A Village Speeding Problem: State Roads

Our major arterials into the village have a problem. A big speeding problem.

It’s easy to tell when someone is going at or around 30 mph—the legal speed limit for the Village—because it feels reasonable when you are walking or biking adjacent to the road.

We notice daily when someone is going the speed limit—or when they aren’t—when we are out walking our dog, our kids are biking down the sidewalk, or we are mowing the front yard. It’s a safety issue. But it’s also a quality of life issue.

“That person is driving way too fast,” our kids say. They are small, but they sense it too. It’s easy to feel what’s too fast, what makes you bristle.

But I’m not going off of what feels fast.

I’ve been sitting outside on the sidewalk a few days a week waiting for the school bus. This has given me some time to observe our street. And let me tell you, sitting outside for 10 minutes is enough to see plenty of scary driving behavior.

This is during school dismissal time when kids are walking, biking, and getting off buses, a time where we learned some of the worst driver behavior happens.

The other day while discussing what we’d been observing, my neighbor offered, “Here, borrow my radar gun.”

“You have a radar gun?” She’s not clocking baseball pitches. And we aren’t the only people who feel the traffic is too fast on our streets.

This is not a scientific study by any means. But, on State Street within the Village, I clocked multiple people driving in at 42, 45, 46, 48, 49 mph. In just 10 minutes sitting out there for just three days. 49 mph. That’s almost 20 mph over the speed limit.

There is no margin for error in a dense environment at those speeds.

I also very happily clocked people going 31 or 35 mph, usually when someone was a Pace Car with a long line of cars traveling behind them, so some people are driving near the speed limit. But many, many are not.

Please slow down when you come into the village. People are here. People who live, work, play, sit on their front porches, and love their family, friends, and neighbors very much.

Even traveling at the speed limit through the village gives pedestrians a 50-50 shot at survival when hit. But traveling at the speeds set by the State DOT for the highways heading into the village doesn’t give pedestrians a fighting chance.

The speed limit along Palmyra Road is 45 mph until you hit the Village line when it drops abruptly to 30 mph. It is so sudden, almost nobody comes in anywhere near 30 mph. It’s hard to do it without consciously decelerating, which almost nobody does. After all, that’s how the road is designed. It’s has wide lanes, wide shoulders, and high posted speeds coming into the village.

I don’t expect someone to slam on the brakes at the Village line, but I do expect people to anticipate the change and slow down. I expect people to try. And I expect people to be aware enough when they are driving to know the speed limit for where they are.

I also expect the roads to be designed the right way. These State roads aren’t designed for people living here. And people do live here. They are designed for people driving through here.

Complaining isn’t any good without a suggestion, so I am sharing three possible items and am asking our Village and Town leadership to help advocate with the State, County, and Sheriff to accomplish them:

1. Create speed transition zones leading to our Village gateways now. Lower all speed limits on arterials approaching the Village line to 35 mph. This will make it reasonable to expect drivers to slow to 30 when entering the Village.

Specifically this means:

• Rt 31/Palmyra Road: 35 mph to/from the new traffic light at Mitchell Road to the Village line (currently 45 mph)
• Rt 31/Monroe Ave:  35 mph to/from 3750 Monroe Ave traffic light to the Village Line (currently 40 mph)
• Rt 64/N. Main St: 35 mph to/from S. Campus Drive at Nazareth (currently 40 mph)
• Rt 64/S. Main St: currently already 35 mph, but issues remain and this illustrates how enforcement is a key component. Monroe County Sheriff has many competing needs, but this is a priority for us, so let’s welcome them to have a discussion.
• Rt 96/E. Jefferson Rd: 35 mph to/from Knickerbocker (currently 40 mph)
• Rt 96/W. Jefferson Rd: 35 mph to/from Kings Bend Park (currently 45 mph)

But we can’t do it alone. We need those who own the roads and enforce speed limits on the roads to help. We need our elected officials to advocate with NYS DOT and the Monroe County Sheriff to make it happen.

This isn’t a major change to road design—it’s signage and enforcement.

2. If needed, take on a joint Village-Town speed study. If the State needs more data, don’t wait for them to do a study. Talk with them about beginning a Town- and Village-sanctioned study, demonstrating real concern for this issue. We don’t need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants. If needed, train and rely on volunteers (Walk Bike Pittsford is happy to help!) with speed guns (available on Amazon for around $100), There are plenty of methodologies to follow. Here’s just one.
3. Get legislation passed to lower speed limits within the village to 25 mph in 2019. Our Village leadership should advocate hard in 2019 with NYSDOT to encourage New York State government to pass the legislation allowing us to lower Village speed limits to 25. Four years of discussion and two legislative sessions have come and gone with talk about the issue and no movement or concern from our State officials.  

Read more about how speed impacts safety here: How Fast We Drive On Our Village Streets Matters