Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Portland Celebrates 20 MPH Neighborhood Streets; WA Tries For Same

I think I blogged about this a while back, but my memory is short these days so I apologize if you've already read it. Portland will hold an event this Friday to celebrate approval of a 70-mile network of new 20 mph neighborhood streets.


The "neighborhood greenways" are expected to increase safety as even a small adjustment in speed reduces the chance of a pedestrian being killed in a collision with an automobile. At 20 miles per hour, your chances of being killed are only 5%.
So here is the story on that network of 20 mile per hour streets. And here's the local connection: The Bicycle Alliance of Washington and partners championed a 20 mph neighborhood streets bill for our state in the 2011 session and it made it through the house on a unanimous vote. Unfortunately, the bill ran out of time on the Senate floor, so it's back to work on it in the 2012 session. Here's more info on the Safer Neighborhood Streets bill, because we think you'll be hearing a lot about it in the coming months.

2 comments:

Charles said...

415Sounds good, but since so many people refuse to even slow to 25 now who will enforce a 20 mile per hour speed?

SRTC Staff said...

That's a good point. Guess your laws are only as good as your enforcement. They'll probably have an emphasis patrol early on to drive the message home but hopefully they can keep up on enforcement.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.