The village’s climate ready plan, like just about every climate plan, aims to reduce automobile traffic and enhance bike and pedestrian trips. Of course, the presence of automobiles is a leading deterrent to more widespread non-carbon trips, so one of the main challenges is how to make non-car trips safer.
One of my favorite musicians, David Byrne, has been cycling in countless world cities on and off tour and offers some examples of new, lower speed limits in his newsletter, Reasons to be Cheerful. His staff reporters recently ran a series on the many towns and neighborhoods that have adopted 20 mile-per-hour speed limits. (“Cars Are Slowing Down in European Cities,” reasonstobecheerful.world). Twenty’s Plenty (mph), City 30 and Tempo 30 (kilometers per hour) are gaining momentum in Europe with the entire country of Wales now having a 20 mph default.
After reading the article series, I realized I knew more about the speed limit in Wales, Singapore and elsewhere than in Oak Park. What is the speed limit here? To reduce my ignorance, I turned to the Illinois Legal Code that specifies the speed limit in Oak Park, Illinois (15-1-10: SPEED LIMITS: amlegal.com). I learned that, except for the four bordering avenues and two busy streets (Washington and Ridgeland) the speed limit is 25 mph. That is the speed limit except for 28 exceptions that are precisely described in the Legal Code. For those 28 exceptions, which mainly border parks, the speed limit is 20 mph.
My pleasure in learning that Oak Park already has safer traffic rules in much of the village was tempered by the nagging feeling that I’m not the only one who is unsure of the speed limit when on the road. I probed this question at our block party, which happened to be this past weekend. I asked seven neighbors to write down on a piece of paper Oak Park’s speed limit. Two out of the seven answered correctly, stating 25 mph, and three stated 30 mph. Assuming my block is not an outlier, most of us seem to be driving around Oak Park somewhat blind.
Although knowledge of the speed limit and its enforcement in the village are somewhat ambiguous, 20 mph or slower traffic usually means fewer fatalities and reduced noise pollution (Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Review of City-Wide 30 km/h Speed Limit Benefits in Europe, mdpi.com).
Oak Park is apparently closer to 20 mph than we think. Maybe it’s time to make it the rule rather than the exception.
Susan Subak, Oak Park