City staff recommends 30 km/h speed limits in all residential areas

Thestar.com
April 18, 2018
By Ameya Charnalia

In the ongoing debate over safer streets in Edmonton, pedestrian advocates have drawn a line in the sand: 30 km/hr.

Speed limits were under the microscope at city hall Wednesday, when city staff suggested in a new report that councillors consider imposing a 24-hour 30 km/h speed limit in all residential areas across the city.

Currently, most neighbourhoods have speed limits ranging from 30 km/h to 50 km/h.

Residents showed up to debate the proposal at a community and public services committee meeting, many of them arguing that pedestrians and cyclists would be safer if the cars driving through local neighbourhoods were required to slow down.

Anna Ho, a bicycling and walking advocate, told councillors that research has shown that 30 km/h is the safest speed limit in neighbourhoods.

"We're talking about streets where people live," she said. "These collector and local roads are places we live and aren't places for high speeds."

Ho urged councillors to act, telling them that her mother-in-law had suffered extensive injuries after she was struck by an inattentive motorist in a marked crosswalk.

"This kind of violence should not be a statistic," she said.

The measure would apply both to residential roads - which city administration defines as local roads that give access to properties and where traffic is low - and to collector roads, which vary in size and appearance and are usually busier.

The report argues that a blanket limit would bring Edmonton in line with other major cities. Calgary experimented with slower speeds and found it resulted in fewer collisions, the report says.

Not all residents, however, supported the idea.

Dennis Worobec, a resident of the Brookside neighbourhood in south-west Edmonton, says he supports having a 30 km/h speed limits in playground zones during school hours, but not afterwards.

"Once the kids are out of school, why do we have to be faced with a 30 km/h zone, especially in the wintertime?" he asked. "Nobody is out there."

"All of us want zero fatalities," he added. "However, people need to accept some responsibility of their actions for themselves and their children when it comes to the health and safety of them."

Julie Kusiek, a resident of the Queen Alexandra neighbourhood, suggested city council create slow zones.

"It's time to lower residential speed limits to 30 km/h because that's how you build a city for people."

Council is toying with speed-limit reforms as part of the Vision Zero strategy, launched in 2015 to achieve zero traffic-related injuries and fatalities.

On Wednesday, city administration presented a report to the committee saying that a 30 km/h limit in residential areas is the safest speed in terms of collision survivability.

The report examines the possibility of lowering speed limits in residential areas and passing a bylaw to set a default speed limit on city-owned roads.

Sandeep Agrawal, an urban and regional planning professor at the University of Alberta, says regardless of what speed council decides on, the most important thing is consistency.

"There are too many signs to follow from one zone to another," he said.

According to a city poll, 80 per cent of surveyed residents believe speeding on residential roads is an issue that should be addressed. Almost three-quarters of respondents supported a speed limit of 30 km/h or 40 km/h in residential areas.

Under current legislation, the city can set speed limits on its own roads but must use signage for roads where the limit is anything other than 50 km/h.

Signing over 220 Edmonton neighbourhoods to a 30 km/h or 40 km/h speed limit would cost approximately $4.5 million, according to the report.

But, it says, the city could save money by passing a bylaw that did away with the requirement for signs on every affected road.

Alternatively, the report suggests, council could use a wait-and-see approach to determine what works best to reduce collisions.

Waiting for a year, according to the report, would allow councillors to analyze data from the implementation of 30 km/h speed limits in playground zones and study how collector roads are functioning following a change in residential speed limits.

In September 2017, council approved the implementation of 30 km/h limits in more than 400 playground zones.

According to city administration, studies have shown reduced speed limits around playgrounds reduce collisions and add little travel time.

In addition to speed limits in residential areas, councillors discussed what specific requirements should determine playground-zone designation, with emphasis on how to improve safety around collector roads.

They received the report for information and deferred discussion until the next city council meeting.