Jay Crossley opines in the Chron for a lower speed limit in Houston.
Texas law requires a 30 mph speed limit in the city of Houston on local residential streets unless a different speed limit is posted. If you are walking and are hit by a car traveling 30 mph, you have a 60 percent chance of survival, while at 20 mph, you have a 95 percent chance of survival. In the legislative session that just ended earlier this month, Houston Tomorrow worked on SB 1717 with the city of Houston Public Works and Engineering Department and Houston state Sen. Rodney Ellis to change the local street speed limit to 25 mph and allow the city to use 20 mph where appropriate. Unfortunately, the bill was never taken up for consideration by the Senate Transportation Committee.
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We need streets and sidewalks designed for little boys doing what little boys do. Two urban road safety approaches address this need. The Complete Streets concept, which the city has embraced, is the idea that all Houstonians matter – whether they’re in cars, on two wheels or on foot. And it’s a crucial element of Vision Zero, a multinational road-safety project. Specifically, it is the idea that we should design, allocate funding and build our transportation system for the safety and comfort of all users, regardless of age, ability or mode of transport.
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We must treat traffic deaths in the Houston region as the public health crisis it is.
Cities around the world are taking a comprehensive approach to bringing the number of people who die on the streets to zero. New York City, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, San Jose and Austin are all committed to Vision Zero. While we have made progress on bicycle deaths with the Goal Zero bicycle safety program, Houston is now the largest city in America without a Vision Zero plan that would attempt to eliminate traffic deaths for people using all modes of travel.
The Houston region’s 134 mayors should commit to Vision Zero by the end of this year, starting with Houston Mayor Annise Parker. And every Houston mayoral candidate should commit to pursuing this vision and making serious progress over the next six years. This crisis will not be fixed overnight, but we can begin making progress immediately.
See here for some background on Vision Zero, whose goals were just approved by the US Conference of Mayors. Crossley is not the first person to call for this in Houston, though I couldn’t say how much traction the idea has gotten. Part of the Bike Plan that the city is currently working on includes Goal Zero Fatalities, which doesn’t specify a speed limit but does call for creating “streets that encourage safe speeds”.
You may be wondering what all the fuss is about. This would be the reason.
Crashes involving a motorist and a pedestrian or bicyclist have jumped 63 percent here since 2010, contributing to more than 220 related deaths, and Houston has the dubious distinction of leading the state in such accidents.
More than 4,000 wrecks between motorists and pedestrians or bicyclists were recorded in Houston city limits from 2010 to June 2015, according to data obtained from the Texas Department of Transportation. Austin places second with a little more than 2,580.
Motorist-pedestrian collisions saw the largest increase, according to the data, jumping 71 percent since 2010.
The string of fatal crashes here in the past month alone has motivated local enthusiasts to demand that city leaders fulfill their promises to provide safer roadways.
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The recent uptick in fatal crashes is significant for Houston, which has reported an average of five fatal bicyclist accidents per year in city limits since 2010.
“It’s unusual, and that’s very concerning,” said Michael Payne, BikeHouston executive director. “These weren’t accidents caused by reckless cyclists or cyclists who were drinking. These were cyclists who were obeying the law.”
Payne says the city needs to get serious about reducing collisions for pedestrians and people who ride bicycles. In 2014, the city recognized a need for improved cyclist safety and partnered with Payne and BikeHouston to launch a major bike safety campaign designed to enforce road safety.
That’s an awful lot of death and injury to pedestrians and bicyclists. Yes, sometimes it is the fault of the pedestrian or bicyclist, but let’s be real here: The automobile always wins these collisions, and the person not in the vehicle pays a vastly disproportionate share of the price for it. Surely we can do better than this, and yes, it’s something the Mayoral candidates ought to be speaking about.
It’s always about the children isn’t it? “We need streets and sidewalks designed for little boys doing what little boys do.” That’s swell if you really believe the majority of pedestrians hit were children yet the interactive map linked to the article shows almost all pedestrian deaths each year were downtown and a few hot spots. Rather than saddle the entire 650 sq. miles of the city with more feel good speed limits (which are better set by traffic study as the law provides), you get more bang for the buck by addressing the areas most in need.
I strongly suspect the biggest reasons for the increases in accidents/deaths in the last five years is the huge increase in 1) Texting and cell phone use 2) the increased amount of distractions in high accident areas (ask the city police chief about it sometime), and 3) the increase in people persuaded that the streets are now much safer for bicycles because of modest changes or city ordinances passed. Lowering the speed limit might have some effect for those of us who comply with posted limits yet Texas state law does not provide for an absolute speed limit (what is posted is the recommended speed).
But given the usual outcome in a match between a car and a bicycle, it seems the focus should be on advising the far smaller population of bike enthusiasts to play it safer. You can order the police to write as many tickets as you like but it’s not going to be enough under current staffing levels to make a difference. Those that think lowering speed limits a few MPH will impact LOCAL drivers (who often disregard the posted limit recommendations), losing a full lane to accommodate bikes alone at incredible costs to overall mobility and finances, or other infrastructure changes without far more emphasis on changing the attitudes of the combatants (because that is what they appear to be) will find their efforts wasted.