Lowering Speed Limits

The Mayor and Transport for London (TfL) is committed to Vision Zero, eliminating death and serious injury from London’s roads. The Vision Zero Action Plan sets out our ambition and next steps to achieve this. It details our plans to reduce road danger, including proposals to implement safer speeds on the roads we operate and manage across London.

What are we doing?

Our Vision Zero Action Plan sets out our aims to lower the speed limit by 10mph in selected locations, covering our roads in the central London area and over 140km of our roads across London. We have achieved and exceeded this target and to-date we have:

• Introduced a 20mph speed limit on our roads in the central London Congestion Charging Zone in March 2020.
• Reduced the speed limit by 10mph on over 200km of TfL roads across selected roads in 24 boroughs and in 37 town centres.

The Mayor has asked us to continue the programme as there are more locations where we can reduce speeds and therefore reduce collisions and casualties across London.

We will soon be entering Phase 3 of our Lowering Speed Limits programme. This phase involves reducing speed limits on roads on the Transport for London Road Network in nine more locations. These roads will be:

• A1 Archway Road: Bakers Lane to Archway (Southwood Lane to Bakers Lane & Shepherds Hill to Hornsey Lane)
• A312 Church Road: White Hart Roundabout to Western Avenue
• A24 Stonecot Hill: Gander Green Lane to Sutton Common Road
• A23 Thornton Road: Thornton Heath Pond to, and including Lombard roundabout
• A10 The Roundway: Great Cambridge Road to Bruce Grove
• A214 Trinity Road: Windmill Road to Aldrington Road
• A316 corridor: Chalkers Corner to St Margarets roundabout (30mph)
• A306 Roehampton Lane: Upper Richmond Road to Kingston Lane
• A2213 Kidbrooke Park Road: Peglar Square to Eltham Road

We are committed to improving transport in London by making it safe and reliable. All of our plans have been designed with this in mind. Please view our Equalities Statement for more information.

Why do we want to lower speeds?

Collision data from around the world is very clear. It shows the faster a vehicle is travelling, the more likely a collision will occur because the driver has less time to react, stop or avoid the collision and the more severe an injury resulting from the collision will be.

We recently published a study which examines the impact of 20mph schemes and limits on borough roads in London. Our report – the first of its scale in London – comprehensively demonstrates that 20mph schemes have had a significant positive impact on reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) on our roads. It shows that on borough roads where 20mph speed limits were introduced, there was a 34 per cent reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured (from 395 to 260), compared against the background trend of a 15 per cent fall.