Seattle’s plan to lower default speed limits across the city heads to the City Council’s Sustainability and Transportation Committee today. The plan — which has support from the Mayor’s Office, SDOT and the City Council — needs to make it through the committee and the full City Council before getting the Mayor’s approval and going into action. If all goes smoothly, that could be as soon as November.
That change itself is pretty simple, but the implications for safety could be huge as we reported when it was announced. All it really does is change a bunch of signs near the city limits to spell out the new default speeds. For “non-arterial” mostly residential streets, the default limit would be lowered from 25 to 20 mph. For busier “arterial” streets, the speed would drop from 30 mph to 25 mph unless marked otherwise, as is often the case.
But when speed limits are lower on a street (and people know about the limit), the majority of people who want to follow the law will limit their top speed to that new limit. And that alone could improve safety, according to a city legislation document (PDF): (more…)