Study: Don’t raise speed limit
Posted on Thursday, October 9, 2008
On rural Arkansas highways, 55 mph remains fast enough.
So concludes the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department in a study mandated by the Arkansas Legislature.
Act 242 of 2007 directed the agency to study raising the speed limits in the Arkansas Primary Highway Network to 65 mph. The law also required the agency to increase the speed limit on “any two-lane highway or four-lane highway to 65 if the findings of the study support the increase on a particular two-lane highway or four-lane highway.” That increase is not going to happen anytime soon.
The study found a variety of factors that suggested that increasing the speed limit by 10 mph on any of those roads would be “premature.” Among the factors: Higher speeds would increase fatal crashes and reduce fuel economy; the proposal comes at a time when Congress is weighing a new national speed limit; and it could cost the state $ 1 million to put up new signs only to have to change them again.
“It just doesn’t make sense... to go out and change speed limits” now, said Scott Bennett, the assistant chief engineer for planning at the Highway Department.
The sponsor of the bill that led to Act 242 didn’t quibble with the study’s conclusions.
“I agreed that right now it wasn’t the time,” said Rep. Scott Sullivan, D-De Queen, co-chairman of the Arkansas Legislative Council, who met with Bennett and other state highway officials last month. “Everything is on hold right now.” At the time lawmakers were considering the bill, Sullivan said, he thought several highways in his part of the state — including U. S. 70 from Hot Springs to De Queen and U. S. 71 from Texarkana to Fort Smith — seemed safe enough to increase the speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph.
The state’s 16, 000 miles of roads have varied speed limits, depending on their design and location. On the state’s 754 miles of interstates, the speed limit is 70 mph for cars and 65 mph for trucks in rural areas. In suburban areas, no one can legally exceed 65 mph on the interstates, while cars and trucks can drive no faster than 60 mph on urban freeways.
Cars and trucks can hit 65 mph on the state’s 284 miles of multilane, divided highways in rural areas.
The rest of the state highway system, at least beyond city limits, generally is posted at 55 mph. The system includes 288 miles of rural multilane, undivided highways and 5, 044 miles of rural two-lane highways that could include passing lanes.
States have set their own speed limits since 1995 when Congress repealed the national 55 mph law, which was adopted in 1974 in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The law was modified in 1987 to allow some routes to have 65 mph speed limits.
The United States may again go to a national speed limit. U. S. Sen. John Warner, D-Va., has asked for a General Accountability Office study to take into consideration today’s improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency in the decades since the original adoption of the national 55 mph speed limit and assess how much money Americans would save today if that speed limit was again adopted.
A member of the U. S. House of Representatives, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., introduced the Gasoline Savings and Speed Limit Reduction Act, which would set the national speed limit at 60 mph in urban areas and at 65 mph in rural areas.
The Arkansas study cited both proposals, introduced this summer when gas prices peaked at about $ 4 per gallon, as reasons to pause. Both proposals are efforts to reduce fuel consumption. The highways in question are already at the level where fuel consumption is optimum.
“With gas prices the way they’ve been, that’s an issue,” Bennett said.
The study noted U. S. Energy Department figures showing that gas mileage decreases rapidly at speeds exceeding 60 mph with each 5 mph driven over 60 mph reducing fuel economy by at least 7 percent. Speier, in announcing her proposal, suggested that the difference between driving 60 mph and 70 mph could result in $ 250 in annual savings for the typical driver of a passenger car. The savings would double for the drivers of larger vehicles, she said.
State highway officials are hesitant to set a new speed limit for a considerable part of the highway system while Congress is looking at adopting a new national speed limit.
Further, according to Bennett, the state would have to increase the number of signs if a higher speed limit is adopted. Now, most Arkansas motorists assume that the speed limit is 55 mph on rural two-lane roads, hence the Highway Department requires fewer signs beyond the 55 mph sign it posts for motorists leaving an urban area, Bennett said.
But if some rural two-lane highways are posted at 65 mph, that assumption is gone, and highway officials must use more signs on the 55 mph limited roads to ensure that motorists know what the changing speed limits are, he said.
The cost of the new signs would be between $ 750, 000 and $ 1 million, according to the study.
Finally, department officials fear that fatalities would rise if speed limits on some roads are increased and thereby compromise the state’s goal of reducing its fatal crash rate 14 percent by 2010. Research has found that increasing highway speed limits from 55 mph to 65 mph would lead to a 28 percent increase in the number of traffic fatalities.
“It’s hard to say we would be in favor of something that would have a direct impact on the number of fatalities on highways [when ] they would increase,” Bennett said.
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