A San Diego City Council committee wants to lower speed limits on a number of commercial streets, including Newport Avenue.
The committee met last Thursday, Feb. 20, and advanced a proposal to lower speed limits to 20 miles per hour on Newport Ave, as well as on a handful of blocks in Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Old Town, Hillcrest, North Park and City Heights. The full city council will probably vote on the lower speed limits sometime in March.
See this map:
KPBS reports:
City traffic engineers say they’re developing a comprehensive “Speed Management Plan” due out in December [2025] that would lower speed limits on a host of streets. But for now, they’re limiting the changes to a handful of blocks in Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, Old Town, Hillcrest, North Park and City Heights.
Those streets … meet the law’s definition of a “business activity district,” where speed limits can be lowered by 5 miles per hour. Most of the streets would have speed limits lowered from 25 to 20 miles per hour, while segments of Mission Boulevard, El Cajon Boulevard and Washington Street would be lowered from 30 to 25 miles per hour. …
In addition to the lower speed limits, the city is also moving to maintain existing speed limits on an even larger set of streets when state law would otherwise require them to raise the speed limits.
Three years ago, “Mayor Todd Gloria said he was interested in implementing AB 43, a state law that gives cities slightly more autonomy to set enforceable speed limits based on safety concerns. Typically, those limits are based on the actual speeds people drive — even if those speeds are unsafe. … Most speed limits are based on the “85th percentile” rule, which states that cities cannot write citations for speeding unless they’ve performed a speed study and found a driver was going faster than 85% of other vehicles. In practice, the rule often results in “speed creep” — when speeding becomes normalized and sets a new de facto speed limit.”
Don’t these clowns have anything better to do than lower speed limits? It’s already impossible to go any faster than 10 mph on Newport, unless it’s midnight maybe? What a joke!
Maybe we’ll see more police writting tickets as a way to raise cash for the money-hungry administration of SD?
Glad to hear. Will help keep my mother safe as she crosses the street.
First, I will say I am in favor of lowering speed limits. I think the speed limit in all residential neighborhoods should be lowered to at least 20 mph. Voltaire east of Sunset Cliffs Blvd. should be lowered. Nimitz does not need to be as fast as it is.
But, Newport? It is impossible to go 25 mph on Newport, the street naturally keeps things slow. Typical of the city to look in the wrong directions.
Hey! I have an idea. Why don’t we also allow pedestrians to cross the street wherever they want to?
Oh, sorry, the Governor already approved that back in 2022 and it became law in 2023. That sure helped the quality of life of most Californian’s huh?
Well, I’ll bet if I worked for the city, I’m sure I too could think of other useless laws or ordinances to pass rather than work on anything meaningful to the residents of San Diego.
Well, along Newport, pedestrians pretty much cross wherever they / we want to.