What is the rationale behind speed limits? For example, why does Audelia Road have six lanes, limited cross traffic, and a speed limit of 35 miles per hour?
Deputy Chief Jan Easterling felt that the City of Dallas’ transportation department would be best suited to answer this question, so we spoke with Elizabeth Ramirez, assistant director of public works and transportation, who oversees the transportation operations division. Here’s what she had to say.
The first thing you would do is go out and measure speeds to see what the majority of the drivers feel comfortable driving at. But then you may be limited because of sight distance problems, or there may be curves, there may be a hill coming out of a side street, or maybe some properties developed so that you just can’t see around that house.
So you wouldn’t want to set that speed limit too high because a driver wouldn’t have a chance to come out of their neighborhood because they would never see that car in time. Audelia is a thoroughfare, but if you let people go 45 miles per hour on Audelia, cars would never be able to pull out.
