Findings of traffic speed study serve as basis for City Commission vote
With a unanimous vote on March 23, upon first reading of the proposed ordinance, the Sarasota city commissioners approved the lowering of the city’s speed limits from 25 mph to 20 mph on all local roadways on which a traffic study showed that 85% of the vehicles using those roads were traveling at or below 20 mph.
Traffic calming measures will be proposed in the future on those roads where 85% of the traffic was found to exceed 20 mph, as noted in the ordinance the board members addressed.
Further, the speed limit will be set at 35 mph on collector and arterial roads, except for the interstate connectors and U.S. 301 from 17th Street north to the city limits, the ordinance says.
The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) defines a collector as a “[d]ivided or undivided roadway which serves to link arterials with local roads or major traffic generators. … Collectors may include minor state roads, major county roads, and major urban and suburban streets.”
FDOT defines an arterials as “[d]ivided or undivided roadways that provide continuous routes which serve through traffic, high-traffic volumes, and long average trip lengths. Arterials include expressways without full control of access, US numbered highways and principal state roads that connect cities and towns.”
The commission decision followed a staff presentation and the remarks of two members of the public over a period of about 24 minutes.
In response to a Sarasota News Leader inquiry, Luke Mocherman, a communications specialist with the city, wrote in a March 24 email, “A specific date for when the speed limit changes item will return for second reading is not yet available.” The second reading is necessary before the ordinance can go into effect.
As City Engineer Sage Kamiya pointed out during the March 23 presentation, the board members directed staff in October 2025 to proceed with planning for those speed reductions. A slide shown to the commissioners explained, “Florida Statute 316.183 requires an investigation” before a local government can adjust speed limits.
A speed study that staff had undertaken with a consulting firm was organized with the requirements set forth by FDOT, as noted in the Agenda Request Form for the March 23 item.
The study showed that 85% of the traffic on many of the roads with 25 mph speed limits were traveling at 20 mph or even more slowly, Renato Alva Coletti, a project engineer with the Lakeland office of the Rummel, Klepper & Kahl LLP (RK&K) consulting firm, told the commissioners on March 23.
He explained that FDOT guidelines “say the speed limit posted has to be within 3 mph above the 85th percentile speed.” Coletti noted that the 85th percentile speed is that at which 85% of vehicles are traveling.
Thus, based on the study results, he said, the recommendation that day was to lower the limit on most of the city’s local roads to 20 mph.
Traffic calming measures will be planned for the roads on which 85% of vehicles drove over 20 mph during the study, Corinne Arriaga, the city’s senior transportation planner, pointed out. The types of measures that will be considered will be available on the city website’s Traffic Calming webpages until April 17, she said.
City Engineer Kamiya told the commissioners that, given the study results, staff also recommended that the speed limit on Ringling Boulevard between U.S. 41 and Lime Avenue be changed from 35 mph to 25 mph, as much of that segment has been modified to include a protected lane for bicyclists.
Additionally, the speed on Osprey Avenue between Oak Street and Brother Geenen Way near downtown Sarasota should be lowered from 30 mph to 25 mph, he said. The speed limit on the latter section is not posted, Kamiya noted, but it is assumed to be 30 mph on the basis of a state law.
Further, after consultation with representatives of the Sarasota Police Department, staff recommended that the posted speed limit of 15 mph on some city roads be raised to 20 mph because of enforcement challenges.
Among the streets where the speed limit will be raised from 20 mph to 25 mph, based on the traffic study, are Sixth Street from Brink Avenue to Lockwood Ridge Road, Eighth Street from Gillespie Avenue to Washington Boulevard, 10th Street from Washington Boulevard to the railroad crossing, and 15th Street from Euclid Avenue to Tuttle Avenue, as shown in charts in the ordinance.
RK&K staff obtained speed data for the traffic study from the StreetLight Analytics platform, as noted in a Feb. 23 RK&K memo included in the backup agenda materials for the March 23 discussion.
The memo explains that StreetLight, which is an on-demand platform, utilizes data from mobile devices to support analyses such as travel time and speed studies. It “provides speed data segregated by day of the week and time of day.”
As an example of the reports generated by the analysis, one of the maps included in the materials for the March 23 agenda item showed that, between 6 and 9 a.m. from January through December 2024, Tuesdays through Thursdays, 85% of drivers drove 5 to 10 mph over the speed limit on John Ringling Boulevard. The same level of speeding was noted for John Ringling Boulevard from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays from January through December 2024.
A phased-in approach
Alvimarie Corales, manager of capital projects for the city, told the commissioners that the Sarasota Police Department (SPD) supports a phased approach to the changes. It will take time to educate the public and to produce the new signs, she noted. If the board members approve the proposed on second reading, she continued, staff will coordinate the implementation of the new speed limits with the members of the Police Department.
Moreover, Corales explained, the new signage would be introduced to one quadrant of the city at a time.
In response to a question that Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich posed to Deputy City Manager Patrick Robinson, a former long-term Sarasota Police Department leader, Robinson said that after new signage has gone up in an area, police personnel will focus on more enforcement of the new speed limit and conduct an educational campaign through both the agency’s Public Information Office and the city’s Communications Department, whose general manager is Jan Thornburg.
Robinson added that he anticipates that the educational aspect of the effort will begin a week or two in advance of each speed limit change. Further, he said he expects that officers will allow time for the public to become accustomed to the new speed limits before they begin issuing warnings, with citations to come later.
Staff has scheduled quarterly meetings with SPD staff, Corales pointed out, to ensure that the changes take place as smoothly as possible.
Public support for the proposed changes
The first member of the public who addressed the commissioners on the proposed changes was Kelly Brown, president of the Gillespie Park Neighborhood Association and the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations of Sarasota (CCNA).
The latter nonprofit organization, Brown noted, represents about 22,000 households.
CCNA’s mission “is to enhance and protect city neighborhoods,” she reminded the commissioners. During summits that the organization conducted in 2016, 2019 and 2023, she continued, members reviewed CCNA’s priorities. “Traffic speeds [and] pedestrian/bicycle safety came up as a priority for all neighborhoods at every summit,” Brown pointed out.
During regular meetings of the organization on Oct. 4, 2025 and March 7, Brown said, “Members voted unanimously to support the speed limit change to 20 mph on our local streets.” She added, “This change will eliminate any confusion in traveling from one neighborhood to the next and provide consistency across our local roads.”
Moreover, Brown said, she believes that implementing the changes will encourage more residents to use other forms of mobility.
“CCNA would be happy to take white duct tape and big black markers and help make the changes on those signs as fast as possible,” she concluded her remarks, prompting a laugh from Mayor Debbie Trice.
John Harshman, a commercial Realtor who founded his eponymous firm in Sarasota in 1989 — who is running for one of the at-large seats on the City Commission this year — told the board members, “When I’m talking to people out in the community, what I’m hearing from them is [concern about] excessive speeds. That’s a problem in lots of different places.”
However, he continued, he also hears comments about “choke points,” where traffic cannot flow well, such as the entries/exits for St. Armands and Lido keys and sections of Osprey Avenue. Thus, Harshman said, “I kind of question just the overall approach of changing all the signs to 20 mph. My experience is that the people that are going 35 mph in a 20 mph zone are not going to change their behavior to drive 20 mph now unless there’s some enforcement involved.”
Harshman characterized enforcement as “a key factor” in the process the commissioners were entertaining that day.