‘You want citywide school zones’: Gee and Ursula clash with producer over Bellevue’s new 20 mph speed limit

Bellevue is lowering the speed limit on every neighborhood street from 25 to 20 mph, with crews installing 360 new signs and painting 190 pavement markings starting Monday in north Bellevue.

Co-hosts Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin discussed the change on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, with Gee fully on board and producer Andrew Lanier firmly against it.

“I think everywhere needs to go down by five miles per hour for safety reasons,” Gee said. “Don’t we specifically have a problem here in the state of Washington with speeding, pedestrian accidents, e-bikes, and all of those things? We’re like in the top in the country all the time. Why would anybody be against lowering speed limits in residential streets, knowing how easy it is to hit somebody?”

Ursula agrees but explains the psychology

Ursula sided with Gee and pointed out that the lower number works because drivers will always push past the posted limit anyway.

“If you actually want them to drive 25, put it at 20,” Ursula said. “If it’s 25, you’re going to go 30. If it’s 20, you’re going to go 25. There’s always going to be, ‘Well, that’s suggested, and I’m going to go a little faster.’ The only time it becomes a problem for you is if you hit somebody. Their own program says it worked. The number of drivers going faster than 30 dropped by 20%.”

The city said a pilot program in the Eastgate neighborhood cut the number of drivers going faster than 30 mph by nearly 20%, even without additional police enforcement. Neighborhood streets make up roughly 64% of Bellevue’s road system, and the city is now considering lower limits on larger arterial streets as well.

Andrew says 20 mph is ‘crawling’

Andrew strongly disagreed with the change, explaining why 20 mph makes it a citywide school zone.

“Twenty is too slow, man,” Andrew said. “Driving in a school zone, 20 mph is crawling. It is crawling. You have to consciously drive 20. Cars are not made to drive that slow. You want citywide school zones. That’s what you want.”

“You’ve been speeding all your life,” Ursula replied.

Andrew argued that changing the posted number alone is not enough and that cities should focus on changing the physical design of streets, such as speed bumps and roundabouts, rather than signs.

“Changing the speed limit, I think, is worthless,” Andrew said. “Seattle has done this for years. I don’t think there’s been a meaningful reduction in fatal car accidents in the city of Seattle because they reduced it in residential streets.”

Gee ties it back to changing attitudes

Gee said the real work is shifting how people think about speed, the same way attitudes need to change around drunk driving.

“We need to change people’s idea of like, ‘Yo, slow down.’ And the only way for people to slow down is they’re not going to slow down by nothing. You got to actually put it down there,” Gee said.

The Bellevue City Council approved the ordinance in October 2024 as part of the city’s Vision Zero effort to eliminate fatal and serious crashes by 2030. The first phase covers neighborhoods in NE Bellevue, Crossroads, Lake Hills, Bridle Trails, Wilburton, and NW Bellevue. The South End will follow later this year.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.