I enjoy biking here and encourage anybody interested to start biking as a form of transportation but hopefully these studies push us to resolve the issues that still exist!
Ive been thinking about the city speed limit since that report came out in June. 30 absolutely too high, it should really be 25 or even 20, especially on residential streets.
Chicago ranked 161st out of 163 big cities and scored a seven out of 100. Speed limits tanked the city’s bikeability. The report’s analysis considers streets with a 30 mph speed limit — a standard for most Chicago streets — or higher as unsafe for cycling.
“The person who wrote the People For Bikes report told Streetsblog last year that if Chicago had a 25 mph speed limit, we would shoot up to being the 15th best city in the U.S. in their rankings.”
The Federal Highway Administration has found that a car traveling 30 mph that hits a pedestrian has a 45% chance of killing or seriously injuring them, while at 20 mph, the likelihood of death drops to 5%
The Johnson transition team recommends 20mph for through roads and 10mph for residential. Traffic enforcement is low but these speed limit adjustments would raise the amount of drivers being considered criminal drivers with serious consequences. Right now you can be going 55 mph on a city street and still only be considered for a trivial fine despite creating violent and dangerous situations. The signs indicate the maximum speed you are supposed to go but most drivers treat it as a minimum. It’s almost like people consider driving a right. It’s a privilege and you should have to strictly follow the rules of the road of you want to keep a license.
What would that even do? The only places where speed is even remotely enforced is where speed cameras are setup.
Im not pretending to be an expert in city planning but lowering the default limit seems like a good place to start.
People still driving crazy? Advocate for a camera(both replies i got said it was the only way it’s enforced and I agree, and lets not bring a cop with a gun into every speeding violation), or for traffic calming devices(speed bumps, narrowing streets with bollards, etc) . If you make it harder to speed on side streets people are going to go back to the thoroughfares as it should be and enforcing those lower limits elsewhere becomes less of an issue.
I’m just spitballing.
Yeah it looks good on paper for this report but would likely not have any material difference.
Moving violations are basically not enforced in this city except by camera.
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