The first speed limit reductions under the city of San Diego's Comprehensive Speed Management Plan are now in effect in the South Bay, following an announcement by Mayor Todd Gloria Tuesday.
Gloria joined city Transportation Department officials at Willow Elementary School in San Ysidro to announce that the surrounding neighborhood and Otay Mesa would see the first reductions in school zones — but work will continue throughout the city in coming weeks.
"Every San Diegan deserves to get home safely, whether they're walking, biking, taking transit, or driving," Gloria said. "Our first-ever Comprehensive Speed Management Plan is a smart, data-driven approach to improving traffic safety. Along with investments in safer street design and other improvements, this plan will help prevent crashes, save lives, and make it safer for everyone to travel through our neighborhoods."
State law mandates speed limits posted above 25 mph require an engineering and traffic survey, which entails measuring the 85th percentile speed — essentially the speed most motorists are already traveling. But that process didn't account for streets with higher safety risks such as school zones, areas with heavy bicyclist and pedestrian traffic and commercial zones, officials said.
Several new laws passed in Sacramento gave cities greater flexibility to determine appropriate speeds rather than defaulting to 25 mph. Corridors with higher comparative fatal or serious injury crashes as well as areas with high pedestrian and bicyclist activity can see 5 mph reductions. Business districts can be reduced to 25 or 20 mph. School zones can reduce speeds to 15 mph or 20 mph within 500 feet of a campus and 25 mph between 501 and 1,000 feet on qualifying approach streets, according to the city statement.
The citywide plan, passed by the San Diego City Council in March, will reduce vehicle speeds where allowed under state law.
With these new permissions from the state, the city found that more than 20% of its roads — 679.1 miles — are candidates for slower speeds.
These include:
— 189.6 centerline miles eligible as crash-heavy safety corridors;
— 32.6 centerline miles eligible as high a pedestrian and bicyclist activity corridors;
— 58.7 centerline miles eligible as business activity districts;
— 371.1 centerline miles eligible for school zone speeds (15 or 20 mph); and
— 27.1 centerline miles eligible for school approach speeds (25 mph).
The roads in question include major thoroughfares such as Balboa Avenue, Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, Rosecrans Street, University Avenue, Washington Street, Imperial Avenue, Skyline Drive, Convoy Street and more.
The changed speed limits had been passed in March and won't go into effect until new signs can be posted. About 3,000 of them will go up across the city, along with 1,200 new sign poles, at a cost of $2.4 million. Work will begin in the southern parts of the city and move north, likely finishing next year.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded San Diego $680,000 through the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program, intended to bolster Vision Zero efforts to reducing crashes through safer street design, slower speeds, equitable access improvements and community engagement. One of the initiatives funded was the Comprehensive Speed Management Plan.
The city maintains 3,185 centerline miles — the length of a road sans extra lanes — of public streets, with another 842 under the purview of the city's engineering and traffic survey network.
On average, more than 180 traffic crashes in San Diego involve a fatality or serious injury each year, often occurring on streets with similar conditions and disproportionately affecting people walking and biking, older adults, and residents of historically underserved communities, a city statement read.
"Speeding continues to be one of the biggest contributors to crashes so we know slower speeds will save more lives," said Interim Transportation Director Naomi Chavez. "By reducing speeds in school zones and highly trafficked corridors, we're making our neighborhoods safer with every sign we install as part of this important project."
Simply lowering speeds will not solve all of the city's problems, however. City officials said reduced speeds need to be paired with "continued traffic calming improvements, intersection safety enhancements, street design changes, education and public outreach, and traffic enforcement," to reach Vision Zero.
The plan can be found at sandiego.gov/vision-zero/safety-initiatives.
