I Can’t Drive 25
Since old men who shake their fists at speeders have been gentrified out of central Austin, several neighborhoods must now rely on a new state law to reduce residential speeds. HB 87 allows the city to lower speed limits to 25 mph on any road “that is not an officially designated or marked highway or road of the state highway system, is 35 feet or less in width, and along which vehicular parking is not prohibited on one or both sides of the highway.” As the Statesman points out, when coupled with APD’s reduced “tolerance” from 9 to 4 mph, this would create an effective 10 mph speed drop in the proposed areas.
Austin doesn’t offer many carrots to promote public transportation, but it’s getting pretty good at giving drivers the stick. The bill doesn’t affect four-lane highways like Lamar, where traffic snarl already takes care of speeding at key times during the day. But it does promise to add another obstacle to neighborhood traffic already “calmed” by disruptive traffic devices and increasing overflow street parking (prompted by non-enforcement of parking requirements for new developments, but that’s another story).
There is one additional component to HB 87 that has thus far escaped attention:
[The governing body of a municipality] may declare a lower speed limit of not less than 25 miles per hour, if the governing body determines that the prima facie speed limit on the highway is unreasonable or unsafe.
I’m guessing that few, if any, of the proposed speed limit reductions will be required to demonstrate improvements in reason or safety. There are certainly some cases where a reduced speed limit can address both, but for the most part it’s simply going to burden reasonable drivers while the egregious speeders will continue to ignore laws and conditions. If Austin really wants to improve safety on the road, they could start with enforcing existing limits at known trouble spots. Or better yet, encourage more cars to stay parked at home.
I like the opening bit.
30 is a bit much for the “default in residential areas”. Most places I’ve lived set that at 25. The rest of it, though, I agree with – my old neighborhood (OWANA) actually tried to get the speed limit ON LAMAR lowered to 25. Same type of people who thought all the (supposed cut-through) traffic was from out-of-neighborhood people only to have the cops calmly explain that the tickets were mainly written to people inside the neighborhood in question…
Thanks M1EK. I’ve heard similar comments about in-neighborhood infractions during post-ACL Fest vent sessions. When neighbors got together to complain about the hazards of festival traffic, our local APD rep commented that some of the perps she observed were sitting in the room. Things got a bit quieter after that.
But my anecdotal observation is that the most consistently aggressive and dangerous traffic threats come from cut-through drivers. To them, the neighborhood is just another obstacle on the way to a destination, and the residents are unknowns to be ignored rather than friends and acquaintances to be respected (or feared, if they’re quick to dial the fuzz). I have zero data to reinforce this, which is exactly the same amount as those pressing for the lower speed limit. I’d just like to see some measurement and/or enforcement of the status quo before going through this whole exercise.
And speaking of, how can it possibly take the city “years to get this done?” Do they not have a “computer” with “GIS mapping” that could possibly identify residential streets with Thanks M1EK. I’ve heard similar comments about in-neighborhood infractions during post-ACL Fest vent sessions. When neighbors got together to complain about the hazards of festival traffic, our local APD rep commented that some of the perps she observed were sitting in the room. Things got a bit quieter after that.
But my anecdotal observation is that the most consistently aggressive and dangerous traffic threats come from cut-through drivers. To them, the neighborhood is just another obstacle on the way to a destination, and the residents are unknowns to be ignored rather than friends and acquaintances to be respected (or feared, if they’re quick to dial the fuzz). I have zero data to reinforce this, which is exactly the same amount as those pressing for the lower speed limit. I’d just like to see some measurement and/or enforcement of the status quo before going through this whole exercise.
And speaking of, how can it possibly take the city “years to get this done?” Do they not have a “computer” with “GIS mapping” that could possibly identify residential streets with
… fewer than 4 lanes? If not, I’m beginning to understand how Prop 1 could have been so expensive, what with transcribing everything from papyrus and all.
The “years to get this done” probably refers to the ordinance-writin’ and sign-postin’, not the street-measurin’. They have most streets’ width in computers (in Excel spreadsheets, in one case I’ve seen) already.