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Date: 4/25/2023
NORTHAMPTON — An order that has been in the works for six years is about to see the light of day within Northampton municipal government.
During a meeting on April 13, Northampton City Council President Jim Nash and Ward 5 Councilor Alex Jarrett presented an order that would lower the default speed limit in Northampton from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour in thickly settled residential or business districts where a speed regulation has not already been posted. The default speed limit is also otherwise known as the statutory speed limit.
According to Nash, the order has been kicking around within municipal government since 2016, when then-Mayor David Narkewicz suggested that Northampton could explore the possibility of reducing the default speed limit like Boston did at the time.
Both Nash and then-council Vice President Ryan O’Donnell introduced the idea in 2017 and the council referred it to its committee on Legislative Matters and the Transportation & Parking Commission. Legislative Matters sent it back with a neutral recommendation, but the TPC eventually tabled it.
“It’s been kicking around in the TPC for a number of years,” Nash said.
Now, the council is once again talking about the statutory speed limit, and during the meeting on April 13, they decided to send the order back to the TPC and Legislative Matters for review.
“It’s one thing to change the statutory speed limit, but how to have that meaningfully be reflected in other ways so that we can actually lower speed limits across the city,” Nash said.
Back in January 2022, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation launched its “Safe Speeds initiative” to help communities work to slow traffic and prevent serious crashes.
Data from the MassDOT Safe Speeds initiative states that 73% of pedestrians will die when struck by a vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour, 40% will die when the vehicle is traveling at 30 miles per hour, and only 13% when the vehicle is traveling 20 miles per hour.
Typically, cities and towns cannot lower an official speed limit without first conducting a traffic study for each street, then seeking approval from MassDOT. The entire process can be costly and cumbersome.
Statutory speed limits are different, however, in that they are not officially posted speed limits. Instead, the de facto speed limit in these areas, most of which are thickly settled residential and business districts, is 30 miles per hour. Unlike posted speed limits, cities and towns can reduce the statutory speed limit to 25 miles per hour.
Thickly settled neighborhoods are considered places where residences have an average density of 200 feet or less.
“There are a lot of residential streets where [30 miles per hour] is way too fast,” Jarrett said, in an interview with Reminder Publishing back in October. “It’s one of the top issues, the traffic calming, because people drive too fast.”
According to the order, since 2016, 65 communities, including Chicopee, Greenfield, Holyoke and Springfield, have reduced their statutory speed limit to 25 miles per hour on a citywide, townwide or street-by-street basis.
By adopting the order, the city would be supporting the addition of a citywide speed plan to the Sustainable Northampton Plan, which would consider changes to design speed and speed limits on individual streets in relation to speed regulation across the entire city.
“I think there’s a lot of benefits, even other than safety, to reducing speed,” Jarrett said. “I would like to see a citywide plan for speed and a decision about how we’re going to get there.”
During the meeting on April 13, Jarrett said the change of the statutory would not solve all of the speeding issues in those areas, but it would better inform future street developments and improvements in the city.
“I see this as one piece a broad long-term plan to reduce speeds and increase safety throughout the city,” Jarrett said.
Aside from this initiative, the city is also embarking on other initiatives, like improving safety around Northampton High School, where deadly crashes have happened in the past. Back in January, the council appropriated $500,000 for the design, bidding and construction of safety improvements around Northampton High School.
The most significant of these changes involves the installation of traffic light signals at the intersection of North Elm and Elm Street, and North Elm and Woodlawn Avenue.
The next TPC meeting is on May 16.