City to Reduce All School Zone Speed Limits to 15 Mph by 2029

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced that Sammy’s Law, which provides for the rollout of a 15 mph speed limit in local school zones, would be in effect for all such zones citywide by the end of his term in 2029.

Mamdani added that he expects to change to cover 800 school zones by the end of this year. This will impact 700 school zones that currently maintain a speed limit of 20 mph, and 100 additional zones that maintain a speed limit of 25 mph. The complete citywide rollout is slated to cover 2,300 districts.

Sammy’s Law, which is named after a 12 year-old boy who was killed by a speeding driver back in 2013, passed the City Council in 2024. Sammy Cohen Eckstein’s mom, Amy Cohen, founded a group called Families for Safe Streets that advocated for the law’s passage.

“NYPD data shows us that speeding causes 25 percent of all traffic fatalities. It is one of the primary causes of pedestrian death in New York City,” Mamdani said at a March 16 press conference. “In the years since Sammy was killed, almost 2,900 New Yorkers have been killed by dangerous driving on our streets. More than 100 of them [were] children.”

“In addition to speed limit reduction, our DOT is working to slow vehicles and improve pedestrian safety around the most dangerous locations near schools by upgrading intersection design and incorporating speed bumps so every child can get to class safely,” he added.

Mamdani then indicated that he believed his hands were tied when it came to universally reducing the speed limit on other New York City streets, saying that such a change would be up to the City Council. Other street safety advocates believe that such a widespread reduction, albeit to 20 mph rather than 15 mph, is already possible through Sammy’s Law.

“It is from our Law Department’s assessment that in order to change the citywide speed limit in one fell swoop, that requires a local administrative change to the city administrative code,” he said. “That is a change that I would support.”

A spokesperson for the City Council later appeared to disagree with Mamdani’s assertion on this front, telling the press that “under Sammy’s Law, the NYC Department of Transportation already has the authority to lower the speed limit in specific locations.”

It appears that the Mamdani administration is already anticipating potential pushback on the school zone speed limit reduction from some drivers, as evidenced by remarks given by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams at the March 16 presser.

“I’m sure that there will be drivers who are going to be upset about this announcement, and I want to say something to them,” he said. “I represented a very car-heavy district, and I will say, honestly, this is probably the least favorite advocacy of my mom, who’s also a driver. I just want drivers to understand that we just have to drive slower, and that includes myself.”

Republican City Council Member Joann Ariola of Queens, a political opponent of Mamdani, criticized the announcement.

“This is just another attempt at picking the pockets of middle- and working-class residents of the outer boroughs, while making it even more difficult to own a car than it already is,” she said in a Facebook post. It appeared that she was referring to speed cameras, which fine drivers $50 for speeding in school zones.

If any further local uproar was immediately evident, it was perhaps best captured by the classic back-and-forth of car owners and bike riders online, who engaged in maximalist arguments on the city’s popular r/micromobility Reddit page.

One user, Remarkable-Cow3421, dropped the provocative conversation-starter after the news broke: “There shouldn’t be cars in school zones!”

“Do you think ‘school zones’ are magical permanent force fields? School zones are just zones in which children are walking to/from school and are more at risk of being hit by traffic,” user AgentBorn4289 shot back. “If we ban cars from current school zones, children will still have to walk to where the cars are.”

Remarkable-Cow3421 adopted the premise, clarifying that he believed schools should have private streets blocked to traffic, citing 14th St. and Times Square as examples of car-free zones.