THE general speed limit in Hobart's city precinct should be reduced to 40km/h not 50km/h, a national pedestrian advocate says.
Pedestrian Council of Australia chairman Harold Scruby said Hobart City Council plans to introduce a blanket 50km/h speed limit did not go far enough.
Tasmania's Department of Infrastructure Energy and Resources has accepted a proposal from the council to reduce the speed limit to 50km/h for 24 streets and parts of streets, but wants a 60km/h limit to stay on 10 others.
Mr Scruby said 50km/h was still too fast and out of step with capital city councils across Australia, which had lowered their speed limits, or planned to.
He said 50km/h was "too fast, much too fast".
"A pedestrian hit at 50 is twice as likely to die as a pedestrian hit at 40km/h -- when are they going to move to the 21st century and put pedestrians first not last?" he said.
"They can't get round this 20th-century mentality where the car is always king."
Sydney's speed limit had been 50km/h for more than a decade and the speed limit in Balmain, and the Chatswood and Parramatta and North Sydney CBDs was 40km/h.
Mr Scruby said some places had 30km/h speed limits and in most of Brisbane it was now 40km/h.
He said the Hobart proposal showed the council and the roads authority were both living in the previous century.
"Many places have changed. The whole of Toorak Rd, Punt Rd and places round South Yarra [in Melbourne] are 40km/h zones," Mr Scruby said.
"A 50km/h limit is 10 years old, it's nowhere near good enough."
He said the influence of traffic signals and improved traffic flows meant motorists would find they would arrive about the same time with a 40km/h limit as with a 50km/h limit.
And he said if capital cities CBD areas had traffic speed limits of 30 or 40km/h they became much more inviting outdoor cafes and tourism would prosper because it was not a hostile environment.
Mr Scruby said in 90 per cent of incidents in which a pedestrian was hit by a vehicle in a 60km/h speed limit zone the pedestrian would be killed.
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