As cities grow increasingly more congested, local legislators keep trying new ways to improve the situation for residents. Some seem to completely disregard the safety and convenience of riders of two-wheeled vehicles, like Paris' recent ring road speed reduction to 50 km/h (about 31 mph), which carries an added consequence of axing lane filtering for motorcyclists and scooterists.
There, riders and drivers alike haven't been pleased with this plan, and staged a protest to make their displeasure known last weekend.
But that's France, where lane filtering was tolerated. What about Chicago, where as far as the local laws are concerned, lane filtering isn't a thing that's allowed?
There's been talk about lowering the speed limit on city streets from 30 mph to 25 mph for some time now. From a pedestrian point of view, the data presented by proponents of this change in the Chicago city council is compelling. Basically, the city's studies show a distinct correlation between high rates of car speed and percentage of pedestrians killed.
In 2023, says the city, a total of 70 percent of traffic fatalities within city limits came from drivers driving "at high speeds." Other important factors include vehicle size, with SUVs and other large vehicles accounting for more than half of those fatalities. This tracks with what we've seen in other studies, and there are of course additional mitigating factors to consider with regard to automotive design and pedestrian safety, which are outside the scope of this piece.
But in late October 2024, the Chicago city council's Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety officially passed a measure in favor of lowering the speed limit on city streets from 30mph, where it currently sits, to 25mph. The next step for this measure is to go to the full Chicago city council for consideration.
If you've never driven or ridden in Chicago, let me set the scene for you. For the massive numbers of folks who have the misfortune to try to get anywhere during rush hour, it's your typical stop-and-go nightmare, even if you're on what's optimistically designated as an 'expressway.'
While I no longer have to do that every single day, I did it for many years. It was more enjoyable on a motorbike, in a way, although it would of course have been better if my state legalized lane filtering (which so far, it never has).
As I was stuck sitting in traffic on 90 yesterday during afternoon rush hour, barely crawling along until I could at last have the relief of getting off at my exit, I noted that I would've felt lucky to consistently be moving at 30 or even 25 mph. Traffic was just that bad.
When I got onto regular city streets, I was moving along at 20 to 25 mph as I went with the flow of afternoon congestion. Stop signs and stop lights brought progress to a halt, but we did at least mostly keep moving. Honestly, it was flowing better than we had been on the expressway.
Riding or driving down city streets during the hours when most people are awake and active is a completely different experience than doing it late at night. During the day, the streets are teeming with life and activity.
People are everywhere; on foot, pushing strollers, riding bicycles, skating, riding e-scooters, and moving pretty much any way you can think of. And the streets are pretty narrow, so your senses regarding all the activity around you are automatically heightened.
Some pedestrians are cautious, and only set foot in the street with care. And yet, others seemingly could not care less if they end it all by randomly darting out from between two parked cars, regardless of whether there's traffic passing by.
Still others might be small kids who've escaped their caregivers and don't really know what they're doing; not a common occurrence, but also not exactly zero.
In all cases, if you're a pedestrian, you don't want to be hit. And you don't want to see other people hit.
And if you're a driver or rider, you don't want to hit them. Shared goals are important!
Late at night, though, it's a different story. The streets aren't ever totally empty, but they're considerably emptier then (at least, on a weeknight; busier on weekends of course) than they are during the day. And it's then that you're more readily able to keep your speed up at the speed limit until you have to stop for a stop sign or light, or you need to make a turn.
Here's the thing. During the day, when everything is so congested, you literally can't go at super high speeds unless you're trying to hit something with your vehicle. Like, it's physically impossible. Traffic (and people) are just too gridlocked to reach those speeds. Obviously, someone is, according to the 2023 data. But those high speed fatalities aren't happening during rush hour.
The data also bears this out. Since the City of Chicago makes its datasets readily available, I was able to pull all the data recorded for the year 2024 so far. Although it's late October as I write this, I'll note here that the data available only runs through August 25, 2024, so about two months aren't in this set.
This pie chart graphic doesn't show the times of day when these fatalities occurred, but the full dataset I used to compile the data does.
Of the traffic fatalities recorded so far in 2024, just 15 of them occurred during the day. There are 72 fatalities recorded so far through the end of August, which means that just under 21 percent of them occurred during the day.
The remaining 79 to 80 percent occurred during the evening and nighttime hours. That makes sense, because the roads are much more wide open, with fewer vehicles and people in general out and about.
What's not clear is how much of a difference lowering the speed limit will make if these high-speed fatalities must, by definition, already involve vehicles that are disregarding the existing 30 mph speed limit.
Will lowering the speed limit to 25 mph suddenly convince those who already weren't abiding by the slightly higher speed limit to ease up on the gas pedal or throttle?
Is this a case of taking concrete action to improve public safety, or just look like you're doing something to improve public safety?
