Drivers in Rancho Santa Margarita are now seeing reduced speed limits across the city.
In an effort to make roads safer and slow down drivers, the city has updated more than 75 speed limit signs across the Rancho Santa Margarita with reduced speed limits.
Since September, the city has been working to update the signs to “reduce accidents and improve mobility for pedestrians, bicyclists, and children,” the city said in a news release.
“Reducing motorist travel speeds will also allow increased reaction time for both drivers and pedestrians in an effort to avoid collisions,” the city said. “Studies show that the faster the speed, the higher the risk of a severe crash that could lead to serious injuries or deaths.”
In Rancho Santa Margarita, 45 roadway segments were reduced, and 19 were left the same. No speed limits were increased, and no freeway speed limits were changed.
Most speed limits were reduced by 5 miles per hour, but on the street segment from Las Mesitas to Ria, the speed limit was reduced from 40 to 30 mph. It was the only roadway reduced by 10 mph in the city.
Similar to Anaheim, a city that also began to reduce its speed limits in August, Rancho Santa Margarita made its speed limit changes based on a traffic survey that examined how fast people were driving throughout the city.
The city said this was not an attempt to issue more tickets to speeding drivers and is never a motivation for the city.
Funds from tickets issued do not cover the salaries of deputies, patrol units, or other equipment. While the city has worked to update the speed limits, Rancho Santa Margarita Police have alerted drivers and given warnings about the changes.
Rancho Santa Margarita previously saw changes to its speed limits in 2019, when it last updated its survey. Used to determine speed limits, the surveys are updated every few years and consider how fast drivers travel around the city and pedestrian patterns. The next deadline for an updated survey was April 2026, but the city decided to complete its survey and adjust its speed limits early.
In 2021, the state adopted AB 43, which changed the way that cities updated speed limits.
Prior to its passing, cities were expected to set speed limits at the 85th percentile of how fast drivers were going. Now, cities can consider specific conditions of roadways, including roadway geometrics, adjacent land uses and the presence of pedestrians.
