Last month, the Chicago City Council's Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety passed an ordinance to lower our default speed limit from 30 to 25 mph. There will likely be a final Council vote later this year, and if the legislation is approved the new rule would go into effect by New Year's Day 2026.
[If you're already familiar with the Chicago speed limit issue, feel free to skip to the last paragraph of this introduction.]
However, that's a big "if". The ordinance passed in committee by eight voted to five, and many of the alderpersons who supported in are outspoken Safe Streets proponents. Getting a majority of the 50-member Council to vote "yes" will be a much heavier political lift.
Data from other cities that lowered their speed limits to 25 or lower years ago makes the potential benefits of the proposed Chicago policy obvious. For example, New York has seen a 23 percent drop in yearly pedestrian fatalities in recent years, as well as that city's lowest pedestrian death rate in a rate in a century.
The main arguments from opponents of the Chicago legislation have included the assumption that it will lead to more tickets. However, at the October committee meeting, ordinance sponsor Ald. La Spata (1st) said NYC and Boston lowered the number of crashes by merely reducing the speed limit, without significant enforcement changes.
Another claim, recently made in a Chicago Tribune op-ed by politically conservative former Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, who lives in the suburbs, is that the policy would "punish [Black Chicagoans]... for driving."
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has voiced support for lowering the speed limits in a city where nearly two-thirds of people killed in crashes are Black, although African-Americans make up about 30 percent of the population. He noted that change needs to be "done in an equitable way."
The City Council is currently setting up an interagency working group to help make sure this is the case, with its efforts completed before the lower speed limit goes into effect. Read our recent interview with Rochelle Jackson, chair of the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council’s transportation committee, for more discussion of the equity issue.
Streetsblog Chicago checked in with the editors sustainable transportation news and advocacy in cities that have had lower speed limits for years, for some history of how concerns raised by opponents were addressed. We also asked for more info about the benefits of this policy, that can we shared with Windy City skeptics who insist, "I can't drive 25."
New York City
A decade ago in November 2014, NYC lowered its default speed limit to 25 mph. According to Streetsblog New York Editor Gersh Kuntzman, in the last New York State legislative session that ended in June, representatives passed a law allowing NYC to further lower its default speed limit to 20. "Some small segments of some streets are already being reduced to 20, and the entirety of Manhattan below Canal Street, where it was difficult to ever even hit 25 anyway, is being made a Neighborhood Slow Zone at 20 miles per hour," he explained.
Regarding the argument that a lower speed limit would result in more citations for motorists of color, Kuntzman said New York City’s speed camera program is so robust that it tickets speeding drivers in virtually all neighborhoods. "Our cameras are not deployed disproportionately," he said. "However, many of the roadways where the speed limit is being reduced have not been redesigned to encourage drivers to drive slower — and many of those roadways are in low-income communities of color. That’s a multi-faceted program: The city Department of Transportation faces strong opposition for road safety projects, such as street narrowing or 'road diets' from Council members who represent low-income communities of color where, they say, cars are 'needed.'"
"That opposition flies in the face of the real needs on the ground: In those very neighborhoods," Kuntzman added. "There is a disproportionate amount of road violence, and a vast majority of people get around on transit. Those neighborhoods should be first in line for safety improvements that would reduce the speed of drivers."
But Kuntzman noted that the benefits of lower speed in NYC are clear. "According to the Department of Transportation, the vast majority of drivers who get a ticket do not get a second one, and the severity of crash injuries is down."
Boston
Boston lowered its default speed limit to 25 mph in January 2017.
"IMHO the strongest evidence for switching to 25 mph did come from Boston's experience, which created an opportunity for a natural experiment when it took effect in 2017," noted Streetsblog Boston Editor Christian MilNeil. "Compared to nearby Providence, Rhode Island, where speed limits didn't change, Boston's 25 mph speed limit didn't really affect average speeds. But it did have a significant effect on reducing the most dangerous speeding, people going over 35 mph, even though nothing changed except for the signs. Since then, about 66 of other cities across Massachusetts have followed suit, most recently Worcester, the state's second-biggest city."
"Stats on crash fatalities are a little tricky, since there's a lot of variability from year to year and we should be reluctant to ascribe changes to any one particular factor," MilNeil added. "But looking at the data for fatal crashes in the City of Boston, excluding crashes on interstate highways (which were unaffected by the speed limit change), there's evidence to suggest that it's had a positive effect. There were 24 fatal crashes in each of the 2 years prior to the change, down to 13 in 2018 and 2019, and 17 fatal crashes in 2022 and 2023."
So the experiences of peer cities suggest that Chicago can look forward to lower crash rates if we lower our default speed limit to 25
In the near future, this post will be updated with info on how lower speed limits have worked our in Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
Did you appreciate this post? Please consider making a tax-deductible donation, to help keep Streetsblog Chicago's sustainable transportation news and advocacy articles paywall-free.
