Calgary Speed limits to be standard 30km/hr?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by kermitology

Inside neighbourhood speed, not applicable to collectors.

I'm fully for this. The survival rate for pedestrian - vehicular incidents is 90% at 30 km/h. It's a no brainer for me.

I didnt realize that we had such an epidemic of fatal collisions in Residential Areas to warrant this solution.

[Ashasx]

I hate driving in Airdrie. 30 is absolutely insane.

[calf]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'd be interested to see a map of which roads this applies to. For instance, is something like 4th st NW, or Northmount Drive, or 20th ave? None of these would be very pleasant at 30.

Yeah, it looks like major collectors/parkways aren't affected. If I look at my community, what makes sense is 50 if the road has a boulevard or solid yellow line (or put another way, anywhere a city bus drives), and 30 in the side streets...thats how fast most people go anyways.

[Northendzone]

to me this is a bad idea. this means that some slow moving pedestrians will likely survive encounters with cars that they may not have when the speed limit was 50.

this changes the gene pool and messes with darwinism.

seriously though, who does 50 in the neighborhood collector streets?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by kermitology

Inside neighbourhood speed, not applicable to collectors.

I'm fully for this. The survival rate for pedestrian - vehicular incidents is 90% at 30 km/h. It's a no brainer for me.

How many deaths a year occur in Calgary in residential zones on non-collectors? How many of those deaths were in accidents where people were doing less than 60?

Have other jurisdictions shown this to be effective?

If this costs each Calgarian 1 minute per day Calgary loses 700 person years of life per year so is roughly equal to killing 5-10 people so this initiative needs to save that many lives to break even assuming we value a fraction of a life in the same manner as a whole life.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by Locke

I didnt realize that we had such an epidemic of fatal collisions in Residential Areas to warrant this solution.

My kids play outside and people fly down my residential street. What's so wrong with getting in the habit of going a little slower?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by kermitology

My kids play outside and people fly down my residential street. What's so wrong with getting in the habit of going a little slower?

Absolutely nothing, but is it such a significant issue?

I mean, I can easily speed on my residential street, but if I go into some of the side-streets theres no way I'd be doing 50, especially in the winter when its darker earlier or there are cars parked on both sides of the road.

It seems to me that this is an attempted solution to something that doesnt seem to be a problem.

[Swarly]

Originally Posted by kermitology

My kids play outside and people fly down my residential street. What's so wrong with getting in the habit of going a little slower?

do what my parents did and teach your kids to not play on the road and always watch for cars? If there isn't a current problem what the heck are we solving by changing things?

50 is never 'flying down the road', those are the people speeding going 60-80 anyway. making it 30 isn't going to stop them.

[OMG!WTF!]

How about a 40 km/hr compromise?

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Locke

Absolutely nothing, but is it such a significant issue?

I mean, I can easily speed on my residential street, but if I go into some of the side-streets theres no way I'd be doing 50, especially in the winter when its darker earlier or there are cars parked on both sides of the road.

It seems to me that this is an attempted solution to something that doesnt seem to be a problem.

The part I bolded is key. Setting the residential limit to 30km/h is just the initial step, planning and having funding to build/retrofit roads to achieve the desired speeds is needed as well. Simply making the limit 30km/h won't stop traffic from going 50+ on 2nd Avenue in Sunnyside for example. It is a wide road that induces higher speeds naturally. Slim it down (bike lane, center median, on-street parking, etc) and you can induce the speed you'd like. Sure it won't take care of the odd crazy driver but it will have the desired effect for the majority.



Heck I have gone 50km/h in Airdrie on their residential roads quite a few times before remembering where I was and the 30 limit. But those roads I was on gave me no reason to not feel completely comfortable at 50.

[Lumby Lager]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'd be interested to see a map of which roads this applies to. For instance, is something like 4th st NW, or Northmount Drive, or 20th ave? None of these would be very pleasant at 30.

With the amount of playground and school zones it almost is 30 all the way already from Northland all the way until 40th.

[Sylvanfan]

For a lot of residential streets, I think 40 is about the right number. I'm not in Calgary, but where I live in St.Albert, an unmarked street with cars backing on and off it has the same speed limit as roads with lights and 4 marked lanes. Granted many of our 50 roads should be 60, but aren't. There's also places where you have a playground zone end like 70 meters from a stop sign...so yeah you can go 50 now, but you have to stop right away.

I think it's Europe where they set speed limits based on what 85% of the population drives at. In most residential neighbourhoods I typically would go about 45km/h give or take. In those area's, I usually don't touch the limit. All other roads, my natural tendency is to exceed the limit.

We have two similar roads in St.Albert, one has a limit of 50, the other is 60. My natural reaction is to drive 60 on both of them.

[Erick Estrada]

Thanks again Ward 7 voters.

[calf]

Originally Posted by Swarly

do what my parents did and teach your kids to not play on the road and always watch for cars? If there isn't a current problem what the heck are we solving by changing things?

50 is never 'flying down the road', those are the people speeding going 60-80 anyway. making it 30 isn't going to stop them.

But kids are impulsive, and it takes ages to teach them how to be safe. Just because you tell them to stop/look both ways before crossing the road yesterday, doesn't mean they won't go running into the street without looking when they're playing tag tomorrow.

[GGG]

Half of collisions occur when the pedestrian has the right of way. 20% of accidents are hit and runs. Average 9 fatalities per year. The draft report 2 years ago recommended 40 as the reduction. Survival rate at 45 is 50% compared to 90% at 30km.

If 1 pedestrian is hit per day if collisions were occurring at 50km we would expect 180 deaths per year. If collisions occurred at 30km we would average 36 deaths per year. Since the average deaths is only 9 per year the vast majority of collisions already occur at less than 30km/hr.

Reducing the speed limit could possibly make the 9 average drop to 4. However when you look at hit and runs being 20% of collisions it makes you question whether it’s a law problem or a compliance problem

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/calgaryh...it-and-run/amp

[Erick Estrada]

Personally I feel there are too many poorly marked pedestrian crossings in this city. Even though it may cost the city a little more money I feel adding lights to pedestrian crossings on busy roads will help a lot more than reducing the speed limit. It's not done enough IMO.

[stampsx2]

Nm. Not even worth arguing.

[Swarly]

Originally Posted by calf

But kids are impulsive, and it takes ages to teach them how to be safe. Just because you tell them to stop/look both ways before crossing the road yesterday, doesn't mean they won't go running into the street without looking when they're playing tag tomorrow.

right, but again what problem are we solving here. There are no stats showing a high number of deaths occuring in residential areas, or a large number of kids being hit while playing on the street. We have an average number of 9 deaths per year (2005-2014) from the article GGG posted. However that does not show how many of those occured in the residential areas that would be affected by this new law. In fact two of the specific examples used would not be included as they were on main roads (Centre Street at 18th Avenue N, and 14th Street NW and MacEwan Drive).

[TorqueDog]

F--k me. This is absolutely mental. No to a 30 KM/H speed limit.

If you want people to obey the speed limits, set reasonable speed limits. Elbow Drive, a majority of people exceed the posted 40 KM/H limit because it's unreasonable, it's easily a 50 - 60 KM/H zone in any other part of town, or any other city. The only reason people actually do 30 KM/H through the school zone is because they know there's very likely photo radar on the side of the road, and CPS tend to enjoy that particular cash cow.

[Flames0910]

Just dropping in a few comments I noticed from Twitter.

Some stats from the notice of motion:

50 per cent of all pedestrian collisions (and 83 per cent of collisions for small children) occur on residential and collector roads within communities

Admin research indicates that the average Calgary commute includes less than 1km of travel on neighbourhood streets, where travelling at 30km/h rather than 50km/ would add less than one minute to the typical overall commute.

https://twitter.com/DruhFarrell/stat...03430013759488

Also, this point on the design challenge is interesting. People tend to drive to the speed they feel comfortable rather than the posted limit, but in order for the city to start designing neighbourhoods for slower speeds, they have to first lower the limit. That sounds bass ackwords to me but sort of makes sense in a political way (you can't force new communities to build for safer streets if they're designing for 50km/h).

https://twitter.com/DaleCalkins/stat...26816802705408