Fairfax County, Virginia, is planning to lower the speed limit on at least three roads as part of a pilot program aimed at helping change driver behavior.
The county’s transportation department is working through which roads to consider. Vanessa Holt, with the department’s traffic engineering section, said lower speed limits will be coming to at least three roads.
In July, a new Virginia law allowing local jurisdictions to lower speed limits on state roads went into effect. It enables localities to shift speed limits to less than 25 mph but not less than 15 mph. They can make the change on roads that already have a posted speed limit of 25 mph and are located in areas that are residential or have commercial businesses.
“We want to make sure that we’re selecting roads that have what they call ‘self-enforcing characteristics,’ so things like pedestrian activity, sidewalks, marked crosswalks, on-street parking, things that would contribute to drivers maintaining a lower speed,” Holt said.
While it may seem like a minor change, Holt said other jurisdictions that have taken a similar step have reported positive results. Montgomery County, Maryland, launched a pilot program to change speed limits on five roads in 2021 and has since made the change on over 100 roads. The City of Falls Church has reduced speed limits on most of its residential streets to 20 mph, replaced about 100 signs and worked with a budget of about $100,000.
In Portland, Oregon, a study of 58 sites where the speed limit changed found that 57% of the locations reported a decrease in average speed and 69% of the sites reported a decrease in the number of cars going above 30 miles per hour, Holt said.
The Virginia Department of Transportation recommends that any road segments considered for the change are at least 0.2 miles, “because drivers are more likely to follow speed limits that are uniform,” Holt said.
She added that Fairfax is recommending setting a reduced speed limit of 20 miles per hour for whichever roads are selected. County staff hasn’t picked which roads will be included in the pilot, but Holt told WTOP it’ll likely be more than three. Several members of the board of supervisors urged the department to consider including more roads because of demand and ensuring geographic diversity.
Vice Chair Kathy Smith said the program should be aimed at problematic roads.
“There needs to be a piece of: What dangerous problem are we solving by doing this in the locations we do it?” Smith said.
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