Now Queensland has announced that the speed limit on residential streets in the south-east corner of the state will be lowered to 50kmph, the ACT should follow. Of course, it should have led on the issue. The longer the lower speed limit is postponed the greater the unnecessary death, injury and property damage will be.
Queensland has unfortunately delayed the lower limit until December next year. None the less it cited overwhelming support for the move from local councils throughout the region. Queensland Transport Minister Vaughan Johnson has got the balance right. Arterial streets will have the higher limit and streets where people live will have the lower limit. That will deter commuters from cutting through the suburbs and improve the safety and quality of life of those who live in the suburbs.
Mr Johnson said a review of speed limits undertaken before the decision had found crashes on local residential streets accounted for up to 30 per cent of the state’s casualty crashes and cost the community an estimated $120 million a year. The experience of other countries was that a reduction of speeds through lower urban speed limits had resulted in reductions in the number and severity of crashes.
It is time for action in the ACT. There is no need for the ACT to wait to see what happens with the NSW trial and what happens in Queensland trials first. There is really no need to prove that the laws of physics apply in each legal jurisdiction. And there is no need to waste the lives, limbs and property of ACT residents in arriving at the obvious conclusion. Where the primary use of the road is for access to dwellings, broadly defined as single-carriageway roads with dwellings either side, the limit should be 50km/h. It would be a minor inconvenience for a few to the great advantage of the many.