Yes, the speed limit ordinance is about imposing new taxes, higher fines, and penalties
With little fanfare, the Chicago City Council took a break last week from attempting to ban gas stoves, bravely denouncing hate speech, and other empty virtue signaling, and voted on October 30 to reduce the citywide speed limit from 30 to 25 mph. Despite the huge impact this ordinance will have on Chicago residents, it has received surprisingly little press coverage. Perhaps the Chicago media were more focused on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed $300 million property tax increase, or his appointment of disbarred anti-Semitic attorney Reverend Mitchell Johnson as president of the Chicago Board of Education (disbarred for taking money from his client).
The ordinance takes effect on January 1, 2026.
While the speed limit ordinance has received some excellent coverage online (including in these pages), there are a few points that still require attention.
First, the effect of the law will be to turn the city into one huge speed trap. The new speed limit applies to all streets, including most major arterial streets (think most of Western and Cicero Avenues, for example). While sections of a few major arterial streets (and all highways such as Lake Shore Drive) under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Transportation are excluded, that exclusion offers little comfort to motorists, since most major arterial streets are still covered. No reasonable motorist would expect a four-lane street such as Western or Cicero Avenue to have a 25 mph speed limit, so the city can be assured of ensnaring many safe drivers. Ironically, there is almost no speed limit enforcement on Lake Shore Drive, which, as every driver who has driven it at night knows, turns into a real-life version of the 1975 movie "Death Race 2000" after 10 p.m.
However, the largest impact on residents will of course be financial. Mayor Lori Lightfoot famously said that Chicago was “addicted” to fines and penalties, but then proceeded to lower the ticketing threshold for Chicago’s automated speed enforcement cameras from 10 mph over the speed limit to only six. Lightfoot's change caused revenues and fines to skyrocket from $63 million to $142 million in one year. Mayor Johnson’s 2025 budget projects fines and penalties of $326 million — more than the proposed property tax increase — but does not break out the speed camera revenue separately from red light cameras. Additionally, this huge increase arrives before the 2026 reduction in the speed limit becomes effective.
Nevertheless, here is another oft-overlooked point: Motorists may think they will catch a break, and that perhaps the city will not further reduce the threshold for speed camera enforcement as Mayor Lightfoot did. But the speed camera law on the books (which is separate from the new speed limit law) is already written so that the speed cameras can and will ticket all drivers who drive 31 mph or faster. The speed camera law is based upon a motorist’s speed relative to the speed limit, and not based upon an absolute speed. Thus, once the new speed limit is effective, the enforcement speed camera threshold will automatically drop. So driving 31 mph will cost $35, and driving 36 mph will cost $100.
It isn’t possible to determine the impact of the new ordinance upon revenues, because Chicago doesn’t report the breakdown of $35 tickets and $100 tickets. But a 50 percent increase would probably be a reasonable estimate.
Of course, these speed cameras are ostensibly all about the children, and not revenue. There are 162 speed cameras near parks and schools, although the city permits up to 300. Park speed cameras are active from 6 am to 11 pm, and school cameras from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., despite the fact that these sites are devoid of any human activity for much of the time.
If there was any doubt that this is a cash grab and not a safety measure, look at a related resolution passed on the same day as the speed limit ordinance. It creates an interagency working group consisting of (among others), the Finance and Transportation Departments, City Clerk, and Office of Equity and Racial Justice. The working group is charged with “designing a more equitable enforcement system, including fines and fees reform”. So what, you might ask, does that mean? The preamble of the resolution (all the Whereas clauses) gives us a clue when it states (among other things): (1) three of the five speed cameras with revenues over $2 million were on the South Side; (2) “the ability to pay precludes [sic] upper in-income households from the most punitive effects of tickets and fines;” (3) poor and working class families are more likely to incur penalties for non-or late payment; and (4) recommends developing graduated responses to address income inequities.
Yet the real goal is this: Although few are willing to say it out loud, several members of City Council have spoken in committee meetings about the possibility of income-based fines and other city fees. For example: In one recent hearing, aldermen discussed an income-based utility tax whereby the higher consumers’ income, the higher the rate of tax paid on their utility bills. This would require a change in law by the state legislature, which seems unlikely in this climate, but isn't out of the question. This vision would create an even bigger bureaucracy whereby the city would have to receive your income tax returns in order to determine the level of fines, which would undoubtedly be even higher than they are now.
Therefore, in summary, given Mayor Johnson’s seemingly insatiable appetite for human services spending, and the looming city deficit, it seems likely that this new speed limit will be used to greatly increase fines and penalties. By setting an unreasonably low speed limit, the city will create a huge new revenue stream. While Chicago has put some programs in place to reduce the burden of these fines and penalties, these apply only to the poorest residents, and the cumbersome bureaucratic process and tight requirements ensure that this relief will be unavailable to most residents. Consequently, we can count on even more fines and penalties imposed on residents, property tax increases, and other fees to come.
