Reader question: Why is Monroe Avenue 25 mph in Green Bay but goes up to 35 mph in Allouez?

Answer: Speeding concerns brought down Monroe Avenue's speed limit on the Green Bay side in 2001 through an ordinance passed by the City Council after decades of policies that looked to do the opposite across the city.

Allouez, for its part, does not have such independence.

Cars may go 35 mph on the village's side of South Monroe Avenue and Riverside Drive but are limited to 25 mph once in Green Bay.

It's a limit many do not obey. The stretch of road between Grignon and Eliza streets has been identified as one of the city's numerous speeding hotspots by the Green Bay Police Department's traffic enforcement unit.

Aldo Leopold Community School's marquee sign was yellow on a recent school day morning. "Drive slowly, children at play," it implored drivers from the direction of Allouez.

Tom Schuurmans, traffic engineer for the city, and Sean Gehin, Allouez's director of public works, pointed to the need to conduct speed studies and collect crash data to justify any change in speed limits.

Studies in 1967 led Green Bay's Traffic Commission to recommend raising the 25-mph speed limits across seven sections of some of the city's major roads. Avenues including Velp and Shawano would be 35 mph, according to an Oct. 28, 1961, Green Bay Press-Gazette article. South Monroe Avenue from East Mason Street to the city limits with Allouez would be 30 mph.

"In all cases, the recommended speed increases are designed to create a more realistic speed limit on the streets involved" the commission's report said. "In the specific cases, it is believed that the increase in the legal speed limit will reduce the actual average speed of the vehicles on the street."

Schuurmans suggested that speed limits mattered less in how fast people would drive than the road environment. Wide, smooth roads with few intersections make people comfortable driving faster; narrow roads with turns and convergences make people go slower, an instinct that traffic calming policies take advantage of. All the speed limit signs could be taken down in the city, and people would generally still drive at the same speed they normally would given the road conditions, Schuurmans said.

This was what the city found through the 1960s and '70s. Traffic studies observed that motorists drove about the same speed no matter the speed limit, according to Press-Gazette articles from the era. The city recommended increase after increase in the speed limits across more of its roadways. The speed limit of Monroe Avenue from Main Street to what's now University Avenue was raised to 30 mph in 1967, and Monroe Avenue from Walnut Street down was set at 30 mph in 1979.

Schuurmans added that no matter the speed limit, drivers would always give themselves a 7-mph cushion: a 30-mph limit meant consistent 37 mph driving; a 25-mph limit meant reliable 32 mph driving.

"We like to set the speed limit at what people are going, because if you under post, people are going to constantly be noncompliant," he said.

However, speed studies that set limits can be overruled. Speed limits in Green Bay are set by ordinances passed by the City Council.

Schuurmans remembered lowering the speed limit of Monroe Avenue from 30 mph to 25 mph after lobbying efforts led by then-Astor Neighborhood Association president Mike Nass.

At the request of two council members, the Traffic Commission in 2000 recommended reducing the speed limit of Monroe Avenue to 25 mph. The police department had been targeting speedsters on busy streets and school zones, like at Aldo Leopold school along Monroe Avenue, for at least four years by then. An ordinance codified the recommendation in 2001, at which time Nass described the sequence of events as: "We forced the issue, and it got brought up before the transportation committee, and neighbors showed up. It got through."

Schuurmans characterized such decision-making as "bending to the people who you represent." To change a speed limit, he believed, was a political decision at the end of the day, regardless of the data collection involved.

As for Allouez, the village has little freedom to change such limits on its major thruways, no matter the village's political will.

For example, on Webster Avenue, after residents complained the village tried to lower the speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph in 1994 and again in 2003. At the time, Brown County Highway Commissioner Roger Kolb did not support the first change because data did not show the high speeds that people thought were happening, he said. Then, in 2003, Kolb told the village that Brown County would only agree to drop the limit to 30 mph, an offer the village took up and voted 5-2 to pass.

In the case of South Monroe Avenue, which becomes Riverside Drive at the Allouez Terrace intersection, speed limits are similarly out of the village's hands because it's also a state highway (57). The village also does not own the highway, Gehin said.

Generally, state law dictates speed limits, he said, pointing to Chapter 346 of Wisconsin statute. Unless otherwise posted, speed limits are typically fixed at 35 mph in "any outlying district within the corporate limits of a city or village" and highways in a semiurban district outside of city and village limits.

Schuurmans also said the village wasn't large enough to maintain the connecting highway on its own. Any speed limit change would require permission from the owner, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, both engineers said.

Do you have a question about Green Bay? Send them to Jesse Lin at 920-834-4250 or jlin@gannett.com for an answer every week.

Reader questions why Monroe Avenue speed limit is 25 mph in Green Bay but 35 mph in Allouez