Commuters who take Third Street to downtown Coeur d’Alene every day will soon need to give themselves a few extra minutes to get to work.

The Coeur d’Alene City Council unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday night that will change the speed limits along the popular street.

“What I’m asking for tonight,” city engineer Chris Bosley told the council, “is to provide a little more consistency in our speed limits downtown. As a general rule, [almost] every street south of Harrison is 25 miles per hour.”

The amendment to the current ordinance dictating the Third Street speed limit essentially creates a line of demarcation at the corner of Third and Harrison. From Harrison south to Front Street, the speed limit will drop from 30 mph to 25 mph.

The decision also corrects a brief anomaly that saw southbound drivers from Interstate 90 travel comfortably at 35 mph until they hit Spokane, where they had to drop their speed to 30 mph, not in keeping with parallel streets that waited another block before dropping to 25 mph.

“That probably had to do with the intersection configuration that was at Harrison and Third years ago,” Bosley said, “but that has [since] been corrected.”

The new amendment keeps the speed limit consistent from the interstate to Harrison Avenue at a steady 35 mph.

“North of Harrison,” Bosley explained, “the street is pretty wide. Everything is set back quite a ways. But then, when you get down to south of Harrison, the lanes narrow considerably … On-street parking becomes present in this section, as well.”

Those factors and a changing pedestrian landscape along the street contributed to the decision to bring the matter to the attention of the council.

“Sight distance, the presence of cyclists, the presence of pedestrians,” Bosley listed, “things like that, and the [southern narrowing] allignment of the roadway itself [led to the change]. There’s a row of trees that makes it difficult to see, so reducing the speed limits would have a positive impact on that.”

Most amendments are enacted overnight, but because speed changes require legal publication, the change might take place as early as Friday, March 6. Councilmember Amy Evans said the change was a long time coming.

“Thank you for bringing this forward,” Evans said. “As you know well, this has been a big concern of mine for the last six years. I’ve talked to many of our citizens about their concerns, especially citizens who live on Third Street and see accidents at that intersection.”