IT absolutely infuriates me to see yet another minority group, namely Brake, trying to impose their opinions upon the majority (Calls to cut urban speed limit to 20mph, The National, September 15).
That is an absolutely ludicrous idea. I am 100 per cent certain that the vast majority of drivers do not want it. Public service vehicles should also be taken into account, since with the introduction of the one-man bus operation many years ago, they were set to reflect an average speed of 22mph.
Therefore there would be places where buses needed to move faster than that to maintain that average speed. What are they set at now? Is it dead slow and stop?
The police in Edinburgh have already stated that they do not have the resources to enforce the present 20mph speed limits, never mind the whole of Scotland. Are more serious crimes to be disregarded while the police run about with speed cameras trying to enforce a limit that only a minority want? How much manpower will be dedicated to chasing and arresting drivers who refuse to pay their fines?
Do we really want to see drug dealers or burglars being ignored in order to release police resources to trace drivers who perhaps did 30mph in a 20mph area?
If they really want to see how to manage traffic to the benefit of everyone, let them come to Glenrothes and see how it is done here. All of the housing areas have 20mph limits but the through roads and the roads round the edge of the housing areas have higher limits. In fact it is legal to drive at 50mph to within a couple of hundred yards of the town centre.
Glenrothes is infamous for the number of roundabouts. There are no “traffic lights” in the town at all. Where necessary, junctions are controlled by roundabouts. The only “traffic control lights” here are for pedestrian crossings. But it works. There are very few collisions and I’ve never heard of anyone being knocked over. The fact that drivers are allowed to travel at a higher speed where it is safe to do so tends to incline everyone to observe the lower speed limits where they are necessary.
There are cycle paths throughout the town and many of the through footpaths are well removed from any traffic. So, if treated sensibly everyone can be catered for – not just the vociferous minority.
Charlie Kerr
Address supplied
QUITE a lot has been said and written over the last few days regarding the future of transport and electric cars in Scotland in the coming years (Is it realistic to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2032?, The National, September 14). I detailed quite a lot of the possible difficulties in my Long Letter in July.
Some further comments seem needed, however. I do not think that the statement by the Scottish Government was ever intended as indicating a date after which there would be no internal combustion engined vehicles allowed on our roads. My reading was that this would be a cut-off point for the sale of new vehicles only. It would follow that existing vehicles would be in use for many years thereafter. Political organisations need to be very careful to consider all the implications when making life-changing announcements and not just to go for scoring brownie points.
The biggest practical difficulty involved in the roll-out of electric vehicles is still recharging. This is particularly bad in a country such as Scotland where distances to be covered are large. The idea of charging points at lamp-posts and the like is a possible free-for-all for all sorts of cable thieves. Perhaps the next 10 years or so will see some new technological breakthrough to overcome this?
Thought has also to be given to the needs of all the farmers and crofters in the islands and remote areas of the country who need heavy haulage transport to be able to move their livestock and produce long distances to mainland markets.
Even if these can be created, in electric form, one cannot have vehicles laden with cattle or sheep standing around for hours while batteries are plugged in. I think that the diesel and petrol units have quite a long way yet to run.
In the meantime, a huge amount of progress could be made in the cutting down of harmful emissions by intelligent action within our major centres of population.
George M Mitchell
Dunblane
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