A bill for an ordinance reducing the speed limit on streets and highways where speed limits are not posted. For an ordinance reducing the speed limit on streets and highways where speed limits are not posted. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-1-21.
911 IES Council Resolution 1438 has been adopted. Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens. Councilmember Herndon, will you please put Council Bill 1475 on the floor for final passage? Yes, Madam President, I move that council bill. Excuse me. 20 1-1475 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded comments by members of Council on Council Bill 1475. Councilmember Black. Thank you, Madam President. As a Walker runner and cyclist, I spend a lot of time on our streets and I support Vision Zero and I support lowering speed limits to achieve Vision Zero goals and save lives. I know that the police department supports lowering speed limits, as does the auto club. And I recently learned that some delivery companies like UPS actually monitor their trucks to ensure that their drivers. Adhere to the speed limit. My problem with this bill is, though, that it will trigger spending. $1.5 million from our Vision Zero budget on new 20 mile per hour signs. I know this bill itself doesn't allocate any funding, but we've learned from Dottie that if we pass this, that they will then have to replace signs and put new signs in. According to his own data, our most dangerous streets by far for pedestrians and cyclists are arterial streets, which make up only about 16% of our streets, but account for 80% of pedestrian fatalities, 69% of bike fatalities and 75% of head injuries and 71% of bike injuries. In contrast, our local streets, which make up two thirds of our streets, only account for 10% of bike impaired incidents. So with finite resources, funds, I believe, should be prioritized to address the issues on our arterials, on our high injury network streets like Federal Colorado Boulevard in Hampton. In my district, I've advocated for safety improvements for many years on arterials where we have serious safety issues. A couple of examples are on Quincy, where seniors and people with disabilities living at Denver Housing Authority, Syracuse Plaza, and the families that live at an adjacent development, also Denver Housing Authority have been begging for six years for a signal so that they can safely cross Quincy to get to school, the park transit and more. The not is warranted, but for years we've been told there's no funding. South Colorado Boulevard is very unsafe. In the past two months, two pedestrians were hit while crossing at Amherst. I've been advocating to make Colorado Boulevard safer for years. Dottie doesn't disagree. There's just no funding. Last week, tragically, a man was killed while crossing Evans. I've heard from many of my constituent constituents asking me to prioritize funds for these various crossings. Also, we really want people to bike and walk to our rec centers, to our parks, to schools, to shopping and transit. We want to get them out of their cars. But it's really dangerous to cross our arterials. I just believe that our vision $0 should be directed to our most dangerous streets. So while I do support lowering speed limits, I am not supporting this bill simply because it will take precious dollars away from our Vision Zero budget. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Black. Next up, we've got Councilmember Cashman. Thank you, Madam President. Denver's population continues to grow. We're around. We're approaching 750,000 people. You can go to the movies. You can buy whatever you need at Home Depot, get your hair done at the barber, the stylist, get groceries at King Soopers, have dinner at Wash Bar Grill and without an abnormal weight. But when you get in your car, life gets difficult. People get impatient and cut through our neighborhoods because the collectors and arterials are not moving fast enough for them. Since Mayor Hancock has declared his commitment to Vision Zero in 2016 to bring deaths and serious injuries close to that zero number, 380 people have died on Denver streets , some 7% of those on local streets. Almost 80 people have died this year, the most in recent memory. What we're doing isn't working. Denver Drivers need to take a deep breath, leave earlier and slow down. We need that message to go out loud and clear. We need to slow down. That's not someone else. We need to slow down. The severity of injuries, the frequency of injuries, the frequency of fatalities increase speed increases. The severity of injuries increases most dramatically for children and older adults. Posting slower speeds on online locals is only a part of a comprehensive program of changes that Daddy has in mind to send that needle a vision zero in the proper direction. This bill is presented because the default speed, now 25 miles per hour on postage streets, is in ordinance and needs to be changed by amendment. Speeds on our collectors and arterials can be changed by Dottie as policy. As a result of the speed limit reduction feasibility study completed in August, that department will be looking at what additional changes to postage speeds need to be made and collectors and arterials in school zones and elsewhere. As Councilmember Black noted, the most intense focus is now and will remain on our high injury network, where the bulk of serious injuries and deaths take place. We need to lower postage speeds to encourage people to drive more slowly, and we need to re-engineer some of our roadways, roadways to cause them to drive more slowly. In discussion with daddy leadership, I'm convinced of their plans to be more aggressive in doing just that. But that is not something that is done by ordinance or I would be doing just that here as well. And for those who say posted speed limits won't change a thing. I would simply say that it will if you observe them. Slower speeds do reduce injuries when collisions occur. Posted speeds have no effect on people who don't care. We can raise them or lower them, and those people won't care. But for the vast majority of drivers, who do they serve as an important reminder to slow down? We need to slow down. This is not being done as a feel good measure. It's an important beginning to changing the culture that we need to slow down. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Cashman. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. The most effective way to slow down traffic is to stop building our streets so that they induce higher speeds. You can't build a local street that's 40 or 48 feet in width and put a 20 mile an hour speed sign on it and expect people will go 20 drivers will go the speed that the street invites them. We built so many of our streets, especially in my district, in Councilwoman Blacks in the postwar years, when people were moving out to the edges of the city and the automobile was every family had an automobile, at least one or two, and they're way too wide. And as a result, we get I don't know if every other council member has the same experience, but one of the most frequent complaints that we get from constituents is speeding on local streets. My office has purchased five solar powered driver feedback signs, the kind of tell you how fast you're going at up to a certain speed and then tell you to slow down if you're going five or ten miles faster than that. I am going to support this bill tonight, although I believe that it won't be very effective. I think if we're not enforcing the 25 mile an hour default speed limit, we might as well not be enforcing the 20 mile an hour speed limit. But as Councilman Cashman said, it sets the tone that we are looking for people to slow down no matter where they are. One of the problems I have with this vote is that I asked two months ago today I asked DPD and Dotty for data. On accidents crashes in the city and county of Denver for the last five years. I did not receive that data until Wednesday of last week. So I spent a lot of time looking, focusing mostly on my district because that's all I had the time to do. There were 2238 accidents on a system wide on freeway, arterial collector and local streets. Of those, 126 were on local streets, 5.6% citywide. And those six, almost six years, there were 349 fatalities, 15 on local streets, 4.3% when I drilled down on the fatalities because there were 15 on local streets. So I examined those in particular. And a number of them, several of them, at least including one in my district, would not have been impacted at all by this change. The one the one I'm referring to in my district was a woman who was had not set the brake on her car properly in her driveway. And when she got out, walked around the back of her car, it rolled over her and she died. The same thing happened in Council District one on Osage Street, I believe it was where a guy was working under his car. When it stalled and when it restarted, it ran over him and he died. But this this speed limit is not going to affect so many of our not just the fatalities, but the serious bodily injuries for pedestrian fatalities occurred on local streets. When I read the police reports which were forwarded to me again only on Wednesday, none of them would have been impacted by this change, given the circumstances under which they occurred. Many of them are unrelated to speeds at all. In my council district, of the 2238 crashes, there were 115 over those six years, and only one one of those fatalities was on a local street. It was a motorcyclist who, on his own volition, decided to go way too fast and hit a hit a tree. Hit a neighbor's tree. Having said that. Madam President, I would I would suggest that Dottie and CPD begin to get serious about our street design and stop designing streets that tell drivers to go 35 while we put up a 20 mile an hour sign on them. I had this experience with the recent Laredo Heights development, where we struggled, in some cases unsuccessfully, to narrow streets and to tighten curb radii in order to induce slower speeds. But the reviewers told us, Oh, no, that's not the current standard. It has to be a certain radius or it has to be a certain with to accommodate the traffic and to let it go at speed. And so I hope that our practices catch up with our vision at some point and maybe by approving this ordinance that will happen. Thank you, Madam President and Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, council president. And thank you, Councilmember Cashman, for this bill. I'm in support. I would say Councilmember Flynn has a good point. Urban design is the best way to ensure people go the speed they should go. Just as Councilmember Flynn said, I hope that Dottie considers that when we consider implementing shared streets and the 50 to 80 trail, both of which should prioritize people and cyclists and attenuate cars. So as we consider that, we should start thinking out of the box until we get good urban design in our streets, we should do whatever we can to achieve Vision Zero by 2030. Our fatalities are going the wrong way, and the right answer isn't to move the 2030 goalpost. It is to do all the things we can at all times to achieve zero pedestrian and cyclist fatalities. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hines. Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I just wanted to weigh in on this issue as well. I'm not convinced this is going to solve the problem, particularly on our arterial corridors. Over two years ago, I had asked that we do an amendment to the budget which we were successful in doing to add money to take care of the intersection at 14th and federal. That is still one of the worst intersections in the city for accidents and fatalities. And I know that the West Colfax Group has been working on sort of a redo of Federal Boulevard in that general area, looking at what is referred to as the Cloverleaf. However, there could have been some additional. All measures put into place to mitigate the additional deaths that have happened from that time until now. And I think just given the data on the vast number of the accidents and fatalities that are occurring on are purely arterial corridors, is is not necessarily going to solve the problem where it is the greatest. By lowering the speed on what are known as residential streets. So I will be supporting this tonight. I do think slowing traffic down in our neighborhoods is important, but I also think it's important not just for drivers but for our bike riders as well. In my neighborhood, I often see people on bikes that do not stop it, stop signs, and that is a contributing factor, whether they're on a bike or whether they're on a scooter. People think that they can just ignore the rules on the streets, and that is part of the problem. And so there's got to be some education that needs to happen as well. But we have to pay attention and prioritize the fatalities that are occurring on our arterial streets and at intersections where at 14th and federal you have traffic, foot traffic moving around, trying to get to Denver, Human Services, trying to get to the train. And they're rushing to be able to catch their their bus or their train. And that is a huge contributing factor to the fatalities that we've seen at that intersection. And I will be following up with body to try to figure out what is going on and where are they on that. And I do have to admit that I've been lax in not doing that follow up, because I thought that was being incorporated into some of the work that's being accelerated with the Colfax and federal intersection. But I will be supporting this tonight. I just think we have to keep our eye on the ball with the arterial corridors. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ortega, Council President Pro-Tem Torres. Thank you, Madam President. I'll be supporting the bill tonight. I think one of the things that our office takes a lot of calls on our internal residential complaints about speeding. We see it on a regular basis. Repeat crashes at first, next court 10th and Knox Court fifth and Perry 17th, and Julian on a regular basis. And I know that I agree with Councilman Flynn. We may not see this won't fix the problem. I think it's one of the many things that we have to employ to try to chip away at it. I hope to see some good outcomes, but I know our work is a long path. So thank you, Councilman Cashman, for sponsoring this this effort. Thank you, counsel pro Tem Torres. And I am happy to support this this evening. We do need more tools in order to slow down traffic. And really the width of streets is an issue and education as well. And one of the things that we've also not talked about is the widespread drag racing that we have throughout our city as well. And I know that the the you know, lowering the speed limits to 20 isn't going to necessarily address that. But I think those earlier comments that we need different tools to accomplish just keeping pedestrians and others safe on our streets and so happy to support this this evening, but would also like to see Dottie step up and implement more of those traffic calming traffic mitigating tools. But all along with that, educating the community as to why we may be taking a lane of traffic away, why we might be removing some things in the neighborhood to make it safer for residents and people who are biking, etc.. And so really look forward to seeing Dottie move more in the space and become more assertive around how we do this in our neighborhoods. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 1475, please. See the doctor. I. No. Clark. I went. By Herndon. Hi. Hi. Hi. Katherine. Hi. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Madam President, i. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. Good name of a nice. 11 Eyes Council Bill 21 Dash 1475 has passed. That concludes the items to be called out. All bills for introduction are ordered published. Council members remember this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote I.