The highest ticketed playground zones in Calgary.
I’m all for playgrounds and playground zones but is the playground along Elbow Drive critical? Maybe it’s time to relocate the playground to a more kid friendly location? Is it currently heavily used?
1) 3200 Elbow Drive sw - 13.9% of city wide tickets
2) 1100 12 ave sw - 10.2%
3) 1600 10 ave sw - 9.6%
4) 1000 20 ave nw - 6.6%
5) 1500 9 ave se - 5.3%
6) 2200 26 ave sw - 4.2%
7) 2400 5 ave nw - 3.7%
8) 700 58 ave sw - 3.4%
9) 4800 Dalhousie drive nw - 3.3%
10) 1200 Northmount drive nw - 3.2%
All playground zones in Calgary (mapped):
https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/v...3.3555,51.2038
Elbow drive sw was the most enforced.
Pieces of the cbc article (not sure how to embed)
"It's not ideal for the safety of kids, but police aren't the ones who set up where the playground zones are or where the schools are, for that matter," he said.
The playground zone along Elbow Drive S.W., for instance, sees about 17,000 cars on an average weekday, according to the city's latest traffic counts.
And the No. 2 zone — the one on 12th Avenue S.W. next to Connaught School in the Beltline — gets about 13,000 vehicles per day.
....
He says the No. 2 playground zone outside Connaught School, for example, is seen as "a joke" by many drivers, who believe police target that location mainly because it's easy to catch people exceeding 30 km/h.
Hart noted that section of 12th Avenue S.W. is a one-way road with multiple lanes and said that type of road design tends to make 30 km/h feel especially slow compared to travelling at the same speed on a more narrow, two-way street.
Then there's the schoolyard itself, which is mostly behind a fence. And, Hart noted, there are rarely students there when most of the tickets are being issued.
Kids at Connaught School get out of class at 2:30 p.m., but two-thirds of the tickets in that zone were issued after 3 p.m., according to the data, with 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. being the most-ticketed hour of the day.
....
Hart believes the focus on zones at times like this damages the credibility of speed enforcement.
"People have a legitimate right to look at this and go: 'This is crazy.' Because it is," he said.
"That concerns me. If we're going to use enforcement, we can't erode its credibility. And I think we're at a point where it's pretty eroded. So that's a big concern."
Larry Leach shares that concern.
As president of the Crossroads Community Association in northeast Calgary, he's heard from many residents who question the timing of playground zone enforcement.
"Having the enforcement on a weekday after 5 p.m. seems a little pointless when you're taking school zones and amalgamating them with playground zones, as we have," Leach said.
Full article:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ions-1.5130180