Political twist in 20mph rule row (From York Press)

A couple of years ago I wrote to Nick Clegg asking him to back The Press' "Live Now, Drive Later" road safety campaign. His office responded saying Liberal Democrats supported 20mph speed limits and wanted to make it easier for councils to implement. The correspondence can be found here: http://db.tt/5xLf2VM
u

Councillor James Alexander
Labour Leader of City of York Council

"Right for politicions to honour pledges"

When does that happen then ?.

Liberal Democrats in York have always supported having the most appropriate speed limit for a road, bearing in mind its individual chracteristics - with the potential for accidents being the key infuencing factor.

This policy led us to implement 20 mph limits outside all schools in the City.

That is very different from Labours policy which is a city wide 20 mph limit, which would cost £600,000.to implement.

That is £600k less that could be spent on accident prevention improvements at black spots.

The numbers killed on York's roads increased to 7 during Labours first year in office.

This reversed a downward trend over many years. The Council's priority should be to ask for a professional assessment of the KSI figures and how they can be improved.

Slavishly adhering to the small print of an election manifesto (that apparently many of their supporters never read) in the light of emerging new evidence on the ineffectiveness of wide area 20 mph limits, would simply confirm the party leaderships arrogance and inflexibility.

James Alexander wrote:
A couple of years ago I wrote to Nick Clegg asking him to back The Press' "Live Now, Drive Later" road safety campaign. His office responded saying Liberal Democrats supported 20mph speed limits and wanted to make it easier for councils to implement. The correspondence can be found here: http://db.tt/5xLf2VM

u

Councillor James Alexander
Labour Leader of City of York Council

Don't you find it a little insulting that in an article quoting you that you're the first person to post on it? It does seem very egotistical when you could just make sure that if they misquote you to get them to print a correct?

James Alexander egotistical ???
Surely not.

James Alexander wrote:
A couple of years ago I wrote to Nick Clegg asking him to back The Press' "Live Now, Drive Later" road safety campaign. His office responded saying Liberal Democrats supported 20mph speed limits and wanted to make it easier for councils to implement. The correspondence can be found here: http://db.tt/5xLf2VM

u

Councillor James Alexander
Labour Leader of City of York Council

As usual Cllr Alexander you have a complete blind spot when it comes to actually paying attention to detail.

You just don't do detail, or are too lazy - not sure which.

I had a Lib Dem Focus leaflet through my door in Holgate which clearly said that they were not against 20mph - where appropriate. What they were against was the flagrant waste of money putting 20mph where it was clearly not needed or enforceable.

When will you learn to look harder at the facts than going for soundbytes all the time.

LibDem wrote:
Liberal Democrats in York have always supported having the most appropriate speed limit for a road, bearing in mind its individual chracteristics - with the potential for accidents being the key infuencing factor. This policy led us to implement 20 mph limits outside all schools in the City. That is very different from Labours policy which is a city wide 20 mph limit, which would cost £600,000.to implement. That is £600k less that could be spent on accident prevention improvements at black spots. The numbers killed on York's roads increased to 7 during Labours first year in office. This reversed a downward trend over many years. The Council's priority should be to ask for a professional assessment of the KSI figures and how they can be improved. Slavishly adhering to the small print of an election manifesto (that apparently many of their supporters never read) in the light of emerging new evidence on the ineffectiveness of wide area 20 mph limits, would simply confirm the party leaderships arrogance and inflexibility.

I do not support the introduction of a 20mph speed limit throughout the city. I am not Labour supporter. But, to say that "the numbers killed on York's roads increased to 7 during Labours first year in office" is ludicrous. So was there a deliberate ploy to bring this about ? There may well have been a downward trend but to suggest that a change in council control should influence this is beyond belief. The spending of all this money on a scheme which is unenforcable and impossible to police is shameful when cutbacks are having to be made in more important departments. If this is the best reason the Lib Dems can come up with for not implementing the scheme, then it is pathetic to say the least.

The criticism of Labour, over the increase in road deaths in the City, is that, 2 months after the figures were first published, they have still not agreed to consider a professional officers report into the causes of the increase, and the options for reducing the toll in future years.

Councils now have to publish details of the reports, that they intend to consider, in a 4 month rolling programme.

There is nothing about accident reduction on the current programme which can be viewed on the Councils web site.

All road deaths are a disaster and totally regretable. But when you are down to levels like 7, you simply cannot attribute blame for variations...the numbers are too small to have statistical significance and the chance of random variation is too high.

I think it is not good for York when road safety becomes a political football. Traffic and transport is becoming a real wolf-whistle issue with parties in power trying to take difficult decisions for the long term...and parties in opposition falling over themselves to appear to be pro-motorist (lots of motorists = lots of votes!).

I'm afraid I've seen this from all 3 main parties...look where it got Labour with the Clifton Green debacle. Now the Lid Dems opposing a policy which they certainly seem to support nationally.

Not good. We demand better and in particular that politicians (in power and opposition) make arguments for long term good not just for short term votes.

Coun Alexander said: “Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is backing 20mph speed limits where the York Lib Dems will not.

And ironically, Clegg's former cabinet colleague, Chris Huhne, doesn't even support the 70mph motorway speed limit, it would seem - let alone a 20 one!

http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/R_v_Huhne_a
nd_Pryce

"in the light of emerging new evidence on the ineffectiveness of wide area 20 mph limits" - Actually the so called evidence that has got national publicity is a school boy misinterpretation of the increase in number of injury accidents on 20mph roads without any account of the growing proportion of roads with this limit across the country. If you want anon political review of this statistic listen to this week's More or less programme on about 13 mins in: http://www.bbc.co.uk
/radio/player/b01lv7
yn or the CTC take on http://beta.ctc.org.
uk/blog/chris-peck/2
0-mph-casualty-figur
es-another-failure-t
o-properly-evaluate-
risk

The evidence from Portsmouth (introduced by a Lib Dem authority!) after 2 years was that overall average injury accidents went down and the reduction in 20mph areas was actually greater for drivers/riders and car passengers than for pedestrians! (see p 43 of http://assets.dft.go
v.uk/publications/sp
eed-limits-portsmout
h/speed-limits-ports
mouth.pdf

James Alexander said:

he has written to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to thank him for “supporting this idea”.

If Nick Clegg supports the idea of a council spending millions on putting up signs, painting roads, building obstacles for cars and increasing air pollution for no actaual proven safety benefit at the same time as closing vital public facilities and removing carers from vulnerable people due to lack of money, it would go quite a long way to explaining why him and his party have proved so such a calamity during the short time they have been involved in running the country.

If James Alexander is looking for a political ally, Assad of Syria would prove a more sensible choice than Clegg as only about two thirds of his country want him to quit trying to run it and Cameron probably thinks a few million in aid would be a cheap price to pay to rid us of Clegg right now.

‘James Alexander says...9:31am Sat 18 Aug 12
A couple of years ago I wrote to Nick Clegg asking him to back The Press' "Live Now, Drive Later" road safety campaign. His office responded saying Liberal Democrats supported 20mph speed limits and wanted to make it easier for councils to implement. The correspondence can be found here: http://db.tt/5xLf2VM

u

Councillor James Alexander
Labour Leader of City of York Council’

It matters not what you say baby James it’s what you do that matters to the people that elect or do not elect you.
So far you have failed to do as stated and have made some pretty bad knee jerk decisions and your personal vendetta against the Hitler T shirt shop was a poor/backfired attempt at self-promotion of yourself and your abilities. I think it’s time for you to get out of politics for you before you are voted out as it’s beyond your capabilities!

Yours,
Someone that did not vote for you or your party or any other main stream party.



‘Guy Fawkes says... 8:49pm Sun 19 Aug 12
Coun Alexander said: “Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is backing 20mph speed limits where the York Lib Dems will not.


And ironically, Clegg's former cabinet colleague, Chris Huhne, doesn't even support the 70mph motorway speed limit, it would seem - let alone a 20 one!

http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/R_v_Huhne_a

nd_Pryce’

More importantly it’s not the speeding that was the issue more the attempt to pervert the course of justice from an elected politician!

greenmonkey wrote:
"in the light of emerging new evidence on the ineffectiveness of wide area 20 mph limits" - Actually the so called evidence that has got national publicity is a school boy misinterpretation of the increase in number of injury accidents on 20mph roads without any account of the growing proportion of roads with this limit across the country. If you want anon political review of this statistic listen to this week's More or less programme on about 13 mins in: http://www.bbc.co.uk

/radio/player/b01lv7

yn or the CTC take on http://beta.ctc.org.

uk/blog/chris-peck/2

0-mph-casualty-figur

es-another-failure-t

o-properly-evaluate-

risk

The evidence from Portsmouth (introduced by a Lib Dem authority!) after 2 years was that overall average injury accidents went down and the reduction in 20mph areas was actually greater for drivers/riders and car passengers than for pedestrians! (see p 43 of http://assets.dft.go

v.uk/publications/sp

eed-limits-portsmout

h/speed-limits-ports

mouth.pdf

The Killed and Seriously Injured figures for Portsmouth (all roads) are:

2010 = 91

2011 = 143

That doesn’t mean that Portsmouth’s roads are inherently now more dangerous as a result of their wide area 20 mph speed limit.

But is does suggest that the 20 mph policy is not the panacea for accident reduction that some claim, and that Council’s should think very carefully before investing very large sums of money in any accident reduction strategy.

& yorkshirelad the reduction in the numbers killed and seriously injured on York’s roads (down from a peak of 160 in 2006 to 62 in 2010) was achieved by a thoughtful accident reduction strategy. Each accident is considered individually and appropriate action taken. Sometimes that means changes to speed limits. On other occasions engineering works are needed.

Accidents are concentrated on trunk roads and in particular types of location. So it is a reasonable objective to seek to reduce the numbers killed on our roads to zero.

Is this the most important item that our Council have to deal with at this time?
Would the money not be better spent keeping essential services running and not wasted on a scheme which may/may not have benefits?
There must be more pressing things than a 20 mph limit in York or is this a smokescreen to keep our minds off more important things?