| The concerns raised within this petition have been considered by officers and assessed against the County Council’s Speed Management Strategy and as part of the Annual Hazardous Sites Review. Assessment against the Speed Management Strategy The Speed Management Strategy (SMS), which sets out the current criteria for setting speed limits, is based on Government guidance published in January 2013, ‘Setting Local Speed Limits’. Speed limits should be evidence-led, self-explanatory and seek to reinforce peoples’ assessment of what is a safe speed to travel. They should encourage self-compliance and not be seen by drivers as being a target speed at which to drive in all circumstances. The key criteria for setting a speed limit are set out in section 2 of the SMS and are as follows. 1. An assessment of the environment must be made to confirm that a speed limit is appropriate for the road. The Hertfordshire Speed Limit Framework will be used to meet this criterion. 2. For 30mph to 70mph limits, the maximum mean speed should not exceed the proposed limit once implemented. 3. Mean and 85th percentile speeds will be collected before and after a limit is implemented, although mean speeds will be used as the basis for setting speed limits. This section of London Road has been assessed using the above criteria 1. The Environment. The Hertfordshire Speed Limit Framework provides a guide to assist in speed limit selection, particularly in assessing whether the environment or nature of a particular road is suitable for a specified limit. Guidance on what the environment should be for any given limit can be found in sections 2.6 to 2.11. London Road has been assessed against sections 2.7 and section 2.8 for 30mph and 40 mph limits. London Road is one of the main radial routes into the City and is a classified A road. It is a higher quality suburban road with properties set back from the carriageway behind heavy vegetation and there are few individual accesses. The carriageway is of a good width and layout, putting the environment into the category of a 40mph urban road rather than a 30mph urban road, despite the new developments. 2. Maximum Mean Speed A speed survey was carried out for a week in September 2013 between Abbots Park and Cunningham Hill Road. This indicated that the maximum mean speed towards the city centre was 34mph and from the city was 33mph. The maximum mean speed exceeds 30mph. The 85th percentile speed towards the city centre was 39mph and from the city was 38mph. The environment and character of the road would need to be changed to bring the speeds in line with the SMS for a 30mph limit. The type of measures that would be required to bring about the required speed reduction, for example ‘build outs’ and changes to the carriageway width, would not be appropriate for a classified A road which is also a bus route. Therefore a change in speed limit cannot be endorsed. Annual Hazardous Sites Review Hertfordshire County Council reviews the available injury collision data annually and produces a list of hazardous sites on the roads within the County. This investigation forms part of Hertfordshire County Council’s ongoing commitment to reduce the number and severity of injury collisions that occur on our roads. Our records show that over the past three years for which data is available, 1 Jun 2013 to 31 May 2016, there were fourteen injury collisions recorded along this section of London Road. Two of these collisions involved at least one casualty that was seriously injured, and the other twelve collisions resulted in at least one casualty being slightly injured. There was a cluster of collisions at the St Vincent Drive/Mile House Lane junction with four slight and the two serious injury accidents. Another cluster of four slight injury collisions were located at the Drakes Drive junction. The cluster of collisions at the St Vincent Drive/Mile House Lane junction has been identified through the annual review process and has been selected for more detailed investigation in this financial year 2016/17. The investigation will consider whether there are any patterns in the type of collisions and whether there are any engineering measures that could be introduced to try and reduce the number and severity of any collisions. From an initial look at the data, speeding is only listed as a contributory factor in one collision however all possible factors will be looked at as part of the investigation. |