Palm Coast Council Stops Short of Lowering Residential Speed Limits to 25, Deterred By Cost

After the city studied drivers’ speeds at 48 speed zones and 109 locations across the city, the Palm Coast City Council in June 2024 opted against lowering speed limits on all residential streets from 30 to 25 miles per hour. It would have cost $1.6 million to do so, city staff told the council. 

Today, the council heard a similar presentation and reached a similar conclusion. 

The council again opted against lowering residential street speed limits, again as a matter of cost, though today’s conversion cost is put at $400,000 to $1.3 million. The council will seek state and federal grants on the off chance that it could implement the speed reductions that way. Crash data does not point to as serious a safety problem on residential streets as it would on collctor roads. 

“I would like to see us be able to do this, but we have limited monies,” Council member Theresa Ponieri said, “and it’s tough when you’ve got to do 2,400 signs, because there’s, I would say, probably 30 problem streets in the city.”

To Council member Dave Sullivan, the return on investment isn’t there when the problems are limited to certain streets, not the majority. “Look at the critical areas, the more critical areas where there are crosswalks and children going across, things like that, where we can make improvements,” he said. 

State law requires speed limits for residential streets to be set at 30 mph. Cities may set them lower. Kimley-Horn, the engineering and planning company, conducted the required investigation which had to precede any consideration of a reduction in speed limits across the city. The city’s 1,578 residential streets met the criteria for a 5 mph reduction, but not more. Lowering the speed limit on 71 collector roads was not warranted, the study found. 

Five-year crash data on residential streets indicates 34 crashes, all involving pedestrians (21) and bicyclists (13), with 32 injuries–five major injuries, 20 minor, and seven “possible.” There were no fatalities. The fatalities have been on larger roads like Belle Terre Parkway and Palm Coast Parkway. 

To universally lower speed limits, all speed limit signs must be replaced. “We’re forced by Florida law that every time you make a change from a 30 to 25 we must post the sign,” Traffic Engineer Scott Kehoe said. (Curiously, when Flagler Beach lowered its speed limit across the city to 20 mph, it did not follow that requirement.) 

At every point where traffic changes from a collector road to a residential road, a speed limit sign must be posted. “This ends up bringing us to a total of about 2,400 signs that we would have to create throughout the city,” Kehoe said. Currently, 30 mph signs don’t have to be posted on residential streets because there is no change between a collector–like, say, Point Pleasant Drive–and a residential road–like, say, Postwood Lane. 

“If the study had come back and said the collectors could be 25, then all we’d have to do is change out the collector signs to 25 and we’d be good,” Council member Ty Miller said. “But because there’s a differential, we now have to post signs at every single residential road.” And for long enough roads, more signs must be posted. 

A typical sign with a contractor costs between $535 and $552. If the city were to bid out the project, it would cost at least $1.3 million, not including bond money and “mobilization,” or the cost of bringing construction equipment together. If the city were to do the job with its public works department, it would cost $550,000. It would take 18 months. 

Retrofitting existing signs does not significantly bring costs down: it could be in the $400,000 range, but there’s only “a very small number” of signs that could be retrofitted that way, Engineering and Stormwater Director Carl Cote said. “It’s not a recommended approach to do it,” he said. 

The city has a $30,000 machine to make street signs. It could make about 20 signs a day. The city engineer, unenthused already about changing speeds, was not recommending that route. “If we end up going this way, I would probably want a contractor to do it,” Kehoe said, “be done with this thing and put the signs in and they’re up, rather than have it drawn out for a year and a half or more.”

The more he spoke the more Kehoe sounded like Debbie Downer, reflecting the administration’s  tepidness about lowering speed limits. “Just because we put a sign up doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to drive that speed,” Kehoe said. “We have a lot of ‘do not enters,’ ‘no left turn’ signs that people still do what they do. So putting these signs in for the most part, over my 40 years of doing this, most people will drive what they’re comfortable driving at. So they’re already driving slower. We really don’t have any issues as far as serious injuries and fatalities on the residential roads, and it will cost pretty much a million dollars, plus we have to maintain them forever.” 

One alternative is to request a grant through the Transportation Planning Organization, at least to reduce the cost. “I’d like us to pursue that aggressively,” Miller said. “I think there’s money there.” Council member Charles Gambaro suggested federal avenues. Miller is not interested in taking money away from the street fund, such as microsurfacing that is prolonging residential streets’ life. He does not see the crash data as particularly alarming. 

“We don’t have streets with sidewalks on both sides, and it’s dangerous, and it just concerns me,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said. She agrees with Miller on not taking money away from other street needs and on the crash data, but also on seeking out grants. “I don’t want us to be having this conversation a year from now, and it because there’s a fatality on one of these long stretches,” Pontieri said. 

To Mayor Mike Norris, it’s just a matter of punishment, and getting sheriff’s deputies to be less forgiving with warnings. “I’m not happy with some of the numbers that were presented last time, as far as enforcement,” Norris said. “I understand trying to give out warnings just for educating people, but sometimes you got to make them pay.”

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