If you build it, they will speed
Building a new expressway and posting the speed limit at 35 mph
is kind of like buying a hybrid and only using gas to run it. You
just don’t get the intended efficiency, and the price tag suddenly
looks like a bad deal.
If you build it, they will speed
Building a new expressway and posting the speed limit at 35 mph is kind of like buying a hybrid and only using gas to run it. You just don’t get the intended efficiency, and the price tag suddenly looks like a bad deal.
But San Benito County’s transportation leaders, to their credit, have recognized they hit the wrong target on the dart board by somewhat arbitrarily picking 35 mph as the speed limit on the 2.4-mile roadway when it opened in February of this year, and they’re correcting the problem.
Mary Dinkuhn, transportation planning manager for the Council of San Benito County Governments, noted how the speed designation had been chosen during planning that occurred in the late 1990s. That was before the county underwent an historicial population spike on the heels of Silicon Valley’s boom and bust, before Hwy. 25 evolved into a daily portal to and from San Jose and other cities for somewhere around half of San Benito County’s working residents.
Times have changed, and so must a 10-year-old projection on local traffic habits. COG and city officials followed suit and conducted a survey in the spring that showed – they found the speed at which the 85th percentile of drivers travel – the appropriate speed for one part of the bypass should be 50 or 55 mph, and for another section 40 or 45 mph.
That means most drivers have been traveling at those speeds, around 20 mph over the limit, while a minority of do-gooders inevitably have kept their foot off the gas pedal, and kept their dial close to the legal maximum. Such inconsistency lends itself to dangerous conditions and, at freeway speeds for many, potentially fatal consequences.
Raising the limit, however, doesn’t necessarily make the road safer.
With the posted limit likely elevating in the coming months to somewhere around 50 mph, the velocity threshold also increases for the speeding types, meaning that some vehicles pushing the limit at 35 mph likely will do the same at 50 or 55 mph.
Here’s where the police should – and you can expect they will – step in. Logic on the part of authorities and natural traffic flow have kept the citations down. But don’t expect police to look the other way much longer, especially when the California Highway Patrol still has jurisdiction over the road. Especially at a time when new revenue sources shine like a bag of gold.
