Leaders across New York united in an appeal to Governor Cuomo this week to correct a loophole in the Vehicle and Traffic Law that circumvents New York’s home rule principles, and prohibits municipal leaders from making their streets safer. Over 50 mayors and supervisors representing communities in over half of New York’s counties, along with the Association of Towns and the New York Conference of Mayors, have spoken with one voice to the Governor: give municipal leaders the ability to lower the speed limit in their communities.

The home rule concept allows local leaders to make local decisions about the health, safety and welfare of their communities. It is a bottom-up philosophy, embedded in the belief that local leaders know their communities best and that self-governance leads to better solutions. Unfortunately, when it comes to local roads, communities have to open their pocketbooks to pay for them, yet they do not have the authority to govern basic rules of them—like the speed limit.

Existing state law prevents New York municipalities from adopting an area speed limit lower than 30 miles per hour. Some jurisdictions are able to lower that speed limit to 25 miles per hour on a street-by-street basis, while others (towns and counties) must first petition the New York State Department of Transportation. In order to have a consistent, community-wide speed limit below 30 miles per hour, municipalities must petition the State Senate and Assembly to pass a bill in Albany—a time-consuming proposition that is rarely successful.

There are a couple of success stories: the City of Long Beach on Long Island can lower their limits in certain areas, and Rochester and Buffalo can do so around parks. But there are 932 towns, 62 cities, 551 villages and 62 counties in New York. Passing state laws for each community that seeks local control is a piecemeal approach to safe street policy, and an example of how state legislators who represent local communities, often hinder the ability of those very same communities to exercise home rule. As the letter states: “To force an inflexible, one-size-fits-all statutory scheme on all municipalities is an untenable state mandate.”

Over half the states in the country have statutory speed limits of 25 miles per hour, which are often designated in business or residential areas. Washington State enables communities to reduce speeds to 20 miles per hour on local roads. The logic behind lowering the speed limit in areas with high pedestrian and business activity is simple: speed kills.  If a person is hit by a car traveling 25 mph, there is a 90 percent chance that they’ll survive. If they are hit by a car traveling 30 mph, there is a 20 percent chance they’ll be killed.

There are a smattering of bills currently being considered in the New York Legislature that aim to remedy current law:

• a bill to give New York City the authority to reduce speeds to 25 mph in a given area
• a bill to give towns with populations under 50,000 the authority to bypass petitioning the NYSDOT to reduce speeds
• bills to give the Town of Riverhead and the City of Niagara Falls more local control

The list goes on, but at the moment, there are no bills that would grant municipalities the same level of control that New York City is seeking.

Action on speed limit control couldn’t come soon enough for the state’s residents. New York State has the worst record in the nation when it comes to pedestrian and bicycling fatalities — 27 percent of the people dying on our roads are either a pedestrian or a bicyclist. The time is now for a more rational statewide policy that enables municipalities to create safer roadways.