Following cities’ lead, Minnesota counties could set own speed limits

Since the state of Minnesota took control of setting speeds on the state’s hundreds of county highways more than 80 years ago, much has changed.

Namely, Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn (DFL-Roseville) says, a number of Twin Cities suburbs have grown up around some of those county roads and placed heavy car, bicycle and pedestrian traffic on and along them.

Because of that, she said, the existing process doesn’t work.

Becker-Finn sponsors HF3974 to let counties set their own speed limits on county roads without authorization from the Department of Transportation.

“This is about values,” she said, adding that the current MnDOT-led process doesn’t necessarily take into account local communities’ values when it comes to bicycle and pedestrian safety.

“This is a tool many of our communities could use and would use,” Becker-Finn said.

Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn

HF3974 was approved Tuesday, as amended, by the House Transportation Finance and Policy Division and sent to the House Floor. There is no Senate companion.

Becker-Finn’s bill is similar to a law enacted last year allowing municipalities to set their own speed limits on local roads. Minneapolis and St. Paul officials have said they are working together to reduce speed limits on local roads in an effort to create a safer environment for walkers, joggers and bikers.

The legislation would let county officials set speed limits on county roads under their jurisdiction — but not trunk highways or city streets — without prior traffic analysis or authorization from MnDOT. Counties would, however, be required to develop procedures for setting speed limits based on their own analysis of safety, engineering and traffic flow.

“Lower speed limits are part of the solution for getting to our goal of zero [pedestrian] deaths,” said Dorian Grilley, executive director of the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota.

Opponents of the proposal disagree, saying the change would lead to a hodgepodge of different speed limits on similar-type roadways across the state. That, they argued, would lead to drivers tuning out speed limit signs altogether.

Joe Gustafson, a traffic engineer with Washington County and member of the Minnesota County Engineers Association, told lawmakers he believes the bill would lead to outcomes that are less safe and equitable than the current process.

Setting speed limits on county roads is a rigorous exercise that includes detailed study and public input. Granting individual counties the ability to set different speed limits could mean arbitrary changes on a stretch of roadway with no discernible change in conditions. It could, Gustafson said, lead to driver confusion and make speed limit signs “mere background noise.”

Jennifer Witt, a government affairs policy analyst for MnDOT, urged lawmakers to hold off on making such a change, saying an agency task force is in the process of evaluating the issue.