Steve Burns
WMAL.com

ROCKVILLE – (WMAL) The Montgomery County Council is asking for help from Annapolis as it looks to lower speed limits on residential roads from 25 or 30 mph down to 20 mph.

“We are prohibited from going any lower than 25 mph in a residential neighborhood outside of areas that are immediately adjacent to schools,” Montgomery County Councilmember Hans Riemer told WMAL. “We need to get some authority over speed limits.”

Montgomery County’s delegation in Annapolis has introduced a bill that would give the county authority to set speed limits below 25 mph as it looks to increase awareness of its “Vision Zero” campaign of reducing traffic-related deaths.

“What we’re trying to push towards is getting people to make safety the priority when they get behind the wheel, and to make our communities more attractive places to walk and bike,” Riemer said.

There would not be a blanket change upon the bill’s passage, Riemer said, but instead a targeted effort in certain areas as identified by residents in those neighborhoods.

“What we are trying to do is allow the county to set up a process where neighborhoods can request 20 mph in certain places,” Riemer said. “You could apply for that, and (the Department of Transportation) would come out, they would do a safety evaluation, and if they agree that 20 mph is the appropriate limit based on safety, then they’ll go ahead and change it to 20, if they have that authority. Currently, they don’t have that authority.”

While 25 mph speed limit signs already permeate residential areas, Riemer said 30 mph is actually the default speed where no signs are present. The chances of a pedestrian or bicyclist surviving a crash increases greatly if a car is traveling at 20 mph rather than 30 mph, Riemer said.

While speed cameras also permeate the county, Riemer denied his new effort is actually an attempt to find, and fine, more speeders.

“We don’t really have speed camera tickets on the kinds of lower-speed roads that we’re looking at for this,” Riemer said. “This is not intended to expand the reach of cameras into residential neighborhoods. That’s just not what’s going on here.”

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