Politics

City Council to Decide Whether to Lower Chicago’s Default Speed Limit to 25 MPH

The Chicago City Council is set to decide Wednesday whether to reduce Chicago’s default speed limit to 25 miles per hour from 30 miles per hour, an effort to make the city’s roadways safer after a surge of deaths in recent years.

Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st Ward) said Friday he would ask his colleagues to vote Wednesday on the measure advanced by the Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee in October after working for months behind the scenes to marshal support for the measure.

Opponents of the change say it will only increase gridlock in Chicago, which already has the fifth worse traffic in the world, according to a recent report, and give city officials a way to ease Chicago’s financial crunch by hitting drivers who refuse to slow down with fines and fees.

But La Spata and other transportation advocates say the change is designed to save lives, not generate revenue, and the time to act is now.

“I have stood next to parents who have lost their children to traffic crashes, who have lost 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds,” La Spata said. “How can I possibly stand next to them and then say, we’re going to figure out the right time to do this? For them, the right time is right now.”

Reducing a car’s speed by just a few miles per hour significantly increases the chance of surviving a crash and reduces serious injuries, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation.

New York City and Boston recorded fewer deaths as a result of traffic crashes involving speeding and pedestrians after lowering their default speed limits, records show.

In 2023, 163 people died in car crashes in Chicago, data shows. Nearly 70% of those crashes involved speeding, records show.

Traffic deaths surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking in 2021, when 186 people died in crashes. That represented a 55% increase in the number of traffic deaths in 2019, records show.

Black Chicagoans are nearly four times likelier than White residents to be killed in a traffic crash, according to city of Chicago data from 2021.

That same data showed people 70 and older were more than 1.7 times as likely to die in a 2021 traffic crash in Chicago as the average fatality rate of those ages 20 to 69 — and that Latino residents, too, are almost twice as likely as White Chicagoans to be killed in a crash.

Along with the measure lowering the city’s default speed limit, alderpeople are set to consider a resolution that would create a working group to come up with ways Chicago can change its traffic ticketing system so Black, Latino and low-income residents are no longer disproportionately hit with fines.

However, measure to create a one-year pilot program that would allow residents to submit complaints — backed with photo evidence — of drivers illegally taking up a bus or bike lane will not be called for a vote, officials from La Spata's office said.

The speed limit would not apply to thoroughfares controlled by the state of Illinois. La Spata said the estimated cost to post new signs would run $3 million unless the Illinois Department of Transportation follows the city’s lead and lowers the limit on its streets to 25 mph as well, in which case signs differentiating the speed on city-controlled streets would be unnecessary.

If approved, the lower speed limit would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2026, allowing time to educate drivers on the change.

Contact Heather Cherone: [email protected] | (773) 569-1863 | @HeatherCherone

Contact Nick Blumberg: [email protected] | (773) 509-5434 | @ndblumberg

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