Drivers, prepare to cool your engines — speed limits on many residential streets are likely to drop within a year.

By state statute, the speed limit on most urban, residential streets defaults to 30 miles per hour.

Advocates for pedestrian safety have long asked the state Legislature to allow cities to lower those limits without onerous, street-by-street engineering studies and lengthy conversations with the Minnesota Department of Transportation. The department until now has had final say over appropriate speeds.

But under a law change that took effect Aug. 1, a city council can opt to lower the posted driving speeds on residential roads to 25 miles per hour without lobbying the state, as long as they’re clear and consistent in their application. No special engineering studies are required.

Under a separate legal provision, they can go even lower, provided they’ve done some technical analysis.

Minnesota Statute 169.14: “A city that establishes speed limits … must implement speed limit changes in a consistent and understandable manner. The city must erect appropriate signs to display the speed limit.”

“On a residential roadway, the city can reduce the speed to 25,” said Anne Finn, assistant intergovernmental relations director for the League of Minnesota Cities. “But if they use the other authority, they could change it to be 15 miles per hour — or 40. They have to have a process in place for establishing the change.”

Both St. Paul and Minneapolis are conducting a technical analysis of what the appropriate speeds might be for both residential and city-owned arterial streets. In St. Paul, an open house is scheduled for Oct. 3, but Public Works is already budgeting for new speed limit signs.

The public session will be held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Rondo Community Library, 461 North Dale Street in St. Paul.

In a statement, St. Paul Public Works officials said drivers in both cities can expect to see new speed limits roll out by the spring of 2020.

“We are looking at all streets that the city owns,” said Fay Simer, pedestrian safety coordinator for St. Paul. That includes streets like Summit Avenue, Grand Avenue and portions of Hamline Avenue. “We have not made decisions yet. … What I can tell you is slower speeds make traffic safer for everyone, no matter how they get around.”

THE DEBATE

Now that cities can lower speed limits, should they?

Pedestrian advocates say there are plenty of benefits, safety being chief among them. Slower driving speeds improve walking, biking and transit access.

“On many residential streets, you can’t go much faster than that,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Public Works. “Think stop signs, parked cars, garbage carts and more.”

National studies have found that in car-versus-pedestrian crashes where the vehicle is traveling at 20 miles per hour, about 13 percent of pedestrian victims are killed or suffer serious injury.

At 30 miles per hour, the death and serious injury rate goes up to 40 percent. At 40 miles per hour, it’s 73 percent.

Traffic engineers have worried, however, about creating a hodge-podge of speed limits that change from one city to the next, as well as the potential impact on traffic patterns. They’ve also worried that decisions about individual roads would be influenced by politics — residents calling their council member — rather than based on sound engineering decisions.

The League of Minnesota Cities monitored the legislative discussion closely but did not take sides.

“We did not take a position,” Finn said. “We have members on both sides of this issue — some who would like to have the authority to change speed limits, and some who feel this decision is best left to engineers.”

During the legislative session, the City Engineers Association of Minnesota acknowledged that their members were split on the question of lowering speed limits, but most felt that consistency was key.

“As an organization we strongly feel that the legislature should consider establishing a minimum residential statutory speed limit which can be applied consistently and uniformly, and with minimal signage, across the state of Minnesota,” said CEAM, in an April 9 letter to the Senate Transportation Finance and Policy Committee.

MnDOT, which in the past opposed giving cities control over speed limits, remained neutral as the legislation was being debated this year.

There are other considerations.

In a recent discussion with the St. Paul City Council, St. Paul Public Works Director Kathy Lantry noted that the cost of buying 1,000 new speed limit signs could exceed $320,000, and that number was more of a placeholder estimate than anything set in stone. The materials presented to the council contemplated signage indicating speed limits of 20-25 mph.

Safety and infrastructure are good policy objectives, I agree with you. Not sure this expenditure is in furtherance of infrastructure though. Plus, concerned this will be much more than $300k when said and done. — Patty Hartmann for Ward 3 (@ForHartmann) September 12, 2019

A city’s right to adopt a speed limit of 25 mph without engineering studies applies to the city’s residential roads, and not to collector or arterial streets, park roads, or county-owned or state-owned streets. Previously, a more restrictive definition held that only streets less than 1/2-mile in length could be considered residential. As part of the new legislation, the definition was changed to include any street zoned exclusively for residential housing.

The technical analysis that St. Paul and Minneapolis have planned will include trading notes with neighboring cities on their speed limits, conferring with Hennepin and Ramsey counties, and studying crash data, speed studies and national research on traffic safety. Related Articles Minneapolis man pleads guilty to torching University Avenue business during May unrest

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There’s also some question as to how best to communicate the changes to the public and then enforce them, given other public safety priorities facing police traffic enforcement, such as crosswalk monitoring on arterial roads.

With all seven St. Paul City Council seats on the November ballot, the speed limit question has already trickled into campaign discussions. Patricia Hartmann, a candidate for the Ward 3 seat representing Mac-Groveland and Highland Park, recently tweeted “$300,000 could be better spent. … Concerned this will be much more than $300K when said and done.”