Yeah, the current approach globally - at least it seems to be the same in Germany - is to make the "experience", if you want to call it that, for car users worse to the point that it's worse than public transport in order to force people onto it. There are some minor improvements being made to public transport, but it's of course a lot faster to put up signs for a speedlimit everywhere or even blocking access to certain roads completely than to increase the capacity of a rail network. And as you said, this hits the already disadvantaged parts of the population more, since they more often than not have manual labor type job that requires going into the "office" everyday, that are living further from work, ...

Missed one - you actively encourage mobile working so you have less people moving around in total.

My main concern with this is that what you're doing is desensitising people from the speed limit.

I'm from a country that has arbitrarily defined speed limits and VERY low compliance rates compared to the UK (if you've ever been to Italy for example you know what I'm talking about). The nice thing here is that because the vast majority of roads have a speed limit that 'feels' appropriate (ie the road is designed for its speed limit), the amount of speeding I see here is negligible compared to what I was used to.

And generally here when the limit changes people comply to it because you can trust there's usually a good reason.

There's roads near me that are arbitrarily set to 30 (no pedestrian walkways, no side roads, but it passes near the back of houses and I assume they successfully petitioned the local authority to change it to 30), and traffic flow there is usually 40-45. I've never seen an accident there.

We have a poorly designed intersection not too far away and there's always accidents there to the point that there's now a consultation to fix it.

If this rule came to England, both these roads would be turned to 20, and that won't really be solving anything. In the first example I assume locals will still be driving 40, and it will create unnecessary overtaking because the road is wide and the visibility is good so it's not necessarily unsafe. But you've gone from a safe 40 road to risking head-on collisions pointlessly.

I envy you. My city is still at federal maximum of 60 km/h. I know only one city in Belgorod oblast that has 40 km/h.

We have this speed limit in the Netherlands, mostly in areas with housing. It doesn't really affect busses because they stay on the bigger roads that are 50 kmh (about 31 mph). In my opinion it's fine to drive 20 mph on the more local roads, as long as there are collector roads where you can go a bit faster.

speed bumps are garbage for speed control, you need to make the cars weave with alternating bollards or curbs. Traffic circles and roundabouts use this method to reduce dangerous collisions.

For small streets with no lane markings: bollards placed on both sides so cars have to stop to let other cars through.

For large streets - lanes that weave near pedestrian crossings with curbs or jersey barriers force drivers to slow down and turn work best.

Traffic calming has plenty of options outside speed bumps.

They let you buy an oversized SUV to bypass that.

Is this a European car thing or a driver skill issue? As an American I’ve never had a problem maintaining slow speeds in any vehicle I’ve driven - manual or automatic.

Edit: I am starting to realize that some drivers are startlingly dependent on cruise control to maintain a target speed.

Can't enable cruise under 40kph (~26mph). It's a pain.

It's really difficult to get them to remain at a constant speed under 25 mph or so

You don't have to drive at exaxtly 25, driving below is just fine