Ask any municipal councillor what the No. 1 concern of their residents is and I can guarantee the answer will be traffic.
It doesn’t matter whether they live on a busy main road or a quiet local street; speeding vehicles and safety are top of mind for many people.
It’s why municipalities across Ontario have jumped on the photo-radar bandwagon.
It’s the reason you see all those traffic-calming measures these days. Residents want them.
Which is why it is puzzling that the provincial government is proposing to ban Ontario municipalities from implementing what, in my experience, is one of the least expensive but most effective anti-speeding tools they have at their disposal.
For my first 10 years or so on Barrie council representing what is now Ward 4, the most frequent speeding complaints came from Livingstone Street residents. By far. I’m not sure if a week went by when I didn’t get an email or a phone call asking me to do something.
And for good reason.
Livingstone Street is used by hundreds of elementary school students every weekday morning and afternoon. There were a couple of instances of children being hit by vehicles, and on at least three occasions, vehicles left the street and hit homes.
Signs asking drivers to slow down were erected. City council lowered the speed limit to 40 kilometres per hour for the section near the school. It was made a community safety zone, meaning speed fines were doubled.
I learned from police attending a town hall I organized at West Bayfield Elementary School that Livingstone Street was the most heavily patrolled street in Barrie. I can’t remember the exact figure, but between 10 and 20 per cent of all speeding tickets issued in the city were for that one street.
But lower speed limits didn’t work.
Signs didn’t work.
Community safety zones didn’t work.
Enforcement didn’t work.
The speeding continued and so did the complaints.
So, when city staff proposed a pilot project on a few streets in Barrie, I was all in. Called a 'road diet,' it saw Livingstone Street West reduced from four lanes to three: one lane in each direction, plus a turning lane, plus bicycle lanes on each side.
To say the road diet worked from the standpoint of speeding vehicles would be an understatement. I’m not suggesting speeding stopped completely, but complaints from residents along that stretch of Livingstone Street didn’t just decrease, they vanished.
After it was the source of the most calls, I went years without a single complaint.
All this for the price of some paint and a few new signs, and with the added benefit of making cycling a bit safer.
So, it amazes me that the Ontario government is reported to be considering a ban on such road diets if bike lanes replace what was previously space for vehicles.
Details remain sketchy and there is a chance the restrictions would only be for ‘major’ streets and roads, but those are often the most dangerous areas for cyclists and pedestrians, more than 300 of whom are killed in Canada each year.
Road diets are also safer for the drivers. Numerous studies have shown road diets reduce collisions between vehicles, largely because drivers are going slower and making left turns more safely from a dedicated centre lane.
Is that really something we are willing to sacrifice in the mistaken belief that more driving lanes will somehow ease traffic congestion?
