Here’s a little background on an item from the Opportunities section of the newsletter:
The Safe Speeds Bellevue Survey is open until March 31st. The city wants to hear from you about the streets where speed limits were reduced and evaluated in 2025, streets where lower speed limits should be prioritized and how you would like to stay informed of the project. The survey will take approximately 5-10 minutes and your feedback will remain anonymous. All questions, including demographic questions, are optional. There are 10mph reductions proposed for W. Lake Sammamish Pkwy, part of Northrup and NE 20th, BelRed Rd, part of Kamber and SE 26th, Factoria Blvd, part of Newport Way, maybe others, and 5mph reductions in many places such as downtown, LWB, part of 114th,120th, 124th, 132nd, 148th, 140th, part of the Lake Hills Connector and many more.
Since the Safe Speeds Bellevue project is in the middle of the outreach and survey process, I thought I’d take a look at the results that are projected and the data that’s available from the state about our Vision Zero performance.
In the four arterial segments where Safe Speeds Bellevue was introduced last year to test this program (parts of Northrup Way, 124th Ave. SE, Village Park Drive, and NE 40th St.), where 35 MPH arterials were reduced to 25 MPH or 30 MPH, it is reported that the incidents of speeding over 40mph were reduced by at least 19% and up to 42%.
Washington Traffic Safety Commission has a dashboard with the road fatality info for Bellevue. In the decade between 2015 and 2024, and deducting the crash info for 405, 90, and 520 (5 crashes), since these are not being changed, there were 19 accidents on surface streets that resulted in a death.
In that decade, there were five deaths of vehicle occupants on arterial streets, and four of these involved speeding. There were also three motorcyclist deaths (one attributed to speeding). Of the eight pedestrian fatalities and three crashes that killed one or more cyclists, none were attributed to speeding.
Other info: Seven of these crashes were related to distracted driving, and three had an impaired driver. The 6th page of the BI dashboard shows the young driver (15-24) stats (including freeways) have improved recently, with no fatalities from 2019-2023 and one in 2024, compared with 1-2 a year from 2015-2018. The 7th page of the BI dashboard shows ten “intersection-related” deaths and eight “lane departure” deaths. An important caveat with this data is that it may include the freeway deaths and does not include the serious injury crashes, which I know the city used in their analysis.
I would expect a change in the speed limit to mostly address pedestrian and cyclist deaths, since in those cases the drivers were going the speed limit, and they likely would also have been following the speed limit if it was set lower. Conversely, I assume the type of driver who gets into a fatal accident while exceeding the speed limit is actively choosing to exceed the limit, so it may not matter what limit is posted. It seems likely that the intersection-related crashes are sometimes related to speed and sometimes not, and that lane departure-related crashes are hazardous in proportion to vehicle speed. Caveat: I’m not sure if the “speeding” categorization truly applies if you’re 1 MPH over, or if there is a higher threshold when it becomes obvious to the responding officer.
You can find data that includes serious injury crashes at https://remoteapps.wsdot.wa.gov/highwaysafety/collision/data/portal/public/ . With this tool, if you search for “intersection related” in 2025 there were 14 serious injury crashes and 1 fatal crash, and 4 were speeding related. Four crashes involved motorcycles and five involved pedestrians, and one involved a bicycle (I’m not sure whether e-bikes would be in the cyclist or motorcyclist category). I don’t think it’s possible to see where there’s overlap between those categories, and it doesn’t look like you can view the data for multiple years at once, but if you have time, I’m sure you could come up with some interesting insights using this dashboard.
Another resource that’s very helpful is the Vision Zero Storymap created by Bellevue city staff. If you scroll down, there’s a Collision Dashboard section with both fatal and serious injury accidents. You can filter by road user type and then click on the dots to see the date of each incident and whether each vehicle involved was turning, going straight, etc. As a cyclist, I found this tool very useful for adjusting my understanding of what riding is most risky in Bellevue.
What other effects can we expect from this speed limit change? I don’t think there will be much of a reduction in intersection vehicle through-put, since cars are only traveling through at the faster speeds when there’s no congestion, but if each trip takes longer, the vehicle will be on the road a bit longer, so roads may feel more full.
One side effect of this change to the posted speed limit will be a corresponding reduction in the average travel speed during peak travel times that’s deemed adequate. The Level of Service (LOS) expectation is typically a multiple of the posted speed limit, with a multiplier that varies. If it is in an urban core area, average speeds are supposed to be 50% of the posted speed, and during rush hour the target is 40% of the posted speed (page 41). In other areas of Bellevue, the expectation for typical urban travel speed (TUTS) is 75% (Crossroads, Factoria, and Eastgate) or 90% (all other areas) of the posted speed. King County allows a concurrency evaluation based on travel speeds, and Bellevue used to have a LOS standard that was solely based on intersection congestion and speed for vehicles.
With the switch to a multi-modal LOS metric, there is a target for vehicular transportation (that’s less binding than the previous standard) and roadway/sidewalk performance for walkers, bikers, and bus riders is also considered. Bicycle Level-of-traffic-stress (LTS) is based on the protectiveness of markings/separation and intersection design; the LTS score is expected to match the goal set on our map (page 43). The pedestrian LOS is based on sidewalk width and planter strip width, and the spacing of crossings; it also has a map showing our target for each area (page 42). The transit LOS is based on the passenger amenities at stops and the time it takes to travel between major destinations. As average vehicular speeds decrease, the target for transit will also decrease; the target ratio of 2.0 means a trip can take twice as long on the bus during rush hour.
The Seattle Bike Blog is encouraging their readers to respond to Bellevue’s Safe Speeds survey, and their write-up mentions a desire for speed reductions on Coal Creek Parkway, so you may want to address that in your survey response as well.
You can find more information about the Safe Speeds changes on local streets (25 MPH to 20 MPH) that are supposed to take place in Spring 2026 here. There was also a survey about speed cushions back in February that was intended to support a grant application; measures like this may reduce the extent to which traffic is diverted onto local streets. A February 12th Transportation Commission meeting discussed CIP items being added (for which full/partial funding has been secured) that included 13 speed feedback signs, 59 rows of speed cushions, 60 crosswalk upgrades for visibility, and many other items.
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