Decatur Still Working On City-Wide 25 MPH Speed Limit Plan
Decatur Metro | January 16, 2015 | 1:33 pm
Just a quick follow up on Decatur’s 25 MPH Speed Limit proposal, which we we reported on in regards to the Citizen Survey a few days back. (BTW, that post has gone sorta viral since then – both Streetsblog and Planetizen have picked it up)
The City of Decatur Project Manager Lena Stevens tells us that the 25 MPH plan is still alive within the walls of City Hall.
She states that the city is still working through the many questions involved in implementing such a proposal, but one idea on the table is that the city would work with the Georgia Department of Transportation in a pilot program where a selected neighborhood would change its speed limits to 25 MPH as a test case before any wide-spread changes were implemented.
Stevens says the plan is still in development and no neighborhood has been selected at this point.
Stay tuned!
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“a selected neighborhood would change its speed limits to 25 MPH as a test case before any wide-spread changes were implemented.”
To see how much revenue they can generate….
Actually that reminds me of another map in the speed limit study that showed where speeding violations occurred in 2011. It seems that DPD sticks to main thoroughfares when it comes to monitoring speed. Check out page 7 at this link: http://www.decaturga.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=4400
Interesting. We will see if that holds up. And I know many have disagreed, but 25 mph on Candler is silly.
25 mph on Candler is impossible.
If I read the document DM linked to correctly, you would have to be going 45 mph on Candler, Clairemont, Columbia to get a ticket (because the speed limit is 35 mph). That is what should be addressed, in my opinion. Maybe lower the speed limit to 30 on those roads so tickets can be issued for unreasonable speeds.
The 45 to get a ticket is because of a long-standing state law, brought about by small-town speed traps, that only state troopers can issue a ticket for less then 10 mph over the speed limit, so you can talk to your legislator about that.
Noted. It seems a lot easier to just order new signs in Decatur.
The idea that you need to be going 45 on S. Columbia Dr. (almost exclusively a two-lane road with a lot of residences) to get a ticket should scare everyone, right? What am I missing?
Nice catch Parker! I still maintain that we need to come up with a creative method of either enforcing or coercing people to comply. Our police are already too busy dealing with very important public safety issues and unless we are willing to fork over even more taxes to fund a dedicated traffic enforcement team, we need to find another solution.
It’s the Residential Zone designation that makes the posted speed limits enforceable regardless of the existing grace law of 11 miles over. Just making that change in Decatur would have a huge impact. Recently the designation was added on Sycamore Street and discussed in a May DM thread.
http://www.decaturmetro.com/2014/05/21/sycamore-drive-speed-limit-lowered-to-30-mph-in-decatur/
If this is the current version of the law, looks like it can’t be a residential district if the speed limit’s 35 or up. http://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2006/40/40-14-8.html
Looks like Sycamore had the speed limit reduced to 30 to become a residential district.
And many streets used as commuter routes like 2nd Avenue are already at 30.
25mph on the main roads is ridiculous and impossible, on neighborhood streets 25mph makes sense
It seems to me that speed limits – and safety in general – would be better addressed on a case by case basis and not with a blanket speed limit law. We need to look at both safety and mobility. We all want to be safe – and we all want to spend less time in our cars.
One approach would be for Decatur police to ramp up enforcement of existing laws, including texting, seat belt laws and the current speed limits. Someone texting at any speed scares me more than anything! And of course, certain roadways that have inappropriate speed limits could have their current speed limits and road design reconsidered.
But to simply limit every road to 25 MPH is not a meaningful approach to safety improvement, and I don’t see the connection between this type of law and an improvement in the overall quality of life in our community. I think the city could do something more substantive on a case by case basis. Let’s bring a little more creativity to the discussion please.
Agreed, with the exception of seat belt laws.
25 MPH is too fast for many residential areas. I also think that 25 MPH is too fast for the downtown section of Ponce.
Man, I hope you’re joking. Have you driven 25 lately? It would be ridiculous driving that slow on a four lane road, i.e. Clairemont Rd.
I don’t think it’s that difficult to drive 25mph through any part of Decatur, 2 lane or 4 lane. Lots safer for the pedestrians I pass as I drive.
I completely support the 25 mile per hour concept but we have the larger problem of enforcement. We live on a street that has a 25 mph speed limit which drops to 20 during school zone times (inman Drive in Winnona park) and I regularly witness local residents as well as pass thru folks driving at speeds over 40 or even 50 mph. We need an effective mechanism for enforcement. I have been tempted to start calling out residents by name on the local list serve but that just doesn’t feel very neighborly.
“but that just doesn’t feel very neighborly.” — as opposed to their endangering your kids, their kids, and everybody else by speeding?
It’s not an easy thing. But neighbors calling out neighbors might be just what’s warranted at this point. I lived on 2nd Ave for 14 years and saw traffic volume and speeds increase dramatically over that time, accompanied by rampant stop sign running at 2nd/Oakview and 3rd/East Lake (by the Boys and Girls Club). In more than one meeting with the City, the Decatur police department said a significant challenge they encounter when issuing citations in the neighborhoods is that most of the transgressors are nearby residents who pitch mighty fits when they get pulled over and threatened with a ticket. So maybe a little solidarity on the part of Responsible Adults would generate some social pressure to behave.
25MPH is way too fast. 5MPH much more reasonable. Imagine how much money…..I mean children Decatur will save. Why won’t people stop and THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!
Solidarity sounds like a great way to start. Maybe we need to start and fund an advocacy group for safe streets for Decatur or something like that. Does anyone know if something like this already exists here. If not, I bet we could gain members and support quite easily -so many issues sourrounding these that affect us all daily and no shortage of folks who’d like to make a difference.
25 mph is too slow for Scott Blvd. too.
I admire the spirit of what you are saying Jim. I just am afraid that realistically, if we are having trouble enforcing even the current limits that 5 or 15 or whatever is going to be an even bigger challenge. Small town gal has inspired me. We need to help frame the issue with a multi pronged approach: Raise awareness, increase penalties and enforcement and place new signage and street paint, speed bumps, and motion sensor paint guns
With all due respect to those commenting, I would urge the City of Decatur to base decisions on interventions with evidence that they work that work. In this case, we have KNOWN for many years that reducing the speed limit reduces fatalities and injuries. [See Reducing speed limit to 20 mph in urban areas. Evidence based principles should be applied to non-health sector interventions. D S Morrison BMJ Clinical Research 02/2001; 322(7277):50.] Enforcement is a separate issue, but this is a fabulous idea!
Do the current speed limits generate a high rate of accidents? Or is the push for ever-lower speed limits simply an extreme level of risk aversion, or a manifestation of the progressive antipathy towards cars?
At any rate, none of it matters. The vast majority of drivers select a speed they deem to be reasonable under the circumstances, regardless of the posted limit. That’s why you could (for example) lower the limit on 285 to 40 mph and virtually no one would actually drive that slow. If you want to truly reduce speeds, add chicanes and other visual cues that cause drivers to slow. Changing the number on the speed limit sign is next to meaningless.
Changing the speed limit, by itself, might not do much to change behavior(I say might because I don’t know) but a speed limit change plus enforcement will cause people to slow down. It’s like with the “no right on red” signs on Commerce, Sycamore, and elsewhere in Decatur. I don’t heed them because I think they’re reasonable; I do it so I don’t get a ticket. If I’m reading the regulations correctly–a big if–the fact that the posted speed limits are 35 (and not 34) means that Decatur PD can’t write tickets unless people are going 45.
Hey, why not go whole hog. Drop ‘em all to 15.
Well I personally have experienced a very effective speed control strategy. 20 years ago when I lived in Massachusetts, they implemented a program of speeding fines: You got a moderately hefty ticket for speeding but for every MPH above 10 miles over they tacked on $50 per mile. As you might suspect, speeding tix got very costly…and guess what? People stopped speeding. Increased fines with a decrease in limits will work to at least some degree. Nothing like a $750 ticket to knock some sense into people and it could offset the cost of new signage.
Why not just toss people in jail for 6 months to a year for such minor moving violations? After all, the harsher the penalty, the more effective the deterrent, right? Sending people directly to jail would at least cut out the middle man in your plan to raise ticket prices to $750, since a huge number of people could not pay such a hefty fine and would end up being arrested for non-payment anyway.
One could go on a payment plan or have the option to perform community service in lieu of paying the fines. Like at the children’s hospital traumatic injury unit as to understand the unintended consequences of speeding in residential areas.
But then you are on probation, and have to pay the added probation fees to a private probation company. What could go wrong with that???
https://www.schr.org/resources/georgia_probation_systems_ensnares_those_too_poor_to_pay_traffic_fines
that’s what you get for living in a debtors colony.
Many people go a speed they think reasonable and others follow speed limit signs religiously. Setting the limits unreasonably low leads to a bigger delta between the community determined reasonable speed and the rule followers, and leads to more, not less accidents.
Better light timing and routes around the city core, would lead to less through traffic in neighborhoods.
That all seems reasonable and may very well be true Josh. As to the argument that we should not implement stricter standards to prevent people from paying high fines, losing their licenses, going on probation etc. I don’t understand what you are arguing for. Driving is a privilege not a right. If you don’t want to pay, lose your license or go on probation…or to jail, then don’t violate the law. We should care about our residents’ safety and mostly about our children. This is drivers Ed 101 stuff. I am tired of seeing near misses. What kind of tragedy will it take to convince folks?
I’m suggesting not setting speed limits artificially low, making it faster for drivers to get through or around town on larger artery roads vs. cutting through neighborhoods, and policing for bad driving, not speeding. On my daily commute I see many, many people driving at or below the speed limit unsafely. Safety has much more to do with attention, and situational awareness than speed.
Before you assume I’m “that guy” driving though your neghborhood, I typically drive slower than or at the speed limit through neighborhoods with limited sight lines, children, and pedestrians, and significantly faster than the speed limit on limited access roads and interstates where the only reason for speed limits is revenue generation.
+1
I agree with the concerns about setting the speed limits artificially low. Driving on Candler the other day, going 30 mph to 35 mph seemed reasonable. I agree that 25 would be painfully slow on Candler. The problem is, our legislature, in their (probably valid) concern about small town speed traps, has made it impossible to ticket a driver until he’s going 45 mph, which is way too fast for a street where people are trying to walk to school and work. I know it’s hilly but it’s also just two lanes for much of its length.
I think a good compromise would be to lower the limit to 30 mph on these roads with the understanding that the DPD will start ticketing at 36 mph. I’m not as concerned as others about Decatur becoming a speed-trap city. It doesn’t have that reputation now (unlike our neighbor to the east) even though there are probably lots of opportunities. We prefer to raise revenue by exorbitant property taxes and annexing new Wal-marts.
The effect of higher fines acts as a deterrent if publicized effectively. People don’t end up having to pay because they don’t speed. Only excessive speeders receive excessive fines.
Oooooooor, the cops are incentivized to ticket for many more minor infractions, because $$$…
This subject was on NPR just last week
How Driver’s License Suspensions Unfairly Target The Poor
h t t p : / / w w w .n p r . o r g/2015/01/05/372691918/how-drivers-license-suspensions-unfairly-target-the-poor
There are several signs on lawns on Westchester Drive and Harold Byrd that I think are pretty effective. They say things like “Drive like YOUR children live here”. Also, more mundane messages like “Slow Down” that still catch your eye because of their homemade appeal. Now those streets are already pretty slow but they get YMCA traffic and some cut-through traffic avoiding the Scott/Clairemont left turn off of Scott. I’ll bet the messages get many 35 mph drivers down to 20-25 mph, if only because they slow down to read them. I have wondered whether it work to have similar signs along Scott. The school could put one on its curb and there are still some private homes with lawns that would probably host signs. Maybe even the apartment businesses would allow them. Problem is that, at the speeds that drivers use on Scott, the signs and font would have to be gigantic, the size of advertising. I think residents around Scott would support signs that size, they’re so fed up with the speeding and accidents, but they might be illegal alongside a state highway.
Sorry Josh, my reply was meant to be posted to the general chat line. I was trying to agree with you, what you are talking about sounds very reasonable and potentially effective. I was trying to ask other people that seem to be arguing against taking action what they are advocating for? I didn’t imagine you as, “that guy” at all…but I am wondering about what the resistance is all about? For those who like speed (I include myself here), maybe Decatur isn’t the best to test-drive. There are practice tracks for that.
I am not advocating for Top Gear-style road testing through your street, Angelo. That should be obvious. And 25 may well be very appropriate on most residential streets. But it’s an absurdly low limit on Scott, as one example, and I agree with others that it’s too low on Candler as well. Reducing COD’s limits to 25 everywhere and at all times is far more likely to be a revenue-raising effort than it is to improve public safety. And per my post below I think your concerns about safety are overblown anyway.
Any speed limit higher than zero will pose some risk to others. In my view, drawing the line at a speed as low as 25 requires the proponent to make a strong case.
Ok, I agree with you that one size fits all is not appropriate for every street. I still believe we could do more to strongly encourage people to drive more carefully and slowly on streets where people live and children play.
Fair enough, I think we have some common ground.
I do love the original Top Gear by the way…
I love the idea because it will be a lot safer for bicycles and pedestrians. It will be annoying to drive 25 mph… so people might just bike or walk. Maybe change jobs and get rid of your soul sucking commute!
“Many responsible medical experts are concerned that we in the West –and increasingly even in developing countries– are becoming too sedentary. Driving an automobile excersizes very few muscles. The demise of the automobile surely has many positive aspects when viewed in the long run, one of which is a return to the oldest transportation mechanism, walking, and to bicycling, which is in many ways the most remarkable.
I can easily imagine a healthy and stable future society in which walking and bicycling are the primary means of transportation; with pollution-free low-speed ground cars and railed public transportation systems widely available, and the most sophisticated transportation devices used relatively rarely by the average person.” – Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain
With so much talk on DM about pedestrian safety, I wondered, just how unsafe are pedestrians, anyway? NHTSA records data on pedestrian/vehicle accidents. In 2012, there were 4,743 pedestrian deaths nationwide, in a country of 300+ million people. Those deaths compare to 76,000 estimated pedestrian injuries (which includes all injuries, even minor ones.) So you can tease out a fatality rate of about 5.9% from car/pedestrian accidents. In other words, even now, a car/pedestrian accident is quite unlikely to result in death.
To get some further perspective around that those 4,743 deaths, the CDC reports that in 2010, over 36,000 people died by accidental poisoning, and over 27,000 died from accidental falls. All tragedies, to be sure, but pedestrians sure seem to be relatively safe in the grand scheme. The 4,743 from 2012 also appears to be quite representative — the number of deaths annually hovers around the mid-4000 range for about 10 consecutive years.
Even the 4,473 deaths is an overstatement of the numbers of deaths truly caused by speeding or improper usage of a vehicle, because it is certain that some of the pedestrian deaths were caused by the pedestrians themselves. I don’t believe we know how many. But it’s not zero.
All in all, the case for additional restrictions on traffic in the name of pedestrian safety seems pretty weak, to say nothing of the more radical notion of excessive fines for run-of-the-mill traffic offenses.
Alright then to heck with the pedestrians and cyclists. Let’s argue the case from a vehicular injury and mortality rate. Or maybe combine the two. Statistical analyses is fine and well but 50% or more of Decaturites (is that what we call ourselves?) believe there is a problem. I’d also argue that your numbers are skewed because they are based on the national average which includes urban, suburban and rural areas. Are you in favor of any traffic restrictions at all?
I think I like ASDF’s utopian vision best. It would render these discussions moot. Ban all vehicular traffic in Decatur!
Of course I am for some restrictions. But I believe speed is less important than other factors like driver attentiveness, and some speed limits are far too low.
4,473 deaths and 76,000 injuries don’t tell the whole story. If no one is walking on certain roads because there are no sidewalks or the intersections are so dangerous, then the pedestrian morbidity and mortality will be low but the roads are still not safe for pedestrians. And how many of pedestrian deaths and injuries were preventable? The overall cumulative human death rate is 100% but we accept that because we all have to die sometime. But even a low number of infant deaths due to vaccine-preventable diseases are a tragedy because they could have been prevented. And how many children are among pedestrian deaths and injuries? We tend to have a lower tolerance for preventable deaths among children who otherwise would live for 70-80 more years. Kids who live less than a mile from school have to walk or bicycle there unless their parents can drive them (which raises the pedestrian risk!).
We spend a lot of money preventing terror and rare infectious diseases in this country even though the current death and injury rate due to terror or Ebola is quite low. So it is a judgment call whether or not any particular health threat is worth intervention; it’s not just a numbers game.