Speed limits on Anaheim streets are going down throughout the city.
The point of the campaign is to make roads safer and reduce the chance of someone dying when hit by a vehicle, officials said. Anaheim is largely trimming speed limits by 5 mph and will be updating signs through mid-August.
“We are hoping to reduce our traffic fatalities because we believe even one could be someone’s parent, could be someone’s sibling, could be someone’s co-worker,” said Mayor Ashleigh Aitken. “We really want to make people aware that driving slower and using our roads in the safest manner possible really creates a safer Anaheim for everyone.”
The city is lowering its limits following a traffic study that surveyed how fast motorists drove through streets, also being factored in is if roads have nearby pedestrians, bicyclists, schools and residential driveways and collision data is being considered.
More than half of the street segments surveyed, which did not include freeways and local residential streets, had their speed limits lowered. Some 169 road sections are seeing changes, while 155 other sections surveyed are being left as they were.
Nine road sections will have their speed limit reduced by 10 mph. A short portion of Manchester Avenue from Anaheim Boulevard to Katella Avenue will have drivers keeping the mph to 25, down from 40 mph.
Aitken said the city wants to educate drivers first that speed limits on many streets have changed and not focus first on ticketing drivers.
“We’ll obviously continue to cite excessive speeding,” she said. “As we go through the city and start making speed limit changes, we want to make sure we are helping people understand that ‘Hey the speed limit has changed and you’re going to need to start slowing down a little bit.’”
A pedestrian hit by a moving vehicle at 20 mph has a 90% chance of surviving compared to a 10% chance when hit at 40 mph, according to data quoted in a city staff report. Anaheim had 21 deaths on roads in 2023, according to a city news release.
Aitken pointed to making red lights during overnight hours standard on Serrano Avenue in the Anaheim Hills until a car approaches the intersection, rather than it being timer-based, as another strategy that makes roads safer.
“We’ve heard countless stories from residents about how at night people are flying down Serrano, sometimes not stopping or observing the posted speed limit, which creates a dangerous environment for that whole community,” she said.
The city added the “resting red” lights on Serrano Avenue in late 2023 after two drivers were killed there that same year. Serrano Avenue will have its speed limit cut by 5 mph and even 10 mph for certain segments.
California cities are required to study street speed limits on a regular basis.
A law passed in 2021, AB 43, gave cities greater power to lower speed limits when roads are near high concentrations of pedestrians, bicyclists or other vulnerable groups such as seniors or people with disabilities. The law gives cities the flexibility to forgo the commonly used rule where speed limits are set at the 85th percentile for how fast cars are observed traveling on a given road.
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