Audit may lead to 35 mph speed limit cap on these 7 Louisville roads
Got a lead foot? Take heed — Louisville officials will begin performing an audit this year of several Metro-owned roads, with the goal of ultimately capping speed limits on them at 35 mph.
The plan comes from Vision Zero Louisville, the city's version of a national initiative to eliminate local traffic-related deaths by 2050. Metro Council members voted in June to have Louisville formally join the Vision Zero Network, which counts cities like Chicago, Atlanta and Charlotte as members.
Since 2014, over 900 people have died on non-interstate roads in Louisville, including 185 pedestrians, according to officials.
The "Safer Speeds" initiative that Louisville is exploring is also one of the five pillars of the federally backed "Safe System Approach," which the U.S. Department of Transportation describes as "building and reinforcing multiple layers of protection to both prevent crashes from happening in the first place and minimize the harm caused to those involved when crashes do occur."
The Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration notes studies have shown that reasonable reductions of a posted speed limit can have a positive impact on safety, and cities like Minneapolis, Seattle and New York City have been among the urban centers to reduce local speed limits in recent years.
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A driver traveling at 30 mph who hits a pedestrian has a 45% chance of "killing or seriously injuring them," the DOT's website says, citing past research, while at 20 mph, it drops to a 5% chance.
A preliminary assessment found that only seven stretches of Louisville-owned roads have a posted speed limit above 35 mph. They are:
Fegenbush Lane (Bardstown Road to Fern Valley Road)
River Road (Mockingbird Valley Road to Lime Kiln Lane)
Progress Boulevard (Buechel Bypass Ramp to Buechel Bank Road)
Old Bardstown Road (Colonel Hancock Drive to Thixton Lane)
Seatonville Road (Lovers Lane to Billtown Road)
Chamberlain Lane (Westport to La Grange roads)
Bradbe Road (Routt to Taylorsville Lake roads)
The audit will not focus on state-maintained roads or federal highways in Kentucky's largest city, so speed limits for busy thoroughfares like Hurstbourne Parkway, Broadway, Frankfort Avenue and Newburg Road are not going to change through this initiative. (However, millions of dollars in federal funding are headed to help redesign vital corridors like Broadway and Ninth Street via separate projects.)
City officials added that more speed limit audits will also be "explored" under the Vision Louisville audit and that Fegenbush Lane and Chamberlain Lane could also physically change through "rightsizing."
Between the start of 2016 and Nov. 30, 2022, crashes on the seven roads that are part of the audit resulted in at least four people killed and 27 people seriously injured, according to data from a city transportation planner.
The segments of Fegenbush Lane from Bardstown Road to Fern Valley Road and River Road Road from Mockingbird Valley Road to Lime Kiln Lane each saw one death, while Chamberlain Lane from Westport Road to La Grange Road saw two fatalities. Most of the serious injuries occurred on the Fegenbush Lane segment, with nine people seriously hurt in crashes.
Meanwhile, crash data from a Vision Zero Louisville dashboard covering all incidents on the city's public roads since 2016 showed 2022 had 119 fatalities and 480 "serious injuries" through Nov. 30, a decrease from the 124 fatalities and 509 serious injuries seen in all of 2021.
The year 2020 saw 124 fatalities as well, tying 2021 as having the most fatalities on Louisville's roads in the past six years. The highest number of serious injuries came in 2016, with 660.
A deadline for wrapping up the Vision Zero audit and potentially changing speed limits has not been set.
Claire Yates, transportation planner with Metro Public Works, said the "whole process is still in its early stages" and that the evaluation portion of the speed limit audit should conclude by this summer before more planning and discussions happen.
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Though Metro Council approved the Vision Zero ordinance last summer, which tasks agencies like Metro Public Works and Louisville Metro Police with creating plans to reduce fatal crashes and provide annual updates, Yates said the city has been working on aspects of the initiative for several years.
"What that ordinance really did was kind of solidify, this is something that is important and that is worth pursuing to save lives," Yates also said.
Yates described one piece to the initiative as "safer speeds," but other parts also include street design, audits, automated speed enforcement and "post-crash care, where we work with EMS and LMPD's Traffic Unit to better understand the circumstances surrounding fatal and serious injury crashes."
Metro Councilman Robin Engel, R-22nd District, who represents an area in southeast Jefferson County that includes several of the roads covered in the audit, said one of his "main goals since taking office has been to alleviate traffic congestion on Bardstown Road and improve driver safety."
"Everyone living on Bardstown Road endures daily traffic jams. One fender-bender can back up Bardstown Road for miles," Engel told The Courier Journal in an email. "Roads like Seatonville Road and Old Bardstown Road are valuable, giving drivers the option to avoid traffic jams. Unfortunately, Public Works and my office have received a growing number of complaints on these two roads. We agree with the audit that these complaints may be helped with lower speeds.
"We hope that the new speed limits will help protect residents as this area continues to grow and we are dedicated towards continuing to make the needed improvements to Bardstown Road."
Reach Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Audit could lead to 35 mph speed limit on 7 Louisville roads
