'No. 1 concern': Stouffville set to start speed hump pilot

The pilot project will take place in the area of West Lawn Crescent and Millard Street

Yorkregion.com, Thestar.com
Aug. 8, 2022
Simon Martin

Stand on West Lawn Crescent, just north of Millard Street in Stouffville, for 15 minutes and you can see why Ward 4 Coun. Rick Upton is inundated with calls from local residents about speeding.

Cars whiz past the “slow down children at play” signs with little regard for the surroundings.

To try to curb the excessive speed the town is implementing a pilot project with temporary speed humps on West Lawn Crescent and on Millard Street.

“Speeding in this town is the No. 1 concern I hear,” Upton said.

At this particular location, Upton said he’s received numerous reports of cars blowing through the roundabout and nearly flipping over.

So far, the town has resisted implementing temporary speed humps on roads other than a brief time on Burkholder Street in 2019.

“This is a significant step for this municipality to test this on our inner streets,” Ward 6 Coun. Sue Sherban said. “We called for this in the early 2000s and it was not successful.”

Sherban would like to see something similar implemented on Hoover Park Drive. “It is a huge concern. It is my No. 1 call from residents,” she said. “If this does become a new policy of the town the first thing I will be asking is that Hoover Park receives speed humps and I have several streets after.”

Stouffville Fire Chief Bill Snowball said speed humps are an issue for emergency services to navigate. “They are a lot different on Millard Street than Hoover Park and that’s why I agreed to the pilot,” he said.

Snowball estimates speed humps take 20 to 30 seconds away from response time for emergency services.

Ward 5 Coun. Richard Bartley did not support the pilot and was worried about it opening a rabbit hole where residents on every street would be demanding speed humps.

The pilot will last until late this year when the speed humps will be removed for winter.

Sherban said it’s time for the town to do something about the speeding issue and come up with a more comprehensive plan. “We have to start somewhere. We can’t just keep doing nothing,” she said. “It’s people in our own community who are doing it. It's our neighbours.”

The recently formed road watch committee has looked at many different type of safety indicators. “We do have options out there. They do not have to be speed humps,” Sherban said. Other options like speed cameras and traffic delineators have been suggested.

Mayor Iain Lovatt said there is lots that the town can do, it just has to decide to do it. “Redesigning Hoover Park would be an expensive project but it might be the right project,” he said.

Speeding concerns weren’t confined to the urban area. Ward 2 Coun. Maurice Smith listed Aurora Road in Ballantrae as another road rife with speeding. “The truck traffic and speeding on Aurora Road is unconscionable but speed bumps on that road is not an option,” he said.

Last year, longtime resident Dolores Kroupis raised concerns about speeding on Hoover Park. She was part of a group, a number of years ago, which advocated and had the speed limits dropped on the road from 50 km/h to 40 km/h.

“Speeding has become a huge issue,” she said. “These wonderful neighbours of ours are locals that race down our street in excess of 70 km/h.” After Kroupis’ expressed concerns, council did direct staff to develop a traffic-calming strategy and consider implementing those measures during the 2022 budget deliberations. Some of the traffic-calming measures considered include mini-roundabouts, automated speed enforcement, radar speed signs, bike lanes, increased signage, bump-outs, traffic delineators, medians and education.