An ambitious plan to reduce the number of road crashes in which Edinburgh people are seriously injured by 50% by 2030 is to be approved this week.
The council’s new road safety action plan includes more than 100 measures to help achieve this goal, from new crosswalks to extending the 20mph limit. Statistics show that in 2021 there will be 521 traffic accidents in the capital, including 3 deaths and 153 serious injuries. Transport Convenor Scott Arthur said: “The number of people killed or seriously injured on Edinburgh’s roads has been trending down over the past few years, but more needs to be done to make city streets more accessible to all road users. Safety.” The goal is to achieve zero fatalities and a 50 percent reduction in the number of accidents by 2030, he said.
The target for reducing serious injuries among children and adolescents is even higher at 60%. Cllr Arthur said the focus would be on reducing the number of accidents to and from schools and the areas surrounding them. He said the council wanted to keep cars off the perimeter of the school as much as possible. “Obviously for some schools it won’t work because of where they are – they might be on a very busy road or on a bus route – so we might need to look at other things. But as a default this should It is our wish.”
The action plan also sets targets to reduce serious injuries to road users aged 18 to 24 by 70 per cent; 40 per cent to pedestrians; 30 per cent to cyclists and motorcyclists; and 30 per cent to road users aged 65 and over. 20%. All targets in the Edinburgh Action Plan meet or exceed national targets.
Cllr Arthur said: “Our aim is to reduce the scale of accidents, which means we can no longer see accidents as something that happens by chance, and the price we have to pay for having a busy road network. It’s more about becoming more interventionists. By the end of 2024, we will have more than 100 plans available. They will include crosswalks, places where we have investigated accidents, where we think we need to make physical changes to intersections, about 80 streets that we are going to take steps to lower speed, and of course increasing the number of streets with a 20 mph limit.”
He said the council would work with police to reduce the number of accidents. “There’s a lot of ambition here, so we can’t go it alone. We’ll be focusing on giving advice to the public and structural changes we can make, but police will also be looking at enforcement. Speed is a big factor in a lot of incidents.”
He said he once spoke to a parent whose child was hit by a car on a 20-mph road, where speeds often exceed 30 mph. “We will take action where we know there is a problem due to an accident. But we will also be proactive and where we know that speeding will occur, we will take physical measures in many cases to reduce the speed of the vehicle.
“On streets where the traffic is too fast, people who live there want to slow down because people are usually just driving through their neighborhood trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and they have kids trying to get to school or to the store Or to see their friends.”
