The Willow Street on ramp speed limit has changed to 30 mph. I challenged my ticket in court and got as close to winning my ticket as possible. The judge discharged my ticket. I don’t think he wanted to give me a total win, because I argued that the speed limit was illegal. I did prove it, but the judge interpreted “through traffic” differently than traffic engineers and since “through traffic” isn’t defined in statutes, I couldn’t refute what the judge was saying. BUT like I said I did enough that he discharged the ticket ($0 fine). I think the judges concern was that if the signs were proven to be illegal, then thousands of tickets were illegal.
After Joe Rose’s article in the Oregonian, I made a ton of calls to ODOT and Portland Bureau of Transportation doing research and I think I made some people nervous when I pointed out the MUTCD rules, the 85th % speeds, and Oregon Revised Statutes. I was even researching if ODOT/PBoT was breaking federal law under MUTCD. In any case, they changed the limit. The 85th % speed on this street is 35-41 mph according to PBoT records. As long as the radar van keeps the margin of error at 10mph over, then people driving in the 85th % speed should be ok going forward. It is a tricky street.
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