At Monday night’s meeting, the Destin City Council discussed lowering the speed limit on all city-owned streets and roadways to 30 mph.

Here’s how we got to this point: ⤵️

The discussion around lowering speed limits on city-owned roads came about from recent issues with low speed vehicles on Airport Road, along with the Multi-Modal Transportation District.

Councilman Dewey Destin brought up the idea of lowering the speed limit on Airport Road back in July versus banning low speed vehicles as he feels that reckless driving is the bigger issue.

“I agree with the dangerous situation we have on Airport Road,” said Destin in the July meeting. “However, why don’t we do something really innovative and try to address excessive speed.”

🗣Councilman Destin went on to explain how get got behind low speed vehicle on Airport Road, which by state law is required to be able to go 35 miles an hour, and had cars swerving around them “acting in a totally reckless behavior” because they were traveling at 35mph.

“What we need to do is lower the speed limit on Airport Road to 25mph, then people would do 35mph,” he said. “There have been three people killed on Airport Road within my memory and all were on bicycles. You’ve got every traffic problem on Airport Road that is out on Highway 98 right now. We need to lower the speed limit and slow the traffic down.”

On Monday night, his comments hadn’t changed.

“My intention really was to just lower the speed limit on Airport Road,” said Destin. “They are doing the same speed on Airport that they are doing on Highway 98. They are passing me and I’m doing 45mph, and that’s dangerous.”

A motion was then made by Council-member Destin to direct staff to bring back a separate ordinance lowering the speed limit on all city owned streets and roadways to 30 mph. The exception will be for those roads with lower speed limits already in place. 

• The motion passed 6-1 with Council-member Rodney Braden dissenting.