MOVEABLE VEHICLE ACTIVATED SIGNS
The Parish Council has bought and installed 2 speed signs in the village. The positioning was organised by the North Yorkshire Traffic Engineer whose advice we were required to follow as part of the agreement allowing us to have signs in the village.
The signs are equipped with datalogging so we can produce traffic reports that we will publish here.
The signs are battery powered – the battery is changed every 4-6 weeks and the signs turned 180 degrees. This again is part of the agreed process we have to follow. Currently two members of the Parish Council look after these signs. If anyone wishes to volunteer to help then please speak to Dr Ian Jackson.
Report July 2026 produced by AI
- Speeding is down year-on-year on directly comparable months, even as traffic volume has risen. Comparing like-for-like (same month, same sign direction):
- Feb 2025 → Feb 2026: Alne 40+ fell 41→15 (-63%); Newton 40+ fell 591→324 (-45%), 50+ fell 23→14.
- Mar 2025 → Mar 2026: volumes rose ~10-13%, yet Alne 40+ fell 104→69 and Newton 40+ fell 99→75; 50+ counts dropped to zero on both signs.
- Apr 2025 → Apr 2026: Alne 40+ fell 67→49; Newton 40+ held roughly flat (711→707) and 50+ ticked up slightly (30→34).
- Newton Road is the persistent hotspot. Despite the two roads having similar 85th-percentile speeds (both cluster around 29-32mph), Newton consistently records 5-15x more vehicles at 40mph+ than Alne — e.g. April 2026: 49 vs 707. This points to a minority of high-speed outliers on Newton rather than a general speeding culture, and it’s the location where 50mph+ readings persist into 2026. NB. We know that the sign picks up the speed of vehicles before they enter the village
- Traffic volume is trending upward. Both sites show roughly 15-20% more vehicles in the 2026 readings than the equivalent 2025 month, so the reduction in speeding events is happening against a backdrop of busier roads, not quieter ones.
- 85th-percentile speeds are very stable (Alne 29-31mph, Newton 30-32mph) across the whole 15-month span — the bulk of drivers’ behaviour hasn’t shifted; the change is concentrated in the speeding tail (40mph+/50mph+ counts).
- Direction matters for comparison. The “entering village” readings on Newton are consistently much worse than “leaving village” ones (e.g. May 2025 leaving: only 100 at 40+ vs Apr 2025 entering: 711) — worth confirming whether this reflects genuine directional behaviour (accelerating away from the 30 limit vs braking into it) or is partly an artefact of sign placement/calibration. NB. We know that the sign picks up the speed of vehicles before they enter the village
2020
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2026
August report
September report
October report
November report
December report