Watson’s safety pledge ignores basic truth
Watson’s proposals are just promises to keep doing the things already being done
Jim Watson’s pledges to improve traffic safety are just promises to keep doing the things Ottawa has always done: build dangerous streets and hope that enforcement blitzes will make up for the mayor and city council’s lack of nerve.
“Although we’ve made progress, we have to take an even more aggressive approach to make community safety a daily priority for each and every resident of Ottawa,” Watson said Sunday, dropping his latest set of campaign promises as he runs for mayor again. Regular police blitzes show just how dangerous it is out there, he said. Not to mention the regular reports of pedestrians and cyclists struck by cars and trucks.
As the heavy favourite for reelection, Watson has immense political capital here: His only challenger who’s serious at all is Clive Doucet, who’s not likely to attack him for hurting easy motoring. Watson’s traffic-safety platform could be literally anything he wants. He has chosen to make it timid and incremental, and several components are things the city is already doing.
He promises $230,000 more a year for traffic calming; photo radar deployed gradually in school zones (which the city was already planning to do); 20 more red-light cameras to add to the 54 we already have; and more police officers and paramedics. Both emergency services already have plans to hire dozens of new members, and they’re short because Watson’s cap on tax increases has squeezed their budgets so hard.
The extra traffic-calming money is enough to put in one more raised crosswalk, as long as there’s nothing tricky about the job. It’ll raise each ward’s annual budget for these measures from $40,000 to $50,000. The city has about 80 places where speed humps, which are slightly cheaper, have been recommended but not built because there’s no money. Those recommendations come from neighbourhood traffic studies, of which the city has had a backlog since before amalgamation.
Also, Watson wants to hire 40 more crossing guards, supplementing the 213 the city already pays for. This promise comes with a little parenthetical note: “(where minimum warrants are satisfied).” That means the city will follow the formulas in traffic-engineers’ manuals that take account of how many cars and how many kids pass through a particular intersection to decide where the new guards will go. That’s better than seeing places where crossing guards are warranted and not supplying them, but is also just what your city government is supposed to do.
Watson’s record on traffic safety does include some meaningful progress. City council voted in 2013 to rebuild Main Street as a “complete street,” with wider sidewalks and bike tracks, knowing that it would slow car traffic down a little. It wasn’t a disaster and the city has repeated itself when other downtownish arteries have come up for reconstruction. The Laurier Avenue bike lanes, despite the death of cyclist Nusrat Jahan under a turning truck at Lyon Street in 2016, are well used and safer than what was there before.
Bike lanes on O’Connor Street and Mackenzie and Beechwood avenues have followed. The Rideau River has one new footbridge and the Rideau Canal is getting one. The city rebuilt the ramps connecting Bronson Avenue and Colonel By Drive after cyclist Krista Johnson was killed in traffic in 2012.
But it has also built numerous roads that repeat the mistakes we’re trying to fix elsewhere.
Last week Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder observed that she was already getting complaints about speeding on Hélène Campbell Road before its final layer of asphalt had cooled.
This is a short but wide artery that comes off Strandherd Drive, which is a Hunt Club-style divided highway. Some of its length, Hélène Campbell has only back fences facing it. Of course drivers will speed there, it’s built for speed. This is the kind of street where, years later, councillors vote to stick stop signs their traffic people say won’t do any good, just so they’ll look like they’re doing something.
In north Kanata, two new schools are considered too dangerous for kids to walk to, so the English public and Catholic school boards will bus them no matter how close they live. Elgin Street is about to be rebuilt as an incomplete street because we just wouldn’t sacrifice street parking for safety.
The city has chosen to undermine a light-rail line to Orléans we haven’t even built yet by widening Highway 174 right next to it, and hasn’t said a word while the province does the same with Highway 417 west of downtown. The Alta Vista expressway, now euphemized into the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, remains on the books.
Finally, there’s the Holland Avenue fiasco, where Watson personally intervened in a detour children are supposed to use while a footbridge across the 417 is rebuilt, to take out dedicated bike lanes — again, in defence of street parking. He proudly announced it to the neighbourhood as a win. He retreated (partly) when everyone saw what a menace the city had created by telling everyone just to share a couple of traffic lanes. Someone was probably going to die there.
We could do all this better. We choose not to.
Watson’s traffic-safety platform could be literally anything he wants. He has chosen to make it timid and incremental, and several components are things the city is already doing. Columnist David Reevely