65-M.P.H. Speed Limit on Freeways Advised

The California Highway Patrol and Caltrans recommended Tuesday that the 55-m.p.h. speed limit be boosted to 65 m.p.h. along hundreds of miles of the state freeway system outside metropolitan areas.

The joint report, issued by the CHP and the California Department of Transportation, asserted that accidents would not significantly increase and that law enforcement personnel could focus more effort on urban traffic problems if the speed limit were raised in rural areas, CHP spokesman Kent Milton said.

Milton said the study, which included a survey of more than 2,000 drivers nationwide, found that the speed of motorists along rural highway segments has steadily increased since its dramatic drop 12 years ago when the national maximum speed limit of 55 m.p.h. was adopted in the middle of America’s gasoline shortage.

For example, he said, the average speed along rural stretches of Interstate 5 in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys is 63 to 65 m.p.h.

“You would suffer hardly any safety disadvantages if the limit was increased, because people are already going that fast,” Milton said. “The law tends to become a laughingstock.”

The two agencies recommended that the proposed new speed limit apply only to automobiles, not to trucks. The 65-m.p.h. limit would apply to about 1,840 miles of roadway outside of metropolitan areas, including major stretches of Interstate 5, Interstate 10, Interstate 8, Interstate 15, Interstate 40, Interstate 205, Interstate 505, Interstate 580 and California 99.

The joint study was conducted at the request of the state Legislature, which has already passed a resolution asking Congress to allow individual states to set speed limits on their highways.

Currently, if any state approves a maximum speed limit above 55 m.p.h., the federal government can withhold all federal highway funds for that state, Milton noted.

Steve Schnaidt, a consultant to the state Senate Transportation Committee, said the agencies’ recommendations will have no immediate effect, noting that California cannot increase its speed limit without losing huge amounts of federal highway funds.

“We’ve told Congress we want to set our own limits, and now it’s up to them to act,” Schnaidt said. “This is a thing that’s had a lot of popular support.”

The CHP-Caltrans report also recommended that the federal formula for assessing whether California motorists are complying with the speed limit be softened. Currently, states in which more than 50% of the motorists exceed the maximum speed limit can be denied up to 10% of their allotted federal highway funds.

Milton said that last year 49.7% of the state’s motorists exceeded the speed limit and that the figure is expected to rise above 50% this year, a situation that could cost California $30 million in federal dollars.

Milton said that although the survey showed that 57% of drivers nationwide favor the current speed limit, the percentage is well below the number of motorists who favored it in the late 1970s. He said national polls in the late 1970s showed that 75% to 80% of all motorists favored the 55-m.p.h. limit.

“Not only that, in California today only 47% of the drivers like the speed limit as it stands,” he said.

THE FAST LANE

Freeway sections where 65 m.p.h. speeds have been proposed:

Route Miles Section of Freeway I-5 293 Bakersfield to Stockton. 30 Stockton to Sacramento. 141 Sacramento to Redding. 79 Lakehead to Oregon. I-8 149 Flinn Springs Rd. east of San Diego to Arizona line. I-10 156 E. County Line Rd., east of San Bernardino to Arizona. I-15 125 W. Cherry Ave., east of San Bernardino to Route 127. I-40 155 Barstow to Arizona. Ca-99 94 Bakersfield to Fresno. I-205 15 Jct. 580 west of Tracy to Jct. 5 east of Tracy. I-505 33 Vacaville to Zamora. I-580 31 Tracy to Livermore.