Officials in Schenectady are raising awareness about the lower speed limit that takes effect in March.
The speed limit drops from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour on March 1st.
City Councilwoman Carmel Patrick, a Democrat, was one of the lead proponents of the new law.
She says she realized the need after the pandemic.
“When people first started coming out of their homes, you could see the difference in how they were driving. They were just driving like crazy, maniacs, not stopping at stop signs not stopping at red lights and speeding. In 2022, Governor Hochul had passed legislation that allowed local municipalities to make decisions about their speed limits. I immediately went to city council and suggested we lower our speed limit to 25 miles per hour,” she said.
Democratic Mayor Gary McCarthy says he hopes the change will result in fewer auto accidents.
McCarthy says that other communities that have implemented similar reductions have seen those results. Albany took a similar step with the new year.
The mayor says Schenectady’s 2,300 average collisions per year are not “cheap events.”
“When you take that and they are two, three, four-thousand dollars each you literally get millions of dollars in expenditure,” he said.
He adds it could mean savings for residents.
“So, if we can improve these things, get some results people are gonna see not only a quality of live improvement. A financial incentive, where hopefully their insurance rates will go down. Again, and God forbid you actually have an auto accident. You lose work from that; you have to get your car repaired. There’s a big impact that often times a lot of people don’t think of,” he said.
Also speaking Wednesday, Schenectady Police Chief Eric Clifford says the speed limit reduction is a “move in the right direction.”
“People will be conscious of the speed that they are going and they’ll be conscious of more things like coming to a full stop at stop signs. Not being distracted, paying attention to the speed they are going not whether a text message is coming in on their phone and being distracted by some other technology in their car,” he said.
Clifford adds that there will be a “grace period” when the speed limit first takes effect.
“We always utilize discretion knowing that nobody is gonna be getting a ticket for 26 miles an hour but you will get stopped if you’re going a certain speed over the limit and I’m not gonna disclose what that is but we do use discretion. We will write tickets immediately if it’s excessive over the new posted limit. The good rule of thumb is that if we would have written it before we are gonna still write it,” he said.
The city is partnering with Triple A to offer a discount for the New York State DMV approved 6-hour point and insurance reduction course.
