Recently, we reported on so-called eco-towns in the U.K. which have imposed 15 mile per hour speed limits in an effort to reduce pollution. We're pretty sure that their end-goal is to remove vehicles from the roads entirely, not simply forcing them to slow down. It seems that other towns are lowering speed limits for a completely different reason: safety. The city of Portsmouth has recently become the first city in Britain to impose a 20 mile per hour speed limit for nearly every residential street, 1,200 in total.

According to the Portsmouth City Council's official website, the goal is threefold:

• to boost the safety of pedestrians and cyclists - especially children and old people
• to encourage cycling and walking
• to make streets more useable for the people who live on them

We can see the benefit to removing cars completely from the transportation equation where possible, but there is a problem in forcing cars to drive this slowly without offering an alternative, and it centers on emissions. Most any newer car has been designed to run most efficiently at a higher speeds, and pollute more when driven too slowly. Electric vehicles are less likely to encounter this problem, but we doubt that many Portsmouth residents are driving through their city in electric vehicles.

[Source: Portsmouth City Council]

As we announced here, the new speed limits around the city of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) to reduce pollution are coming into effect very soon. The new limits will be instated before the end of fall and they require that in a radius of approximately 10 miles around the city, the maximum speed limit will be 80 km/h (50 mph). We already knew the reaction from the Car Dealers Association (Faconauto) was that these speed limits were not logical. Today we get the reaction from the RACC (Reial Automòbil Club de Catalunya).

RACC has published big advertisements on the local and regional press calling the measure "absurd" and they offer an alternative (variable speed limits according to traffic and weather conditions), justifying this suggestion with their own data. RACC considers the reports that the Catalan Ministry of Environment used to justify the speed limit were wrong.

According to RACC, its German equivalent ADAC made a report a few years ago stating that reducing speed actually reduced pollution levels by 24 percent but increased NOx pollutants by 26 percent, because cars would have to use lower gears with higher rpm. Moreover, this report was made with a balance of 50 percent gasoline and 50 percent diesel cars and the Ministry didn't take in consideration is that the actual percentage of diesel vehicles on the road is far more than 50 percent, increasing the effects of NOx pollution.

RACC says the Ministry's calculations didn't take into consideration that 40 percent of cars usually don't reach high speeds, because they're in traffic jams and constant starts/stops in congested traffic actually raises emissions by 60 percent.

[Source: RACC (link points to a .doc file in Spanish]

The Catalan ministry of Environment Protection (Spain) has passed a bill that will reduce the maximum speed for cars in the Barcelona metropolitan area from 120 to 80 km/h (75 to 50 mph). The bill also sets for a recommendation of a maximum speed of 90 km/h (55 mph) in the so-called "second crown" of the city metropolitan area. In order to execute this bill, all the administrations (national, regional and local) will have to change the road signs as well as tune the speed cameras and radars during next fall.

This measure ressembles the strict 55-mph limits that the US implemented after the 1973 Oil Crisis, but the focus for this bill is the air quality. It's claimed that up to 16,000 people die in Spain per year due to air pollution. Current NOx and particullate EU standards are 40 micrograms per cubic meter but current levels exceed 50. In Spain, transport is reponsible of 40 to 52 percent of air pollution, affirms the Spanish Industry Ministry. Reducing speed from 120 to 80 km/h is claimed to reduce air pollution 30 percent.

Other measures that the Catalan government will implement along with this speed reduction are: mobility plans for all companies with more than 500 workers (such as free chartered autobuses) and substituton of public vehicles with hybrids, CNG or at least biofuels.

[Source: El Periódico (link is in Spanish)]

Click on the photo for a high res gallery from the AEV factory tour

Here are AutoblogGreen, we've done several reports on various neighborhood electric vehicles such as the various models from GEM and a factory visit to American Electric Vehicle that included a drive in their Kurrent. These NEVs typically have very limited performance and in most places are legally limited to no more than 25mph. Now that some of these NEVs are getting more safety features like hydraulic brakes, seat belts, lights and full bodywork, the state of Washington is considering bumping the speed limit to 35mph. If the new legislation goes through, it could definitely increase the popularity of these vehicles in urban environments like Seattle, where drivers don't necessarily need to go very far or fast.

[Source: Seattle Times]