Bellingham looks to lower city speed limits
Vehicle speed on many Bellingham roads could drop this summer, if the Bellingham City Council approves an ordinance that would decrease speed limits within the city with the goal of improving safety for all road users.
Since 2024, the city has been studying its speed limits. In recent years, there has been a change in thinking around how traffic engineers view safety, explained traffic consultant Jon Pascal to the city council during an October 2025 meeting. For a long time, speed limits in the U.S. have been dictated by a concept called the 85th percentile speed; the speed at which 85% of drivers travel because they perceive it to be safe. But Bellingham is now looking more holistically at road standards in an effort to minimize injuries and fatalities in crashes.
Vehicle speed is directly linked to crash severity, and risks for vulnerable road users including pedestrians and cyclists greatly increase with higher car speeds.
In the last five years, Bellingham has seen 15 fatalities from vehicle crashes and many serious injuries. Almost half of the people injured or killed have been pedestrians and cyclists.
The vast majority of roads in Bellingham have a current limit of 25 or 35 miles per hour. The city’s draft ordinance and implementation plan proposes a default speed limit of 20 mph unless otherwise posted, down from 25 mph. This applies mostly to residential streets and the downtown core. If approved, the shift will happen this summer.
The speed limit on many heavily-traveled streets across the city will remain higher than 20 mph, but there will no longer be any roads in the city with speed limits higher than 45 mph, a change that would only affect sections of Sunset, Hannegan, Northwest and Meridian. The list of proposed speed limits for individual streets is included in the draft ordinance.
Existing and Proposed Speed LimitsDownload
More than 500 lane miles in the city will be affected by the change. To make sure the public and agencies such as Whatcom Transportation Authority and the state Department of Transportation are prepared for the change, the city will take a three-year phased approach, starting with the installation of signs at the city’s gateways and downtown this summer, followed by signage on principal arterials including Lakeway, Bakerview and Old Fairhaven Parkway in 2027, then signage on secondary and collector arterials such as Yew, Electric, South State and Kellogg in 2028.
Pascal emphasized that speed limits are only “one tool in the tool belt” in a safe systems approach; other mechanisms include road design, education campaigns and enforcement.
The city reassigned traffic enforcement to the patrol division in 2022 to meet staffing challenges, but the implementation plans recommend targeted traffic enforcement by officers or automatic speed cameras to ensure drivers follow the new speed limits.
Other cities in Washington have made the shift to lower speed limits. Seattle dropped its default speed limit from 25 to 20 mph almost a decade ago and studies have shown a reduction in injury crashes and excessive speeding on those streets.
The Bellingham Transportation Commission on April 14 will discuss the plan and make a recommendation to the city council, which will consider the ordinance at a future meeting. The transportation commission meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the city’s Pacific Street Operations Center and on Zoom.
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 107.