This stretch of road in Salem, Missouri has a speed limit of 35 for westbound traffic, 20 for eastbound traffic. I don’t get it – there’s no school nearby, although there is a public park/ swimming poo/ community center – viz, places where children are likely to be coming and going. But that doesn’t explain the 15mph discrepancy for traffic in one direction or the other.
Can anyone make sense of this?
It looks to me like heading west is heading out of the built up part of the town. So I can see the speed limit going up to 35.
Heading east is probably heading into a pedestrian area and thus the low speed limit. Much more a neighborhood than just a road.
Yeah, looking at the street view I don’t see anywhere that the speeds are different in one direction. Further east it’s 20mph both ways, heading west it becomes 35, further west it’s 45. There are signs directly across from each other with different numbers but they indicate the change in speed based on direction.
I don’t think you are comparing the right signs to each other. It looks like over that stretch of road, the speed limit is 20 mph in both directions. This is the speed limit sign heading east on W Rolla St. It’s 20 mph.
Here is the sign heading westbound to that stretch of W. Rolla Rd. Speed limit 20 mph. Here is the sign on northbound N. McArthur Ave, which actually feeds directly into westbound W. Rolla St. The speed limit is 20 mph.
I recall at least one street in West Virginia that did have different speed limits on each side of the road. A steep downhill slope leads to a sharp turn, which caused grossly asymmetric risks to speed in each direction. Missing the curve heading downhill would put you right into an apartment building set below the road grade. The consequences of failing brakes or too much speed are high in that direction. 20 mph speed limit on that side. The other direction leads up with no particular sharp curves ahead. 30 mph on that side, as I recall. A situation like that is somewhat obvious though.
There is actually one place where on the road you flagged where asymmetric risk might justify a different speed limit on each side. A few blocks from your coordinates, traffic heading east on W. Rolla St. is meant to turn right onto N. McArthur Ave. Traffic continuing on W. Rolla St. is meant to yield to oncoming traffic coming from N. McArthur Ave the right. A lower speed limit for eastbound traffic would probably both reduce the chance of misjudgment and the consequences of a mistake but, as I note above, the speed limit on both sides is 20 mph.
There’s a road here that is the border between two towns. The speed limit is 35 in one town and 30 in the other going in opposite directions, but that is consistent with most speed limits in those two towns.