The City of San Diego has started lowering speed limits on hundreds of miles of neighborhood streets as part of its first speed management plan. San Ysidro and Otay Mesa would see the first reductions in school zones — but work will continue throughout the city in coming weeks. Transportatio n crews began replacing speed limit signs in San Ysidro on Friday along Calle Primera and Willow Road. The speed limit was reduced from 25 mph to 20 mph around a curve and to 15 mph when driving past Willow Elementary while children are in school. “Every San Diegan deserves to get home safely, whether they’re walking, biking, taking transit, or driving,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said. “Our first-ever Comprehensive Speed Management Plan is a smart, data-driven approach to improving traffic safety. Along with investments in safer street design and other improvements, this plan will help prevent crashes, save lives, and make it safer for everyone to travel through our neighborhoods.” State law mandates speed limits posted above 25 mph require an engineering and traffic survey, which entails measuring the 85th percentile speed — essentially the speed most motorists are already traveling. But that process didn’t account for streets with higher safety risks such as school zones, areas with heavy bicyclist and pedestrian traffic and commercial zones, officials said. Several new laws passed in Sacramento gave cities greater flexibility to determine appropriate speeds rather than defaulting to 25 mph. Corridors with higher comparative fatal or serious injury crashes as well as areas with high pedestrian and bicyclist activity can see 5 mph reductions. Business districts can be reduced to 25 or 20 mph. School zones can reduce speeds to 15 mph or 20 mph within 500 feet of a campus and 25 mph between 501 and 1,000 feet on qualifying approach streets, according to the city statement. With these new permissions from the state, the city found that more than 20% of its roads — 679.1 miles — are candidates for slower speeds. These include: 189.6 centerline miles eligible as crash-heavy safety corridors; 32.6 centerline miles eligible as high a pedestrian and bicyclist activity corridors; 58.7 centerline miles eligible as business activity districts; 371.1 centerline miles eligible for school zone speeds (15 or 20 mph); and 27.1 centerline miles eligible for school approach speeds (25 mph). Naomi Chavez, interim director of the San Diego City Transportation Department, said the plan is based on city data, which shows an average of 180 crashes each year result in a death or serious injury. The city pointed to a fatal six-car crash in La Jolla last January in which one person died. A police investigation found a driver speeding through a red light was responsible. San Diego City Council approved $2.4 million for the speed management plan, which will replace nearly 3,000 speed limit signs in neighborhoods across the city. A federal transportation grant is also funding the project. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded San Diego $680,000 through the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program, intended to bolster Vision Zero efforts to reduce crashes through safer street design, slower speeds, equitable access improvements and community engagement. One of the initiatives funded was the Comprehensive Speed Management Plan. Simply lowering speeds will not solve all of the city’s problems, however. City officials said reduced speeds need to be paired with “continued traffic calming improvements, intersection safety enhancements, street design changes, education and public outreach, and traffic enforcement,” to reach Vision Zero. In San Ysidro, resident Sonia Krayem said speeding has been a persistent problem outside her apartment. “It causes us problems, there are crashes all the time. In front of our driveway here and in front of the driveway there. Cars are always speeding,” Krayem said. Jeremy Bloom of Circulate Planning Policy, who is collaborating with the city, said even small reductions in speed can have a significant impact. “Somebody going just 5 or 10 miles less literally could be the difference in tragedy like you going to the hospital,” Bloom said. “So yes, reduction in speed is a huge part in saving lives.” By the time the project is scheduled to end next May, the city expects 680 miles of streets to have new speed limit signs with lower speeds. New signs also went up Friday around three other elementary schools and one middle school in the San Ysidro district. Next week, the project moves to the Otay Mesa Nestor community. This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication. City News Service contributed to this report. ...read more read less