AN ORDINANCE relating to arterial and non-arterial speed limits; amending Sections 11.52.060 and 11.52.080 of the Seattle Municipal Code.
The bill passed in with Senate next session item please. Agenda item 17 Constable 118815 relate to arterial and non integral speed limits. The committee recommends the bill passes amended. Councilmember O'Brien I want to start by thanking advocates in the community who've been working on a range of issues around Vision Zero, the city's commitment to reduce, to eliminate all serious injuries and fatalities related to traffic. What this legislation would do would change that the arterial speed limits that are not posted from 30 to 25. So the default speed limit would be that on arterials that are posted in a neighborhood not arterial streets, neighborhood streets. It would lower the non posted speed limits from 25 to 20. This is a step in the right direction to making our streets safer for everyone. It's only a step. There's a lot of work that needs to be done going forward around both education, enforcement and in particular engineering. I also want to highlight that that a lot of the arterials in the city of Seattle are actually posted. Almost all the ones, I believe, outside of the downtown core, meaning those speed limits will not be reduced because of this legislation. But our state has agreed to come back to us in the future months to help us understand how we can go back as quickly as possible, where appropriate, and lower the speed limits on the arterials outside the downtown area. I want to thank Councilmember Burgess for his co-sponsorship and ongoing work on this, too, and commitment to Vision Zero. Thank you, Councilman Brian. Any further comments from any of my colleagues? Councilmember Bagshaw. Thank you. And thanks to you, Councilmember O'Brien, Councilmember Burgess, for working on this. It's something that's been very near and dear to my heart for a number of years. I posted a blog this Saturday just saying thanks to Representatives. City Review from Shoreline. She's tried three different times to finally get this through our state legislature giving. City's the authority to be able to do just what we're doing here today. And I also cited on my blog a street film that was produced six years ago from the United Kingdom, where neighborhoods decided that they wanted to slow down the traffic on the streets. And it was remarkable because people were talking about how much more they enjoyed their neighbor, their neighbors and their neighborhoods when they could. Walk. Or ride their bikes or get around safely. And it's not because we don't love cars. We all drive them at some time or another. But this makes it a place where people want to be. So I want to say, thanks to neighborhood greenways, you've been terrific about leading this. I know Cascade Bicycle Club's been working, but also the pedestrian groups to Feet First and others saying, you know, this is the way we really. Want our city to be. So many thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Bagshaw, Councilmember Johnson. Thank you. Council President I just wanted to say thank you to my colleagues for bringing this important piece of legislation forward of a received a surprising amount of constituent response in support of this and a minority in our position. And to those that are opposing, I have one simple thing to say to you. Speed kills. And we need this legislation to ensure that fewer people on our roadways every year perish as a result of collisions. I want to thank central staff and I start. Thank you both. I appreciate that. I want to thank Central Central staff and staff for working with me on that amendment that Councilmember O'Brien referred to about rapidly getting an implementation plan together so that we can expand this to more than just the city streets downtown. And I'll be proud to vote in favor. Thank you. Councilmember Herbold, thank you. I'm going to be supporting this legislation. I do want to flag an issue, though. There's a narrative out there that the problem isn't the speed limit. The problem is the enforcement of the speed limit. And, you know, I just I had a question when I heard about this legislation, and I wanted to get a sense of how often tickets are given in in the neighborhoods that are currently opposed to 25. And the response I received from Usb-Pd was that they couldn't provide that information. They wrote our tickets do not routinely capture whether the road was an arterial or not, nor what the posted speed was in any kind of fielded way. I actually asked for information both about tickets for violating the speed limits on arterials as well as in the neighborhood, the the current 25 miles per hour speed limit. So to the extent that, you know, we want to grapple with this with this issue further moving forward, I think it would be really helpful to have a better sense of of where the problem lies. Is the is the problem simply in what the speed limits are? Or should we also be considering making enforcement of our laws something that we have more focus on? Thank you, guys. Herbert Council Councilmember Burgess. Yeah, thanks very much. I strongly support this legislation and I would just point out what many have said and that is this is not some radical move. If we adopt this legislation today, Seattle will have speed limits that are exactly the same as every other city and King County. So I know that some are opposed to this, but this is a really smart move to save lives and reduce serious injuries on our roadways. So in closing debate, I'll simply say I came up with this little phrase, I want you guys to remember a toe is plenty. So I thought of I just thought of this on the on the spot here. Absolutely. Our our pleasure supporting this legislation because a brand you won't see any closing words. Are you ready to vote? Let's get that speeding right down as fast as possible. Yeah, I think we are. Okay. Please call the roll on the passage of the bill. HERBOLD Hi. Johnson. Whereas I. O'Brien So aren't I BAGSHAW Burgess. Gonzales President Herrell. Hi. Nine In Favor and unopposed. Bill passed in the Senate. Please read the next agenda item.