A San Diego City Council committee on Thursday advanced a proposal to lower speed limits to 20 miles per hour on a small number of commercial streets.
The move came three years after Mayor Todd Gloria said he was interested in implementing AB 43, a state law that gives cities slightly more autonomy to set enforceable speed limits based on safety concerns. Typically, those limits are based on the actual speeds people drive — even if those speeds are unsafe.
City traffic engineers say they're developing a comprehensive "Speed Management Plan" due out in December that would lower speed limits on a host of streets. But for now, they're limiting the changes to a handful of blocks in Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, Old Town, Hillcrest, North Park and City Heights.
Those streets, seen in a map below, meet the law's definition of a "business activity district," where speed limits can be lowered by 5 miles per hour. Most of the streets would have speed limits lowered from 25 to 20 miles per hour, while segments of Mission Boulevard, El Cajon Boulevard and Washington Street would be lowered from 30 to 25 miles per hour.
Many street safety advocates told the committee that lowering speed limits is fine, but that signage alone does little to change drivers' behavior.
"We need tangible infrastructure changes: narrow lanes, speed humps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks and protected bike lanes that physically enforce safer speeds," said Gail Friedt, a volunteer with Vibrant Uptown.
In addition to the lower speed limits, the city is also moving to maintain existing speed limits on an even larger set of streets when state law would otherwise require them to raise the speed limits.
Most speed limits are based on the "85th percentile" rule, which states that cities cannot write citations for speeding unless they've performed a speed study and found a driver was going faster than 85% of other vehicles. In practice, the rule often results in "speed creep" — when speeding becomes normalized and sets a new de facto speed limit.
The full city council is expected to vote on the lower speed limits sometime next month.
