Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Speed

19’s Plenty: Toronto Drops Speed Limit to 19 MPH on Residential Streets

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 2, 2015 | 10 Comments

“There is no war on the car,” said Toronto City Councillor Paula Fletcher. “There’s basically been this continued war on people who don’t have a car.” To remedy that situation, Fletcher, along with all of her colleagues on the Toronto and East York community council, voted last week to reduce speed limits to 30 kph (or 18.6 […]

Can a New Way to Measure Streets Help Advocates Tame Speeding?

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 29, 2015 | 8 Comments

You’ve heard of sensors that can count cars or bikes. Tools like that can help transportation planners make smarter decisions about where bike infrastructure is needed, for example. A new digital tool called Placemeter aims to measure streets at a much more fine-grained level, analyzing a variety of different aspects of movement in an urban environment. […]

Man Who Painted Speed Warning on Street Vows to Fight Charges

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 28, 2014 | No Comments

A Pennsylvania man faces charges of criminal mischief and disorderly conduct for painting a warning to speeding drivers on his street. John Cherok appealed to the city about drivers going dangerously fast in front of his bookstore in McDonald, Pennsylvania. The city, for its part, conducted a study and told him speeding wasn’t a problem. The […]

Talking Headways Podcast: Les Rues Are Made for Walking

By Tanya Snyder | May 28, 2014 | 1 Comment

Last week, Smart Growth America brought us the bad news: More than 47,000 people died while walking between 2003 and 2012. Most victims are killed on high-speed arterial roads. A disproportionate number are elderly or racial minorities. Paris showed us a powerful solution: The city is lowering its default speed limit to 30 kilometers per […]

Paris to Set Default Citywide Speed Limit Below 20 MPH

By Angie Schmitt | May 21, 2014 | No Comments

Slow-speed zones are an increasingly widespread tactic to improve street safety and urban livability. Inspired by a German town that limited motor vehicle speeds to 30 kilometers per hour — or roughly 19 miles per hour — British activists have made 20 mph zones a core street safety policy across the nation. The movement has […]

Moving People or Moving Vehicles: How Should We Grade America’s Streets?

By Darren Flusche | Nov 27, 2012 | 7 Comments

Darren Flusche is the policy director of the League of American Bicyclists. Should the performance of this road… …be measured like this one? Under the new federal transportation bill, known as MAP-21, the performance of these two roads could be measured the same way — even though one is a bustling business district, and the other is […]

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