Road Runner: Tucson bike boulevard speed limit to drop to 20 mph

On Thursday afternoon, Greta Anderson was riding north on the North Fourth Avenue bicycle boulevard with her smiling preschool daughter safely strapped into a bike seat behind her.

It’s a route the pair takes twice a day, and when she heard that the City Council had decided just the day before to drop speed limits on such bike routes from 25 mph to 20, she was supportive.

“Five mph means (cars) have more time to see bikes and pedestrians and stop,” she said.

Bicycle boulevards are residential roadways where traffic-calming measures like speed humps, ample signage and pavement markings are used to make them safer and more inviting for cyclists and pedestrians.

As fate would have it, moments after the Road Runner thanked Anderson for her time and rode south, she came across a badly bloodied cyclist a few blocks away who had just been hit by a car at the boulevard’s intersection with East Drachman Street.

The circumstances of the accident weren’t clear, and Anderson later told the Road Runner that the cyclist was reluctant to discuss it with her. But the intersection in question has a roundabout with yield signs at each entrance, as well as ample signage indicating that the roadway has heavy bike traffic.

Wrecks like the one Anderson witnessed — and the one your humble columnist was nearly in when another driver buzzed through yet another four-way yield intersection — are less likely to happen and less likely to be serious when they do with bike boulevards. At least that was what several members of the City Council argued during the Wednesday study session.

“This is a significant help in reducing accidents by reducing speed five miles,” said Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, referencing information provided by city staff.

What was intended to be a conversation about rolling out a pilot speed reduction project on just one of the city’s two established bike boulevards quickly turned into one about implementing it on both, and doing the same for all future bike boulevards as they come online. Those two routes are the Third Street/University Boulevard and Fourth Avenue/Fontana Avenue bike boulevards.

“We don’t need to study what we know already works,” Councilman Steve Kozachik said.

The council voted unanimously to direct city staff to implement the changes, which mostly involves swapping out 25 mph signs within the next 60 days. The cost for the change on the Fourth Avenue/Fontana boulevard, which was originally going to be the sole site, was estimated at less than $5,000.

The proposal, versions of which have already been implemented in cities like Portland, Seattle and Berkeley, California, has strong data behind it. In addition to decreasing the total number of bicycle and pedestrian vehicle collisions, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found an unsurprising but striking exponential relationship between a vehicle’s speed at impact and the likelihood of serious pedestrian injury or death.

The nonprofit news outlet ProPublica compiled that data, which shows that the chances of a pedestrian of average age being killed by a vehicle jumps from 7 percent at 20 mph to 12 percent at 25 mph. At just over 40 mph, half are killed.

Let’s localize that data: between 2001 and 2008 there were 82 reported bike-vehicle collisions on a stretch of Broadway and just nine on Third Street, which has an active bike boulevard, despite the fact that roughly seven times as many cyclists use the latter, according to data recently compiled by the city. Put another way, Broadway, which has higher speeds and more traffic, is about 70 times more dangerous than calmer, largely residential Third Street.

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Though the change passed unanimously, several present raised concerns.

“Lowering the speed limit doesn’t lower the speed,” City Manager Michael Ortega said, echoing several others who pointed out that enforcement needs to be a part of the change.

He pointed to the University of Arizona’s semi-annual traffic enforcement efforts as one way to handle that and also said outreach has to be a part of the rollout.

“There’s also a community piece,” he added. “Making people know that we are serious about it as a community.”

Rothschild suggested that the Tucson Police Department could reserve citations for serious speeding along bike boulevards, and warnings for those closer to the old 25 mph limit. “Our department is not looking to give tickets for 25 in a 20,” he added.

After the meeting, Kozachik told the Road Runner that the change was likely to be “well received” in neighborhoods along the two routes, and that drive times would be minimally impacted by the speed reduction.

Additional bike boulevards, which will also likely see their speed limits reduced, are likely in the near to mid-term along Liberty and San Francisco avenues, Fifth Street, Treat Avenue, Third Street, Copper and Flower streets and Ninth and Eighth streets, according to a recently released city master plan. The city has identified 64 corridors and 193 miles of roadway for future boulevard development, work that will cost an estimated $31.7 million.

To test Kozachik’s claim about how readily people will accept the change, the Road Runner hopped on his bike and headed to the proposed routes to chat with soon-to-be affected residents.

Alexis Ramirez, who lives along the Fourth/Fontana boulevard, said the change was a “great idea.”

“It’s only five mph,” he added. “It’s not a big deal.”

Blonzetta Shannon agreed, but was skeptical that drivers would abide by the new limits. Romel Ojeda, who just pulled up to his apartment in his compact car, thought there were more “cons than pros.”

“From the perspective of drivers, it’s going to create more traffic,” he added.

Three votes for and one against is pretty close to the results of recent public opinion surveys conducted by former UA College of Public Health student Krista Hansen. Hansen is now with Living Streets Alliance and the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Program.

Of the 1,360 who responded to her online survey, 63 percent said they would support a measure like the one the city just approved. Unsurprisingly, avid bikers were more likely to feel that way.

But what do you think? You’ll find a poll accompanying the online version of this story, and the results will be shared in the next column.