Council chiefs are facing fresh pressure to consider Edinburgh-style 20mph zones in communities across Perthshire.
Scotland’s capital has started rolling out 20mph speed limits on all residential, shopping and city centre streets.
Now Perth and Kinross Council is being urged to investigate a similar move across all built-up areas.
It follows calls for a go-slow zone, including traffic calming measures, at Coupar Angus following the tragic death of local two-year-old Harlow Edwards.
Yesterday, the town’s community council held a drop-in session to give people the chance to discuss proposed measures to put the brakes on speeding motorists.
Feedback from the event, held at the school, will be raised at the next community council meeting on Monday evening. The meeting will be attended by council officers.
Strathmore councillor Lewis Simpson called for blanket 20mph limits during a meeting of the enterprise and infrastructure committee.
He said: “I understand that the council has been inundated with requests for 20mph speed limits.
“That would suggest to me that the public has an appetite for these sort of measures – and that is something we should be encouraging.”
He said: “Would it not be easier to make the 20mph limit the default position for built-up areas? If it was felt that these areas could cope with faster moving traffic, then they could apply to the council to have the speed limits increased.
“It seems to me to have worked very well in Glasgow and Edinburgh and I cannot understand why we can’t do the same.”
Traffic and network manager Charles Haggerty said: “It would be up to elected members to make that sort of decision. I wouldn’t like to comment on that at this stage.”
On Wednesday, Harlow’s mother Sara Edwards address councillors in an emotional plea for action at Larghan Park, where her daughter died.
Presenting a 1,100-signature petition to councillors, she said that area wide limits and extra traffic calming measures were “urgently required.”
Mrs Edwards was joined at the meeting by husband Steven and 18-year-old daughter, Dionne who was badly hurt in the accident.
Coupar Angus resident Michael Gallagher said: “The case for area-wide 20mph zones with additional traffic calming is overwhelming. The Department of Transport states: ‘for residential streets and other town and city streets with high pedestrian and cyclist movement, local authorities should consider the use of 20mph schemes’.”
