Calgary Speed limits to be standard 30km/hr?

[btimbit]

My biggest issue is the frustration this will cause. A frustrated driver is a dangerous driver yet the city seems to be doing everything it can to make driving worse and worse.

If they can back this change up with actual facts, studies and statistics that show certain roads need this change, then I'm all for it. But a blanket rule across the whole city with a cop out "slow = safe, think of the children" message is not the answer.

[SebC]

You know what's better than slow, safe roads? Fast, safe roads!

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by SebC

You know what's better than slow, safe roads? Fast, safe roads!

It would be best if they were full of competent, vigilant, predictable drivers. The roads don't need to change, drivers do.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

I don't understand why the speed would need to be reduced now vs. when these speed limits were introduced in year whatever decades ago.

Are people walking around on the road? Don't you guys use sidewalks? When you approach intersections, do you not look to see if cars are coming / around or do you just wander on in hoping for the best?

A minute to commutes (both ways, every single time you leave your community- so multiple times a day probably?) actually is a big deal to many people. The city has grown and as such commute times generally speaking have grown. Every thing the city has done over the last (forever?) has been to make it harder or more annoying to drive. We live in Canada. Our city's footprint has grown ever larger and affordability on the inner-city side is strictly for millionaires or renting.

There's no reason that speed limits can't be better enforced with technology (auto cameras, which I am confident will pay for themselves in tickets within a year or two at most key residential neighbourhoods) or people can teach their kids and family to avoid wandering onto the roads.

What has changed in society from before to today that warrants this change? Poster who said society is getting soft is absolutely correct. Maybe if you're walking with your kids on the sidewalk get off your phone so they don't wander into traffic without you paying attention.

Drivers are literally the target of everything these days. As Bunk says, I borderline think things get wholesale safer if you move speed limits to the actual street engineered design, and we'll watch people drive more cautiously. Issue is the precious revenues.

Is it not possible that people are observing drivers going too fast because there are already so many impediments to driving that drivers are simply impatient / annoyed? So many areas in the city with lights that could simply be 4-way stops, for example. My community has like 4 playground zones. Takes forever to get out of and not a child in site virtually ever.

Is it soft to try to prevent the deaths of 9 people each year in Calgary? What was soft was adding seatbelts to cars. That and crash testing cars. That’s what made us soft.

While I disagree with a 30km/h speed limit saying that it’s because we are getting soft is a terrible argument. Yes we are getting soft if you define soft as in the risk tolerance for loss of life is going down. This is a good thing.

The argument against needs to be a rational cost benefit analysis. If the argument is Think of the Children vs Society is getting soft Think of the children will always win.

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

I don't understand why the speed would need to be reduced now vs. when these speed limits were introduced in year whatever decades ago...

If anything speed limits could be increased from what they were decades ago due to one major change which has greatly reduced stopping distances: ABS.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

I don't understand why the speed would need to be reduced now vs. when these speed limits were introduced in year whatever decades ago.
...
What has changed in society from before to today that warrants this change? Poster who said society is getting soft is absolutely correct. Maybe if you're walking with your kids on the sidewalk get off your phone so they don't wander into traffic without you paying attention.

That's not the question that needs to be answered. The question is, does the reduction in speed provide any tangible benefits compared to the detriments? Nothing else should matter.

As the article posted, there's a $120 million annual societal cost due to pedestrian accidents. Would the decrease in speed limit reduce that? Would it reduce it enough that the benefits outweigh the detriments?

I mean the first step to determine if a change is required is understanding the outcome. Change for the sake of change is of course not the answer, but neither is lack of change for the sake of keeping the status quo.

[Calgary14]

What the article doesnt mention is how common pedestrian accidents occur in residential areas. How many times did a pedestrain die as a result of a MVC in the past 5 years? Is it common? If so perhaps something should be done, although 30km/hr seems a bit drastic. If not why spend $120M on an issue that isnt an issue?

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

That's not the question that needs to be answered. The question is, does the reduction in speed provide any tangible benefits compared to the detriments? Nothing else should matter.

As the article posted, there's a $120 million annual societal cost due to pedestrian accidents. Would the decrease in speed limit reduce that? Would it reduce it enough that the benefits outweigh the detriments?

I mean the first step to determine if a change is required is understanding the outcome. Change for the sake of change is of course not the answer, but neither is lack of change for the sake of keeping the status quo.

At a cost of like $350,000 per accident i want to see the math on that one.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Weitz

At a cost of like $350,000 per accident i want to see the math on that one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life

Somewhere in the 5-10 million range is the societal value of a human life. 50k per year is another value that is used. So you 45-90 million in deaths plus the injury costs of another 350 accidents. Between deaths and paralysis you get there pretty quick even if 90% of accidents have minimal to zero cost.

[Bunk]

yet the city seems to be doing everything it can to make driving worse and worse.

I think that’s kind of a ludicrous claim. The City puts enormous resources into things big and small to make driving easier.

Just look at the number of massive road works from Crow-Bow construction, to major interchange work all over the city to the Ring Road (and yes the city went to great lengths to facilitate the deal which is a super mega project - and tens of millions to connect into it), to countless small projects like additional dual lefts, widenings, optimizations, lane reversal schemes. There’s a lot you can legitimately criticize the City for, but deliberately tying to make driving worse is not one of them. Come on.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

If anything speed limits could be increased from what they were decades ago due to one major change which has greatly reduced stopping distances: ABS.

Idiots staring at their crotches while driving have more than nullified that advantage.

[Bunk]

If people are interested in reading and understanding the Vision Zero movement (of which speed limits are a part, not close to the whole picture - and the Farrell motion points to), take a look at some readings like this:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/new-yo...aths-1.4771286

Or

http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/

The writings or videos of people like Jeff Speck or Janette Sadik-Khan (who heard the NYC DOT under Mayor Bloomberg) are useful.

[#-3]

I'm curious if there is any evidence that this would improve traffic safety at all?

As far as I know Alberta traffic statistics doesn't keep track speed as a cause of pedestrian related incidents, and they chalk over 3/4 of incidents up too failure to yield by either the driver or pedestrian.

I also believe there is some work out of New Jersey showing speed limits have almost 0 impact on how fast 90some percent of drivers go, when speed limits are set too high, they continue to drive slower, and when speed limits are set too low they continue to drive faster.

And, the Montana reversal of no speed limits policy, has show that existence of speed limits in general has correlation with increased incidents.



Well it seems intuitive that lower speed limits will reduce deaths, we need our policy to be made on facts and not just things that seem right.

It also seem intuitive that since dentists tell us that it is toxic swallow a 1/4 cup of fluoride, that a drop a day in our water would be harmful. But we know that is not how dosing works, and our City counsel stupidly doing things that feel right instead of looking for evidence to backup their hair brained ideas has caused Calgary to be ridiculed by right thinking people from around the world.

Maybe instead of creating a policy that will cause people to drive a wildly varying speeds, distracted be constant monitoring of their speedometers and the worry that they might get fined for driving at what is a reasonable and safe speed. City counsel should look for ways to address the problem of cars and pedestrians not yielding to each other, the real cause of the few problems that their are.

[Mr.Coffee]

the problem here though is that even though you can go calculate societal costs on the healthcare system due to pedestrian accidents or the value of a human life it's pretty difficult to do an all-in analysis on how much time is now burned by delaying everybody that 1 minute.

So it's not really apples to apples, or should I say one is not able to do an apples to apples cost benefit analysis. GGG's analysis of the 1 min scenario doesn't take into account anywhere close to the true cost in terms of impacts to businesses or quality of life.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Bunk

I think that’s kind of a ludicrous claim. The City puts enormous resources into things big and small to make driving easier.

Just look at the number of massive road works from Crow-Bow construction, to major interchange work all over the city to the Ring Road (and yes the city went to great lengths to facilitate the deal which is a super mega project - and tens of millions to connect into it), to countless small projects like additional dual lefts, widenings, optimizations, lane reversal schemes. There’s a lot you can legitimately criticize the City for, but deliberately tying to make driving worse is not one of them. Come on.

these are all good points. Anecdotally, my driving experience is far worse than it used to be, but it's most likely just due to a very noticeably larger population which there's probably only so much a city can do about that.

I borderline was going to suggest the city scrap the playground zones and instead, I login today to see that they're installing them city wide in residential areas. Awesome.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

That's not the question that needs to be answered. The question is, does the reduction in speed provide any tangible benefits compared to the detriments? Nothing else should matter.

As the article posted, there's a $120 million annual societal cost due to pedestrian accidents. Would the decrease in speed limit reduce that? Would it reduce it enough that the benefits outweigh the detriments?

I mean the first step to determine if a change is required is understanding the outcome. Change for the sake of change is of course not the answer, but neither is lack of change for the sake of keeping the status quo.

That 120MM number is low though. It doesn't take into account the unidentifiable number in delaying people city wide by 1 minute per journey out of residential areas in a city that functions largely by employment in a highly consolidated commercial core.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Bunk

I think that’s kind of a ludicrous claim. The City puts enormous resources into things big and small to make driving easier.

Just look at the number of massive road works from Crow-Bow construction, to major interchange work all over the city to the Ring Road (and yes the city went to great lengths to facilitate the deal which is a super mega project - and tens of millions to connect into it), to countless small projects like additional dual lefts, widenings, optimizations, lane reversal schemes. There’s a lot you can legitimately criticize the City for, but deliberately tying to make driving worse is not one of them. Come on.

Can you link to the actual quote so I can get some context? The current link doesn't go to the text you have in the quote.

[bob-loblaw]

I think if it's too slow then drivers don't pay attention and get distracted more - checking texts, looking around, fiddling with radio, etc.

I also think slower moving vehicles give pedestrians a false sense of security in terms of taking risks.

With more cars having pedestrian detection, and eventually self-driving cars, I'm assuming a lot of these accidents will happen less frequently.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by zamler

Can you link to the actual quote so I can get some context? The current link doesn't go to the text you have in the quote.

https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpo...&postcount=121

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by bob-loblaw

I think if it's too slow then drivers don't pay attention and get distracted more - checking texts, looking around, fiddling with radio, etc.

I also think slower moving vehicles give pedestrians a false sense of security in terms of taking risks.

With more cars having pedestrian detection, and eventually self-driving cars, I'm assuming a lot of these accidents will happening less frequently.

The best thing for public safety ultimately will be for humans to stop driving and for machines have capability to do it. Humans are abysmal drivers.

The scale of the carnage is immense:

“Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44.”

Like a 9-11 of preventable deaths every day. Or an airliner crashing every two hours or so.