Soon I will no longer be an habitual offender...

[TXCharlie]

NTTA raising speeds 10 mph on toll roads

07:23 AM CDT on Friday, April 25, 2008
By DAVID SCHECHTER / WFAA-TV



WFAA-TV
Speeds on this stretch of the Dallas North Tollway will be bumped from 55 to 65 mph.

Video



2/20: NTTA plans to raise tollway speeds
4/14: Why are we still paying for the tollway?
LINK: North Texas Tollway Authority
More News 8 video


DALLAS — News 8 has learned the North Texas Tollway Authority plans to raise speed limits by 10 mph on the Dallas North Tollway and the President George Bush Turnpike. The change is a result of a News 8 Investigation.

For years, the NTTA skipped the most basic procedure for setting speed limits. It's now making up for that oversight and has submitted a request to raise speeds. In some places, the limit would increase to 70 mph.

By Texas law, a speed limit is set by stringent safety standards that include a speed study, which determines the top speed a reasonable driver will go when the weather is good and traffic is light.

What do you think? Will speeding still be a problem after toll road speed limits are raised?
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"If you set the speed limit lower than that, you're actually punishing prudent, reasonable drivers," said Kelly Selman, TxDOT's Director of Transportation,

But that's exactly what the NTTA did, and in some cases for more than a decade. Late last year, the NTTA finally conducted the speed studies. But when News 8 asked to see the results, the NTAA said that information was "not subject to disclosure."
NTTA has long insisted that its roads are not designed to sustain faster speeds. But News 8 learned the NTTA is now requesting 10 mph increases across the board. Speeds of 55 would be raised to 65, and speeds of 60 to 70.

That will have a wide reaching effect because of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the nine local communities that patrol NTTA roads. Through open records requests, News 8 determined about 17,000 tickets are written on the roads every year. Those tickets were written on the roads that have artificially low speed limits.

On face value, many may think that slower speeds mean safer roads. However, studies show that on roads where traffic moves fast, a faster speed limit is "considered safe and reasonable."

[Andrewtx]

This should help my morning commute--the 55 MPH zone has always seemed inexplicably low.

[TXCharlie]

Yeah, a lot of people don't know that the speed limits around Dallas/Ft Worth were dictated by the Federal Government's EPA because of ozone levels, not byTexas - and not for safety reasons. This is the beginning of a challenge to the EPA that Texas will not be dictated to.

I hope they do something about the high-speed tolltag lanes too...

It's absolute SUICIDE to follow the 45mph speed limit in the hi-speed tolltag lanes in Carrollton, and there's no reason for such a low limit unless you use the Cash lanes - everyone is coming through there at a minimum of 60mph, and quite a few at 80mph.

They don't even slow down to 45mph when there's a state trooper on the shoulder, because the troopers don't even enforce such a stupid limit - They're apparently just looking for tailgaters and speeders flying through there well over 60, otherwise they'd have to write thousands of tickets and still wouldn't slow people down to 45.

I set my cruise on 70 from one end to the other of the tollway and don't even slow down unless I see construction workers or flashing lights on the shoulder - Even then, it's counter productive if I'm in the left lane, because people behind me are not going to slow down. They simply change lanes and then you have idiots doing 80mph in the right lane, even closer to the workers and inches from police standing out there writing tickets.

I don't know what the answer is, but all the lower speed limits have done is introduce slow vehicles into the mix, and cause some people to slam on their brakes when they see a trooper because they're so damn afraid they'll get a ticket, they slow down to 10 miles UNDER the limit. It seems to me that this increases the danger, it doesn't reduce it.

[Bob Loblaw]

FINALLY!!! The 60 mph limit on The Bush is ridiculous. Now I'll be able to get to the folks house about 3 minutes sooner! Now if they could only address the retarded drop on southbound i-35 as you pass UNT where the limit drops to 50 mph, I'd be happy!

[TXCharlie]

FINALLY!!! The 60 mph limit on The Bush is ridiculous. Now I'll be able to get to the folks house about 3 minutes sooner! Now if they could only address the retarded drop on southbound i-35 as you pass UNT where the limit drops to 50 mph, I'd be happy!

You mean through Denton? I didn't even know it was 50 through there - I'm suprised I haven't been stopped

It's really hard to believe that I've only had one speeding ticket in my life, that one in Melissa TX doing 78 in a 65 zone about 8 years ago, early Sunday morning with no other cars on the road - I guess I was easy pickin's.

That's the time that I had 4 loaded guns in the car, two of them on me, one on my wife, over 1,000 rounds of ammo which I told him about (well, he asked!). She had a newspaper in her lap, so when he took all that in, he took two steps back, and I had to tell him he'd better get out of the road.

We were late for our shooting match, so he sent us on our way after writing me up, and told us to have a good time at the match.