Speeding up ‘Slo-noma’?

The Sonoma City Council met with the city’s traffic safety committee Monday night to discuss possible speed-limit modifications in seven out of 26 streets recently surveyed by a transportation specialist.
Every five years, the city of Sonoma is required by law to conduct a speed survey of its streets if it wishes to use radar or other electronic devices to enforce speed limits.
A survey was completed in October 2006 by W-Trans, Whitlock and Weinberger Transportation Services.
There are six proposed speed limit modifications to go from 25 to 30 mph: on Fifth Street West (Verano Avenue to West Napa Street), Fifth Street East (East Napa Street to the south city limit), Denmark Street (Fifth Street east to Brockman Lane), Lovall Valley Road (Fourth Street East to the east), East MacArthur Street (Broadway to the east city limit), and Verano Avenue (Fifth Street West to the west city limit).
The one street proposed to go from 30 to 35 mph is Fifth Street West (Andrieux Street to the south city limit).
The California Department of Transportation has a specific policy for establishing speed limits. According to the traffic survey report presented to the city council, this specific policy is based on prevailing traffic engineering practices, and indicates that the speed limit should normally be established at the nearest 5 mph increment to the 85th percentile speed.
The 85th percentile is that speed at or below which 85 percent of the observed vehicles were traveling during the survey.
Council isn’t scheduled to take any action on speed limits until its meeting of Wednesday, Feb. 21.
The second part of the meeting was regarding the possibility of broadening the role of the traffic safety committee to more of a citizen-advocate and proactive role such as bicycle and pedestrian safety in the community – as opposed to just being the committee to which citizens complain.
“It is time to let the people know that Sonoma is a bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly town,” councilman Steve Barbose said.
Councilman August Sebastiani said, “I’m out ringing doorbells and asking people – yeah – traffic is a real big issue.”