City Limits: Setting Safe Speed Limits on Urban Streets

A new guide from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) outlines how to use a tested, context-sensitive safe systems approach to strategically set safer speed limits on urban streets to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries. This three-method approach provides an alternative to percentile-based speed limit setting: 

1) setting default speed limits on many streets at once; 

2) designating slow zones in sensitive areas; and 

3) setting corridor speed limits on high priority major streets using a Safe Speed Study. 

These approaches allow cities to holistically evaluate who is using streets and how people are using them. 

City Limits is free to download and is part of a larger conversation about how to make streets safe for everyone.