It seems council can’t get over the speed hump
A cure for the common cold seems more likely to come along than a remedy for speeding on residential streets. But that is not going to stop city hall from trying new antidotes.
The latest experiment came in the form of speed humps, and failed utterly to provide solid data supporting or discouraging their continued use to slow down speeders.
The city administration resists the use of speed humps, since they hinder snow removal and buses and impede emergency vehicles.
Coun. Zach Jeffries, however, pushed for a pilot project to try them out. Jeffries and other council members say residents are always asking for speed humps to slow traffic on their streets. So, perhaps, the unwillingness of council members to accept wildly divergent results from the speed humps experiment can be seen as politicians trying to deliver on their constituents’ wishes.
The administration deemed the results “inconclusive,” and it’s hard to argue with that conclusion — unless you’re Mayor Charlie Clark and other councillors.
“I’m just struggling a little bit with the inconclusive conclusion,” Clark said last week.
City hall installed speed humps for two to four months last year at four locations where speeding was perceived to be a problem. City staff measured speeds before and after the speed humps were installed.
At only one of the four locations could the hump really be seen as having successfully curbed both traffic volume and speeding. On Nemeiben Road in the Lakeridge neighbourhood, speeds in both directions declined by 10 kilometres per hour and traffic volume dropped by 17.5 per cent. That makes it sound as if the speed humps the city administration had criticized were the magic speeding bullet city hall had been searching for.
But the results at the other three locations failed to yield the same degree of success.
On Vic Boulevard in Stonebridge, speeds dipped by three kilometres per hour in one direction and by five kilometres per hour the other direction. Traffic volume decreased by 5.1 per cent. That’s not a complete failure, but is it successful enough to justify impeding buses, snow plows and ambulances?
The speed of eastbound vehicles, heading toward the flyover connection to Highway 11 on Vic Boulevard, remained high at 63 km/h, despite a drop of five kilometres per hour.
The most bizarre results came from the speed humps installed on 29th Street West in Westmount. The city’s measurements found a 43 per cent increase in traffic volume in both directions. The speed of eastbound traffic jumped nine kilometres per hour — to 71 km/h from 62 km/h — while westbound traffic plunged 17 km/h — to 35 km/h from 52 km/h.
In this instance, the speed humps seemed to act like a magnet for motorists and substantially increased speeds in one direction.
On Stensrud Road in Willowgrove, traffic volume grew slightly and speeds increased one kilometre per hour in one direction but dropped 10 km/h in the other direction.
So what to make of that mess of wildly varied results? The administration deemed the experiment “inconclusive” because it’s difficult to draw conclusions from such divergent results.
City officials tried to determine whether other factors affected the results, but came up empty.
The transportation committee interpreted the data as meaning more experiments are needed. The committee wants city hall to study when and where measures like speed humps could be used. That could prove awfully difficult, given the results so far.
The city also consulted residents through an online survey. In Stonebridge, about half of respondents said they would welcome permanent speed humps.
In the other neighbourhoods, opponents outnumbered supporters two to one. Overall, respondents were overwhelmingly opposed to more speed humps.
Saskatoon has a handful of permanent ones. Clark and Jeffries wonder whether the right questions were asked.
Maybe, though, Coun. Randy Donauer best summed up the difficulty with addressing speeds with an observation he has made before: People want motorists to go slowly on their own street, but fail to curb their own speeds. If that’s accurate, a solution will likely remain elusive.