The City of Yarra released a review of road crash data in Victoria for the five years before its existing 30km/h test was implemented and the five years after, which showed a 51% reduction in all accidents and a 70% reduction in serious accidents.
The data showed there had been 193 crashes on Collingwood and Fitzroy streets in the past five years, often involving vulnerable road users including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton previously dismissed the push for a 30km/h limit as “ridiculous”.
Mr Patton argued road fatalities were happening on country roads, not inner-city streets, and said lowering the speed limit in the City of Yarra was not the answer.
Jeremy Lawrence, City of Yarra resident and head of advocacy group Streets Alive.Credit: Jason South
“No one will obey it … it's ridiculous,” he said at the time.
On Thursday, Patton was again questioned about his position.
“I could have used better words,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
“But it's more in the context of, 'Have we brought the community? Have they explained the case to you? Has there been research that justifies the imposition of what is a significant decrease?'
Crossland was adamant the police supported the change.
“We have not spoken directly to the commissioner, but we know that Victoria Police is very supportive of this whole process. So we know they are aware of what we are doing,” he said.
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Yarra resident and chairman of advocacy group Streets Alive Yarra Jeremy Lawrence said the change meant Yarra was now in line with European standards.
He said the reduced speed limit was an efficient alternative to bike lanes.
“If you want a child to be able to get from any house in Yarra to their local school, they're going to have to cycle a lot on local streets, and you can't put a cycle lane on every street – too expensive,” Mr Lawrence said.
“[Speed limit reductions] is the lowest total cost for maximum possible security access… [for] people of all ages and abilities; children, elderly people, parents with prams.”
But Northern Metropolitan Region Liberal member Evan Mulholland, whose upper house seat is Yarra City, said the move “slowed down the rest of the state, slowed down people coming to home on time and its green ideology facing everyday road users who need to go from A to B”.
But Yarra Residents Collective founder Adam Promnitz, founder of local group Yarra Residents Collective, pointed out that data from Monash University showed compliance with the limit in the initial test in 2018 dropped from 95% to 66% after the introduction of 30 km/h.
“You don't want people to pick and choose which rules to follow because you've made them so ridiculous,” he said.
In Victoria, the default urban speed limit is 50km/h, and 30km/h zones can only be implemented on trials.
International research suggests that if a pedestrian is hit by a car traveling at 30 km/h, they have a 90% chance of survival. This drops to just 10% if a car is traveling at 50 km/h.
A long-awaited final report of the inquiry into the impact of road safety behaviors on vulnerable road users was tabled in the Victorian parliament last week, with the committee making 56 recommendations, including a priority push to review guidelines of speed zoning.
The research followed a period of horror on the state's roads with 296 deaths, the highest loss of life in 15 years, in 2023. This was 24% more than in 2022. Nationally, deaths in roads were up 6.8% at the end of November. , but only 3.6 per cent if Victoria is excluded.
–with Patrick Hatch, Melissa Cunningham
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