Skokie drivers will likely soon need to slow down on residential streets. At the May 19 Village Board meeting, trustees approved the first reading of an ordinance to lower the speed limit on residential streets from 30 to 25 mph.
The implementation of the lower speed limit won’t be immediate. Village officials said they expected the process to take between six and nine months after the Village Board gives final approval to the ordinance at a second reading.
The ordinance came about after the village received questions and concerns about the speed limits from Skokie residents, the village’s Senior Engineer Samantha Maximilian said in a memo to the Village Board. At Monday’s meeting, Maximilian said Skokie residents would be safer with lower speed limits, and pointed out that surrounding municipalities have already lowered their speed limit to 25 mph in residential areas.
A 2017 study done by the National Transportation Safety Board found that accidents involving pedestrians with a vehicle traveling 20 mph had a 5% chance of fatality. The fatality probability shoots up to 45% if a vehicle was to travel 30 mph, and to 85% if a vehicle were to travel 40 mph.
Once approved and implemented, the new speed limit will be applied to nearly all Skokie residential streets, but not affect major thoroughfares such as Gross Point Road, Niles Center Road and Howard Street. The changes won’t affect county or state roads, as the village does not have the authority to change those speeds limits. Those include Skokie Boulevard, Oakton Street (west of Skokie Boulevard), Crawford Avenue, Dempster Street, Church Street, Lincoln Avenue, Touhy Avenue, McCormick Boulevard and Golf Road.
East Prairie Road between Dempster Street and Golf Road, Frontage Road between Gross Point Road and Howard Street and Lawler Avenue between Golf Road and Old Orchard Road are also exceptions to the speed limit reductions.
In cases where the speed limit is currently 20 mph, the speed limit will remain the same. The speed limit changes won’t affect Waukesha Avenue and Ionia Avenue either, in a Skokie exclave block surrounded by Niles and Chicago.
Trustee Gail Schechter thanked Maximilian for her work, and asked why the village isn’t considering lowering the speed limit to 20 mph.
“Throughout our study, our data just leans more on the speed limit is more appropriate with the 25 mph” limit, Maximilian responded. “We wanted to be careful where we’re having more than 85% of the drivers in violation (of the speed limit)” if a 20 mph speed limit were to be adopted, she said, referencing a study done by the village that showed that 85% of drivers already drive within a 5 mph variance of 25 mph.
“That would make it very difficult for our police enforcement to deal with that,” she said.
Schechter relayed a message from Charlie Saxe, the co-founder of the Skokie Bicycle Network, asking if the village would consider establishing a bike and pedestrian task force to review what facilities and work needs to be done to make Skokie streets safer for everyone.
“It’s something to take under consideration,” responded Mayor Ann Tennes, adding that she would like time to consider a task force.
“With any policy, it means nothing if you don’t enforce it,” said Trustee Keith Robinson. “Also, looking at across the country, traffic stops have led to loss of life… if we’re trying to cap the speed limit, that means an increase of stops, potential conflicts, potential loss of life.”
“I would love to see just a progressive plan— a whole communication plan before the final ‘Let’s blank it’ (sic), and have one policy,” he added.
“There’s a couple ways we could do that,” Tennes said. “If we have an affirmative vote of the board tonight to approve the 25 mph village wide speed limit, an ordinance would have to come back to us. So we could have a communications plan and marketing plan brought to us at the same time possibly,” she said.
In 2024, two cyclists were killed in separate accidents in Skokie. One was a 37-year-old man struck by two vehicles in a hit-and-run in the 3500 block of Oakton Street, and the other was a 27-year-old man struck near the intersection of Gross Point Road and Skokie Boulevard. A 78-year-old man was also killed in a January hit-and-run incident in the 7900 block of Crawford Road, just blocks from his home.
