Swansea: Owner spends £3,000 on speed camera outside café

Paul Hooper, outside Hooper's café with his speed monitoring device the square grey box

A frustrated café owner spent £3,000 on a speed camera to monitor a 30mph zone outside his café.

Paul Hooper, owner of Hooper's café in Swansea, said he regularly clocks vehicles at over 70mph, with one travelling at 106mph.

He claimed Oystermouth Road in Swansea "could be the fastest 30mph road in the UK".

Swansea Council said regular monitoring it carried out showed the majority of drivers drove within the speed limit.

Mr Hooper said his results suggested both a considerable amount of speeding, and an excessive speed problem, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.

The total number of speeds he recorded was 551,127 and, if the equipment was accurate, 149,387 of them were over 30mph - meaning just over 27% exceeded the limit.

Referring to the results of his survey, he claimed that if you excluded vehicles which weren't running freely and also excluded the fastest 15%, the average speed for the remainder was 51mph.

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The 57-year-old said he has raised speeding concerns previously with Swansea Council and South Wales Police but didn't feel enough action was being taken.

Mr Hooper said he planned to apply to the council for planning permission to switch on a display element of the device which would flash a 30mph sign when drivers went past.

Mr Hooper said another issue with the road was the noise of speeding vehicles, particularly at night, and air pollution.

"It's supposed to be 30mph. I didn't realise how fast cars would go in the evenings," he said.

"I didn't realise how [road noise] much it would be. I expected that it wasn't going to be constant."

Oystermouth Road resident Tina Curtis described the situation as "beyond a joke".

"You want to sit here at night - I open my patio doors, but I have to shut them. It's the noise of the cars revving up, the exhausts backfiring," she said.

Oystermouth Road is the east-to-west dual carriageway which links Swansea city centre with Mumbles

"They dice in and out of the lanes. How somebody has not been killed, I just don't know."

Another resident, Don Astill, said: "They race from the lights (near Swansea Prison) up to the Slip Bridge.

"The music is going boom, boom, boom, and they are flying."

GoSafe, the Welsh Road Casualty reduction partnership, said: "We have been in liaison with Mr Hooper regarding concerns of speeding in Oystermouth Road. We are currently assessing the location and evaluating it's suitability for mobile enforcement."

Swansea Council said: "A very low number of minor traffic incidents along this route in recent years means it is unlikely there would be a need for additional traffic calming measures."