[Talk-GB] National speed limit changes

Philip Barnes phil at trigpoint.me.uk
Mon Sep 23 08:34:12 UTC 2013


On Sat, 2013-09-21 at 22:09 +0100, Andy Street wrote:
> I'd agree that maxspeed=national is insufficient as it is impossible
> to tell what speed you can do in a built up area. 
National speed limits rarely apply in built up areas, other than
sometimes on faster feeder roads. The built up area limit in the UK is
30mph, unless signposted differently. This is implied by the presence of
street lighting. 30mph limits, where there are no streetlights, require
repeater signs.

> I'm also not a huge
> fan of the current practice of placing "single" or "dual" in the
> maxspeed:type tag either as I consider the number of carriageways to be
> feature of the road rather than the speed limit.
This tag is vital, as in the UK on roads where the national speed limit
applies, it is much more than a mere feature of the road as you put it,
but defines the speed limit. When roads change between single and dual
carriageway the speed limit changes, there are no signposts. 

60 mph on single carriageways, 70 mph on dual carriageways or 70 mph on
motorways in England and Wales are never explicitly signposted on NSL
roads, but are indicated by the black diagonal, or motorway chopsticks
signs.

There are a few exceptions on special roads, hence the A55 in North
Wales and the Edinburgh City Bypass do have 70mph signage.

Phil (trigpoint}




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