Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

I don't fully understand why - at least in the position of a few councillors around the benefit of the new limit enabling slower limits on new road designs - this couldn't be done with a blanket drop to 40 and instituting that all new construction and road updates would require a road diet and scaling design down to 30.

I guess its more complicated in practice having to sign all the 30s, but it bums me out if they roll it back only to lock out the chance to start making neighbourhood roads safer just because in the short term the roads are designed to feel safe at faster speed.

There's a few reasons I don't support this.

First and foremost, rebuilding all roads for a lower limit is a generational project, there's a reason I left the city, and it's because I don't have a generation to wait for safer roads.

Second most important, our engineers are incapable of building roads for a 30km/h limit right now, and are unwilling to even try. So we're like 3-10 years away from even starting our generational project.

And third, we know that speed limits are more effective when applied broadly rather than in individual cases. A speed limit of 30km/h applied broadly through the city is more effective than a 30 km/h speed limit on one or two disconnected segments of poorly designed reconstructed roads.