CHARLOTTE — Slow down -- that’s the message from the City of Charlotte to drivers as the Queen City begins lowering speed limits uptown as part of its Vision Zero Program.
“It’s horrible down here, horrible,” said pedestrian Evelyn Turek.
Even with a pandemic and so many people working from home, there’s still traffic in uptown Charlotte.
“They need to slow down a little bit,” cyclist Kenneth Simpson said. “Sometimes they’re speeding up real fast.”
The city said pedestrian crashes have been a problem for years and have only grown since adding more bikes and scooters. More than 145 people have died in bike or pedestrian crashes across the city within the last two years.
“Unfortunately, our pedestrian numbers were up, which is not a good thing,” said traffic safety program manager Angela Berry.
She heads up the city’s Vision Zero Task Force which is working to reduce the number of deadly collisions to zero by the year 2030.
The program was adopted in 2019.
“The city really, really needs to make improvements if they want a better pedestrian way of living in this city,” Turek said.
The latest effort from the city is to reduce the uptown speed limit from 35 to 25 mph. The city is working on switching out speed limit signs on all city-maintained streets, with the exception of Graham and McDowell streets, which are managed by the state.
“We just felt it needed to be a consistent 25 miles per hour,” Berry said.
The hope is that by slowing down, drivers will pay more attention and share the road, a move Turek said could be lifesaving.
“I can’t tell you how many times, if I had not stopped, I would have been hit,” she said.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police will begin enforcing the new speed limits once the signs are posted. That’s expected to be completed by the end of July.
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