Car Convenience over Pedestrian Safety: VTrans Values Traffic Speed over Safety of School Children

Mar 26

Mar 26 Car Convenience over Pedestrian Safety: VTrans Values Traffic Speed over Safety of School Children

infrastructure, Community, planning & design

The difference between 25 and 30 miles per hour to a driver is nothing. To a biker, this could be the difference between life and death, according to AAA. However, this doesn’t seem to be a concern to the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

A recent speed limit update has been added to the entirety of Route 116 (Hinesburg Road), reducing the posted speed limit from 35 to 30 miles per hour after years of studies and requests from the city of South Burlington, according to the city’s website. While this is a win, South Burlington’s goal was a reduction down to 25 miles per hour. This may not seem like a large difference, but according to a 2011 study by AAA, the risk of severe injury by impact for a pedestrian is 25% below 25 miles per hour and doubles to 50% at just 31 miles per hour.

This speed limit reduction is important because this stretch of road is a busy crossing route for middle and high school students on their way to school. To make students feel safer, the BPC wanted to add a crosswalk and slow down drivers.

*South Burlington, courtesy of* *Royalbroil*.

The first requests for this change were put in to the Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans) at the end of 2020, when the South Burlington Bike and Pedestrian Council (BPC) petitioned for the drop to 25 miles per hour. “[Hinesburg Road] does not have fields on both sides or businesses. It goes through a neighborhood full of people,” BPC’s Chair, Havaleh Gagne, explained. “We wanted it to be 25 miles per hour and the City Council agreed with us.”

Furthermore, a slower speed like 25 miles per hour would’ve been beneficial for South Burlington’s businesses. Market Street, South Burlington’s city center, is a turn off of Hinesburg Road. “Having slower traffic makes it easier for people to get on and off Market Street, which is where we want traffic to go,” Gagne said.

However, VTrans would only go as low as 30 miles per hour. As an agency for transportation, they aimed to convenience the driver, not the pedestrian. Dropping the speed limit of 25 miles per hour would have disrupted the speed of traffic significantly, even though in the long run, this would mean a safer road for the children of South Burlington.

While this was not the original goal of South Burlington, it is still progress. Of course, a speed limit change alone will not completely alter the speed of cars. As Gagne said, it is how a street is engineered that will truly affect drivers’ behavior. “If you have everything narrow and tight, people will instinctively slow down,” she said.

Though VTrans argued that this infrastructure of streets is the real issue and not speed limits, Gagne’s opinion is there needs to be a change to both. “You can’t have a speed limit of 35 miles per hour and have narrow streets. You need both,” she reasoned.

At the end of the day, the reality is that preference is still being given to cars. It is unreasonable to argue that speed limit reduction would not be helpful, but all this says is that speed of traffic outweighs the safety and comfortability of pedestrians in terms of importance. “If we are going to shift the way we use our cars, we’re going to have to shift our thinking,” Gagne said. “We need to prioritize walking and biking and need to make that more pleasant and preferable.”