As winter broke this year and spring emerged, a disturbing trend re-emerged in my neighbourhood. Drivers young and old started to take full advantage of the 50-km speed limit down my car lined residential side street. I don’t need to go into a lengthy discussion into very young children playing and darting out — we all are familiar.
What does bear repeating is we live on a residential side street and a crescent. Watching people accelerate only to have to brake dramatically at the corner is galling to me — dangerous and totally unnecessary.
The recent school zone speed limit clarification is long overdue and is in the same vein as the solution.
My proposal is to assign a 30-km limit to all residential neighbourhood streets. For ease of public understanding, it should apply to main through streets and side streets. The logic that city drivers can only accelerate to 60 km on wide, arrow straight, two-lane, traffic-light, controlled main arteries — 30th Avenue, 40th Avenue, Gaetz Avenue, Ross Street, etc. — but only need to shave 10 km off in single-lane, curving, car-lined, children-at-large residential streets is baffling and disheartening.
A blanket email was sent by myself this spring to city council members regarding these concerns.
I did receive a considered response from Frieda MacDougall, a deputy city clerk. She indicated that the city typically takes cues on traffic issues from the province.
To that I respond this is not a highway safety issue, it’s a municipal safety issue. However, I see some parallels between this and the passing emergency vehicles laws that took effect in recent years.
A second concern was the price of retrofitting and adding signs. To this I simply state it would become unnecessary with a citywide limit of 30 km/h.
Steve Beierle
Red Deer