Neighborhood Safe Streets bill moving forward

The Neighborhood Safe Streets bill passed the House Wednesday on a vote of 86-10, moving one step closer to saving cities and counties money by allowing them to use their common sense.

Right now, local governments must pay for an engineering report to raise – or lower – speed limits. It makes sense for raising the limit, to ensure a road can handle higher speeds.

But it's a waste of time and money for state law to require engineering reports to lower a speed limit. Any road or highway can always handle lower speeds.

The legislation by Rep. Cindy Ryu (D-Shoreline) cuts that red tape, which will save taxpayer dollars --and more importantly, save lives.

The Seattle Bike Blog does a great job explaining the bill:

"Speeds on such streets are most often 25 mph today. Studies show that a person struck by a car going 30 miles per hour has a 40 percent chance of dying. When the speed drops to 20 mph, the chance of dying drops to 5 percent. So while a few mph might seem like a small safety gain, it can actually be the difference between life and death."

This common-sense reform is now in the Senate, and you can track it by clicking here.

Read this story in Spanish.