30 kph limit for non arterial roads
Ian Napier, Paul Tranter and Rodney Tolley

regaining a large part of the public realm for humanity

I am embarrassed offering the proposal to introduce 30kph to city streets as an entry in an ideas competition. After all, it is not a new idea and is already adopted in many cities around the world and even in Australia, for instance, the central area of Manly and parts of Melbourne.

The ideas competition will come up with beautiful and inventive ways to make our streets more liveable as public spaces with no doubt a range of price tags attached. If however, it is possible to reduce traffic speed down as low as 30kph the gain in truly public space will be considerable.

Streets become able to be enjoyed by young and old. Roads that were barriers become places of community interchange. At these speeds, it is possible to judge gaps in traffic when it is safe to cross and drivers have the width of vision to spot children at the side of the road. At these speeds, it is not necessary to build expensive separated bike lanes as cyclists are comfortable sharing the road. Front gardens and shop footpaths become places to linger and converse.

Of course it is not enough just to post a new speed limit sign but at lower speeds roads can be narrower allowing more room for footpaths and tree planting among other measures that together can change the feel of the space so that it becomes ‘self-explaining’. See the recent book ‘Slow Cities; Conquering our Speed Addiction for Health and Sustainability’ Elsevier 2020.