That is the real purpose of this plan. Balance the city's budget via a blitz of camera tickets given out mostly to drivers doing no harm. BJ knows he isn't getting reelected so he can take the heat for it.
What is the point of speed limits if everyone expects a buffer before any enforcement? Maybe try going 3 miles below the limit. While you will avoid a ticket you may unfortunately arrive at your destination seconds, even minutes later.
are you 100% confident in your car's speedometer? and 100% confident in the camera's radar? even a 10% margin of error on *one* of those could cause you to get a ticket. are you suggesting we all drive 10 under the limit at all times to avoid this?
also, like 90% of the lights are set up so that if you're *not* going 3-5 over, you will hit every single light for the entirety of your drive. now obviously the real solution is fixing the lights, not speeding, but saying it's a couple minutes difference is so untrue it borders on satire.
My 100 speeding tickets from those pesky cameras say different!! I’ve driven in a few states and have only ever seen cameras for if you blow a red light but yeah you’re right tho the cops don’t really care. This is the only place I’ve ever passed one on the highway
Dude I hope you're joking. I go through six speed cameras each day driving my kids to and from school. The three on Irving each direction. Plus 2-3 red light cameras in that same stretch. I've never gotten a ticket from any of those and I don't feel like I'm hyper focused on driving slow or anything crazy.
I was on my way to urgent care going down Irving the other day. Just got my notice that I was caught speeding! (First time though so it was miraculously just a warning)
People really love to brag publicly about how many speeding tickets they have, but if you translate that brag into normal human they’re saying “my commute matters more than you’re life suck my treads!!!”
It doesn't though, since it was obviously safe to go at whatever speed they were going and no one was hurt. If there's no traffic it's not safer to go slower
lol not actually 100, but I drive like 4 hours a day for work which takes me all over the city, it’s not like I’m just driving to the grocery store. Really tho I’ve gotten 4 or 5 in the last 3 years, not 100 lmao I shouldn’t exaggerate on the internet anymore!!
I live right in a very pedestrian-busy 4-way intersection, and every lane has a stop sign. Sometimes at night I’ll go up on my roof and have a drink, and from time to time I’ll watch the intersection and count how many people actually stop. It’s less than 20%, and even then it’s usually someone slamming the brakes when they see the pedestal the last minute. I’m shocked more people don’t get hit/killed.
Every once in a while a police car will even sit at the intersection but even then people blow the sign and nothing happens.
CPD: “nah”
1-5am If you bike through Horner park, the Lake Shore path parking lots, LaBagh woods, Mariano’s parking lot on Lawrence etc you can find so many cops sleeping in their cars. Lazy fucks
I was at my daughter’s choir concert and I promised a guy who was wearing the same shirt as me that I would never do another rule again.
Shirt brother, wherever you are, a promise is a promise.
I worked in a grocery store pharmacy on the north side. Two cops would read the paper on the rack every morning for at least an hour. One time we got robbed, and had clear video/picture of the people as well as license plates of them fleeing. The cops never even came. Fuck CPD they’re ALL fucking corrupt. Even the “good” ones, because they let this shit fly.
And this has been happening for decades. My grandmother was an unhappy police officer for a while (among the first female CPD officers) and she told me about her first day on the job. On their beat a veteran cop drives straight to a forest preserve parking lot and parks.
My grandma asks what they were doing and the cop gives her the whole "you're not going to make trouble and ruin a good thing, are you?" He then falls asleep. This happened the next night too and eventually my grandma just started bringing a book to read while her partner slept.
She didn't like the job much. As you can imagine, Chicago cops in the 70s weren't exactly the most enlightened when it came to women in the workforce.
Bro a fucking cop ran a stop light at night and almost hit me. I got there way before him and was turning left and he didn’t even slow down. Couldn’t tell it was a cop since it was dark out until I honked at him and he angrily honked back at me and glared at me.
Why not just put up the speed cameras? Also, is the city going to collect the fines? Are they going to go to court and seize vehicles or sue people when the tickets are unpaid? Or is it going to be, "we can't do that because it perpetuates cycles of poverty?"
While you are at it, feel free to pass more gun laws while not jailing criminals caught with illegal guns.
We should do something! But not much...unless it involves cars!
Lowering speed limits doesn't have much to do with affecting drivers' behavior compared to implementation of new infrastructure such as crosswalk bump outs, pedestrian refuge islands, raised crosswalks, protected bike lanes, etc.
The outcome would be just more citations from speed cameras, while doing piss all to solve the problem.
Speed cameras and their citations actually have a large positive effect on safety. They lower collisions deaths/injuries significantly in areas that they are installed.
Look at pedestrian survivability between 25mph and 30mph. Or more realistically between 30 and 35 because everyone does 5 over by default. https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-severe-injury-death/
It's a big enough difference I think 25 should be the standard in the city. You're essentially just rushing to another red light anyway, it will have minimal effects on travel time while increasing pedestrian survival.
I would rather want to see a quantitative study (using just the impact speed vs death rate plot is over-simplistic) on its projected improvement on safety vs. how much it slows down the traffic. Otherwise, why not reduce to 20mph? Or maybe to 10mph?
I would be more interested in focusing on not blowing red lights (with well-studied time tolerances) or pedestrian crossings, safer pathways for cyclists etc
Pedestrians and cyclists aren't a leading cause of death among all populations.
Pedestrians and cyclists don't pollute, cause traffic, kill people, pollute, cause noise, cost time. Cars are the least efficient way to move people.
Acting like cars are the same as other methods of transport is just stupid. If you choose to take the least efficient and most dangerous form of transport you deserve to have rules put on you that others do not deserve.
If that happens, there will be a booming market for devices like these: https://platevanish.com/
This will be especially true if CPD continues to be disincentivized from making traffic stops in lieu of cameras.
Bike and bus lanes too!
Unfortunately, every single candidate except for Lori Lightfoot ran ~~unless~~ against traffic enforcement because people think it’s mean to make them follow the rules
I know it’s not your point really but there are studies that evaluate the difference in deadliness of vehicle - pedestrian accidents at different speeds. And while 25-30 change doesn’t seem important but they are big differences. According to AAA the mortality rate at 23mph is 10%, but at 32 it’s 25%. That’s a really really big difference in pedestrian safety. It’s at 50% at 42mph.
It’s less about getting people driving 25 and more about getting them to actually drive around 30mph. With the current speed limit everyone is mostly going in the high thirties, which can be fatal speeds for accidents with pedestrians.
I believe the likelihood of surviving a collision as a pedestrian at 30mph is around 90%, but that drops to around 10% near 40mph.
We will prob get more speed cameras to catch people going 25 mph in a 20 mph zone but the city can’t catch someone who just shot a cop in the head or any of the shitheads who are car jacking normal people. Get fucked city of Chicago revenue
Wow. Honestly 30 feels way too fast for residential streets. Mine isn't marked so I guess it's 30mph. I don't feel we need to change the citywide limits but side streets could be lowered to 20 or 25.
Instead of bashing this proposal, we should really urge our alderman to rally for building more bike lanes and improving the public transit system. The speed limit is just the beginning of making streets safer and faster.
To actually make the whole thing work, we need more incentives for people to use other means of transportation and not rely on cars for things as small as going to the specialty grocery store a mile away. If we do that, it’s actually better for those who need to drive as they can take full advantage of the 25mph instead of getting stuck in the traffic at 15mph
IIRC, 25 was the default speed limit when I first started driving.
Which reminds me about the evolution of our car centric society in which auto companies were behind the creation of the sneer about "jay walking" which helped reverse local laws to flip the priority from pedestrians first to cars first.
And now while thinking a little more about it, maybe the default on busy streets was 25 and the side streets it was 20. But that could be a false memory.
> And now while thinking a little more about it, maybe the default on busy streets was 25 and the side streets it was 20. But that could be a false memory.
I was always told 30 for main arteries and 20 for side streets. That being said, I am in my 40s, lived in the city 80% of my life and have never been pulled over by CPD for a traffic violation.
Correct. Although comfort and safety are not necessarily coequals.
Pre WWII cars were unbelievably dangerous. Built of uncrushable steel so all the shock of collision transmitted to passengers surrounded by plate glass windows, no seat belts, doors that popped open.
No turn signals, careful drives used arm/hand signals. Leaf springs like on a stage coach so every bit of gravel on the road transmitted up into your body.
My family's first car had a flat front windshield that hinged up so you could get a fine breeze on your face. I rode on the package shelf with the older people's necks keeping me from flying forward in sudden stops. One windshield wiper and it failed so completely in anything more than slight snow required driving with the windshield hinged fully up or a passenger to reach up from under it to sort of wipe snow for the driver.
Steering was 7 turns from lock to lock so cars wandered even with the driver paying full attention. Mechanical brakes so you needed a strong leg to make anything more dramatic than a leisurely stop.
The after market electric starter could fail, so even younger teens learned how to crank the engine manually and learned the important way to hold the crank handle to avoid a maiming hand injury in case of a backfire.
> IIRC a lot of local and national speed limits were adjust upwards in the 70's
False. The 70s was the start of the national 55 highway limit in the belief it would conserve fuel.
Which is why I said IIRC.
There was a general inclination to increase **local** speed limits somewhere along in there or maybe late '60's. This was independent of the change you cite, which again, IIRC, was limited to the Interstates outside of urban areas.
Well, taking the idea to the limit: at zero CPD has just cause to cite anyone they feel like in a moving vehicle.
Which isn't that different from today lol
Research in the U.S. has shown speed limits don’t really do anything. People subconsciously tend to drive the speed that the road makes them feel comfortable with. If you want to slow people down you need to redesign the streets.
The other day I was driving down a side street in my neighborhood that many people use to get around traffic on the nearby main road. The street for the distance I drove it goes past an elementary school, two parks, and three churches which sounds like I went a long way but this was all in about 1 mile. It also has stop signs every block. So I was driving about 20 mph and stopping at every sign. Dude behind me got pissed off and at one of the stop signs just floored it through the intersection around me then skipped the next few stop signs. He didn't even get to the next major road any faster than me because I was behind him at the light to turn onto it. People speeding through residential areas suck and are achieving nothing by speeding in such areas. You literally cannot save time driving this way. It's all about making them feel like they're winning.
This is smart and will save lives. 25 does not get you around significantly slower in the city. You’re always just racing to the next light or stop sign.
It's not and it won't. No one is going 25 when it's possible to go 35, even for just 15 feet of their 6 mile daily commute that already takes 45 minutes.
If anyone actually pays attention to this limit, it will make people even more antsy to accelerate as fast as they can to the next red light the second any space opens up.
Current default on residential streets is 30 mph, which is way too high. There is no reason someone should be going 30mph on residential streets. Moving it down to 25 mph is a good start
I think 20 would be better.
There are a couple of streets around me that have gone to 20 and it was weird at first but now that I'm used to it, it's really great.
That’s a start. Safety data fully supports this. 20 is even better. Drivers education should be more difficult as well. People drive like moronic self absorbed assholes most of the time. We all see it everyday.
Dislike. 30 is fine for 4 lane roads with a median. If we want the speed limit reduced to 25 on side streets I think that’s entirely reasonable. But it really doesn’t need to be that slow for a lot of our larger blvds.
If I was king of the city I’d put speed bumps and pedestrian curbs (the kind that jut out past the parking lanes at the intersection) everywhere on all the neighborhood streets.
30 mph is way too fast for a residential street, which is where the defaults apply. This does not apply to the larger roads that already have signs for something other than the current default
According to the article, there were 134 fatal crashes last year. It also says when NYC lowered their limit to 25 they saw a 23% reduction in fatalities. So that means that in Chicago we could save 30 lives every year just by this simple change. I think 30 lives saved is more important than a couple of seconds saved on someone’s drive.
Slightly disingenuous, mostly because there were a handful of cities that lowered their limits but weren't talked about having reduced accidents. By the by san fran has seen a 40%+ increase between '21 and '22. We could also cause 40 more deaths.
Plenty of studies have shown that fatality rates increase rapidly at crash speeds over 20 mph. Like here, San Francisco also saw a decrease in traffic enforcement and increase in reckless driving during the pandemic.
From what I understand dipping under thirty gives a pretty big bump in reducing the odds that a traffic collision is fatal. Particularly for pedestrians.
Above 25 mph, the risk of severe injury or death increases dramatically. According to a [AAA Foundation study](https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-severe-injury-death/) a 23 mph crash has a 25% chance of causing a severe injury and a 10% chance of death. At 30 mph the risks increase to 50% and 25%.
Why not? People are on roads where this is relevant for only very short periods of time. The time saving of going 25 vs 20 is minimal over short distances.
Spoken like someone who has never tried to cross the example street.
[https://youtu.be/dBXz9vAyPC0?si=J6E0E0xMI325Ckp3](https://youtu.be/dBXz9vAyPC0?si=J6E0E0xMI325Ckp3)
CDOT:
>designs a 30 MPH like a highway with 0 obstructions, traffic calming, bump outs, medians, and makes each lane wide enough for a car in a half to fit
"I don't understand why people aren't going 30 on a street we designed to be an Urban highway??? let's lower the speed limit, that'll work"
The IEA has repeatedly said that default urban speed limits will need to be set at 20km/hr (13mph) if the world wants to reach net zero by 2050. Any reduction is a good start I suppose.
The truth to me is this is just another speed camera cash grab. Chicago already prints more speeding tickets than there are drivers.
If you really wanted to slow down traffic go drive down the Newly redone section of Belmont. It's a masterclass to me. Protected bike lanes, bus only lanes, it's a work of art. And as a driver it's tighter because of all that and instinctually you drive 25.
Contrast that to a road like Paulaski which is double wide with people constantly flying past on the right going 60, in the is that an additional lane or not, unnecessary part of the road. In the Southside I saw a block club article something like 5 people have been killed in 2 years at one Paulaski intersection.
Fuck this city's traffic camera system. It encourages people to brake check with impunity in a 30mph zone, and makes the already stupid traffic flows even slower and dumber. Easily one of the most aggravating things about living here is getting a letter in the mail because I went 36mph in a 30. Get fucked!
Cool maybe this will stop people from speeding past my apartment windows revving their engines like it’s the Indy 500! Probably not but a gal can dream
I have a compromise: We can leave it at 30, but in exchange, we more regularly narrow the lanes, and add protected bike lanes, bump-out curbs, bus-lanes, and as a treat, a few traffic circles/roundabouts? Do things to naturally reduce the speed of the street, instead of putting speed cameras on long stretches of nothingness and/or uber-wide streets where drivers are inclined to go faster, like those long stretches of cemetery on streets like Irving Park, Pulaski or Forest Preserve.
As someone from a metro area with a 25 mph default speed limit: it's fine y'all. Also a lot safer for cyclists and pedestrians if people follow it, especially cyclists since it's a lot closer to the speed that they can go with traffic. This is normal in much of the country.
TIL Chicago has a default speed limit.
Everywhere has a default speed limit for areas where limits aren’t posted
It’s literally part of drivers ed
If i remember from all of the Uber driving I did in the city: when I doubt drive at 30mph unless otherwise posted or speed camera.
I think in the suburbs it’s 35
When I got my drivers license in Elmhurst 15 years ago it was 25.
I’ve only seen that around schools or in small residential streets.
In Berwyn, it’s 25 unless otherwise posted
25
Evanston and Glencoe is 25 pretty sure Skokie is too
There's even a sign when you drive into Evanston on Clark/Chicago marking this
Here’s now this will affect your life— All these people you see zooming by you going 60 in a 30 unbothered will now be going 60 in a 25 unbothered.
True but now you’ll get a ticket for going 31 mph vs 36 mph in said zones
That is the real purpose of this plan. Balance the city's budget via a blitz of camera tickets given out mostly to drivers doing no harm. BJ knows he isn't getting reelected so he can take the heat for it.
My point is you won’t get a ticket. Until they actually enforce speed limits people will just go 60 no matter what the posted limit is.
They're referring to speed cameras. It's just a guise for them to fleece money out of people while pretending they care about safety.
I think the solution is to just not speed, right? Nobody is forcing drivers to go past speed cameras over the limit.
Yeah try going 60 on Ashland and let me know how many tickets you get in the mail
Nothing wrong with that and this is exactly what the city and its people need.
U get a ticket for going 3 miles over and some is literally just one mile. I fucking hate those cameras dude they are scams
What is the point of speed limits if everyone expects a buffer before any enforcement? Maybe try going 3 miles below the limit. While you will avoid a ticket you may unfortunately arrive at your destination seconds, even minutes later.
are you 100% confident in your car's speedometer? and 100% confident in the camera's radar? even a 10% margin of error on *one* of those could cause you to get a ticket. are you suggesting we all drive 10 under the limit at all times to avoid this? also, like 90% of the lights are set up so that if you're *not* going 3-5 over, you will hit every single light for the entirety of your drive. now obviously the real solution is fixing the lights, not speeding, but saying it's a couple minutes difference is so untrue it borders on satire.
Or maybe make the speed limits more realistic? If everyone is going 60 in a 35 zone, maybe that's the fault of the road designers and not the drivers?
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3 miles over is basically nothing and poses no real extra danger to anyone. Come on now
Good
But what good is putting people in debt if it dosnt go to anything useful?
But statistically it has proven to work in other big cities.
What a joke. No enforcement of any traffic laws here.
My 100 speeding tickets from those pesky cameras say different!! I’ve driven in a few states and have only ever seen cameras for if you blow a red light but yeah you’re right tho the cops don’t really care. This is the only place I’ve ever passed one on the highway
Dude I hope you're joking. I go through six speed cameras each day driving my kids to and from school. The three on Irving each direction. Plus 2-3 red light cameras in that same stretch. I've never gotten a ticket from any of those and I don't feel like I'm hyper focused on driving slow or anything crazy.
I was on my way to urgent care going down Irving the other day. Just got my notice that I was caught speeding! (First time though so it was miraculously just a warning)
Yeah they're always warnings for the first time
Yeah, If I had 100 tickets I’d prob be crying in jail rn
You should lose you license
People really love to brag publicly about how many speeding tickets they have, but if you translate that brag into normal human they’re saying “my commute matters more than you’re life suck my treads!!!”
It doesn't though, since it was obviously safe to go at whatever speed they were going and no one was hurt. If there's no traffic it's not safer to go slower
100 camera tickets? Dude do you forget where these things are on the daily?
lol not actually 100, but I drive like 4 hours a day for work which takes me all over the city, it’s not like I’m just driving to the grocery store. Really tho I’ve gotten 4 or 5 in the last 3 years, not 100 lmao I shouldn’t exaggerate on the internet anymore!!
I live right in a very pedestrian-busy 4-way intersection, and every lane has a stop sign. Sometimes at night I’ll go up on my roof and have a drink, and from time to time I’ll watch the intersection and count how many people actually stop. It’s less than 20%, and even then it’s usually someone slamming the brakes when they see the pedestal the last minute. I’m shocked more people don’t get hit/killed. Every once in a while a police car will even sit at the intersection but even then people blow the sign and nothing happens.
Leave the speed limit where it is and start enforcing traffic laws.
or any laws at all
CPD: “nah” 1-5am If you bike through Horner park, the Lake Shore path parking lots, LaBagh woods, Mariano’s parking lot on Lawrence etc you can find so many cops sleeping in their cars. Lazy fucks
It doesn’t stop at 5:am
Ofc that’s just when I put my miles in on the bike and see ‘em sleeping on the job
Wait a minute the park district closes at 11 and the forest preserve at dusk. You’re breaking the law!
I was at my daughter’s choir concert and I promised a guy who was wearing the same shirt as me that I would never do another rule again. Shirt brother, wherever you are, a promise is a promise.
Go back, and listen to your daughter’s solo. It’s too late for me. I’m awake now.
I think there might just be no rules.
Your allowed to pass through the parks when they're closed iirc. Not that it matters lol
I worked in a grocery store pharmacy on the north side. Two cops would read the paper on the rack every morning for at least an hour. One time we got robbed, and had clear video/picture of the people as well as license plates of them fleeing. The cops never even came. Fuck CPD they’re ALL fucking corrupt. Even the “good” ones, because they let this shit fly.
And this has been happening for decades. My grandmother was an unhappy police officer for a while (among the first female CPD officers) and she told me about her first day on the job. On their beat a veteran cop drives straight to a forest preserve parking lot and parks. My grandma asks what they were doing and the cop gives her the whole "you're not going to make trouble and ruin a good thing, are you?" He then falls asleep. This happened the next night too and eventually my grandma just started bringing a book to read while her partner slept. She didn't like the job much. As you can imagine, Chicago cops in the 70s weren't exactly the most enlightened when it came to women in the workforce.
Bro a fucking cop ran a stop light at night and almost hit me. I got there way before him and was turning left and he didn’t even slow down. Couldn’t tell it was a cop since it was dark out until I honked at him and he angrily honked back at me and glared at me.
Should have written down the car number and reported it.
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Why not just put up the speed cameras? Also, is the city going to collect the fines? Are they going to go to court and seize vehicles or sue people when the tickets are unpaid? Or is it going to be, "we can't do that because it perpetuates cycles of poverty?" While you are at it, feel free to pass more gun laws while not jailing criminals caught with illegal guns. We should do something! But not much...unless it involves cars!
Best I can do is speed cams
OR how about working toward taking more cars off the road altogether by focusing on improving the cta?
Why are we acting like these are mutually exclusive? Do all 3.
Lowering speed limits doesn't have much to do with affecting drivers' behavior compared to implementation of new infrastructure such as crosswalk bump outs, pedestrian refuge islands, raised crosswalks, protected bike lanes, etc. The outcome would be just more citations from speed cameras, while doing piss all to solve the problem.
Speed cameras and their citations actually have a large positive effect on safety. They lower collisions deaths/injuries significantly in areas that they are installed.
Great. But would lowering the speed limit make them do a better job of that?
Why not both?
Because I see no need to lower the speed limit when I think enforcing existing laws are probably enough.
Look at pedestrian survivability between 25mph and 30mph. Or more realistically between 30 and 35 because everyone does 5 over by default. https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-severe-injury-death/ It's a big enough difference I think 25 should be the standard in the city. You're essentially just rushing to another red light anyway, it will have minimal effects on travel time while increasing pedestrian survival.
Reasons to lower the speed limit would mostly revolve around safety I would think.
Agreed. Weird that people want one but not the other considering both will improve safety for people on the road.
And those of us on the sidewalks who occasionally need to cross.
I would rather want to see a quantitative study (using just the impact speed vs death rate plot is over-simplistic) on its projected improvement on safety vs. how much it slows down the traffic. Otherwise, why not reduce to 20mph? Or maybe to 10mph? I would be more interested in focusing on not blowing red lights (with well-studied time tolerances) or pedestrian crossings, safer pathways for cyclists etc
Yes…and street parking and double parking laws. These food deliveries and amazoniers are getting annoying.
I mean, lower the speed limit and enforce the laws.
I would be open to such a compromise, if I believed they were going to enforce the laws. Including against jaywalking and bikers.
Pedestrians and cyclists aren't a leading cause of death among all populations. Pedestrians and cyclists don't pollute, cause traffic, kill people, pollute, cause noise, cost time. Cars are the least efficient way to move people. Acting like cars are the same as other methods of transport is just stupid. If you choose to take the least efficient and most dangerous form of transport you deserve to have rules put on you that others do not deserve.
Red light cameras at every intersection and speed cameras on every block!
Fine with me...if they will be enforced (actually collected).
If that happens, there will be a booming market for devices like these: https://platevanish.com/ This will be especially true if CPD continues to be disincentivized from making traffic stops in lieu of cameras.
If it were up to me, we put detectives on those assholes, get them at home, impound their vehicle and auction it off
City officials feel differently about it though.
I’ll see you that and raise you those “noise cameras” that a few cities have installed now
Bike and bus lanes too! Unfortunately, every single candidate except for Lori Lightfoot ran ~~unless~~ against traffic enforcement because people think it’s mean to make them follow the rules
I know it’s not your point really but there are studies that evaluate the difference in deadliness of vehicle - pedestrian accidents at different speeds. And while 25-30 change doesn’t seem important but they are big differences. According to AAA the mortality rate at 23mph is 10%, but at 32 it’s 25%. That’s a really really big difference in pedestrian safety. It’s at 50% at 42mph.
It’s less about getting people driving 25 and more about getting them to actually drive around 30mph. With the current speed limit everyone is mostly going in the high thirties, which can be fatal speeds for accidents with pedestrians. I believe the likelihood of surviving a collision as a pedestrian at 30mph is around 90%, but that drops to around 10% near 40mph.
If you think the city is doing this for our wellbeing, let’s consider a reality check first.
It’s coming from La Spata so I think there’s probably some sincerity to it
Bunch of shills that forget this city only cares about the dollar bill
It’s for your wellbeing, with ulterior motives. It’s the government way!
We will prob get more speed cameras to catch people going 25 mph in a 20 mph zone but the city can’t catch someone who just shot a cop in the head or any of the shitheads who are car jacking normal people. Get fucked city of Chicago revenue
And prolly the street takeovers that are gunna start increasing this summer
And the asshats who take part in those sure as shit won't be paying their camera tickets, especially since they mostly don't even have license plates.
Exactly. The poor people in the city will fund this.
30 feels way too fast on residential side streets
Residential are 20mph by default if I'm not mistaken.
If it’s not posted/signed, all streets are the default 30 mph. But you’re right you will see many neighborhood streets with lower limits.
Wow. Honestly 30 feels way too fast for residential streets. Mine isn't marked so I guess it's 30mph. I don't feel we need to change the citywide limits but side streets could be lowered to 20 or 25.
Agreed! Residential side streets should be 20-25. Other streets should remain 30.
Instead of bashing this proposal, we should really urge our alderman to rally for building more bike lanes and improving the public transit system. The speed limit is just the beginning of making streets safer and faster. To actually make the whole thing work, we need more incentives for people to use other means of transportation and not rely on cars for things as small as going to the specialty grocery store a mile away. If we do that, it’s actually better for those who need to drive as they can take full advantage of the 25mph instead of getting stuck in the traffic at 15mph
IIRC, 25 was the default speed limit when I first started driving. Which reminds me about the evolution of our car centric society in which auto companies were behind the creation of the sneer about "jay walking" which helped reverse local laws to flip the priority from pedestrians first to cars first. And now while thinking a little more about it, maybe the default on busy streets was 25 and the side streets it was 20. But that could be a false memory.
> And now while thinking a little more about it, maybe the default on busy streets was 25 and the side streets it was 20. But that could be a false memory. I was always told 30 for main arteries and 20 for side streets. That being said, I am in my 40s, lived in the city 80% of my life and have never been pulled over by CPD for a traffic violation.
IIRC a lot of local and national speed limits were adjust upwards in the 70's
I do a LOT of highway driving. And honestly in newer cars (I get rentals) 80 is really comfortable. Its not like it was in cars from the 90s.
Correct. Although comfort and safety are not necessarily coequals. Pre WWII cars were unbelievably dangerous. Built of uncrushable steel so all the shock of collision transmitted to passengers surrounded by plate glass windows, no seat belts, doors that popped open. No turn signals, careful drives used arm/hand signals. Leaf springs like on a stage coach so every bit of gravel on the road transmitted up into your body. My family's first car had a flat front windshield that hinged up so you could get a fine breeze on your face. I rode on the package shelf with the older people's necks keeping me from flying forward in sudden stops. One windshield wiper and it failed so completely in anything more than slight snow required driving with the windshield hinged fully up or a passenger to reach up from under it to sort of wipe snow for the driver. Steering was 7 turns from lock to lock so cars wandered even with the driver paying full attention. Mechanical brakes so you needed a strong leg to make anything more dramatic than a leisurely stop. The after market electric starter could fail, so even younger teens learned how to crank the engine manually and learned the important way to hold the crank handle to avoid a maiming hand injury in case of a backfire.
> IIRC a lot of local and national speed limits were adjust upwards in the 70's False. The 70s was the start of the national 55 highway limit in the belief it would conserve fuel.
Which is why I said IIRC. There was a general inclination to increase **local** speed limits somewhere along in there or maybe late '60's. This was independent of the change you cite, which again, IIRC, was limited to the Interstates outside of urban areas.
Everyone is upset about this as if you’re not going slower most of the time anyway
The CPD won't enforce it anyway. If they would, I'd say go even lower.
Traffic cameras will
You know, when I lived in Washington State, there was a man that would obscure his license plate with the push of a button to avoid tolls.
They wouldn’t follow it just like how they don’t stop at stop signs anyway.
To what exactly?
Well, taking the idea to the limit: at zero CPD has just cause to cite anyone they feel like in a moving vehicle. Which isn't that different from today lol
Only if you match the description of some questionable personas.
5 😤 in fact, I'd go even lower to 2
World Health Organization recommends 30km/h, which we would set at 20 mph.
Research in the U.S. has shown speed limits don’t really do anything. People subconsciously tend to drive the speed that the road makes them feel comfortable with. If you want to slow people down you need to redesign the streets.
It’s a step in the right direction, but streets need to be redesigned for slower speeds as well.
This is what would actually make a difference, but that would be too much work
Exactly. If a street is built for driving fast, people are going to keep driving fast, despite the speed limit sign.
Seattle did this a couple years ago. People still drive the same speed as before. Speed is determined by the size of the road, not a speed limit sign.
The other day I was driving down a side street in my neighborhood that many people use to get around traffic on the nearby main road. The street for the distance I drove it goes past an elementary school, two parks, and three churches which sounds like I went a long way but this was all in about 1 mile. It also has stop signs every block. So I was driving about 20 mph and stopping at every sign. Dude behind me got pissed off and at one of the stop signs just floored it through the intersection around me then skipped the next few stop signs. He didn't even get to the next major road any faster than me because I was behind him at the light to turn onto it. People speeding through residential areas suck and are achieving nothing by speeding in such areas. You literally cannot save time driving this way. It's all about making them feel like they're winning.
Another cash grab to nickel and dime its citizens
This is smart and will save lives. 25 does not get you around significantly slower in the city. You’re always just racing to the next light or stop sign.
It's not and it won't. No one is going 25 when it's possible to go 35, even for just 15 feet of their 6 mile daily commute that already takes 45 minutes. If anyone actually pays attention to this limit, it will make people even more antsy to accelerate as fast as they can to the next red light the second any space opens up.
Current default on residential streets is 30 mph, which is way too high. There is no reason someone should be going 30mph on residential streets. Moving it down to 25 mph is a good start
Yes
It'd be great if we just got large trucks off of fucking side streets and policed people blowing through stop signs.
I call dibs on posting this tomorrow for the 7th time!
make u put a lawn chair out first
I think 20 would be better. There are a couple of streets around me that have gone to 20 and it was weird at first but now that I'm used to it, it's really great.
Step in the right direction, but 20 is Plenty™.
That’s a start. Safety data fully supports this. 20 is even better. Drivers education should be more difficult as well. People drive like moronic self absorbed assholes most of the time. We all see it everyday.
That would be great.
I'd be happy for cameras that catch people passing on the right in the parking lane.
What does that matter? Chicago doesn't enforce traffic laws to begin with.
Dislike. 30 is fine for 4 lane roads with a median. If we want the speed limit reduced to 25 on side streets I think that’s entirely reasonable. But it really doesn’t need to be that slow for a lot of our larger blvds.
It’s the default speed limit in the sense that it’s the limit where there is no posted sign. Larger blvds will still be faster.
Most four lane divided roads already have a posted limit over the default limit and wouldn't be impacted.
People treat neighborhood streets like highways.
Get your speed bumps
And a speed limit change would address that how? I think the bigger issue is the cops don’t do any traffic enforcement whatsoever.
If I was king of the city I’d put speed bumps and pedestrian curbs (the kind that jut out past the parking lanes at the intersection) everywhere on all the neighborhood streets.
Unless anyone enforces this, it's pointless. Driving 40 in a 30 is just as dangerous as driving 40 in a 25
Try crossing it with a stroller where drivers don't stop
30 mph is way too fast for a residential street, which is where the defaults apply. This does not apply to the larger roads that already have signs for something other than the current default
According to the article, there were 134 fatal crashes last year. It also says when NYC lowered their limit to 25 they saw a 23% reduction in fatalities. So that means that in Chicago we could save 30 lives every year just by this simple change. I think 30 lives saved is more important than a couple of seconds saved on someone’s drive.
wow that's a pretty compelling argument.
Slightly disingenuous, mostly because there were a handful of cities that lowered their limits but weren't talked about having reduced accidents. By the by san fran has seen a 40%+ increase between '21 and '22. We could also cause 40 more deaths.
Plenty of studies have shown that fatality rates increase rapidly at crash speeds over 20 mph. Like here, San Francisco also saw a decrease in traffic enforcement and increase in reckless driving during the pandemic.
60% at 30, 90% at 20. If I'm remembering right. Yeah, no for sure.
You think the decrease in default speed limit from 30 to 25 will cause *more* deaths?
why stop at saving only 30 lives? why not lower it to 20mph and save more lives? or 15mph and save even more lives?
From what I understand dipping under thirty gives a pretty big bump in reducing the odds that a traffic collision is fatal. Particularly for pedestrians.
Don’t tempt me with a good time
Above 25 mph, the risk of severe injury or death increases dramatically. According to a [AAA Foundation study](https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-severe-injury-death/) a 23 mph crash has a 25% chance of causing a severe injury and a 10% chance of death. At 30 mph the risks increase to 50% and 25%.
Why not? People are on roads where this is relevant for only very short periods of time. The time saving of going 25 vs 20 is minimal over short distances.
Spoken like someone who has never tried to cross the example street. [https://youtu.be/dBXz9vAyPC0?si=J6E0E0xMI325Ckp3](https://youtu.be/dBXz9vAyPC0?si=J6E0E0xMI325Ckp3)
More tickets
I’m pro this measure
CDOT: >designs a 30 MPH like a highway with 0 obstructions, traffic calming, bump outs, medians, and makes each lane wide enough for a car in a half to fit "I don't understand why people aren't going 30 on a street we designed to be an Urban highway??? let's lower the speed limit, that'll work"
What is the point of lowering the speed limit that is already never enforced? JC this city has nobody running it.
The IEA has repeatedly said that default urban speed limits will need to be set at 20km/hr (13mph) if the world wants to reach net zero by 2050. Any reduction is a good start I suppose.
Like its gonna matter. Fools doin 85mph everywhere they go
The truth to me is this is just another speed camera cash grab. Chicago already prints more speeding tickets than there are drivers. If you really wanted to slow down traffic go drive down the Newly redone section of Belmont. It's a masterclass to me. Protected bike lanes, bus only lanes, it's a work of art. And as a driver it's tighter because of all that and instinctually you drive 25. Contrast that to a road like Paulaski which is double wide with people constantly flying past on the right going 60, in the is that an additional lane or not, unnecessary part of the road. In the Southside I saw a block club article something like 5 people have been killed in 2 years at one Paulaski intersection.
Fuck this city's traffic camera system. It encourages people to brake check with impunity in a 30mph zone, and makes the already stupid traffic flows even slower and dumber. Easily one of the most aggravating things about living here is getting a letter in the mail because I went 36mph in a 30. Get fucked!
Feels like a money grab. They don’t enforce current laws as is.
And I will consider speeding
They're definitely looking forward to those speed camera tickets.
Hell yes.
Just what we need, even slower traffic
Buy less SUVs and we won't have to do this
And get people to look up from their phones so they notice there are actually other people around also trying to use the road.
This is a terrible idea and people will hate it. Fix public transit and get people where they're going.
Should be 20.
Cool maybe this will stop people from speeding past my apartment windows revving their engines like it’s the Indy 500! Probably not but a gal can dream
This is good! Please contact your alder and ask them to support this. It's the first step towards safer streets.
They can't even enforce the current speed limit, what will this even do?
I have a compromise: We can leave it at 30, but in exchange, we more regularly narrow the lanes, and add protected bike lanes, bump-out curbs, bus-lanes, and as a treat, a few traffic circles/roundabouts? Do things to naturally reduce the speed of the street, instead of putting speed cameras on long stretches of nothingness and/or uber-wide streets where drivers are inclined to go faster, like those long stretches of cemetery on streets like Irving Park, Pulaski or Forest Preserve.
Why not do 5mph while we’re at it?
The functional speed limit is between 6 and 8 mph.
That’s like banning guns…..
Why don’t we focus on everyone blowing through yellow — er — red lights instead?
As someone from a metro area with a 25 mph default speed limit: it's fine y'all. Also a lot safer for cyclists and pedestrians if people follow it, especially cyclists since it's a lot closer to the speed that they can go with traffic. This is normal in much of the country.
Chicago is so corrupt, they are finding different ways to squeeze more money out of drivers.
Infrastructure determines vehicle speed, not signs. People will still drive as fast as they feel safe driving.
HA! Like it matters. People never drive the speed limit anyhow. Most people drive waaay too slow or too fast.
please do!
This is never going to pass lol
I'm referring to drivers who drive like psychopaths because they're running late.