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4. Partnering with Law Enforcement It is well known by traffic professionals that that drivers will generally pick an operating speed based on their perception of the road environment. If a community decides to lower the speed limits on streets when drivers are comfortable traveling at higher speeds, merely announcing a new speed limit will not change their behavior. Law enforcement can provide information about prevailing speeds and help identify of problem areas. It is also helpful to understand current levels of enforcement effort and whether they have the capacity to provide increased enforcement in support of lower speed limits. It is also important to understand if there are conditions attached to these efforts. If you are considering lowering the speed limit on streets where prevailing speeds are higher, the best chance of changing operating speed without other changes to the roadway environment is through the application of high levels of enforcement. Therefore, it is important that law enforcement be on board with the decision. 5. Evaluate Alternative Approaches & Make a Decision After evaluating your system there are two likely outcomes, retain the historic speed limits or adopt new lower speed limits across your city's system of streets. If the data supports retaining the 30 mph limit but elected officials decide that lower limits are called for, a possible plan of action would include the following steps: Conduct an informational session with the council and residents to share information. Potential topics should include: • A discussion of published research. Adopting a lower speed limit and changing the number on a sign has never (by itself) changed the operating speeds selected by drivers. Changing the road environment will be required and until that is achieved additional enforcement will need to be provided to have any chance of lowering speeds. • Discussions with law enforcement — documenting what resources they would need to provide a higher level of speed enforcement and what other conditions they would place on the effort • Establishment of a performance measure associated with the lowered speed limit, so that at some point it can be concluded that the lowered speed limit did or did not achieve the desired outcome. Propose a temporary reduction in the speed limit (and an increased level of enforcement) for a specified period (six months to one year) combined with the collection of speed data to monitor the results. The idea would be to secure an agreement with the council that at the end of the specified period of the test, if the performance measure is achieved the lower speed limit would be retained. However, if the performance measure for speed reduction is not achieved, the speed limit could revert to the statutory limit. The case for lowering speed limits should be based on determining that current speed profiles on some parts of the system indicate that prevailing speeds are lower than the statutory limit and the opinion of residents and elected officials in fact support a change. The suggested system -based speed limits are as follows: • Local Residential Streets 25 mph • Urban Collectors 30 mph • Urban Minor Arterials 35 mph • Multi -lane Suburban Minor Arterials 40 mph 12 Page 144 of 185