Inslee vetoes proposed raise to Washington speed limits

OLYMPIA — In the first use of Gov. Jay Inslee’s veto power in 2015, he struck out a section of a bill Wednesday morning that finds it is safe to raise the speed limit from 70 to 75 mph on parts of Interstate 90 and other state highways, but enabled a future speed increase after study.

Inslee’s partial veto left intact sections of House Bill 2181 that allow raising the speed limit to 75 on a road where an investigation finds a speed-limit increase would be safe.

The governor, who wore an orange tie in honor of a transportation workers’ safety commemoration Wednesday morning, said his experiences meeting the family members of people killed in auto wrecks had influenced his consideration of the bill.

“I understand that for all of us, shaving a few minutes off here and there is handy,” Inslee said, “but … I know the face of speeding, and it can be deadly.”

He noted the bill would originally have authorized a 75 mph limit only on a section of Interstate 90, but its reach had been extended to affect potentially thousands of roads before it reached his desk. He also said that before he struck out the language, the bill was “putting the cart before the horse” by enabling a 75 mph speed limit at the same time as it commissioned a study of the change’s risk.

“We’ve got to do things in the right order,” Inslee said, “which is to study the safety, then make a decision about the wisdom or lack of wisdom of increasing the speed with the attendant safety risk.”