City cuts Shevlin Park Rd. speed limit to 40 mph

Following community input and engineering analysis, the city of Bend announced Monday that the speed limit will be lowered in coming days from 45 to 40 mph on a stretch of Northwest Shevlin Park Road.

The area to be affected is between the Mount Washington Drive roundabout and 200 feet west of Northwest Park Commons Drive, officials said.

The new speed limit signs will have orange warning flags on top for a few weeks to call attention to the changes, the city said. Communications Director Anne Aurand said the new signs are expected to go up late this week or early next week.

As with other recent speed limit reductions in recent months, this one was “initiated by a combination of citizen requests and city staff in response to changing traffic and development along these corridors,” the city announcement said.

In Oregon, speeds for roads within the city that are not highways or local residential streets, like this, are set by the Department of Transportation.

The new speed limits are established based on a traffic study that looks at existing driving speeds, road characteristics, adjacent land use, access locations and more. It can take up to a year to complete this speed study. Most of these requests were started this past summer.

The city asked drivers to pay attention to the new speed changes and be aware of conditions. Oregon’s “basic rule” speed law requires driving at the speed that is safe for conditions – this may be a speed slower than the posted speed. With winter here, it is especially important to pay attention to speed. Drive safely.