Councillors green light public engagement on lowering city speed limits

[GGG]

So speed limits like in Europe you say

Germany

areas
City limits
There is a general speed limit within built up areas, which are marked by distinctive rectangular yellow signs showing the name of the village, town or city, of 50 km/h (31 mph) but residential areas usually have a lower posted speed limit of 30 km/h (18 mph). On arterial roads, the speed limit may be raised to 60 or 70 km/h (37 to 43 mph); this higher speed limit will be posted in the usual way. Motorways crossing cities count as normal Autobahns and can be used for travel within larger cities in many cases.

Netherlands

A woonerf (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈʋoːnɛrf]) is a living street, as originally implemented in the Netherlands and in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium. Techniques include shared space, traffic calming, and low speed limits. Under Article 44 of the Dutch traffic code, motorised traffic in a woonerf or "recreation area" is restricted to walking pace.[1]

In urban residential areas, 30 km/h (19 mph) zones are found, as well as home zones (woonerven), in which vehicles must adhere to a walking pace (15 km/h (9 mph) is tolerated).[6] Contrarily, some four-lane urban arterial roads have a posted 70 km/h (44 mph) speed limit.

France and the UK are adding more 30km zones in residential areas.

All quotes are from Wikipedia. Italy is 50km.

In general there is a global trend of reducing speed limits

I still think 30 is absurdly slow but 40 is pretty reasonable in residential.

[redforever]

How many accidents actually happen in residential areas? And is the cause of the accident excessive speed or some other factor?

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

Safety concerns are used as a smokescreen. They have nothing to do with this motion. It is a f...n' cash grab and nothing else. We do not have a single city street that was not designed to accommodate 60 km/hr.

With what this is going to potentially cost, it can’t be a cash grab. The police say it will be hard to enforce, the initial implementation costs could approach $800mm and the ongoing cost increases are in the tens of millions per year. Unless they put camera on every single block, which they are currently barred from doing, they’d never recoup the money.

They’ll frame it as improving safety and it’s worth it if it saves even one life. Anyone who disagrees doesn’t care about safety on the streets and is the reason why the lowering of the limit is needed.

[kermitology]

I don’t live in Calgary anymore, but I fully support this. I also support going lower to 30 so that you have a chance to redefine the street design that 50km/h doesn’t afford you.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by kermitology

I don’t live in Calgary anymore, but I fully support this. I also support going lower to 30 so that you have a chance to redefine the street design that 50km/h doesn’t afford you.

I believe current residential street width is dictated by fire truck access.

What kind of things would you change on street scapes with slower speed limits?

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by kermitology

I don’t live in Calgary anymore, but I fully support this. I also support going lower to 30 so that you have a chance to redefine the street design that 50km/h doesn’t afford you.

It's a good idea for some streets, and a terrible idea for others

[skudr248]

European residential streets are a lot smaller than Calgary’s.. Calgary residential streets are massive compared to anything in Europe so there is no point to even use that as a comparison

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by skudr248

European residential streets are a lot smaller than Calgary’s.. Calgary residential streets are massive compared to anything in Europe so there is no point to even use that as a comparison

Correct. And a Dutch “woonerf” is better envisioned as a large sprawling row house condo complex, with the streets being more like the complex’s car park. Nothing like the streets in Calgary.

[GGG]

The wide streets of Calgary residential actually make speed limits more important. Narrow streets naturally limit speed whereas Calgary’s wide roads make roads feel safer therefore higher speeds naturally feel more comfortable. The visibility of pedestrians isn’t improved on a wide road from a narrow one and the presence of parked cars on both sides makes visibility worse.

The comparison to Europe was a response to Lockes question of what does the rest of the world do. In general world wide there is a push to lower speed limits. Things like Vision Zero throughout the US.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by GGG

That’s only true on highways where differential speed is a factor in accidents and encourages passing.

I don't think I believe this at all.

If you want to slow down residential streets, put more trees near them, paint more center lines on them, paint shoulder lines to define parking areas, paint more crosswalks, empower communities to do the painting themselves if it's a budget problem, many community associations will do it. make the streets feel narrower and people will slow down.

The vast vast majority of drivers will drive the speed that feels comfortable to them, regardless of the posted speed limit. Having some people drive a speed that feels uncomfortably slow on a road because they are sticklers for rules is breading conflict that creates risk. If you want slower roads make it less comfortable to go fast by making the roads feel narrower without making them narrower.

Even if we can't agree on what the speed limit should be, I think we can both agree what the end impact of this change will people. People will continue to drive whatever speed they have always driven on residential streets unmonitored and unenforced. While police resources are wasted on areas that accidentally fall under these new guidelines and have nothing to do with the pedestrian safety arguments you are making, because those will be the easiest places to rack up fines, and speeding tickets as they are currently issued have nothing to do with a concern for community safety.

[SebC]

I disagree with crosswalks as traffic calming. Unmarked crosswalks should be the norm. Too many marked crosswalks and drivers will stop recognizing the unmarked ones.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by #-3

I don't think I believe this at all.

If you want to slow down residential streets, put more trees near them, paint more center lines on them, paint shoulder lines to define parking areas, paint more crosswalks, empower communities to do the painting themselves if it's a budget problem, many community associations will do it. make the streets feel narrower and people will slow down.

The vast vast majority of drivers will drive the speed that feels comfortable to them, regardless of the posted speed limit. Having some people drive a speed that feels uncomfortably slow on a road because they are sticklers for rules is breading conflict that creates risk. If you want slower roads make it less comfortable to go fast by making the roads feel narrower without making them narrower.

Even if we can't agree on what the speed limit should be, I think we can both agree what the end impact of this change will people. People will continue to drive whatever speed they have always driven on residential streets unmonitored and unenforced. While police resources are wasted on areas that accidentally fall under these new guidelines and have nothing to do with the pedestrian safety arguments you are making, because those will be the easiest places to rack up fines, and speeding tickets as they are currently issued have nothing to do with a concern for community safety.

Painting lines on residential streets would get crazy expensive.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by SebC

I disagree with crosswalks as traffic calming. Unmarked crosswalks should be the norm. Too many marked crosswalks and drivers will stop recognizing the unmarked ones.

Drivers ignore the unmarked ones anyway. But proper crosswalks should absolutely be traffic calming.

Proper bump-outs, speed tables on high volume pedestrian crossings would actually reduce speed and increase pedestrian safety far more than putting up a sign and hoping drivers slow down. On the streets with the biggest concerns, the correct move would be to prioritize the pedestrian and active transport realm over the car realm.

As an example, Elbow Drive's infamously long playground zone. If the pedestrian crossing at the Rideau Bridge/32nd ave was also a speed table, it would slow vehicles down much more effectively than the playground zone sign and the threat of a speed camera one direction.

5th Street W between Elbow Drive and 17th Ave is in desperate need of traffic calming, and while lots of money has been spent on painting crosswalks and adding the cheap pedestrian lights because a couple of the unmarked spots were such problem zones, but a little more money would have made things a lot safer (bumpouts specifically would help avoid the need to step out into the street so that drivers could actually see that a pedestrian crossing, playing chicken with people trying to go 50.

Changing speed limits is a cash grab and 'safety theatre' to pretend like they're doing something, without addressing the actual problems with the streets, which that they're designed to prioritize making it easier for vehicles to go faster, rather than making people safer.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Painting lines on residential streets would get crazy expensive.

Overbuilding roads and prioritizing cars as a transport mode is also crazy expensive, but we keep doing it. Painting lines is a drop in the bucket.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by #-3

I don't think I believe this at all.

If you want to slow down residential streets, put more trees near them, paint more center lines on them, paint shoulder lines to define parking areas, paint more crosswalks, empower communities to do the painting themselves if it's a budget problem, many community associations will do it. make the streets feel narrower and people will slow down.

The vast vast majority of drivers will drive the speed that feels comfortable to them, regardless of the posted speed limit. Having some people drive a speed that feels uncomfortably slow on a road because they are sticklers for rules is breading conflict that creates risk. If you want slower roads make it less comfortable to go fast by making the roads feel narrower without making them narrower.

Even if we can't agree on what the speed limit should be, I think we can both agree what the end impact of this change will people. People will continue to drive whatever speed they have always driven on residential streets unmonitored and unenforced. While police resources are wasted on areas that accidentally fall under these new guidelines and have nothing to do with the pedestrian safety arguments you are making, because those will be the easiest places to rack up fines, and speeding tickets as they are currently issued have nothing to do with a concern for community safety.

I agree with you that trees and boulevards extending into intersections are far better than speed limits. Fundamentally speed is a design problem.

I disagree having people drive uncomfortably slow creates risk. You’d have to explain that one further to me. In general I believe accidents are caused by inattentive drivers rather than reckless drivers. If this is true (And I have never found any good information on it) then convincing these general law abiding Drivers to slow down will reduce the consequences and frequency of collisions. If collisions are caused by the ####### driving 80 in a 50 then this won’t work. School zones have been shown to reduce speed in school zones so the assertion that people will drive the speed they feel like is not true. It is influenced both by feeling and posted limit.

I agree with you that current speed enforcement is poorly done and is a revenue Center rather than a safety program. Speed enforcement should have KPIs based on reducing the conditions that cause incidents in high incident locations. It doesn’t always need to be tickets either. The electronic radar signs training people what the speed limit feels like is important too.

http://conf.tac-atc.ca/english/resou...dfs/lazic2.pdf

The above link is a study done in Saskatoon and found that people speed less through school zones. You still don’t have compliance with the limit but lowers limits lowers speeds.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by GGG

I agree with you that trees and boulevards extending into intersections are far better than speed limits. Fundamentally speed is a design problem.

I disagree having people drive uncomfortably slow creates risk. You’d have to explain that one further to me. In general I believe accidents are caused by inattentive drivers rather than reckless drivers. If this is true (And I have never found any good information on it) then convincing these general law abiding Drivers to slow down will reduce the consequences and frequency of collisions. If collisions are caused by the ####### driving 80 in a 50 then this won’t work. School zones have been shown to reduce speed in school zones so the assertion that people will drive the speed they feel like is not true. It is influenced both by feeling and posted limit.

I agree with you that current speed enforcement is poorly done and is a revenue Center rather than a safety program. Speed enforcement should have KPIs based on reducing the conditions that cause incidents in high incident locations. It doesn’t always need to be tickets either. The electronic radar signs training people what the speed limit feels like is important too.

http://conf.tac-atc.ca/english/resou...dfs/lazic2.pdf

The above link is a study done in Saskatoon and found that people speed less through school zones. You still don’t have compliance with the limit but lowers limits lowers speeds.

School zones have reduced speeds in school zones through aggressive enforcement, if you make everywhere 30 they can no longer target enforcement in a way to skew peoples behavior. Targeted enforcement isn't scalable and if it is that just sounds a little dystopian, I'm already fairly uncomfortable with speed on green cameras as an enforcement concept, the wastefulness of watching every slam on their brakes then slam on their gas pedal just to appease some camera.


I actually don't think we are that far apart on what we think creates risks on roads.

Lack of attentiveness to surroundings is exactly why accidents happen, but not an overall lack of attentiveness, it is letting important things slip outside of your frame of reference. My proposed mechanism of risk for lowering the speed limits to an unreasonable slow level, is moving the locust of attention from the roads to either their speedometers if then intend to follow the speed, or to the person in front of them obstructing the road if they do not intend to follow the speed limit. By moving the locust of attention you are increasing the risk to things that aren't within that frame.

[puffnstuff]

This actually made me email my councilor today. They had already voted no to the consultation previously.

When this originally came out and I looked at the data of where accidents happen, there were so few of them that were in areas that would actually have the limits reduced. In my community and the 3 adjacent ones, if I remmber correctly, one pedestrian/vehicle accident in the previous 3 years. The solution they are proposing doesnt solve the problem.
Trying instead for targeted speed reductions at high incident locations. Combined with traffic calming in the same general area perhaps. As opposed to this ridiculous city wide blanket proposal.

[shogged]

i love this idea. safety is great, but i'm more excited about how much quieter the road noise will be with everyone going 30.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by shogged

i love this idea. safety is great, but i'm more excited about how much quieter the road noise will be with everyone going 30.

How much quieter will it be exactly? 20%? 40%? 2%?

[powderjunkie]

Unlisted to 40 makes all the sense in the world to me.

For the stretches of road that make more sense as 50 or 60...post them as 50 or 60


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[Flamenspiel]

For me, personally, the positives of the lower limits far outweigh any negatives, even if it’s a just a cash grab.