Bill would make 15 miles per hour the default speed limit on park roads

UPDATE: 2/22/22: The Bill has unanimously passed full City Council!

UPDATE: 2/16/22: The Bill has passed Council Standing Committee, the first big hurdle. Big thanks to Councilpersons Deb Gross and Theresa Kail-Smith who signed on to cosponsor the bill.

On February 8, 2022, Pittsburgh City Councilman Bobby Wilson (District 1) introduced legislation to reduce the speed limit on City of Pittsburgh park roads to 15 miles per hour (mph). 

Many of the roads that go through our City’s parks lack sidewalks and are shared with both vehicles and pedestrians. Currently, the default speed limit within these roads is 25 mph. This is an unsafe speed limit for roads shared between cars and pedestrians and discourages residents and visitors from enjoying our City’s beautiful parks.

This change would make 15mph the default speed limit within park roads, and only apply to roads within the City of Pittsburgh’s parks. The Director of the Department of Mobility & Infrastructure (DOMI) will be able to set the speed limit at a higher speed if necessary.

The chance for a serious injury drops dramatically when the speed limit is 15 miles per hour. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), a 70-year old who gets hit by a car at 25 mph has about a 25% chance of losing her life. However, if the same person gets hit by a car traveling at 15 mph, her chance of death drops all the way down 5 percent. Additionally, the average risk of a severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle traveling at 31 miles per hour is 50%, but reduces to 10% at an impact speed of 16 miles per hour. In short, lowering this speed limits will most protect our vulnerable park users, such as older Pittsburghers and children.

And there is data to back up that lowering the speed limit works. Portland, OR recently reduced several residential streets from 25mph to 20. The city studied the effectiveness of the change and showed that while the average recorded speeds did not change by very much, there was however, a significant decrease in “top end” speeding, the very type of speeding that is most likely to cause severe injury or death.

Since 2010, we’ve lost about 200 Pittsburgers to traffic violence, 55 of them or nearly a third were people walking. The risk of getting killed by a car goes up with every mile per hour. Additionally, there were 335 pedestrians who were seriously injured on Pittsburgh’s streets during the same timeframe. On average, the risk of a pedestrian death doubles with every 10 mile per hour increase in speed.

In addition to the safety benefits, this is a great first step to ensure that our parks are welcoming and safe for all users. It is simply not appropriate, pleasant or safe for a street shared with automobiles and pedestrians to be marked at 25 miles per hour. This pandemic has really highlighted how important our park system has been for helping Pittsburghers stay healthy and active, and this new tool will help ensure park-user safety well into the future.