Q: What is Assembly Bill No. 43 (Traffic Safety)?
A: California Assembly Bill No. 43 (AB 43) provides cities more flexibility when establishing speed limits in business and residence districts. AB 43 allows for reduction of speed limits after considering safety, land uses, and concentration levels of bicyclists and pedestrians, especially those from vulnerable groups such as children, seniors, persons with disabilities, and individuals experiencing homelessness. AB 43 also allows lowered speed limits on sections of roadways in a “business activity district”, such as neighborhood downtowns. AB 43 went into effect in 2022 and revised the process by which traffic surveys are prepared.
Q: How do cities determine what areas need speed reductions?
A: An Engineering and Traffic Survey (E&TS) is an engineering study used for setting roadway speed limits based on prevailing speeds (or 85th percentile speed, defined as the speed at or below which 85% of vehicles travel) and review of roadway traffic conditions and history.
Q: What is the City’s strategy for applying AB 43?
A: The City strives to be proactive in improving traffic safety and is conducting a study to review traffic speeds in San Rafael as part of the next E&TS update in 2025. Starting with the downtown area, the study will identify roadway corridors that can benefit from reduced speed limits based on evaluation of the built environment, collision history, and roadway usage. Roadway corridors that are deemed appropriate to have lower speed limits was presented to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee on October 2, 2024 and to the Police Advisory and Accountability Committee on January 15, 2025 for feedback. The speed limit reductions will be recommended to City Council for approval prior to implementation. AB 43 requires speed limits to be adopted by an ordinance of City Council.
Following the evaluation of the new downtown area speed limits implementation and feedback, the City will evaluate other roadways in San Rafael that would be appropriate and follow the same review and City Council approval process described above. Final speed limits will be incorporated into the City’s E&TS update which will establish the legal basis for speed limit enforcement with the Marin County Superior Court.
Q: How are the study areas in the AB 43 Strategy selected?
A: The 2024 Marin County Local Road Safety Plan indicates that many streets in Downtown San Rafael experience elevated collision rates, and that reducing vehicle speeds would increase safety outcomes of vulnerable road user groups, such as bicyclists, pedestrians, persons with disabilities, and individuals experiencing homelessness. As such, the initial study will focus on the downtown area, where most vehicle collisions resulted in injury or fatality (as shown in figure below). Starting with the downtown area allows the City to leverage specific provisions of AB 43 for “business activity district” to improve traffic safety and slow vehicles, which gives drivers the opportunity to discover and experience what Downtown San Rafael has to offer.
Future study areas will focus on other roadways with high levels of pedestrian and bicycle activity and a history of frequent crashes. These areas may include roadway corridors near schools, parks, community centers, and locations with a high presence of seniors, children, other vulnerable groups, and collision history.
Q: Why is reducing vehicle speeds important for improving traffic safety?
A: Vehicle impact speed is the most influential factor attributing to the severity of injuries at the time of a collision/crash. Slower vehicle speed collision may result in less severe injuries whereas higher vehicle speed collisions can result in fatalities. For instance, if a pedestrian is involved in a collision where the vehicle is traveling at 20 miles per hour (mph), the pedestrian has a 90% survival rate. However, if the vehicle is traveling at 40 mph, the pedestrian survival rate reduces to 50%. Small reductions in vehicle speed can have important safety impacts.
In addition, vehicles traveling at slower speeds emit less noise, which results in a more pleasant environment, especially for individuals outside in close proximity to the roadway. Slower vehicle speeds are more closely associated with walkable, livable communities.
Image from: San Francisco Vision Zero Action Plan 2015
Q: What is the speed limit recommendation for the downtown area?
A: A detailed analysis of downtown roadways, including review and consideration of previous planning efforts, in the Bicycle & Pedestrian Master Plan (2018) and Downtown Precise Plan (2021), was performed to identify current and future active transportation facilities and land uses in the downtown area. This review, in combination with an E&TS for downtown roadways, evaluated potential road segments that would be eligible for speed limit reduction to 20 miles per hour (mph) based on the traffic data, crash history, roadway characteristics, conducted speed surveys, and the provisions of AB 43.
The speed limit on most downtown streets is currently 25 mph. As a result of this evaluation, a draft downtown 20 mph zone is proposed, as shown in the below figure. The proposal would retain a 25 mph speed limit on 2nd and 3rd Streets through the downtown core, as these are principal arterials that carry high volumes of traffic through the area and do not meet some of the provisions of AB 43. The speed limit on 2nd Street between Hayes Street and 4th Street, which is currently 35 mph, would reduce to 30 mph.
Figure 1. Potential Speed Limits in Downtown
Q: What about the streets on the proposed downtown speed limit map shown in grey?
A: Many of the downtown streets shown in light grey are alleys, which have an established speed limit of 15 mph set by the California Vehicle Code. Other streets were not included in the study, as they were either located outside of the core downtown area as defined by the Downtown Precise Plan, or are short segments for which it is difficult to obtain sufficient speed survey data, and along which vehicles lack sufficient length to exceed 20 mph by design. These streets will retain their existing speed limit. As such, this project focuses on establishing a 20 mph zone on streets that exhibit the highest rates of crashes and have the potential to make the most substantial safety improvement by lowering the speed limit.
Q: When will the new speed limits become effective?
A: The City’s new speed limits, including the application of AB43 in the downtown area, are planned to be recommended for approval during the regular City Council meeting on February 18, 2025. If approved by City Council, the new speed limits are anticipated to become effective in Spring 2025.
