Cities find MI speed limit law loophole

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Five years ago, lawmakers banned speed limits not set scientifically.

But a Target 8 investigation found there are still a number of streets that have old speed limits and that police are still writing tickets on them, costing motorists hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Earlier this year in Grand Rapids, Ryan Young got a ticket for going 35 in a 30 mph speed zone. The ticket was going to cost him more than $100. He thought it seemed wrong.

"I was going the speed of traffic," said Young.

Young looked up Public Act 85, the state law that requires cities to set speed limits based on a speed study or access points such as driveways and alleys in a given stretch of road.

In Young's case, there were 27 access points. Under Public Act 85, the speed limit on Burton should be 55 mph.

He also found the last speed study on the road was done in 1986. It showed most drivers were going more like 40 mph, not 35. Young decided to fight his ticket.

"It's a matter of principal that the city thinks it is above state law," said Young.

Young wrote his own brief. When he got to court, the city had a defense. Just before state lawmakers passed PA 85 in 2005, the city declared many of its streets are in a neighborhood, making it exempt from state law

"I was put in a position where I had to argue -- to defend -- that the city didn't adopt this measure. There was sort of this feeling that the only thing missing was a wink and a nod," said Young.

A similar thing happened to Charlie Reed in Wyoming. He was going 46 mph in a 25 mph speed zone.

Reed also fought his ticket, spending hours on research, but the judge wanted none of it because Wyoming said this street, a block from an industrial zone, was in a neighborhood.

But with court costs adding up, Reed had to throw in the towel. 

"I had to. I didn't have $550," he said.

When lawmakers exempted neighborhood streets from the speed limit law, this was what they had in mind.

"The safest speed is with the 85th percentile. What those folks are traveling at is the safest. If you underpost, you actually have more accidents. The state police can show you this. There have been numerous studies that have shown the same," said Michigan Senator Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge).

24 Hour News 8 contacted a number of West Michigan traffic departments and heard a number of excuses why they weren't complying with state law.

Some claimed they were exempt, others said that the law might be repealed, and others said that they're still reviewing their speed limits.

But Public Act 85 has been around for five years.

In the meantime, cities continue to write speed tickets. In the five years that Public Act 85 has been on the books, Grand Rapids police wrote over 30,000 tickets. A ticket costs at least $100 and the city, if the ticket is enforcing a local speed ordinance, keeps a large chunk of the fine.

"Let's face it. A lot of jurisdictions don't want to give up the revenue on some of these streets that are underposted and they can write all the tickets they want," said Steve Purdy of the Michigan Motorists Association.

But the city's traffic engineer, Christopher Zull, denies revenue is the driving force behind unchanged speed limits.

"We are doing more and more things to encourage pedestrian activity, bicycles, using buses -- the BRT [Bus Rapid Transit] is coming to town. We're looking at becoming a more multi-modal society," said Zull.

Cities also get a lot of pressure. Neighborhoods want lower speed limits, regardless of how busy their streets have become.

Zull has tried to explain the reasoning behind higher speed limits. But he says cities do not usually buy it right away.

"Until I can show them the crash data that is associated with the speeding problem, their perception is that it isn't unsafe to post it much lower," explained Zull.

In one year, police have written nearly 500 tickets on Burton Street, where Ryan Young was ticketed. Even the city's traffic engineer seemed surprised by the number of tickets written on that street:

"Wow," said Zull. "It sounds like an enforcement area."

Lawmakers hope to more carefully define the exemption in the current speed limit law. In the meantime, the state police do speed studies for free.

But cities have to ask first.