MADISON, Wis. — Twenty is plenty. That’s the name given to a City initiative to reduce the speed limit in residential neighborhoods from 25 mph to 20 mph, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced at a press conference Thursday.
“Clearly, slower speeds and lowering the speed limit can save lives,” Rhodes-Conway said.
According to a study from AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, the average risk of death for a pedestrian hit by a vehicle going 23 mph is 10%. At 32 mph, risk of death reaches 25%, 50% at 42 mph, and so forth.
“We can decide to follow the speed limit and we can set an example for others around us,” Rhodes-Conway said. “We can reset what the normal traffic speed is on our streets.”
Director of Transportation, Tom Lynch, said his team will select two neighborhoods to run a pilot program on at its meeting next Wednesday.
“Last year we had 15 traffic fatalities and that’s one of the highest we’ve had in many years,” Lynch said. “That’s a father or a mother or a family that’s permanently changed.”
Lynch said the department is looking at a number of different criteria to select which neighborhoods to test it out in before implementing a city-wide change in 2022.
“[We want] to make sure the treatment is distributed to communities of color and the like,” Lynch said. We also would like the neighborhood to be supportive of it. We don’t want to impose a pilot on a neighborhood that doesn’t want it.”
The plan also includes making changes to crosswalk markings in high injury areas and adjusting the streets engineering, all in hopes of seeing measurable difference going forward.
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