The Neighborhood Safe Streets Bill is now in line for a final vote in the Senate, among the last steps for the popular, bipartisan bill before heading to the governor’s desk. Of course, it’s gotta get there first.
The Bicycle Alliance of Washington sent out a call to contact your senators and push them to prioritize and pass HB 1045.
The bill is a simple way to improve safety by allowing municipalities to lower the speed limit on non-arterial, mostly residential streets without the need for a cost-prohibitive transportation study. It passed the House 86–10 in February, and passed the Senate Transportation Committee unanimously a few weeks ago. A chance to increase safety in front of the homes where Washington families and residents live and play while also saving money? Let’s make it happen.
Here’s the call to action from BikeWA:
Contact your state senator. Enter your mailing address on the district finder form (choose Legislative, not Congressional) and follow the instructions on the site to reach a contact form.
Choose your state senator and ask for a YES vote on the floor for HB 1045. Use what you’ll find in our last blog post, Will the State Senate Vote to Help Slow Traffic in Your Neighborhood? and stress these points:
- HB 1045 is about local control, increasing government efficiency by cutting red tape and expense, and making neighborhood streets safer.
- HB 1045 has broad bipartisan support.
- HB 1045 can save cities and towns money; it’s smart policy that removes unnecessary regulation over a decrease of 5 mph. This change lets cities spend that money on actually making safety and traffic improvements instead of conducting yet another study.
- The elderly are most vulnerable to collisions at speeds above 20 MPH; slower streets are more forgiving to those whose mobility is affected by the highly individual process of aging.
- Safe, walkable streets are important for safety and livability, and they improve the quality of our schools and neighborhoods—so kids can walk and bike and so parents can feel safe sending their kids to school.
- This bill could help reduce cut-through traffic on neighborhood streets coming off arterials onto non-arterial streets, which affects property values, safety, and livability in cities and towns across Washington.
Our Legislation & Statewide Issues page lists the issues and bills we’re following so bookmark that, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and ask your friends to sign up for our email Action Alerts to keep pace with the session as it speeds up.
We’re almost there–can you help get this bill across the finish line? Don’t stop pedaling now!
Comments
4 responses to “Time for final push to pass the Neighborhood Safe Streets Bill”
Tom, I posted this comment to an earlier story by mistake. In order to use the reply form for a senator, you need to enter the Senate Bill number which is 5066. The form does not recognize the House Bill number. Could you post a quick update? Thanks!
That was the companion bill (confusing parliamentary stuff). Basically, either 1045 or 5066 needs to pass both the House and Senate or they could each pass their respective chambers and be combined in committee (or something like that). When the House passed HB 1045, it was then sent to the senate
where it became SHB (“Senate House Bill) 1045. It has moved so much faster than SB 5066 that they essentially just scrapped 5066 because 1045 looks like it has the legs to go the whole way. The companion bill is something like a backup bill, sort of (who designed this government?)1045 should work.
*UPDATE: I totally had the whole SHB thing wrong. The “s” stands for “substitute,” and does not apply to 1045 which is still plain old “HB 1045” even though it is now in the Senate. So, long story short, the bill senators need to vote on is HB 1045.
Done and…done!
[…] Neighborhood Safe Streets Bill (HB 1045) got off to a screaming start this legislative season, flying through the House with wide bipartisan support. It’s progress […]