City Transportation Planning staff members recommend action on basis of community engagement
On a unanimous vote this week, the Sarasota city commissioners approved the implementation of a 20 mph speed limit on all local roads in the municipality no later than 2055.
A Florida law does allow for such a restriction, staff members told the commissioners during their regular meeting on Oct. 6.
However, a change in the City Code will be necessary before any signage can be changed.
Commissioner Kathy Kelley Ohlrich made the motion calling for staff to work toward the 20 mph speed limit on local roads, and Vice Mayor Debbie Trice seconded it. The action followed a discussion about the city’s Traffic Calming Plan, whose development kicked off with a town hall meeting in February, as the formal Oct. 6 Agenda Request Form noted.
Alvimarie Corales, the city’s chief transportation planner, and Senior Transportation Planner Corinne Arriaga said they hoped the City Commission would adopt the plan no later than the spring of 2026.
In the meantime, they indicated that they would work on scheduling a public hearing for the commission to vote formally on the 20 mph speed limit, as well as the necessary steps to bring city roads that do not conform with state law into compliance with state regulations.
Although it was not part of the motion that won approval this week, the women also recommended a citywide speed limit of 35 mph, except on connectors to Interstate 75 and along U.S. 301 from 17th Street to the northern city limits.
Research has shown that even a 10% reduction in the average speed of vehicles results in a 34% reduction in crashes with fatalities, Arriaga reported. People need more distance and more time to stop, the higher their speeds, she pointed out. Moreover, she said, the faster they are driving, the narrower their fields of vision become, which heightens the risk of crashes.
With a 20 mph speed limit, Arriaga noted, only one pedestrian out of 10 is likely to die after being struck by a vehicle.
She further stressed that pedestrian and bicycle crashes are more common on local roads.
“The goal of this [traffic-calming] plan is to make sure that people are safe walking and biking in their neighborhoods,” Arriaga added.
At one point during the Oct. 6 discussion, Mayor Liz Alpert did inquire about the long timeline. “It’s going to take us that long to change the signs?” she asked, referring to the 2055 date.
Arriaga explained that the overarching goal is not just to change the speed limits but to implement the city’s traffic-calming plan. Nonetheless, Arriaga continued, as soon as the City Code has been changed, the streets where 85% of the traffic has been shown to be moving at 20 mph will see the signs changed “right away.”
It will take more time, she indicated, to achieve the lower speed limit on other streets where 85% of the traffic has been shown through research to be moving faster than 20 mph. Funding for the design of traffic-calming measures and implementation of them will be necessary, Arriaga pointed out.
Moreover, she noted, taking the steps to enforce a maximum speed limit of 35 mph citywide “could take 15 to 20 years …” Staff will have to work with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and Sarasota County leaders on that restriction for any future projects of those government bodies that would affect the city, Arriaga explained.
City-maintained roadways already are posted with limits no higher than 35 mph, she added.
The target date of 2055, Arriaga stressed, “gives us time to accomplish the whole [traffic-calming proposal] … and not just the [changes] that can be implemented right away.”
Alpert then asked why city staff could not just put up signs with the 20 mph limit and then pursue the traffic-calming initiatives later.
The problem is liability, Arriaga replied.
“When a roadway is designed for a higher speed,” she explained, “and you lower the speed limit, people still feel comfortable going at higher speed.” While signs “work to a degree,” she continued, they do not prevent pedestrians and bicyclists from having “this false sense of safety that everybody is going to comply with [the lower speed limit]. We have to really ensure that the target speed, the design speed and the posted speed limit are all consistent,” Arriaga pointed out, “so … drivers are going to feel less comfortable speeding.”
Nonetheless, she noted, some of the lower speed limits can be implemented before 2055 as projects move along in the city’s Capital Improvement Program.
Vice Mayor Trice told Arriaga and Chief Transportation Planner Corales that she hoped they would look for what Trice characterized as “low-hanging fruit, where you can do a quick-and-dirty, cheap engineering improvement,” instead of having to go through the process of getting traffic-calming projects added to the Capital Improvement Program.
For example, Trice suggested “plastic bollards” before working on designs for “bulb-outs, or whatever.”
Arriaga acknowledged that different types of solutions will be presented to the commissioners, such as lane narrowing measures, new striping and the installation of flexible posts or bollards. “All of that,” she said, “will be presented in the implementation plan as projects get identified.”
Trice also asked Arriaga and Corales what they had heard from leaders of the Sarasota Police Department about enforcing the 20 mph speed limit.
“They didn’t see an issue with it,” Arriaga replied.
During the discussion, Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch reminded everyone that she has served on the board for more than eight years. “The largest complaint I have heard,” she said, “is speeding in the neighborhoods, speeding in the neighborhoods, speeding in the neighborhoods, speeding, speeding, speeding, speeding, speeding.”
Ahearn-Koch added, “So this is a great step towards addressing what I hear as a No. 1 concern in the city.”
Alpert agreed with Ahearn-Koch about those complaints. Alpert first was elected in 2015.
What is traffic calming?
At the outset of the discussion, Chief Transportation Planner Corales explained that traffic calming “is a set of roadway treatments that can help alter driver behavior and reduce the negative impacts motorists can have on pedestrians and cyclists.”
Traffic calming, she pointed out, also can “increase pedestrian and bicyclist usage.”
Although the city’s traffic-calming program formally began in the 1990s, Corales continued, “Some say it started really early on.”
Staff released a traffic-calming manual early this year, she noted. (It is dated Jan. 31.) That was a result of “a lot of community engagement,” she added, including public meetings, the town hall meeting and an online survey.
Seventy-eight percent of the more than 500 respondents to the survey were in favor of implementing any form of traffic calming, she told the commissioners.
Among other data, she said, 57% of those who completed the survey reported feeling unsafe on neighborhood streets, and 73% reported that they feel that city speed limits are too high.
Further, Corales noted, staff organized a Community Think Tank composed of members from the traffic calming group of the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations of Sarasota (CCNA), as well as a Leadership Task Force, whose members include city leaders, department directors, Sarasota Police Chief Rex Troche and representatives of the Sarasota County Fire Department, the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County, and Breeze Transit, the county’s public bus service.
City staff also undertook a speed study, Corales pointed out.
Then Arriaga reported that the Transportation Planning staff heard from “several different community members” that they would like to see the speed limit reduced from 25 mph to 20 mph on local roadways. Therefore, she continued, staff developed a test model to evaluate that proposal. The model was put in place from Jan. 1, 2024 through Dec. 31, 2024, Arriaga added.
As explained in the backup materials for the agenda item, the study focused not only on yearly averages but also on a peak season analysis — from Jan. 1 through April 30, 2024 — as well as on typical weekdays separate from weekends, and various periods of the day, including the morning peak travel time (6 to 9 a.m.) and the afternoon peak period (3 to 7 p.m.)
“The existing posted speed limits were compared to their corresponding 85th percentile speed within each day type and day part,” the report says. “The goal was to identify roadway segments in which the recorded 85th percentile speed was above the posted speed limit and by how much.”
The Traffic Calming Manual explains, “The 85th percentile speed is the speed at or below which 85 percent of the motorists drive on a given road. This speed indicates the speed that most [motorists] on the road consider safe and reasonable under ideal conditions.
“ Traffic engineers rely on the 85th percentile rule to help establish speed limits on non-local streets,” the manual adds. “Typically, the speed limit is set to the speed that separates the bottom 85% of vehicle speeds from the top 15%. For example, if speeds of 100 vehicles are measured and 85 vehicles are traveling at 27 mph or less, the speed limit for the subject street could be set at 25 mph.”
The 15 mph zones
At one point during the discussion, Commissioner Ahearn-Koch pointed out, “We do have some 15 mph speed signs up.” Long-time City Attorney Robert Fournier, who retired earlier this year, told her that those were “grandfathered in,” she added.
Her understanding, Arriaga responded, is that those signs do not comply with state law, so they will need to be changed.
Public Works Director Nikesh Patel confirmed that, adding, “Fifteen miles per hour is not achievable.”
“Of course it’s achievable!” Ahearn-Koch responded. “You take your foot off the gas.”
Then City Attorney Joe Polzak explained, “These lower speed limits have to be based in engineering studies.”
Ahearn-Koch indicated that she had been told that they could be used in areas with heavy pedestrian traffic.
Deputy City Manager Patrick Robinson said he thought that the 15 mph signs in Southside Village had been linked to that shopping-dining district’s designation as a high pedestrian-area. He told Ahearn-Koch that perhaps staff could look into the issue, specifically the Hillview Street corridor between Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s campus and Southside Village. Nonetheless, he added, “I don’t think any of [those signs] are grandfathered in.”
Ahearn-Koch urged him to “turn over every stone” in an effort to find out whether 15 mph limits can be imposed in certain areas. “Sometimes, 20 [mph] is too much,” she stressed, including in neighborhoods with no sidewalks and no curbs but high counts of pedestrians.