Viewpoint: Good Roads and Great Networks Built for People

GOOD ROADS AND GREAT NETWORKS BUILT FOR PEOPLE

BY BILL NESPER

SINCE THE LEAGUE’S FOUNDING in 1880, the organization has had a focus on improving infrastructure to make cycling safe and accessible. It goes hand in hand with the other essentials we focus our work on like providing education for people biking and driving, and creating more opportunities for people to bike from those most comfortable on a path to those taking the lane.

The legacy of the Good Roads Movement, led by the League at the turn of the 20th century, lives on in our work. Today, like at the beginnings of the movement, better biking infrastructure begins with smooth, paved roads free of surface defects and hazards. Good roads are designed for safe speeds. We join national and international leaders in saying “20 is Plenty” when it comes to designing for the speed at which roads should be driven and setting speed limits for local streets. We know this will move us towards the new standard of Good Roads and Great Networks, where low-stress streets; streets with contextappropriate, high-quality bike facilities like bike lanes, protected bike lanes, and more; and paths and greenways will offer connected bike routes that serve all in a community. When combined with on-bike education for all and the vital programming that builds Bicycle Friendly Communities, everyone will have the opportunity to bike for transportation, good health, and the pure joy and freedom it brings. In this season of giving thanks, I must call out another great network, our incredible network of people across the country who are making this vision possible. Since its founding, the League has been peoplepowered. League members and supporters are pedaling with us and powering the work you will see showcased in this issue of American Bicyclist. From the emails you send to decision makers to the community meetings you attend, the classes you deliver and the rides you help set up, the encouragement and welcome you give to others connects them with the joy of life by bike. We on the staff are proud to ride with you and to help amplify the voices for proper investment and policies here in Washington and in your community, to support local changemakers through better education and advocacy resources, and to showcase your work at the national level so we might create a bicycle friendly America for everyone, improving lives and strengthening communities through bicycling.

ADVOCACY IN ACTION

HOW SEATTLEITES SLOWED THEIR STREETS

BY LAUREN JENKINS

Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash

SPEED KILLS. SLOWER SPEEDS SAVE LIVES.

When a driver going over 40 miles per hour hits a person walking, that person only has a 55 percent chance of surviving. At 20 miles an hour, the same person walking has a 93 percent chance of surviving the crash.

Those are the facts, and behind the numbers are tens of thousands of individuals whose lives were cut short, families who were forever changed. Their stories and these preventable tragedies are why advocates for safer streets and better biking are increasingly advocating for a shift in how our communities are designed: to be destinations for everyone and not racetracks for drivers to zip through. In Seattle, Washington, community advocates in the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Coalition have made impressive progress in slowing their streets over the last several years, offering change makers and local leaders across the country a model for how to transform their own streets to serve people. The League sat down with a few of the folks who were there at the beginning of the push to lower speed limits and change how roads in Seattle are designed and built to learn about their successes and tips for others hoping to achieve similar wins for safety. Ask Merlin Rainwater and Brie Gyncild how and when the fight for slower streets started and you’ll learn about the people lost and injured—and the memorial rides and walks the advocates led for each of them. “I think that initiative was critical because it made the issue of speed one of life and death,” Merlin said. “Traffic violence is an invisible scourge. It’s truly taken for granted that people are going to die in traffic and there’s nothing we can do about it.” The memorial walks and rides, they said, made the issue of traffic safety about more than just the safety of people inside cars. Using the stories of individuals galvanized support for taking big steps like lowering the speed limit throughout the city. For Brie, lower speed limits were another step towards turning the streets into “places people exist in rather than places people pass through.” When she learned that every city council member was on the record in support of lowering speed limits in Cascade Bicycle Club’s candidate survey, she saw an opportunity to lead a movement for change. In 2016, a coalition of groups mobilized by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways secured their first major win: the city council and mayor unanimously approved a measure designating all non-arterial streets with speed limits of 20 miles per hour, while arterials—unless otherwise posted—were set to 25 miles per hour. Lowering residential speed limits to 20 mph was a big win, but there was and is still much work ahead.

“We all know that just changing what the sign on the street says doesn’t actually change behavior,” Brie said. As part of their ongoing advocacy, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways focused on the need to not only put up a new sign, but also to redesign the streets to limit driver speeds. “It felt like the bigger victory in having arterial speeds set to 25 [mph] was the momentum to redesign those streets for 25 mile an hour speed limits,” Brie said. “That’s what you’re actually trying to do. Ideally, you don’t even need a sign on the street because it’s obvious how slow you should be driving.” The data agrees. Lowering a speed limit will make a difference in lowering crashes, but it won’t get any city to its Vision Zero goals. According to the Seattle Department of Transportation’s own accounting, crashes went down 20 percent on streets where they only reduced the speed limit. “You really need to do the harder streets redesign,” said Gordon Padelford, executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Changing the speed limits by sign and by design on Seattle’s arterial roads has taken years and coordination with the state on state-owned highways. That changing the sign on a street is not an immediate silver bullet should not be seen as discouraging, though. Even before the 2016 vote on lowering speed limits, the movement in Seattle was inspiring change. “I think through the memorial walks and rides, we made a big difference in making traffic safety a serious issue and not just the safety of people inside cars,” Merlin said. The League hopes the successes in Seattle to lower speed through lower speed limits and street redesign are an inspiration to other local changemakers around the country that it can be done.

“Really believe that it’s possible,” Merlin told us. “A lot of things don’t happen because it seems out of reach, but it’s not, it can be done.” Together, we can save lives through slower streets.

The 85th percentile

speed is often described as the highest speed that most people consider prudent and would follow without additional enforcement measures. LEARN MORE >

85%

DEEP DIVE

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE 85TH PERCENTILE?

The 85th percentile rule is one of the most common ways of setting roadway speed limits in the United States, and has been in use since at least the 1950s.

While initially based upon research conducted on rural roads with relatively light traffic, it has since been applied on a much broader scale, including on urban roadways with frequent interactions between pedestrians, cyclists, cars, and other activities of daily life. Although only a few states require traffic planners to use the rule when setting speed limits, in practice most rely on official guidance and manuals that place the 85th percentile rule as the primary method for determining speed limits in the United States.

So what is the 85th percentile? The intent of the rule is to set the speed limit of a road around the 85th percentile in a distribution of driving speeds—meaning that under ideal conditions, 85% of drivers would either drive at or below this speed, and 15% of drivers would drive above this speed. The way this is measured is through a traffic study where the speeds of drivers on a road are measured to determine the actual outlay of this distribution of driving speeds. The speed at which 85% of drivers are either driving at or below is determined, and the closest increment within 5 mph becomes the new posted speed limit. The 85th percentile speed is often described as the highest speed that most people consider prudent and would follow without additional enforcement measures. The reasoning goes that a standard and predictable speed is safer than one that is arbitrarily slow or fast, which could generate conflict or collisions from vehicles traveling much slower or faster than the main body of traffic. From this perspective, the orderly flow of motor vehicle traffic is prioritized over other considerations such as the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists who are also using the road, but are physically outside of cars. It is also argued that people drive closer to the speed at which they perceive to be prudent based on factors such as road conditions and designs, rather than merely a number posted on a sign. Although it is true that drivers generally drive at the speed they perceive the road is designed for, this takes place in contexts where it has been recommended practice to actually design roads to a higher speed than the posted limit, in effect guaranteeing that people will instinctually drive over the speed limit.

A safety study from the National Transportation Safety Board states that “Ideally…statutory speed limits are lower than the design speeds established during the design phase [of the road]”. Furthermore, the practice of continually allowing rulebreakers—those who speed excessively—to set speed limits means basing speed studies primarily on the 85th percentile rule is misguided at best and dangerous at its worst. Over time, speeding from the top 15% of drivers can continually drag speed limits up with each study that is done, even if no design changes take place to the road. Paradoxically, this cycle of continually revising speed limits up based on this upper percentile can create a wide spread of speeds between the compliant and non-compliant over time, contrary to one of the stated benefits of using the rule. Excessive speed is a major contributor to traffic injuries and fatalities in the United States, which have continually increased in the past decade and are among the highest in the developed world. Although the notion that engineering studies should be done before speed limits is sound, there are alternative measures available which prioritize safety over speed, such as recommendations on “How to Conduct a Safe Speed Study” by the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Notably, the 85th percentile speed is de-emphasized and placed in the context of other figures and methods in this approach.

FEDERAL POLICY

INTELLIGENT SPEED ASSISTANCE: THE HOT NEW TECH ON EVERY VEHICLE

(EXCEPT THE MOST DANGEROUS ONES)

BY KEN MCLEOD

IF YOU’VE RIDDEN AN ELECTRIC BIKE, you are likely familiar with a speed governor. The top speed on electric bikes of different classes is limited by a speed governor set to the maximum velocity defined by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and many state class systems. If you’ve ridden a shared scooter, you may be familiar with geofenced speed restrictions, like Lime’s Low Speed Zones which allow communities to set top speeds in specific areas. If you’ve driven a car, you likely haven’t dealt with either the top speed governor or a geofenced speed zone. But, if you visit and drive in the European Union in the near future there’s a very good chance you will get to experience Intelligent Speed Assist. As of 2024, all new vehicles in the European Union must be equipped with Intelligent Speed Assist. Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) is a technology that combines software, geolocation, cameras, and vehicle systems to help drivers follow the speed limit when they are driving. Drivers are assisted in following the speed limit through visual and audio alerts that the speed limit is being exceeded, advisements to increase resistance to depress the accelerator or other haptic feedback, and/or an electronic limiter that prevents speeding. Speed governors for maximum speeds, as used in all e-bikes, have been around for over 100 years. ISA, which varies speed based on speed limits, is newer with initial research beginning in the 1980s. In 2017, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) include ISA in its New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). EuroNCAP—initially modeled on the American program—has included ISA since 2009, with a significant update to its testing in 2018. Despite nearly 30% of traffic deaths involving speeding by cars and trucks, it’s electric bikes that federal, state, and local regulations have targeted with speed restrictions, while no laws are in place to slow down cars and trucks by using ISA. In August, New York City made major news with a six-month pilot of ISA on 50 municipal vehicles—a welcome sign, but far from action that is likely to have a widespread effect. American roads are two to five times deadlier than other similarly high-income nations. In 2021, the United States had nearly 43,000 traffic deaths—a 16-year high—and preliminary figures for 2022 suggest a further increase. In the face of this appalling track record, ISA provides a proven and readily available technology. Studies of ISA in European countries project a 26%50% reduction in fatalities if the technology were enforced by regulation. So far, there is little indication the US will implement ISA any time soon. In a 2021 Request for Comments, NHTSA asked the public whether it should add ISA to NCAP, but did not provide any timeline for action. The 2022 National Roadway Safety Strategy did not mention ISA and NCAP was not mentioned under the element “Safer Speeds.” We don’t have to wait for Automated Vehicles to use technology that limits speeds—we already use it for e-bikes and shared scooters today. For now, our failure to test, implement, or provide incentives for ISA is just one more reason why the roadways of the United States are uniquely deadly compared to other peer nations. As the League of American Bicyclists works to make sure we have safe streets for all, ISA is one of the most promising technologies that we have today for bringing a large benefit at a low cost.

STATE POLICY

WHY CAN’T MY STREET’S SPEED LIMIT BE CHANGED?

BY AUSTIN WU

EVERYONE CAN PICTURE THE ROAD IN THEIR AREA:

it’s four to six or more lanes across, it’s a straight line cutting through neighborhoods, its speed limit is set too high, and it rarely has a bike lane or comfortable crosswalk anywhere. It’s a road for cars, not for people. And in many cases, when people go to their city council about modifying these roads, the answer is: “we can’t”. That’s because in many cities and towns, these major thoroughfares are in fact controlled and maintained by the state.

The laws in virtually every state have a provision to allow local governments— counties and municipalities—to set their own speed limits, at least in theory. However, in practice, there are two primary barriers to local governments setting safer speed limits: local control of streets, and how speed limits must be set, such as through methods like the 85th percentile rule. The first issue is whether a local government, such as a city, has control over its streets. Even if the road is contained within the city’s boundaries and is decidedly “urban” in character, such as by having a high number of intersections and volume of traffic, it may still be controlled by the state. In most cases, speed limits for roads under the jurisdiction of the state cannot be altered without approval from the state’s Department of Transportation (DOT) or secretary of transportation, which can be an insurmountable barrier.

A second issue is mandates for how speed limits can be set by local governments, even if they otherwise control the streets. In states such as Maine, New Jersey, Washington, and Tennessee, state laws require that local governments make use of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) in their processes for setting speed limits, which has been criticized in the way in which it “biases transportation behavior in dangerous and inequitable ways, prioritizing the speed of cars and the convenience of drivers over other modes and uses”. Other states mandate the use of the 85th percentile speed rule in setting speed limits. The 85th percentile rule sets the speed limit so that only 15% percent of drivers are going faster than the speed limit, regardless of the context of the street. Until new legislation in California passed just this year, the mandate to use the 85th percentile in setting speed limits frequently resulted in even powerful cities like Los Angeles being forced to raise speed limits against their will. State legislators have been slow to embrace safer speed limits or allow more local control of speed limits. Progress can be found in Minnesota, where cities may now set speed limits below the statutory limits (30 mph in an urban district and 25 mph in exclusively residential areas) without a traffic study conducted by the state department of transportation. Similarly, local authorities in Washington state are allowed to use processes other than a traffic study to set local speed limits as low as 20 mph. Unfortunately, both of these laws remain constricted by where they can be applied—local roads—and do not address higher-speed roads such as arterials or state highways. While the League welcomes these state efforts to lower speed limits, we must note that they are limited and do not go as far as international policies that call for 20 mph speed limits for urban roads where people biking, walking, and driving mix. To most people using a road, the issue of state or local control is unlikely to cross their minds. However, if we want slower, safer, speeds, we need advocates to petition states for more local control and more state DOTs that are partners for safer speeds.