Yes, I meant “stupid.”

Background: the TCEQ must improve air quality in parts of Texas that don’t comply with Clean Air Act standards. In 2001 and 2002, in 17 Texas counties around Houston and Dallas/Ft. Worth, all 70 and 65 mph speed limits were reduced by 5 mph. The TCEQ surmised this would cause a 5.5 mph speed reduction (they assumed average speeds are 10% over the limit) and a modest emissions reduction.

In fact, ESLs don’t clean the air. Arbitrary speed limit changes have little, if any, effect on actual speeds. Further, the TCEQ wildly overestimated ESLs’ emissions benefit. Compared to total emissions reduction needs, ESLs’ true contribution is somewhere between imaginary (i.e., nonexistent) and a rounding error.

Here’s what arbitrarily low limits really do: turn safe motorists into lawbreakers, undermine respect for the law and police, and make roads less safe due to more speed variance.

The cost/benefit ratio is out of whack!

If that’s not bad enough, the vast majority of theoretical ESL benefits come from heavy trucks, not passenger cars! This means the vast majority of hassled motorists are barely even contributing to this imaginary emissions benefit.

The Texas Legislature saw the stupidity of ESLs and prospectively banned them as of September 1, 2003. “Prospective” here means already-enacted ESLs can remain but new ones cannot be imposed. They had to do this because repealing then-existing ESLs would cause Texas to lose federal highway dollars.

Now the TCEQ is the relaxing ESL rules for DFW: ESLs are now a “transportation control measure.” This means that, instead of explicitly requiring ESLs, DFW’s Clean Air Act implementation plan will only require their (imaginary) emissions reduction. Therefore, ESLs can be eliminated if their (imaginary) emissions reduction is made up by some new emissions reduction. Without this change, any ESL changes also require a thorough analysis and an EPA rubber stamp if Texas is to retain federal highway dollars.

What prompted this? Recently, the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) raised many of its speed limits. A portion of its roadways were subject to ESLs–the Dallas North Tollway between Frankford Rd. and TX-121 and the parts of the George Bush Turnpike that were open before 9-1-2003. The NTTA justified disregarding ESLs because their (imaginary) emissions reductions were offset by the ongoing conversion to all-electronic tolling (elimination of toll booths).

Now what does this mean for other roads? Probably little. If the TCEQ and EPA wanted to practice intellectual integrity, they would have ditched ESLs long ago and done something else. But in the fantasy world of their bureaucrats, ESLs have a slight contribution towards required emissions reductions, so they cannot be dropped outright without jeopardizing highway funds.

The only way I see additional DFW highway speed limits increasing is one of these scenarios:

1. Some road improvement causes an emissions reduction and this improvement is A. is not already part of the DFW Clean Air Act implementation plan and B. affects a road that existed as of 2000, when the emissions plan went into effect.
2. Overall DFW emissions reduction needs are lowered, which I think is unlikely given that we’re looking down the barrel of even more stringent standards.
3. ESLs are technically defined as a 5 mph speed limit reduction from a 70 or 65 mph limit. Roads that have a 60 mph limit today, but used to have a 65 limit before 2001 (when the ESLs went into effect), could be rezoned for 70 mph and then have an 65 mph ESL.
4. Roads never subjected to ESLs in the first place could get increases. These include any roads with a 60 mph or lower limit before 2001 or any road that didn’t exist before 2003.

This video, shot from a San Francisco streetcar, is from 1906, just a few days before the San Francisco earthquake:

Note the huge numbers of pedestrians on the road, the dangerous interactions between various transportation modes, the lack of efficiency, and the layers of clothing.

I don’t know how many of those buildings survived the 1906 earthquake except–of course–the building at the end.

Here’s a similar scene today:

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…and this guy claims he has a video of the same area from 2005:

We did it over Skype. I didn’t have good equipment, so I had to put my face about 4″ from the microphone on my son’s Asus netbook. If you listen to the interview, you’ll hear disturbances in the audio. I guess I leaned too closely or breathed into it?

The Russian subway bombing prevented them from playing it in the London breakfast show, but it played a few times before their dawn.

The interview.

The full 27 minute segment I was on. (I think I am towards the end.)

This plain text belies my excitement, but this was a major high for me. I cannot believe I’ve been broadcasted on wordwide media.

Above is my interview with Dallas’s WFAA channel 8, broadcast on March 23, 2010, which was about my Texas’s Worst Speed Traps article.

WFAA also talked to Keller Police Chief Mark Hafner. He disputed that Westlake is a speed trap. (Westlake contracts policing to Keller PD.) He says, “When we took over policing in 2002, Highway 114 had 3-4 fatals a year. In the last 2 years, we have not had a fatal accident on highway 114.”

I pulled all Westlake auto fatalities from 1996-2008 on a graph. Remember that Keller took over policing in 2002. Here’s the graph:

(Important note:1996-1998 really did have 0 fatalities, but no ticket data was available from the state.)

Sorry, I see no correlation. Do you? Except maybe a lack of a correlation between fatal wrecks and tickets–although I admit that you can’t draw much of a conclusion from this limited data. Plus TX-114 was recently rebuilt in the area, but I can’t find answers yet on how this affected Westlake’s portion. (EDIT 3/26/10: According to State disputes Westlake speed limit (Fort Worth Star-Telegram),TX-114 reconstruction through Westlake was completed in late 2002.)

But wait, there’s more!

Let’s narrow down Westlake fatalities just to TX 114:

1 fatality on occasional years on Westlake’s TX-114, a far cry from “3-4 fatals a year.”

Texas Municipal Wall of Shame: the 40 most prolific speed traps, ordered by total ticket revenue per citizen.

I am not certain, but I think this covers all tickets written from 2000-2008.

This was calculated from data from the Texas Office of Court Administration’s Trial Court Judicial Data Management System.

This University Park, TX cop did a traffic stop in the middle of an intersection!

Enterprise ordered around 66,000 Chevrolet Impalas with standard side curtain air bags deleted. Every retail Chevrolet Impala buyer gets this, but Enterprise’s renters don’t.

This is important: to save $175 per car, Enterprise deprives renters of a critical safety device. Even worse: much of this upfront cost is earned back once the car is sold. And the worst: when renting and finally selling off these vehicles, Enterprise declined to clearly inform that this car is missing an essential safety feature.

Some studies suggest side air bags give up to a 50% crash survivability improvement in side collisions. Consumer Reports strongly recommends side air bags in all car purchases.

Now I will think twice before renting a car from Enterprise.

(Props to The Truth About Cars for finding the article.)

…it’s certainly a deterrent for me to walk down one side of the street when I see twenty yards in front of me a gang of menacing-looking thugs approaching from the opposite direction.  I’m most likely to cross the street and avoid the possible confrontation.  … However, if I were told as I walked down that sidewalk (with no thugs in sight) that some number of years after I have walked down the sidewalk, a group of thugs might be called together (after much legal wrangling and automatic appeals, etc.) and might possible menace me for having had the audacity to walk down that sidewalk on their side of the street — I probably wouldn’t be deterred.

This argument applies to any punishment far removed from the crime, including Texas’s silly “Driver Responsibility” fees. They have no deterrent effect, and they are not paying for a service.

This is simply a way that liberals and too many Republicans hide new taxes.

This speed trap soaks southbount motorists on the US 75 access road approach to SMU Blvd.

UP City Manager Bob Livingston justified this cash grab with, “The location is one, if not the highest, site for injury and non-injury accidents in the City.”

It’s because of red light runners, Bob. Speed enforcement doesn’t make people respect red lights. Even my 5 year old son could guess that.

If you see this car in your rearview mirror, you won the reverse lottery!

Per today’s press release, the Texas DPS’s holiday “special concern” is “drinking and driving,” but that doesn’t stop them from a colossal revenue grab.

In 2007, at least 80%* of their holiday moving violation tickets were revenue enhancement speeding tickets. Their stated “special focus” suggests the same will happen again.

The Texas Legislature created our 70 mph rural speed limit in 1963. Now, if you can tell me what an arbitrary number, picked out of a hat 45 years ago, has to do with road safety… You get the point: NOTHING!

So, yes, fully eighty percent of TxDPS’s holiday moving violation activity is  revenue enhancement. This is what passes for highway policing?

Thank you, Texas DPS: revenue first.

*80% is from speeding tickets / (total citations - seat belt violations).