WORCESTER—Worcester city councilors had mixed reactions to a proposal to change the city’s statutory citywide speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour.
The recommendation to change the speed limit comes from the Department of Transportation and Mobility.
Stephen Rolle, the city’s commissioner of transportation and mobility, told the council the purpose of adjusting the speed limit is to address the safety of Worcester streets.
With more than 950 crashes in the last decade causing serious injuries, resulting in 95 deaths, in the city in the last decade, Rolle called it a “very serious problem.”
When a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle going 20 miles per hour, they have a 90 percent survival rate, which decreases to 50 percent when a vehicle is going 30 miles per hour, and to 10 percent at 40 miles per hour.
“So it’s a really profound difference just by fairly modest reductions in speed,” Rolle said.
If passed, the speed limit reduction would apply to the city streets where there isn’t a specific speed limit set on a roadway such as thickly settled areas or business districts.
“It wouldn’t affect the major streets that have a mandatory speed limit that might be different – 35/40 miles per hour in some locations in the city- and it wouldn’t affect speed limits outside thickly settled or business districts,” Rolle said.
Rolle’s recommendation also allows for creating safety zones with 20-mile-per-hour speed limits.
Seventy-five communities in the commonwealth have already adopted 25-mile-per-hour statutory citywide speed limits, according to City Manager Eric Batista.
The idea of changing the speed limit is not to ramp up enforcement, according to Batista. The intent is so the person driving 45 mph who assumes they have wiggle room in a 30 mph zone will now be more inclined to slow to 35, or even 32 mph, because of the 25 mph limit.
District 3 Councilor George Russell supports sending the recommendation to the council’s Traffic and Parking Committee but said he had reservations and believes the council should really be looking at specific locations for speed limit reductions.
District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj thanked the Department of Transportation and Mobility for “coming up with comprehensive policies that actually do make a difference, such as redesigning roads so they don’t facilitate killing pedestrians and systemic policies like reducing speed limits.”
Haxhiaj asked Interim Police Chief Paul Saucier if he supported reducing the citywide speed limit.
“We believe it’s a good idea,” said Saucier. “Anytime safety is at stake we’re obviously going to be behind it.”
From Jan. 1 to Oct. 1, Saucier said his officers wrote approximately 1,200 speeding tickets in the city.
Russell questioned if the city had enough police officers to enforce a lower speed limit and Batista responded saying the department is already enforcing the 30-mile-per-hour speed limit.
Councilor At-Large Khrystian King said changing the speed limit is a challenge for him and that he’d love to see it discussed further in committee.
“I know we do have a congestion issue in the city,” King said, drawing a connection between traffic congestion and air pollution. King filed an order requesting the administration come back with a report on the economic impacts and public health impacts of congestion.
King also asked how much changing the speed limit signs in the city would cost. The city would need to inventory the number of signs with the citywide speed limit, according to Rolle, but he estimated in would cost about $30,000.
Councilor At-Large Kate Toomey said people need to think about whether taking less time to get from one side of the city to another is worth taking a life.
“If we change the mindset of people in the way that they drive that will save more lives and I think that’s certainly something we need to think about,” Toomey said.
The council voted unanimously to send the item to the council’s Traffic and Parking Committee.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford, and Antigua and Barbuda. Her work has been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
