Rantz: SDOT director’s speed limit claims are ‘so condescending’

KIRO Radio’s Jason and Burns are holding up a stop sign toward two city leaders who claim that slower means faster on Seattle’s streets.

The Seattle Department of Transportation, the mayor’s office, and some bike activists within the Seattle City Council are pushing a change in speed limits – going from 30 miles per hour to 25 mph on the arterial roads and from 25 mph to 20 mph on residential streets. The reason is to go with Vision Zero campaign, which aims to cut the car vs. pedestrian deaths to zero. The number of deaths is currently about seven deaths annually.

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The Seattle City Council’s Sustainability and Transportation Committee met Tuesday to hear, and craft, the argument to reduce Seattle speed limits. Proponents concluded with a message that lowering speeds will cause fewer accidents, which equates to less congestion.

Jason Rantz and Zak Burns attempted to understand the arguments made by council member Mike O’Brien and SDOT Director Scott Kubly.

O’Brien: “Sometimes this gets phrased as a tradeoff between more congestion, safety and what’s the tradeoff?” he said. “Frankly, I’m on the safety side of that one but I think … that actually slower speeds don’t necessarily mean more congestion. We see examples where we can manage throughput better at these speeds.”

Rantz: “Oh yeah? Like what?

Burns: “I’m pretty sure he said nothing.”

Rantz: “He didn’t say anything at all.”

Kubly: “If the human side of this, if the safety side of this doesn’t appeal to you, generally when we have a crash that has been very, very long time to clear it’s because there’s been a serious injury or a fatality so this will, beyond that, beyond just the speed, it will actually improve flow there.”

Rantz: I can’t stand when he does that, where he basically says, if you’re not a good person and you want people to die, why would you prefer people be hit by cars and die? It’s so condescending. I wish I was so high-minded and as morally just as Scott Kubly. And his argument is so absolutely ridiculous. The only time that this would actually apply in Seattle is during off-peak times, where there are virtually no cars on the road.

Burns: That’s the thing, that’s the only time you can go that fast anyway in downtown Seattle.

Rantz: That’s my point. We pretend this is about safety, it’s not. How many of these accidents are we witnessing on a Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock on a non-gameday? Where there’s not a game at Centurylink that’s increasing all the people going to enjoy the Sounders or Seahawks. It’s so ridiculous. The problem is that right now traffic is so bad and the signal timing is so off, that’s what’s causing a lot of these accidents.

Burns: That’s what I thought he was going to say, that lowering the speed limit would lower congestion because when you are going 20 mph you’re going to start hitting green lights. There is that algorithm that if you go a certain speed in the city you’re supposed to hit all the greens. I didn’t think he was going to bring up the humanitarian element. … Also, what if next year the number of deaths goes up to nine? What’s he going to say then?

Rantz: You know what he’s gonna say: ‘We didn’t do enough.’

Burns: Or that it could have been 14. That’s what I would do.

Rantz: All they really want is to make driving as miserable as possible because they want you taking a bus or riding your bike or walking.

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