Plans for a more consistent approach to setting speed limits across North Yorkshire are to be considered in a bid to improve road safety.
A countywide speed management strategy would see all limits reviewed to ensure that the current restrictions reflect the environment and help encourage active travel such as walking and cycling.
North Yorkshire is England’s largest county, with almost 5,800 miles of roads and 74 per cent of the routes are in rural locations.
Until now, there has been a reactive approach to investigating speed limits, relying largely on service requests. Under new plans, the council would be proactive and target the whole of the county’s road network over several years.
North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for highways and transport, Cllr Malcolm Taylor, said:
“In consultation with our road safety partners, we have produced a speed management strategy with the aim of reducing injuries and risk on our urban and rural roads.
“The new approach would help to encourage active travel which will improve the health and wellbeing of the public as well as contributing to carbon reduction.
“We want to ensure that we have a consistent, proactive and countywide approach to speed limits, and make sure communities are consulted every step of the way.”
North Yorkshire Council has a £57 million budget to deliver its highways capital programme, which includes improvement works such as road safety measures.
An extra £100,000 was also secured for speed limit reviews and schemes for 2025/26 through the new Local Transport Grant which is administered by the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority.
The council moved towards the creation of lower speed limits with the introduction of the revised 20mph speed limit and zone policy in January 2022, and its review in July 2023.
A review into speed limits outside all 400 educational sites began last year, starting with those where speeds are highest. The council has adopted a presumption in favour of lowering speed limits in these and other locations.
The speed management strategy will be considered by Cllr Malcolm Taylor and North Yorkshire Council’s corporate director of environment, Karl Battersby, at a meeting on Friday 28th November.
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