Birmingham city council is planning Birmingham 20 mph speed limit plans for almost all roads in the city, leaving only a few major thoroughfares outside the lower limit. Drivers in Birmingham would face the change across most local roads if the plan goes ahead.
The council’s proposal has drawn protest from the right, with Conservatives and Reform already attacking it. Critics describe the policy as a war on the motorist, while supporters point to research from Wales showing reductions in road deaths and injuries after its 20mph change.
Rod King and 20's plenty
Rod King, who founded 20's plenty two decades ago, is one of the campaign figures most closely associated with lower urban speed limits. His campaign’s framing has long been that slower traffic can be set citywide rather than left to piecemeal local schemes.
Birmingham’s plan also sits in a wider set of city transport changes already under way elsewhere. Doug Ford is planning to rip out 19km of cycle lanes in Toronto, while Sadiq Khan is moving ahead with the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street.
Wales and 30mph streets
Wales restricted all Welsh local urban roads to 20mph in September 2023, giving Birmingham a recent example of how a broad citywide limit can be put into practice. A few busy streets in Wales have reverted to 30mph, showing that exemptions can be written into the rules for roads carrying heavier traffic.
The Birmingham proposal follows a city described as having racetrack-style roads, elevated routes and roundabouts in the 1960s, when it was also the headquarters of the UK car industry. Over the past couple of decades, the city centre has already been made more pedestrian-friendly through road removals.
Paris in 2014
Christian Wolmar has pointed to other transport changes elsewhere, including Anne Hidalgo’s election as mayor of Paris in 2014, Paris’s large bike hire scheme in 2007 and the pedestrianisation of the left bank of the Seine. Those examples are being used to show how a city can keep changing the balance between cars and other users.
For Birmingham, the immediate issue is the scope of the exemption list. The council is planning to make the limit citywide apart from a few major thoroughfares, and that leaves drivers to watch which roads remain at 30mph and when the council chooses to bring the new limit into force.
