2010-02-14 Sunday Times - Coyle - Dublin Pushes the Speed Limits

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7026237.ece

Churchgoers in the Austrian city of Graz, best known as the birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger, were treated to a rather unusual homily during the summer of 1992. During their Sunday services, pastors in several churches asked the brethren to support a new 30kmph speed limit in the centre of the historic city.

It was just the first in a series of public-relations stunts dreamt up by the town’s vice-mayor, who had staked his political reputation on making the city more pedestrian-and cycle-friendly, despite a media backlash against the new limits.

“He won over the priests by convincing them it would be safer for their congregations going to church. It was a very clever campaign,” said Karl Reiter, a transport researcher from Graz.

The Austrian city, the first in Europe to introduce a 30kmph limit for the entire city centre, has become a model for Cork in its attempts to reduce traffic congestion and convince its denizens to swap cars for bicycles. The cities are similar in size, with a population of just under 300,000. Part of Cork’s traffic plan is to introduce a 30kmph speed limit in the city centre but, unlike in Dublin, the council wants to win over Leesiders before shaving 20kmph off its current limit.

“Graz is somewhere we are looking at,” said Ian Winning, an engineer with Cork city council, “because it has managed to implement the 30 kmph successfully all over its city centre, while also increasing the use of public transport and bicycles.”

Some 80% of the road network within Graz’s city limits is now 30kmph, Reiter said. “Initially only certain zones had the limit but we eventually decided it was easier for the entire city — except for the main road — to have one limit. Otherwise it is too confusing for drivers,” he said.

Gerard O’Neill of Amárach Consulting knows what he means. Last weekend he drove along a “nearly empty street” in Dublin city centre at a relative snail’s pace. “The driver in front was making sure she did not exceed the new limit, and just to be doubly sure was driving at closer to 20kmph,” he said. His nightmare on Dame Street prompted a blog post in which he wondered whether there was some “deep, dark flaw in the Irish psyche that makes us behave so cravenly before authority”.

A day later Ferdinand von Prondzynski, president of Dublin City University (DCU), had a similar experience. “The elderly lady ahead of me was working on the principle that if 30kmph is good, 20 is probably better. All around we had a clanking of car horns, and one idiot behind the wheel of a 10-year-old BMW overtook her (and me) with oncoming traffic, doing 60 or 70 I reckoned,” he wrote on his blog later that night.

While opposition from the AA and petrol-head motoring columnists to the new limits in Dublin was predictable during the initiative’s first few weeks, criticism from the likes of von Prondzynski reflects a deeper unease.

Even Andrew Montague, the Labour councillor who has consistently been sent out to bat for the new limits in the media, seems to be having second thoughts, admitting that 30kmph may be too slow on the capital’s quays. With a backlash in full swing, it’s easy to see why Cork is looking to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s home town rather than the capital for a how-to guide on implementing a lower city-centre speed limit.

But are Dubliners being too quick to criticise the big slowdown?

WHEN O’Neill searched the council’s website for statistics explaining why the new limits were being introduced, he was underwhelmed by a one-page explanation.

The council insists it has figures to back up its policy. It says the percentage of pedestrians killed when hit by a vehicle travelling at 50kmph is 45%, compared with 5% at 30kmph. Montague said last week that 25 pedestrians were killed in the city between 1998 and 2007. But five of them died in the bus crash on Wellington Quay in 2004, while many of the others were killed by trucks, now effectively banned from the city centre, apart from Guinness trucks on the quays.

The Dublin Cycling Campaign wants the council to publish before-and-after statistical analysis of noise, pollution, injuries and congestion in the coming months to prove that the new limits work. “Thirty kmph is the norm in European city centres,” they say. “In England alone there are 2,150 such zones, including large parts of London, and widespread use in Scotland.”

Ciaran Cuffe, a Green TD, points out that the new limit has been working in Dun Laoghaire without a public outcry for a month. He says the argument for lower speed limits goes further than safety. “What kinds of towns and cities do we desire? I want a city where I can have a conversation on the street without having to shout over speeding traffic, and where children, tourists, older people, shoppers and residents can feel safer and at ease in their surroundings,” he said.

But von Prondzynski’s weekend jaunt through town was ruined by Dubliners’ almost Mediterranean fondness for blaring their horns. “A quiet ride? Like hell!” he said. The academic believes the council has failed to convince drivers that “a steady speed of 30kmph in city traffic actually gets you there faster”.

Conor Faughnan, the AA’s director of policy, is equally sceptical. “In road safety terms, Dublin city is one of the safest places in the country. The road safety justification does not exist . . . nor is there any reason to believe an assertion that a 24/7 30kmph limit will improve traffic flow,” he said.

So will Dublin’s difficulties with implementing its go-slow cause Galway, Cork and Limerick to put the brakes on their plans? All three report that they are between one and two years away from bringing proposals to a full vote of the council. At least they’re now aware of the hidden hazards ahead, Winning said. “By the time we are voting on it, we will be able to look at the situation in Dublin, which will have settled down,” he said.

But even if the scheme is curtailed, or even abandoned, the pre-eminence of the car in urban Ireland is under serious threat.

Along with the new 30kmph speed limit in the city centre, traffic lights have been reset to favour cars driving at this speed. It’s just one of an arsenal of tricks that urban councils have at their disposal to frustrate motorists out of their cars and on to public transport or bicycles.

While Montague insists he is not anti-motorist, national transport policy now actively discriminates against car ownership. Recent policy papers by the Department of Transport show that without some gentle prodding, there will be 2.4m registered vehicles in Ireland in 2020, leading to congestion, growing obesity and increased pollution. It would also lead to a drop in competitiveness, an over-reliance on oil and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. To avoid this, councils have been asked to lure 500,000 drivers out of their cars.

So far, their modus operandi has been mostly stick, with little carrot. On top of increased Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT), higher fuel costs and the spectre of congestion charges, there’s also the impending €200 levy for private parking spaces, more tolls and bus priority routes.

Yet O’Neill remains unconvinced. “This isn’t about science — or safety for that matter — it’s about ideology,” he said. But will the council reconsider?

WHEN Dublin city council’s transportation and traffic strategic policy committee put forward a proposal to reduce the speed limit in the city centre last year, there were no objections.

The committee is made up of 10 councillors and five stakeholders, including the AA. On the back of the committee’s recommendations, the proposal went out for public consulation. Two submissions were received, both in favour of reducing limits in the city centre.

In October, the proposal went before a full meeting of the council, with 34 voting for it and three against — Gerry Breen and Bill Tormey from Fine Gael, and Niall Ring, an independent. Councillors decided to postpone the scheme’s implementation until after Christmas, setting a start date of February 1.

Montague, chairman of the council’s transport committee, is baffled at why controversy has exploded about the scheme in the past two weeks. Even his own party leader, Eamon Gilmore, has come out against the new limits.

“The process has been in train for almost two years,” Montague said. “The AA had no problems with it until it became a media issue. Why weren’t we having this argument two years ago? The crazy thing is that a majority of every party supported it when we voted on it,” he said.

The Labour councillor believes the scheme will win public support if the council perseveres.

“We’ve seen from other cities like Munich and Newcastle that when the speed limit is reduced, there is 60% or 70% opposition in polls. But once drivers get used to it and people see the benefits, the percentage swings in favour of the limits,” he said.

Reiter wonders whether the Dublin public really is opposed to the limits. “The loudest voices are not always representative. There should be surveys to see what the people think,” he said.

Montague said the limits were “here to stay” for at least three or four months. “It can’t be scrapped without going back to the council first. There would then have to be a vote to put it back out to public consultation. Then there would have to be another vote by the full council on it,” he said. By then will the heat have gone out of the argument?

Could the real problem with the limits be the council’s inability to involve the public in its decision-making process and sell its big ideas to Dubliners?

When critics in Graz argued that it was impossible to even reach third gear at 30kmph, the town’s charismatic vice-mayor took up the challenge, inviting motorists to take their cars to the city’s town hall. “He invited the press and proved it was no problem. It was great publicity,” Reiter said. Future Dublin mayor, please take note.