By Mary Marvin, Mayor of Bronxville

Feb. 1, 2023: After many years of steadfast advocacy, our State Assemblywoman, Amy Paulin was able to get a bill passed allowing cities, towns and villages, at local option, to reduce allowable speed limits to 25 mph. We thank Legislator Paulin for her relentless pursuit of this safety measure.

Prior to this legislation, the speed limit was required to be 30 mph in all municipalities, unless in a school zone or on a street showing “special circumstance.” The only “special circumstance” zone we qualified for was a portion of Sagamore Road due to population and vehicular density, a winding topography and sadly some accident data.

At the January Board of Trustees meeting, after two months of an open hearing and public comment where 99% of those speaking to the issue favored the lowering of the speed limit, the Trustees unanimously enacted a local law. We join our colleagues in the Villages of Scarsdale and Tarrytown who adopted the legislation along with many others currently having hearings on their way to adoption. So many communities are on board because a lowering of a community wide speed limit has been documented quite clearly to show that a decrease in the mean speed limit of actual traffic has reduced crash risk both in terms of frequency and severity.

As a corollary, we have petitioned the State of New York to lower the speed limit on Route 22 from 30 mph to 25 mph to conform with other Village roads as the state holds complete control over our Route 22 corridor. Though we enacted the law at the January meeting, by design, we do not plan to enforce until September 1. We believe it only fair to have an education period as we would like this to be welcomed by the community and not seen as a surprising, punitive measure. We also hope to engage, especially our students, in helping us promote by not only getting the word out but joining us to embrace an added safety measure to make the Village even more walkable.

Before we could adopt the new law, the language in the bill required a speed limit study that, “determines a reasonable speed limit that balances, safety, efficiency, environmental quality and functional mobility.” A Village like ours with a great deal of walkability and bicycling had a natural predilection and bias for lowering speed limits for the safety of our very significant non-vehicular traffic.

We also cannot forget that in addition to the safety factor, which is paramount, the environmental benefits of lowering fossil fuel consumption, carbon output and noise impacts, help us further the goals of our Village Green Committee. Our consultant followed the New York State Vehicular and Traffic Law, which has established certain practices that should be used by a consultant, one of which is called the engineering approach to gauge a proper speed limit in a particular community. Our consultant used the engineering approach, which is a two-step process that begins by establishing the 85th percentile speed and then adjusting it according to local context, such as pedestrian traffic, bicycle passage, driveways, and site distance.

The methodology used involved independent data captured using radar at four locations:

-Midland Avenue between Avon Road and Sagamore Road northbound and southbound

-Pondfield Road between Village Lane and The Byway eastbound and westbound

-Woodland Avenue between Greenfield Avenue and Oriole Avenue eastbound and westbound

-Parkway Road between Milburn Street and Dewitt Avenue, eastbound and westbound. 

These locations were chosen because they represent various traffic contexts, neighborhoods and classifications of the Village where the proposed speed limit changes would have the most significant effect. A minimum of 100 samples were taken at each location.  In addition, the Bronxville Police Department downloaded data from our digital speed indicators that we currently have in place throughout the Village.

Results are summarized below with the 85^th percentile speeds varying between 26 and 33 mph for each sample location.

Net net, analysis of the data reflects that most drivers obey the current speed limits and naturally determine the appropriate speeds to be between 26 and 33 mph on all the roads that were observed.

Based on the above data, the engineer recommended that if adopted, the speed limit be reduced to 25 mph on all Village streets.

The Village will now work on an implementation plan for the new speed limit so that all is in place in advance of the start of school in September.