SPEED limits on the A1123 between Hartford and St Ives will be reduced in a bid to save lives. Huntingdonshire s traffic management committee agreed on Monday (January 18) to reduce the 60mph limit between the A141 roundabout at Hartford and Houghton Hill

SPEED limits on the A1123 between Hartford and St Ives will be reduced in a bid to save lives.

Huntingdonshire's traffic management committee agreed on Monday (January 18) to reduce the 60mph limit between the A141 roundabout at Hartford and Houghton Hill, St Ives, to 50mph, with a half-mile 40mph stretch on Houghton Hill.

It means motorists will have seven changes of speed limit on a journey between St Ives and Huntingdon.

Several councillors - including Huntingdonshire District Council's leader, Councillor Ian Bates, who represents the area on Cambridgeshire County Council - and many residents of Houghton and Wyton and their parish council had pressed for the whole stretch between the Hartford roundabout and Houghton Road, St Ives to attract a 40mph limit.

But traffic engineers said speed limits must be effectively self-enforcing, meaning speed limits are set at whatever speed vehicles already travel, even though the stretch of single-carriageway A1123 has seen nearly 50 injury-accidents in three years, 31 of which involved excessive speed. Two of the 31 were fatal.

County council engineers claimed drivers would see a 40mph limit throughout as 'inappropriate', though the county will consider reducing the 50mph to 40mph between the St Ives boundary and the B1090 Sawtry Way junction when 300 new homes are built on Houghton Road - a stretch that it in any case scheduled to attract an extended 30mph limit when a bus lane is installed at part of the residential development.