Slower residential speed ‘desired’
Council set to debate pitch for 30 km/h limit in neighbourhoods
City councillors will consider lowering the speed limit on neighbourhood streets to 30 km/h at a meeting on Monday.
Six councillors and Mayor Naheed Nenshi have signed off on a notice of motion seeking to lower the default speed limit from the current 50 km/ h standard on residential streets and some minor collector roads.
The move aims to improve walkability and reduce the frequency and severity of collisions on Calgary streets.
Proponents of the strategy point to research that suggests lowering speeds can improve reaction time, thereby decreasing the likelihood of collisions.
The policy wouldn’t apply to major collector or arterial roads, and the councillors behind the proposal suggest the reductions will have little effect on commute times.
“Having spent time on doorsteps (I’m) hearing very clearly from absolutely everyone I talk to that slower speeds on their quiet residential streets is absolutely a desired thing,” Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra said Tuesday.
“The science is very clear that it is the right thing to do, and the negative impacts to people travelling is very minimal as long as we sort of contain it to the residential (areas) and that’s what we are proposing to do.”
Proponents of the change said Tuesday that the typical Calgary commute includes less than one kilometre of travel on neighbourhood streets, where travelling at 30 km/h rather than 50 km/h would add less than one minute to an overall trip.
“We’ve got seven names on the notice of motion and we’ve done a lot of work with the other members of council, and I’m expecting a positive result,” Carra said.
The motion cites data from the World Health Organization that suggests pedestrians struck by vehicles travelling at 30 km/ h are 90 per cent likely to survive. The same data suggests survivability drops to 60 per cent when speeds increase to 40 km/ h and below 20 per cent at 50 km/ h.
“There is a massive societal cost to collisions and pedestrian injuries,” said Coun. Druh Farrell, who brought forward the motion.
“Each person that is involved in a collision, it takes them a long time for them to get their life back, if they ever do, and we don’t hear their stories. It’s impacting people’s lives. These are preventable collisions, so we can make a difference by changing how we design our streets.”
The city has pegged the annual societal cost of pedestrian-involved collisions at $120 million, according to research completed as part of the municipal pedestrian strategy, Step Forward.
In addition to Carra, Farrell and Nenshi, the motion is supported by councillors Jeff Davison, George Chahal, Evan Woolley and Ray Jones.
Provincial law previously prevented council from making changes to default speed limits. But under the province’s new city charter process, cities such as Calgary have new powers to set their own course when it comes to issues such as residential speed limits.
Similar speed-limiting measures have been explored in other places, including Airdrie, Ottawa, Toronto and Victoria.
The notice of motion also includes plans to tackle road redesign to ensure that more residential roads are designed to promote lower traffic speeds.
“The old-school approach was to create a designed speed for a road that was higher than the posted speed limit because they wanted to give people wiggle room,” said Carra.
“What we now understand is that speed kills and people will drive as fast as they feel comfortable. So if you make a street where you’re comfortable driving at 70 km/ h and you set the speed limit at 50km/ h people drive at 70 km/ h.”
Not all of council is prepared to embrace the proposal.
Coun. Jeromy Farkas said he believes 30 km/h is “too low” but said he’d be open to looking at data for lowering the speed to 40 km/ h.
“We know that 30 km/h saves lives in playground zones, but doing it throughout the city could paralyze traffic,” Farkas said.
“We should focus on problem areas through traffic calming and better engineering, rather than bring citywide change that might make problems worse.”
If approved, city administration could report back with a list of affected roadways and an implementation plan in late 2019.