AQW 26266/17-22

Mr Andrew Muir
Alliance Party
North Down

Tabled Date: 23/11/2021
Answered On Date: 02/12/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Infrastructure whether her Department will consider the introduction of a 20mph speed limit on Firmount Crescent, Holywood.

Answer:

You may be aware that, in Northern Ireland, a 20mph zone is generally an extension of an existing traffic calming scheme. As such they are usually only implemented in residential areas where self-enforcing measures such as road humps are already in place to reduce vehicle speeds to approximately 20mph.

Requests for changes to a speed limit are assessed in accordance with my Department’s Roads Service Policy and Procedure Guide (RSPPG) E051 ‘Setting Local Speed Limits in Northern Ireland’. A traffic calming assessment was carried out in 2019 which indicated that Firmount Crescent did not score or rank highly enough to be considered for road humps when compared to other locations in the North Down area competing for the finite amount of funding available.

Aside from sites that are self-enforcing through the use of road humps, a number of sites were identified for trialling the effectiveness of 20mph speed limits using signs only. A study on this concluded that this approach had little or no impact on the speed of traffic.

In light of these findings and in the absence of self-enforcing road humps, the Department is not at this time considering the introduction of a 20mph speed limit at this location.