Effort to decrease speed limits in Port St. Lucie
Port St. Lucie, Fl (treasurecoast.com) –Police in Port St. Lucie are starting to get the word out that drivers will need to be extra aware of their speed as they motor through city neighborhoods.
An effort is underway to reduce the speed limit on all neighborhood roads.
There are more than 1,100 miles of streets in Port St. Lucie.
Right now, the speed limit on residential streets is 30 miles per hour, but that’s going to change.
At a meeting in September, Mayor Shannon Martin said “Our residents are telling us in almost every neighborhood in city that speeding is a problem. So we have to do what we can to address that issue.”
The city is proposing reducing the speed limit on all residential roads to 25 miles per hour.
Police have focused on speeding this year. 12,380 tickets have been written through September. That’s only 2,300 fewer than all of last year when 14,692 were written.
But are drivers consistently breaking the law? One resident had his doubts.
“The citywide average is 31 miles per hour,” resident Richard Lawton told commissioners at a September council meeting.
Lawton was quoting from a recent study done by city consultants who tracked speeds in 45 locations.
Along McCall Road just off Port St. Lucie Boulevard, of the 505 cars monitored, just 18 were clocked going 40 or above.
Studies show nine out of 10 pedestrians are killed when hit by a car traveling 40 miles per hour. At 30 miles per hour, the fatality rate drops to four out of 10, according to Police Chief John Bolduc.
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