Bellingham council ready to consider lowering city’s default speed limits
A three-year effort to improve traffic safety across Bellingham by lowering speed limits 5 to 10 mph is headed to the City Council for a vote Monday.
Council members will be considering an ordinance that sets the default speed limit on all streets to 20 mph unless otherwise posted, meaning slower speeds in most neighborhoods, on many collector and arterial streets and in the downtown core.
“The proposed ordinance reflects a data-driven, context-sensitive approach to speed management that aligns with updated federal guidance and the city’s safety goals. Extensive technical analysis, stakeholder coordination, and Transportation Commission support provide a strong foundation for implementation. Adoption of this ordinance will enable the city to proactively reduce crash severity, improve safety for all users, and advance Bellingham’s traffic safety objective of eliminating fatal and serious injury crashes citywide,” according to a Public Works Department summary of its efforts to collect information and craft an ordinance.
A traffic consultant called the Transpo Group helped with a three-year study that resulted in the new ordinance.
Walk and Roll Bellingham, which advocates “for people who travel by foot or by human-powered rolling,” told The Bellingham Herald that it expects that the new ordinance will force the fastest drivers to ease up on the gas pedal, reducing injuries and deaths. “The data is striking: your chance of surviving getting hit by a car doubles when speeds drop from 30 mph to 20 mph,” Walk and Roll board member Jamin Agosti said in an email. “Setting 20 mph as our city’s default will save lives. It also gives city engineers what they need to design streets to safer standards — and when streets feel safe, people use them. People walking to local businesses, kids biking to school, families taking an evening stroll. That’s the kind of city Bellinghamsters are asking for loud and clear and this proposal brings us one step closer.”
In recommending the new speed limits, Public Works officials said they stopped relying on the traditional 85th percentile rule to set speed limits and instead sought guidance from the “City Limits” report prepared by the National Association of City Transportation Officials.
“Recent updates to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, however, require practitioners to consider a broader set of factors, including roadway context and the presence of vulnerable users when establishing speed limits,” the Public Works report said.
Over the past decade, the total number of crashes on Bellingham roads has declined, but their severity has risen, according to data from the Washington State Department of Transportation:
- Bellingham had 750 crashes in 2025, including four fatalities and 22 with suspected serious injuries. There was one fatality among the 34 crashes involving pedestrians last year. Another 33 crashes involved bicyclists.
- In 2016, there were 898 total crashes in the city, but no fatalities. There were 34 crashes that involved pedestrians and another 34 that involved bikes.
According to the new ordinance, the downtown core will be the only arterial street network that will have 20 mph posted speed limits. Those signs will go up downtown this summer.
Other cities across the nation are moving to lower speeds, especially in residential areas, including Seattle and Portland. Seattle saw a 26% decrease in traffic deaths when it reduced arterial speeds to 25 mph and residential streets to 20 mph. Portland lowered speeds to 20 mph on more than 70% of its streets, according to the city report.
Changes to speed limits will be made in phases over the next three years along the city’s 500-plus lane miles of road, Public Works said in its report.
New speed limits will require a “robust outreach and engagement strategy” and affect the entire city — including bus schedules, delivery drivers and commuters.
To enforce the new laws, the report urges the city to apply for a Washington Traffic Safety Commission grant to buy motorcycles and that could help revive the city’s traffic unit, which was mothballed in 2022 amid a shortage of police officers.
A grace period is encouraged along with “emphasis patrols” to target speeders.
