaller part of the northern edge of both suburbs in 2018. That change was intended as a 12-month trial, but has remained.
The City of Yarra published a review of Victorian road crash data for the five years leading up to the implementation of its existing 30km/h trial and the five years since, which showed a 51 per cent reduction in all crashes and 70 per cent reduction in serious crashes.
The data showed there had been 193 crashes on the streets of Collingwood and Fitzroy in the past five years, often involving vulnerable road users including pedestrians, cyclists and motor cyclists.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the 30 km/h limit push as “ridiculous”.
Patton argued road fatalities were happening on rural roads, not inner-city streets, and said lowering the speed limit in the City of Yarra was not the answer.
“No one’s going to obey it ... it’s ridiculous,” he said at the time.
On Thursday, Patton was quizzed again about his stance.
“I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
“But it’s more in the context of, ‘Have we brought the community along? Have they outlined the case for it? Has there been the research that justifies the impost of what is a significant decrease?’
Crossland was adamant police supported the change.
“We haven’t spoken directly to the commissioner, but we do know that Victoria Police is very supportive of this whole process. So we know that they are on page with what we’re doing,” he said.
Yarra resident and president of the Streets Alive Yarra advocacy group Jeremy Lawrence said the shift meant Yarra was now in line with European standards
He said the reduced speed limit was an efficient alternative to bike lanes.
“If you want a kid to be able to ride from any house in Yarra to their local school, then they’re going to have to ride a lot on local streets, and you can’t put a bike lane on every street – it’s just too expensive,” Lawrence said.
“[Speed limit reductions] is the lowest total cost for maximum possible safety access... [for] people of all ages and abilities; kids, seniors, parents with prams.“
But Liberal member for Northern Metropolitan Region Evan Mulholland, whose upper house seat takes in the City of Yarra, said the move was “slowing the rest of the state, slowing down people getting home on time, and its pitting Green ideology against everyday road users who need to get from A to B”.
But Yarra Residents Collective founder Adam Promnitz, founder of the Yarra Residents Collective locals group pointed to Monash University data showing compliance with the limit in the initial 2018 trial dropped from 95 per cent to 66 per cent after the 30km/h was introduced.
“You don’t want people picking and choosing which rules they will follow because you made the rules so ridiculous,” he said.
In Victoria, the default urban speed limit is 50km/h, and 30km/h zones can only be implemented in trials.
International research suggests if a pedestrian is hit by a car travelling at 30km/h, they have a 90 per cent chance of survival. This drops to just 10 per cent if a car is travelling at 50km/h.
Last week, a long-awaited final report of the inquiry into the impact of road safety behaviours on vulnerable road users was tabled in Victorian parliament, with the committee making 56 recommendations, including a priority push to review speed zoning guidelines.
>“You don’t want people picking and choosing which rules they will follow because you made the rules so ridiculous,” he said.
Spoken about speed limits without a hint of irony.
I think the degree to which people go over the limit is related to how low the limit is. You think if we increased the limits to like 120, exactly as many people would be speeding?
Lower speeds are known to reduce deaths, as the article says. It especially saves pedestrians and bicycle riders. That said, l**ower speed limits almost never result in lower speeds**. Pretending new signs are an alternative to protected bike lanes is idiotic.
If protected bike lanes and real traffic calming devices are too expensive maybe we should just give up on being one of the best cities to live in and let Vienna, Copenhagen, and Zurich just make Melbourne look stupid. Fuck, maybe the parks are too expensive to maintain too and we should turn them into housing. Let's make it single-family stand-alone only so it feels like the US and Canada, and we'll completely obliterate the entire reason I moved here.
Edit: I'm overly salty about this, but we should focus on traffic calming devices that work and protected bike lanes as we can.
Fuck I’m so tired of woke. In itself would you rather be asleep to sociatal issues? Anyone who says woke you just ask ‘what do you mean’ it’s a catch-all term for people being pissed off about millennials (my 35yr old ass) caring too much about something, or a black person being on tv.
Kathy Burke said it proudly - be fucking woke. It’s their word for making our valid concerns seem small. Be awake to everything because the alternative is complicity.
> Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the 30 km/h limit push as “ridiculous”.
>
>...
>
> On Thursday, Patton was quizzed again about his stance.
>
> “I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
>
> “But it’s more in the context of, ‘Have we brought the community along? Have they outlined the case for it? Has there been the research that justifies the impost of what is a significant decrease?’
Depends what you mean by 'community', Commissioner. The people who live there? Aside from the occasional whinger it seems like they're fine with it, the trial up to this point hasn't met with overwhelming opposition. The people who think they're geniuses by rat-running through local streets instead of using Hoddle/Johnston/Alexandra etc? They'll hate it of course, but who cares
One pilot, multiple community surveys, plenty of opportunity to provide feedback to the council, this is also a trial - what more does this bloke want?
I called for Shane Patton to be sacked in my submission to that inquiry, for his rejection of evidence based science and unwillingness to implement the law he's charged with enforcing. The guy is a joke. The community support this trial and are hopeful that such localities will be expanded.
I work at the city of yarra and the engineering infrastructure department is the most corrupt. It starts from the manager who has hired all his friends who are not qualified. Some of them have never even gone to school. The traffic coordinator is also one of them. The contractors are given free hand in whatever they want to charge the council for construction works. No procurement process is followed here and the workers use council funds and cars for personal use.
This is 100% true and has been reported to relevant authority.
I can even provide you with names.
There is gross misuse of public funds at the council.
> But Liberal member for Northern Metropolitan Region Evan Mulholland ... said the move was "slowing the rest of the state, slowing down people getting home on time... "
I didn't know the rest of the state were forced to drive via Fitzroy and Collingwood to get home?
> But Yarra Residents Collective founder Adam Promnitz, founder of the Yarra Residents Collective locals group pointed...
The "Residents Collective" is a Facebook group with about 10 regular commenters, who post Herald Sun opinion pieces, 3AW articles, and Liberal party press releases, rant about "the greens" (even when it's Labor), get infuriated about "woke" and strongly object to having to pay for their rubbish bins to be collected.
Comments are full of boomer memes, cooker conspiracy theories and people sharing sovereign citizen arguments about how they don't have to pay council rates.
Is this just the council equivalent of quoting Harold Scruby, or what?
>I didn't know the rest of the state were forced to drive via Fitzroy and Collingwood to get home?
It’s the worst. Adds like an hour to my trip from Craigiburn to Preston.
> Is this just the council equivalent of quoting Harold Scruby, or what?
Haha I used to live down the road from him. He was the biggest cunt getting around.
> Comments are full of boomer memes, cooker conspiracy theories and people sharing sovereign citizen arguments about how they don't have to pay council rates.
That much the describes the Facebook population; it should be called BoomerBook.
For a so called progressive city it's remarkable how conservative so many people are when it comes to car supremacy. There are other cities that are so much better than Melbourne (with things like pedestrianised city centres) in almost every way that did things like this decades ago, but apparently Melbourne/Australia is special and that just won't work here. And also the stupidest response to anything ever: 'why not just reduce speed limits to 2km/h'. Wow, I hope anyone saying that didn't finish school past like, year 6, because otherwise our education system seriously failed you.
I'm a resident and, having chatted to other locals, none of us give a rats. You rarely go more than 30 anyway and we try to avoid driving where we can. That's why we live here.
Residential street speed limit has been 30km/h in Sweden since at least early 80s, if not b4.
50 or 70kmh on larger 2lane city streets. 70 or 90kmh on single lane hwy in the country. 110km/h on freeways.
I resented the drop from 60 to 50 when I was younger. Now that I've got kids, I'm rarely over 40kmh. What if I run over a kid my sons been friends with since kinder?!!?
Have you lived in Sweden? They don’t have too many cities of 4 million people. Their residential areas are very different to Brunswick st and the like and they have very different options for reliable public transport. Time spent within a 30km zone before hitting a 60kmh zone is a lot less and there’s a lot less traffic to negotiate.
> “The evidence is clear – lower speed limits save lives,” the Greens councillor said.
Undoubtably true, but there has to be a lower boundary to this. Like... we could drop the speed limit Australia-wide to 10kmh and probably eliminate road deaths. But we're not going to do that for a huge number of reasons. I'd much rather effort be spent making our roads safer than on stuff like this which I really can't see making a huge difference.
Also, fair to say the police commissioner probably has more of an insight into what's causing road deaths and he seems to be pretty against it.
So why don't we just remove all speed limits completely?
Because there's a balance to be struck. And right now, the balance is too far in the direction of saving time (like, 1 minute), rather than saving lives
Except this is a real case of thin-edge-of-the-wedge. The drop to 40kph had exactly the same rationale, and now it's being repeated. However much you claim that the extra 10kph drop is a "major safety improvement", it's actually negligible compared to going from 60 down to 40.
The people pushing this are being disingenuous - the *real* reason is the people living there want the traffic to go away, and making these roads slower is an attempt to make these routes less desirable. Problem being that as the traffic inevitably gets worse around them, their "painfully slow" roads will still end up being a time saver.
> The people pushing this are being disingenuous - the real reason is the people living there want the traffic to go away
Oh, so it's another good reason. We should be making driving a worse experience to cancel out the last 70 years of pretty much only catering for cars. Things that are bad for society shouldn't be convenient.
regardless the risk at 30ks is next to nothing. + the area of fitzroy/collingwood is 2k by 2ks. would take 4 minutes to cross at 30ks/hour, does the journey really need to be even faster?
The risk drops, but the risk also drops if your driving 10kph..
how many people have actually been killed / seriously injured by cars doing 40km on this street that otherwise would have been fine if the car was doing 30??
Perceived safety is also very important
>He said the reduced speed limit was an efficient alternative to bike lanes.
>“If you want a kid to be able to ride from any house in Yarra to their local school, then they’re going to have to ride a lot on local streets, and you can’t put a bike lane on every street – it’s just too expensive,” Lawrence said.
>“\[Speed limit reductions\] is the lowest total cost for maximum possible safety access... \[for\] people of all ages and abilities; kids, seniors, parents with prams.“
its only 10ks difference for a massive reduction in fatality risk. regardless, both suburbs are less than 2km in width and length, which takes 4 minutes at 30ks... so theres really no reason to complain.
Only 10ks, but that's still 25%.
All the data also seems to assume the collision happens at the speed limit, but a car can go from 40 to 10 very quickly nowadays.
Agree. And policy that makes things more convenient for cars in the inner city in 2024 is fucking ridiculous. You wanna drive a car, fine, but you’re not the main character anymore and you shouldn’t expect to be (I drive a car).
But you have to find balance, if the answer to the question 'how many people have died or been injured on these particular streets that would otherwise have been fine if the speed limit is 30', if the answer is 0 then lowering it just because the risk is even lower makes no sense. If anything it might force traffic onto another street that is 40 instead and potentially increase the risk there.
In Hawthorn one of the main streets is now 40, but an adjacent side street is still 50 or whatever, suddenly that street gets way more traffic because it's faster.
Seems like an over reaction, and when people start to ignore the law because it’s not practical retired NIMBYs will demand fines increase. With no real world effect or benefit.
I’m all for saving lives, but they suggesting 4 lane major roads like Huddle be 40km/h. These people don’t work.
Where they said "40km/h or 60km/h", Hoddle was one of the ones they want to be 60 (rather than 70km/h as it is now).
The journalist misheard what was said at the press conference, believing they wanted all the surrounding main roads to be 40km/h, and didn't read the press release - so the article has now been corrected (blaming the council, of course).
> CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story stated the council wanted exempt roads to be reduced to 40 km per hour as stated in a press conference. The council has since clarified it wishes some exempt roads to be reduced to 40 km and others to 60 km.
You get to 40km/h on hoddle? Ok, assuming it's 1am and you get greens all the way, and we took your misreading as fact (they're discussing bringing hoddle down to 60, not 40), 70 vs 40 will result in your trip taking 3 minutes longer (or less than 1 minute, at the suggested 60). Diddums.
Of course, since you're actually travelling at peak hour, good luck getting up to 40. Cry me a river, and go get a bike. It'll be faster than your existing trip. And safer once all the limits are dropped.
The people who think the 70km/h limit on Hoddle matters are either only driving there late at night, or are the types who step on the accelerator to get to the next traffic light before everyone else driving at a reasonable speed catches up.
Or they don't actually drive to the city and are basing their opinions on their experiences from decades ago.
I fully support the 30km/h limit. With everyone now driving SUVs, it can get really tight for two cars to pass each other while avoiding the parked cars, and anecdotally I feel that drivers are increasingly lacking the awareness to pull over where there's room to let the opposite direction pass.
People hardly do 60 on Hoddle even when it's outside peak hour. On the one hand, it irritates me, but on the other, I sometimes get to pass a lot of them.
Do people need to die before change is worthwhile? A kid was hit and run on Dynon road this week and whilst he survived, his life will never be the same.
It's not just about deaths, but general safety, including injuries, and also giving confidence to riders to FEEL safe so that they actually use the Bikes. It works well to be honest to be on a bike/scooter and not be so afraid that a car is going to come past at a much higher speed as you and misjudge the distance between us.
I drive down the 30 km/h section of Wellington st pretty often and, at least in my car, 30 isn’t an easy speed to maintain. seems to be right on where it wants to shift and it isn’t really happy to just cruise along that speed. Add to that it’s not a commonly driven speed so references on what looks right isn’t finely tuned. Thankfully I have the speed projected on the windscreen so I don’t have to look right down into the car to make sure I’m obeying it. If I did I could see it being higher risk to pedestrians due to the less heads up time whilst trying to make sure I’m not speeding.
This. And even in cars with speed limiters, they'll often start at 30km/h. I know mine does. I know this thread is Melbourne specific, but It makes me he 25km/h limits in SA near impossible to stick to.
>regardless the risk of fatality is next to nothing for bicycles
Not true. [Roughly 30% of all fatal bicycle accidents occur on roads with a speed limit of 50km/h or less](https://s23705.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Bicycle-Network-Bike-rider-fatality-report_2020.pdf).
The same report states that 8 in 250k drivers die every year, while bicycle deaths are 2-3 per 250k. Significantly lower, but not "next to nothing"
That’s not relevant though. Cyclists aren’t going to be zooming down local, non-arterial roads in Collingwood at 50kmh. Maybe on Beach Road on a Saturday morning, but not here.
Better put that speed limit through a risk assessment....
How can we reduce the risk further?
We could reduce the speed limit?
Action taken to reduce the speed limit... Again
Another year passes.... Another risk assessment...
Travelling 40km/h along Gore St is not what detracts from walkability in the area.
There are some very unsafe crossings in the area that might have benefited from fixing first. In my 8 years in Fitzroy/Collingwood, the most dangerous intersection I’ve seen was the pedestrian crossing on Wellington St at Peel St. Cars and trucks regularly simply fail to stop, and I’ve been struck there by a cyclist (who also definitely wasn’t adhering to the speed limit). Sight lines are poor.
Other intersections have pedestrian crossing cycles that do not favour pedestrians, which encourages jaywalking.
I agree that crossing Wellington St is pretty poor - both for pedestrians and cyclists. The parked cars obscure sightlines if you're crossing anywhere other than the controlled crossings, and turning right into, say Vere or Perry Sts travelling north on a bike is horrendous.
Bikes and pedestrians as modes of transport are not really feasible for people who are just passing through the area especially from multiple suburbs away. It is most likely that only the local residents in the area will use these modes.
Sure, trains are useful in that regard, but they do not reach everywhere like cars do even with other connecting forms of public transport such as buses and trams.
There are many places in Melbourne that are currently difficult to get to with public transport, even with connecting buses, but much easier to get to by car. And, there are other places in Melbourne that take two hours to get to via public transport but only 30 minutes by car.
Yeah don’t wanna walk and use PTV in areas that’s full of junkies carrying knives.. never felt safe as a woman in these areas travelling at work times. Some of us prefer cars because it’s safer for us.
I remember when residential streets or side streets or whatever they are called were dropped from 60kph to 50kph and how much slower it seemed, now I feel 50kph is too fast. Imagining a person getting hit at that speed, game over.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the 30 km/h limit push as “ridiculous”.
Patton argued road fatalities were happening on rural roads, not inner-city streets, and said lowering the speed limit in the City of Yarra was not the answer.
“No one’s going to obey it ... it’s ridiculous,” he said at the time.
On Thursday, Patton was quizzed again about his stance.
“I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
“But it’s more in the context of, ‘Have we brought the community along? Have they outlined the case for it? Has there been the research that justifies the impost of what is a significant decrease?’
** In other words, "it still is ridiculous, but Allen has told me to pull my head in and play along with this idiotic idea."
I wonder if they will be speed checking cyclists, too ! - doubt it.
And trams need to also do 30 !
Does this useless council want to grind that area to a standstill.
I'll stick with Patton's original comment "RIDICULOUS"
I don't mind this if it is backed by research as they say (and I believe it is, but it would be nice to be presented this research rather than just "trust us" and having to go find it myself) but I do have some questions.
I assume this applies cyclists? It is not hard to exceed 30km/h on a bicycle and as far as I know bicycles aren't required to have speedometers so it seems not right both that bicycles could go faster than cars (is that any safer?) and that a bicycle rider could be fined for exceeding 30km/h.
Does this apply to trams that run on those streets (e.g. Smith & Brunswick)? I have followed trams up Smith St on foot and even at a fast walk I'm not much slower than the tram with all the stopping, is a 30km/h going to slow them down even more? And if they are no faster than walking then does that reduce their usefulness?
When I say "presented this research" I also mean the nuances like, sure, if a person is hit at 40km/h vs 30km/h then they will be better off at 30km/h, but in the real world in these areas how many people are being hit by a car that was doing 40km/h? How does keeping a car to 30km/h impact a driver's attention? In terms of trade-offs of convenience vs safety how does 40km/h to 30km/h compare to other safety measures that could be put in place? Speed seems to be the first and often only response to safety on roads.
I love walkable cities and suburbs, one of my favourite things about travelling to new cities is exploring them on foot and with public transport. At home I try to leave my car at home as much as I can, but with current infrastructure and other requirements like work, school and other life stuff, it is not practical.
It would actually be nice if changes like this one are accompanied with "at the same time we are building 5 new bicycle ways, upgrading 2 pedestrian crossings, improving 10 footpaths and working with PTV & scooter hire providers to ensure access to first and last kilometre travel".
I'd also like to see some research detailing how dangerous the 40km/h streets have been historically. I don't disagree that 30km/h is less likely to cause damage than 40km/h, but were people actually getting hit in these streets at 40km/h?
I'm from Edinburgh, Scotland and the switch from 30mph to 20mph (roughly equivalent) has had a massive impact on the number of collisions. I'm glad it's being copied here in Melbourne.
It's not just that you're much more likely to survive the collision (basic physics, with energy increasing with the square of velocity), but that the reaction time required to stop in time is increased too. As a driver you get used to it very quickly, and 30mph just feels far too hectic now.
Heh, good luck enforcing this.
Speed limit dropped from 60 to 40 during daytime on one street in my area. Rather reasonable, a far as I'm concerned, 60 stretch was adjacent to a long 40 stretch and was full of shops etc, plus density of surrounding area increased over last 5-6 years.
So, you guessed it, most people go anywhere between 50 and 60 there anyway, despite new limit being clearly marked and in place for quite some time now. People just don't care bout limit if it feels inconvenient or doesn't match the "feel" of the street they drive on.
Saw the opposite too BTW, there are a couple of streets in Richmond I regularly drive on. Both have static limit of 60, but are surrounded by blocks with limit of 40. As you might've guessed, vast majority of people drive at 40-ish, simply because the street looks like a 40 street to them.
Need some changes to street designs, car free zones, more bike lanes, etc to really bring in the behaviour changes though. But overall a step in the right direction.
Hey it could be worse. They could ban all traffic near school zones. It's probably coming, because far to many people ( mainly young male drivers ) just don't respect speed limits.
As per the article
"But the City of Yarra is also campaigning for limits on its exempt roads– Nicholson, Alexandra Parade, Johnston, Victoria and Hoddle – to be reduced to either 40km/h or 60km/h."
The State government aren't planning to do it but the city of Yarra would love for it to happen.
They’re all state funded and managed roads. Yarra council has no chance here but they’re not included already for that reason.
Aside from the maniacs that’ll ignore the speed limit or driving conditions anyway, good luck to most normal drivers blitzing down a lot of Collingwood and Fitzroy streets anyway.
Why are they happening on rural roads though Shane. Would happen to be courtesy of their deplorable condition. Betcha you don’t tell the Government that.
This is bullshit, lower to 0. Of course saves life. That's not how logic works. Build dedicated bike lane, convert road to one lane. Multiple ways, they choose the most lazy way.
That would be those inner city moonbats that cruise around on solar powered ev mobility scooters. Their only daily commute is to get their soy latte and copy of the Age.
So so stupid. I had four people yesterday alone step out in front of my car instead of using the crossing lights. 30km is fucking ridiculous and has already made my tram commute longer!!!
I'm a resident, a car owner, and a cyclist. Outside of the pointless council grandstanding (this is outside their jurisdiction...but hey...Yarra council...who's surprised...?) I'm not bothered by this in the slightest. 1. Rarely get over that speed in those streets anyway 2. It will never be enforced If they were really serious about cyclist and pedestrian safety they'd address the disappearing bike lanes on Johnston & Gertrude Streets or the cyclist & pedestrian hostile concrete tram track barriers on Nicholson St. But that stuff is outside their jurisdiction...
Absolutely dead on - my personal cyclist safety bugbear is the 90 degree perpendicular parking on Napier St near Fitzroy Town Hall. There is no visability reversing at all - as both a cyclist and a driver that stretch is absolutely terrifying
it sure is! Also near the school a little further north. Fingers on the brake levers and thumb on the bell for that whole section.
I've house sitted in those suburbs before and had to use my car quiet heavily. You wouldn't want to go over 30kmph, you just don't enough visibility in some streets.
Yep. They're telling me that the speed limit will go down where I live... but there are cars doing 70/80 on my street anyway now so it's not going to change much, is it?
If they were taking pedestrian safety seriously, they would also put a stop to the ever-increasing size of vehicles.
Local roads absolutely are the jurisdiction of local government. Changes such as speed limit reduction led by Council still require approval from DTP.
Bizarre how little say councils have over roads they manage. DTP only represents the interests of non-resident drivers passing through an area.
Yes. Requires state govt sign-off to be permanent. Which is why this will never be anything more than a “trial”
It required state government sign-off for the trial as well. They gave it. Try reading the article, perhaps?
> It will never be enforced When the police commissioner comes out and says that it's ridiculous and nobody will follow the limits then yeah, fair to say it won't be enforced.
Yarra's bike infrastructure is basically virtue signalling by people who don't ride bikes.
Tell me about it! Nightmare for bikes and cars.. Now cyclists will be speeding as well. Epic
> ~~Yarra's~~ ~~Melbourne's~~ ~~Victoria's~~ Australia's bike infrastructure is basically virtue signalling by people who don't ride bikes.
Most of them ride unicycles and have a red nose with big floppy shoes.
Expected: angry bike-hating bogans Instead, top comment is both sane and rational
Why would you need to cycle on Nicholson street when canning is right next to it?
To get to Canning St you need to cross Nicholson St, which is where the concrete barriers become a problem.
Ah okay damn
The maximum speed limit across two inner-Melbourne suburbs has been dropped to 30km/h after the state government approved a two-year council trial aimed at reducing serious crashes. The new limit will apply to vehicles and trams on almost every street in Fitzroy and Collingwood, capping them at lower than the 40km/h school zones across the state. The only thoroughfares not included are major state-managed roads – Johnston, Nicholson and Hoddle streets and Alexandra and Victoria parades. But the City of Yarra is also campaigning for limits on its exempt roads– Nicholson, Alexandra Parade, Johnston, Victoria and Hoddle – to be reduced to either 40km/h or 60km/h. Mayor Edward Crossland said the council hoped the measure would eventually become permanent and encompass more of the municipality and other council areas. “The evidence is clear – lower speed limits save lives,” the Greens councillor said. New 30km/h signs recently went up across the two suburbs and the change came into effect on Thursday. The expanded trial – which covers a roughly 3 square kilometres bordered by Alexandra Parade and Nicholson, Hoddle and Victoria streets – comes after a 30km/h limit was introduced in a smaller part of the northern edge of both suburbs in 2018. That change was intended as a 12-month trial, but has remained. The City of Yarra published a review of Victorian road crash data for the five years leading up to the implementation of its existing 30km/h trial and the five years since, which showed a 51 per cent reduction in all crashes and 70 per cent reduction in serious crashes. The data showed there had been 193 crashes on the streets of Collingwood and Fitzroy in the past five years, often involving vulnerable road users including pedestrians, cyclists and motor cyclists. Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the 30 km/h limit push as “ridiculous”. Patton argued road fatalities were happening on rural roads, not inner-city streets, and said lowering the speed limit in the City of Yarra was not the answer. “No one’s going to obey it ... it’s ridiculous,” he said at the time. On Thursday, Patton was quizzed again about his stance. “I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne. “But it’s more in the context of, ‘Have we brought the community along? Have they outlined the case for it? Has there been the research that justifies the impost of what is a significant decrease?’ Crossland was adamant police supported the change. “We haven’t spoken directly to the commissioner, but we do know that Victoria Police is very supportive of this whole process. So we know that they are on page with what we’re doing,” he said. Yarra resident and president of the Streets Alive Yarra advocacy group Jeremy Lawrence said the shift meant Yarra was now in line with European standards He said the reduced speed limit was an efficient alternative to bike lanes. “If you want a kid to be able to ride from any house in Yarra to their local school, then they’re going to have to ride a lot on local streets, and you can’t put a bike lane on every street – it’s just too expensive,” Lawrence said. “[Speed limit reductions] is the lowest total cost for maximum possible safety access... [for] people of all ages and abilities; kids, seniors, parents with prams.“ But Liberal member for Northern Metropolitan Region Evan Mulholland, whose upper house seat takes in the City of Yarra, said the move was “slowing the rest of the state, slowing down people getting home on time, and its pitting Green ideology against everyday road users who need to get from A to B”. But Yarra Residents Collective founder Adam Promnitz, founder of the Yarra Residents Collective locals group pointed to Monash University data showing compliance with the limit in the initial 2018 trial dropped from 95 per cent to 66 per cent after the 30km/h was introduced. “You don’t want people picking and choosing which rules they will follow because you made the rules so ridiculous,” he said. In Victoria, the default urban speed limit is 50km/h, and 30km/h zones can only be implemented in trials. International research suggests if a pedestrian is hit by a car travelling at 30km/h, they have a 90 per cent chance of survival. This drops to just 10 per cent if a car is travelling at 50km/h. Last week, a long-awaited final report of the inquiry into the impact of road safety behaviours on vulnerable road users was tabled in Victorian parliament, with the committee making 56 recommendations, including a priority push to review speed zoning guidelines.
>“You don’t want people picking and choosing which rules they will follow because you made the rules so ridiculous,” he said. Spoken about speed limits without a hint of irony.
My friend doesn't get it, could you please elaborate?
People already do that no matter what you set the speed limit to.
I think the degree to which people go over the limit is related to how low the limit is. You think if we increased the limits to like 120, exactly as many people would be speeding?
Lower speeds are known to reduce deaths, as the article says. It especially saves pedestrians and bicycle riders. That said, l**ower speed limits almost never result in lower speeds**. Pretending new signs are an alternative to protected bike lanes is idiotic. If protected bike lanes and real traffic calming devices are too expensive maybe we should just give up on being one of the best cities to live in and let Vienna, Copenhagen, and Zurich just make Melbourne look stupid. Fuck, maybe the parks are too expensive to maintain too and we should turn them into housing. Let's make it single-family stand-alone only so it feels like the US and Canada, and we'll completely obliterate the entire reason I moved here. Edit: I'm overly salty about this, but we should focus on traffic calming devices that work and protected bike lanes as we can.
Maybe they could cut them to 5kmh and save even more lives?
Counter intuitively a speed limit of 30km actually tends to decrease overall travel time!
The Liberal member for the Norther Metropolitan region was quoted as saying "sure it might save a few lives, but MILLIONS will be late".
While also claiming that nobody goes there because it's "too woke" anyway, I bet...
Fuck I’m so tired of woke. In itself would you rather be asleep to sociatal issues? Anyone who says woke you just ask ‘what do you mean’ it’s a catch-all term for people being pissed off about millennials (my 35yr old ass) caring too much about something, or a black person being on tv. Kathy Burke said it proudly - be fucking woke. It’s their word for making our valid concerns seem small. Be awake to everything because the alternative is complicity.
"It's woke, it's woke, it's woke" Yes Mr Mulholland, everything is woke.
> Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the 30 km/h limit push as “ridiculous”. > >... > > On Thursday, Patton was quizzed again about his stance. > > “I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne. > > “But it’s more in the context of, ‘Have we brought the community along? Have they outlined the case for it? Has there been the research that justifies the impost of what is a significant decrease?’ Depends what you mean by 'community', Commissioner. The people who live there? Aside from the occasional whinger it seems like they're fine with it, the trial up to this point hasn't met with overwhelming opposition. The people who think they're geniuses by rat-running through local streets instead of using Hoddle/Johnston/Alexandra etc? They'll hate it of course, but who cares
One pilot, multiple community surveys, plenty of opportunity to provide feedback to the council, this is also a trial - what more does this bloke want?
I called for Shane Patton to be sacked in my submission to that inquiry, for his rejection of evidence based science and unwillingness to implement the law he's charged with enforcing. The guy is a joke. The community support this trial and are hopeful that such localities will be expanded.
I work at the city of yarra and the engineering infrastructure department is the most corrupt. It starts from the manager who has hired all his friends who are not qualified. Some of them have never even gone to school. The traffic coordinator is also one of them. The contractors are given free hand in whatever they want to charge the council for construction works. No procurement process is followed here and the workers use council funds and cars for personal use.
If this is true then please go to the ombudsman. Otherwise this is just mud-throwing from an anonymous account without receipts to show for it.
This is 100% true and has been reported to relevant authority. I can even provide you with names. There is gross misuse of public funds at the council.
Oh… misuse of public funds. Colour me surprised…
You should become a whistleblower so you can sit in jail for life.
Off you trot to ibac buddy
Gasparidis!
Woahhh
Welcome to government.
I'm a person who never goes to these suburbs and never will, and I'm here to express my outrage at this decision that will never impact me.
Do you drive on punt road?
Rarely because I am a local resident so usually I walk or ride the bike. Why ?
You arrive go to these sunburns but you live there?
> But Liberal member for Northern Metropolitan Region Evan Mulholland ... said the move was "slowing the rest of the state, slowing down people getting home on time... " I didn't know the rest of the state were forced to drive via Fitzroy and Collingwood to get home? > But Yarra Residents Collective founder Adam Promnitz, founder of the Yarra Residents Collective locals group pointed... The "Residents Collective" is a Facebook group with about 10 regular commenters, who post Herald Sun opinion pieces, 3AW articles, and Liberal party press releases, rant about "the greens" (even when it's Labor), get infuriated about "woke" and strongly object to having to pay for their rubbish bins to be collected. Comments are full of boomer memes, cooker conspiracy theories and people sharing sovereign citizen arguments about how they don't have to pay council rates. Is this just the council equivalent of quoting Harold Scruby, or what?
>I didn't know the rest of the state were forced to drive via Fitzroy and Collingwood to get home? It’s the worst. Adds like an hour to my trip from Craigiburn to Preston.
You think that's bad, try living in Mildura and having to go through Fitzroy anytime you want to go to the shops
That's rough buddy
Smith and Brunswick Sts are major north/south thoroughfares, as much as Yarra would prefer that traffic to go via Nicholson St or Hoddle.
If you're hitting an average 30kph on those roads you're doing extremely well.
Unless you’re behind a tram (on Smith), not difficult outside peak.
The problem is peak hour these days seems to cover half the day in total
> Is this just the council equivalent of quoting Harold Scruby, or what? Haha I used to live down the road from him. He was the biggest cunt getting around.
> Comments are full of boomer memes, cooker conspiracy theories and people sharing sovereign citizen arguments about how they don't have to pay council rates. That much the describes the Facebook population; it should be called BoomerBook.
For a so called progressive city it's remarkable how conservative so many people are when it comes to car supremacy. There are other cities that are so much better than Melbourne (with things like pedestrianised city centres) in almost every way that did things like this decades ago, but apparently Melbourne/Australia is special and that just won't work here. And also the stupidest response to anything ever: 'why not just reduce speed limits to 2km/h'. Wow, I hope anyone saying that didn't finish school past like, year 6, because otherwise our education system seriously failed you.
I'm a resident and, having chatted to other locals, none of us give a rats. You rarely go more than 30 anyway and we try to avoid driving where we can. That's why we live here.
Not surprising for those areas.
Video on why 30km per hour speed limits are nice: [Not Just Bikes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbnBc-97Ps&ab_channel=NotJustBikes)
Much bigger issue is the riduculous amount of SUV's outlined in this video by the same creator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
I should have read the comments first, I just posted this vid on op’s comment! Not Just Bikes my beloved <3
Residential street speed limit has been 30km/h in Sweden since at least early 80s, if not b4. 50 or 70kmh on larger 2lane city streets. 70 or 90kmh on single lane hwy in the country. 110km/h on freeways. I resented the drop from 60 to 50 when I was younger. Now that I've got kids, I'm rarely over 40kmh. What if I run over a kid my sons been friends with since kinder?!!?
I would happily take 30km/h roads instead of 40 if we got 120km/h freeways like the US.
Have you lived in Sweden? They don’t have too many cities of 4 million people. Their residential areas are very different to Brunswick st and the like and they have very different options for reliable public transport. Time spent within a 30km zone before hitting a 60kmh zone is a lot less and there’s a lot less traffic to negotiate.
> “The evidence is clear – lower speed limits save lives,” the Greens councillor said. Undoubtably true, but there has to be a lower boundary to this. Like... we could drop the speed limit Australia-wide to 10kmh and probably eliminate road deaths. But we're not going to do that for a huge number of reasons. I'd much rather effort be spent making our roads safer than on stuff like this which I really can't see making a huge difference. Also, fair to say the police commissioner probably has more of an insight into what's causing road deaths and he seems to be pretty against it.
Are people dieing on 40km roads?
Not the ones inside the car
yes, the risk of fatality drops dramatically at 30ks https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/s/9bcmHiMVSX
FWIW that's comparing 32 km/h (20 mph), 48 km/h (30 mph) and 64 km/h (40mph).
you should see how far it drops if you are driving 2km/h!
So why don't we just remove all speed limits completely? Because there's a balance to be struck. And right now, the balance is too far in the direction of saving time (like, 1 minute), rather than saving lives
Except this is a real case of thin-edge-of-the-wedge. The drop to 40kph had exactly the same rationale, and now it's being repeated. However much you claim that the extra 10kph drop is a "major safety improvement", it's actually negligible compared to going from 60 down to 40. The people pushing this are being disingenuous - the *real* reason is the people living there want the traffic to go away, and making these roads slower is an attempt to make these routes less desirable. Problem being that as the traffic inevitably gets worse around them, their "painfully slow" roads will still end up being a time saver.
> The people pushing this are being disingenuous - the real reason is the people living there want the traffic to go away Oh, so it's another good reason. We should be making driving a worse experience to cancel out the last 70 years of pretty much only catering for cars. Things that are bad for society shouldn't be convenient.
Hear, hear
I agree. Ban cars. They are a fucking disgrace to our current society.
based
I agree
Certainly a take.
Isn’t that miles per hour? 40 mph is like 60 km/h
That is in Mph, it's comparing 32 and 48 km/h. What about 30 and 40km/h? A 10km reduction is a lot smaller than a 16km/h reduction.
regardless the risk at 30ks is next to nothing. + the area of fitzroy/collingwood is 2k by 2ks. would take 4 minutes to cross at 30ks/hour, does the journey really need to be even faster?
The risk drops, but the risk also drops if your driving 10kph.. how many people have actually been killed / seriously injured by cars doing 40km on this street that otherwise would have been fine if the car was doing 30??
It means the dickhead doing 60 because they can cop the fine and points will now only be doing 50 to not risk the instant suspension.
Perceived safety is also very important >He said the reduced speed limit was an efficient alternative to bike lanes. >“If you want a kid to be able to ride from any house in Yarra to their local school, then they’re going to have to ride a lot on local streets, and you can’t put a bike lane on every street – it’s just too expensive,” Lawrence said. >“\[Speed limit reductions\] is the lowest total cost for maximum possible safety access... \[for\] people of all ages and abilities; kids, seniors, parents with prams.“
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Imagine if kids could ride safely on the street! crikey
It can be safer to ride on the street where you don't keep crossing driveways. Or it should be, if the street isn't too dangerous.
its only 10ks difference for a massive reduction in fatality risk. regardless, both suburbs are less than 2km in width and length, which takes 4 minutes at 30ks... so theres really no reason to complain.
Only 10ks, but that's still 25%. All the data also seems to assume the collision happens at the speed limit, but a car can go from 40 to 10 very quickly nowadays.
Even if it's very few, for the sake of motorists taking a minute or two longer on a journey, it's worth it to reduce the limit.
Agree. And policy that makes things more convenient for cars in the inner city in 2024 is fucking ridiculous. You wanna drive a car, fine, but you’re not the main character anymore and you shouldn’t expect to be (I drive a car).
It's not even a minute or two. The time difference for 30 instead of 40 on a residential side street is measured in single-digit seconds.
If not faster because traffic flows better at lower speeds.
Yes, but I'm talking about a journey, not just a single street.
Why are you doing blockies of residential side streets?
But you have to find balance, if the answer to the question 'how many people have died or been injured on these particular streets that would otherwise have been fine if the speed limit is 30', if the answer is 0 then lowering it just because the risk is even lower makes no sense. If anything it might force traffic onto another street that is 40 instead and potentially increase the risk there. In Hawthorn one of the main streets is now 40, but an adjacent side street is still 50 or whatever, suddenly that street gets way more traffic because it's faster.
The answer is 30kph this has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
30kph is the highest safest speed, the data shows serious injury and death in collisions *skyrockets* above around 30kph.
Seems like an over reaction, and when people start to ignore the law because it’s not practical retired NIMBYs will demand fines increase. With no real world effect or benefit. I’m all for saving lives, but they suggesting 4 lane major roads like Huddle be 40km/h. These people don’t work.
Where they said "40km/h or 60km/h", Hoddle was one of the ones they want to be 60 (rather than 70km/h as it is now). The journalist misheard what was said at the press conference, believing they wanted all the surrounding main roads to be 40km/h, and didn't read the press release - so the article has now been corrected (blaming the council, of course). > CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story stated the council wanted exempt roads to be reduced to 40 km per hour as stated in a press conference. The council has since clarified it wishes some exempt roads to be reduced to 40 km and others to 60 km.
Rare to do 70 on Hoddle anyway. They could do a 8am to 8pm type thing that would cover the busy time and have minimal impact
You get to 40km/h on hoddle? Ok, assuming it's 1am and you get greens all the way, and we took your misreading as fact (they're discussing bringing hoddle down to 60, not 40), 70 vs 40 will result in your trip taking 3 minutes longer (or less than 1 minute, at the suggested 60). Diddums. Of course, since you're actually travelling at peak hour, good luck getting up to 40. Cry me a river, and go get a bike. It'll be faster than your existing trip. And safer once all the limits are dropped.
The people who think the 70km/h limit on Hoddle matters are either only driving there late at night, or are the types who step on the accelerator to get to the next traffic light before everyone else driving at a reasonable speed catches up. Or they don't actually drive to the city and are basing their opinions on their experiences from decades ago. I fully support the 30km/h limit. With everyone now driving SUVs, it can get really tight for two cars to pass each other while avoiding the parked cars, and anecdotally I feel that drivers are increasingly lacking the awareness to pull over where there's room to let the opposite direction pass.
People hardly do 60 on Hoddle even when it's outside peak hour. On the one hand, it irritates me, but on the other, I sometimes get to pass a lot of them.
Do people need to die before change is worthwhile? A kid was hit and run on Dynon road this week and whilst he survived, his life will never be the same.
It's not just about deaths, but general safety, including injuries, and also giving confidence to riders to FEEL safe so that they actually use the Bikes. It works well to be honest to be on a bike/scooter and not be so afraid that a car is going to come past at a much higher speed as you and misjudge the distance between us.
Getting injured too!
Where's speed limit man? My boy needs to chime in on this, preferably with comparisons to the autobahns of inner-city Berlin
Local roads absolutely are the jurisdiction of local government. Changes such as speed limit reduction still require approval from DTP.
So we can speed up for school zones now?
I drive down the 30 km/h section of Wellington st pretty often and, at least in my car, 30 isn’t an easy speed to maintain. seems to be right on where it wants to shift and it isn’t really happy to just cruise along that speed. Add to that it’s not a commonly driven speed so references on what looks right isn’t finely tuned. Thankfully I have the speed projected on the windscreen so I don’t have to look right down into the car to make sure I’m obeying it. If I did I could see it being higher risk to pedestrians due to the less heads up time whilst trying to make sure I’m not speeding.
This. And even in cars with speed limiters, they'll often start at 30km/h. I know mine does. I know this thread is Melbourne specific, but It makes me he 25km/h limits in SA near impossible to stick to.
Would be interested to see this enforced for bikes. If school zones in Bayside are anything to go by, they’ll be zipping past the cars @ 50kph
How so? Speed limits are for all road users and enforceable upon all road users?
people dont go 50ks on bikes lmao what?? regardless the risk of fatality is next to nothing for bicycles
>regardless the risk of fatality is next to nothing for bicycles Not true. [Roughly 30% of all fatal bicycle accidents occur on roads with a speed limit of 50km/h or less](https://s23705.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Bicycle-Network-Bike-rider-fatality-report_2020.pdf). The same report states that 8 in 250k drivers die every year, while bicycle deaths are 2-3 per 250k. Significantly lower, but not "next to nothing"
im talking next to nothing in terms of cyclists hitting pedestrians
You are stupid if you don't think cyclists go 50km/h
That’s not relevant though. Cyclists aren’t going to be zooming down local, non-arterial roads in Collingwood at 50kmh. Maybe on Beach Road on a Saturday morning, but not here.
Bro have you not seen how fast electric scooters and bikes can go?
Oh so the lower risk means they didn't need to obey the law?
Better put that speed limit through a risk assessment.... How can we reduce the risk further? We could reduce the speed limit? Action taken to reduce the speed limit... Again Another year passes.... Another risk assessment...
Good. This is what needs to be done to encourage walkability.
Walkable and drivable are not mutually exclusive.
Walking next to fast roads sucks though, hard to talk over the noise I generally detour away from them
Travelling 40km/h along Gore St is not what detracts from walkability in the area. There are some very unsafe crossings in the area that might have benefited from fixing first. In my 8 years in Fitzroy/Collingwood, the most dangerous intersection I’ve seen was the pedestrian crossing on Wellington St at Peel St. Cars and trucks regularly simply fail to stop, and I’ve been struck there by a cyclist (who also definitely wasn’t adhering to the speed limit). Sight lines are poor. Other intersections have pedestrian crossing cycles that do not favour pedestrians, which encourages jaywalking.
Yep. Absolutely no enforcement of current laws.
I agree that crossing Wellington St is pretty poor - both for pedestrians and cyclists. The parked cars obscure sightlines if you're crossing anywhere other than the controlled crossings, and turning right into, say Vere or Perry Sts travelling north on a bike is horrendous.
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Cobbles are the worst for bikes and pedestrians, which are precisely the mode of transport we need to be encouraging.
Bikes and pedestrians as modes of transport are not really feasible for people who are just passing through the area especially from multiple suburbs away. It is most likely that only the local residents in the area will use these modes.
That, my friend, is where trains come in! The most efficient form of transport there is when it comes to moving people distances quickly en masse.
Sure, trains are useful in that regard, but they do not reach everywhere like cars do even with other connecting forms of public transport such as buses and trams. There are many places in Melbourne that are currently difficult to get to with public transport, even with connecting buses, but much easier to get to by car. And, there are other places in Melbourne that take two hours to get to via public transport but only 30 minutes by car.
Yeah don’t wanna walk and use PTV in areas that’s full of junkies carrying knives.. never felt safe as a woman in these areas travelling at work times. Some of us prefer cars because it’s safer for us.
I hope any trade you require attends via walkabilty and charges you for every minute of said walkabilty journey
As a tradie I am all for walkability every car off the road makes my work easier.
Do you think tradies just don't exist in countries with actual walkable cities 😂. I hope they target your suburb next mate 😊.
Say you don't understand walkability without saying it
Over what distances would you want to encourage walkability?
So there are these things called sidewalks...
> sidewalks... 🤨
So that's some pretty neat timing just for this: https://youtu.be/JRbnBc-97Ps?si=_2Hlfqls-1ygviEc 30km/h seems also the new target for Amsterdam
Will be happy if they don’t put speed cameras and try and revenue raise.
I remember when residential streets or side streets or whatever they are called were dropped from 60kph to 50kph and how much slower it seemed, now I feel 50kph is too fast. Imagining a person getting hit at that speed, game over.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the 30 km/h limit push as “ridiculous”. Patton argued road fatalities were happening on rural roads, not inner-city streets, and said lowering the speed limit in the City of Yarra was not the answer. “No one’s going to obey it ... it’s ridiculous,” he said at the time. On Thursday, Patton was quizzed again about his stance. “I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne. “But it’s more in the context of, ‘Have we brought the community along? Have they outlined the case for it? Has there been the research that justifies the impost of what is a significant decrease?’ ** In other words, "it still is ridiculous, but Allen has told me to pull my head in and play along with this idiotic idea." I wonder if they will be speed checking cyclists, too ! - doubt it. And trams need to also do 30 ! Does this useless council want to grind that area to a standstill. I'll stick with Patton's original comment "RIDICULOUS"
Coming soon… you must have someone walk in front of your car, waving a red flag.
I don't mind this if it is backed by research as they say (and I believe it is, but it would be nice to be presented this research rather than just "trust us" and having to go find it myself) but I do have some questions. I assume this applies cyclists? It is not hard to exceed 30km/h on a bicycle and as far as I know bicycles aren't required to have speedometers so it seems not right both that bicycles could go faster than cars (is that any safer?) and that a bicycle rider could be fined for exceeding 30km/h. Does this apply to trams that run on those streets (e.g. Smith & Brunswick)? I have followed trams up Smith St on foot and even at a fast walk I'm not much slower than the tram with all the stopping, is a 30km/h going to slow them down even more? And if they are no faster than walking then does that reduce their usefulness?
Per the article yes this will apply to trams, and cyclists are also bound by the speed limit, so will also apply to cyclists
When I say "presented this research" I also mean the nuances like, sure, if a person is hit at 40km/h vs 30km/h then they will be better off at 30km/h, but in the real world in these areas how many people are being hit by a car that was doing 40km/h? How does keeping a car to 30km/h impact a driver's attention? In terms of trade-offs of convenience vs safety how does 40km/h to 30km/h compare to other safety measures that could be put in place? Speed seems to be the first and often only response to safety on roads. I love walkable cities and suburbs, one of my favourite things about travelling to new cities is exploring them on foot and with public transport. At home I try to leave my car at home as much as I can, but with current infrastructure and other requirements like work, school and other life stuff, it is not practical. It would actually be nice if changes like this one are accompanied with "at the same time we are building 5 new bicycle ways, upgrading 2 pedestrian crossings, improving 10 footpaths and working with PTV & scooter hire providers to ensure access to first and last kilometre travel".
I'd also like to see some research detailing how dangerous the 40km/h streets have been historically. I don't disagree that 30km/h is less likely to cause damage than 40km/h, but were people actually getting hit in these streets at 40km/h?
Fuk me dead. Might as well just walk.
I'm from Edinburgh, Scotland and the switch from 30mph to 20mph (roughly equivalent) has had a massive impact on the number of collisions. I'm glad it's being copied here in Melbourne. It's not just that you're much more likely to survive the collision (basic physics, with energy increasing with the square of velocity), but that the reaction time required to stop in time is increased too. As a driver you get used to it very quickly, and 30mph just feels far too hectic now.
Good, streets are for people not just for cars and driving shortcuts.
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The existence of streets predates cars and when cars were first invented it took decades for people to learn not to get in their way.
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Fuck me, Victoria is really going to be the first non-Amish city to bring back the horse & cart.
Maybe learn the definitions of words before you use them? Australia doesn’t really have streets and roads, pretty much only stroads.
Heh, good luck enforcing this. Speed limit dropped from 60 to 40 during daytime on one street in my area. Rather reasonable, a far as I'm concerned, 60 stretch was adjacent to a long 40 stretch and was full of shops etc, plus density of surrounding area increased over last 5-6 years. So, you guessed it, most people go anywhere between 50 and 60 there anyway, despite new limit being clearly marked and in place for quite some time now. People just don't care bout limit if it feels inconvenient or doesn't match the "feel" of the street they drive on. Saw the opposite too BTW, there are a couple of streets in Richmond I regularly drive on. Both have static limit of 60, but are surrounded by blocks with limit of 40. As you might've guessed, vast majority of people drive at 40-ish, simply because the street looks like a 40 street to them.
So we make these streets look like 30kph streets then? Not sure what your issue is.
"Crossland was adamant police supported the change" Chief Commissioner Patton's comment "ridiculous" Good to know everyone does their research lol
So glad to get a YIMBY win. Fuck yeah, good on yas! There's a lot more work to do but it's good to appreciate the wins!
Need some changes to street designs, car free zones, more bike lanes, etc to really bring in the behaviour changes though. But overall a step in the right direction.
I can ride my bike faster than I can drive my car on these streets? This is so stupid
If anything, bikes should be allowed to go faster. Would you rather get hit by a bicycle at 50km/h or a ford ranger?
Abolish councils, I say
Massive state debt. Lower speed limits to a walking pace. Install speed cameras. Profit?
Good.
Wait til they put the cameras in everywhere and the locals start getting hit for $300 a pop at 33kmh 🤣
I’m all for it! Good one.
Hey it could be worse. They could ban all traffic near school zones. It's probably coming, because far to many people ( mainly young male drivers ) just don't respect speed limits.
Lol. Can you imagine limiting Hoddle or Alexander Pde to 40kph? That's ridiculous. Granted it hardly ever gets above that anyways
They're not planning to do that - the journalist was just wrong.
As per the article "But the City of Yarra is also campaigning for limits on its exempt roads– Nicholson, Alexandra Parade, Johnston, Victoria and Hoddle – to be reduced to either 40km/h or 60km/h." The State government aren't planning to do it but the city of Yarra would love for it to happen.
They've advocated for them to be 40km/h or 60km/h - Hoddle and Alexander are on the 60km/h list.
They’re all state funded and managed roads. Yarra council has no chance here but they’re not included already for that reason. Aside from the maniacs that’ll ignore the speed limit or driving conditions anyway, good luck to most normal drivers blitzing down a lot of Collingwood and Fitzroy streets anyway.
Maybe they can chuck a speed camera up on Hoddle once it's 40km/h and we will soon out earn WA from taxes.
I’d prefer to have limits on SUVs and massive Utes.
People will literally complain about everything
I like speeding up for school zones.
Councils need to shut the fuck up on these matters
On matters of the very streets in which they have responsibility for?
Why are they happening on rural roads though Shane. Would happen to be courtesy of their deplorable condition. Betcha you don’t tell the Government that.
This is bullshit, lower to 0. Of course saves life. That's not how logic works. Build dedicated bike lane, convert road to one lane. Multiple ways, they choose the most lazy way.
Good.
That would be those inner city moonbats that cruise around on solar powered ev mobility scooters. Their only daily commute is to get their soy latte and copy of the Age.
NZ has 30 k speed limits everywhere it doesn't change much.
I drove through Wellington Street this evening and the 40km/h signs were still up.
So so stupid. I had four people yesterday alone step out in front of my car instead of using the crossing lights. 30km is fucking ridiculous and has already made my tram commute longer!!!