Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[dtkvictim]

Because this way you need only a half dozen signs for a neighbourhood rather than hundreds because the HTA requires that any road with a non-standard speed limit (not 50km/h) be signed at every intersection, so that drivers turning onto the road see the sign. Not only would this be prohibitively expensive it would clutter a neighbourhood with a silly amount of signage.

To make sure I understand correctly, the idea is that once you see a "Maximum X Area Begins" sign, all possible roads you turn on to will have that same speed limit and all possible exits from the area will be signed with "Maximum X Area End"? And specifically, the blue "Area" sign is what makes this different from other speed limit signs?



I don't have a physical copy of the MTO Handbook, but the online copy doesn't make any mention of this (though it also doesn't seem to even have speed limit signs in the Signs section...). Drivers ed did not cover this. The drivers license tests don't (explicitly) cover this. Now, through second hand knowledge I know residential neighbourhoods are 40, and even if I didn't in most neighbourhoods 40 feels too fast, so I don't think I've had any issue here. But I don't expect the vast majority of the population to understand that these signs are different from other speed limit regulatory signs and apply to more than just the street it's posted on.

See this diagram below. These are the signs posted along Jubilee from Queen St to Victoria St. Street view is a bit old so these might be outdated, but I believe they are still correct, though I can't remember of the first and last 40km/h signs have the "Area" sign as well now.

1. Given that neither the 30 nor the 40 signs have the blue "Area" sign, are the speed limits on Theresa and Heins 50km/h?
   
2. If the first and last 40 signs have been updated to be "Area"s, but the 30 signs remain as they are, does that make Theresa and Heins 40km/h? In other words, you have to remember a nested set of speed limits (I'm on a 30 section of road, inside of a 40 area, inside of a 50 city)?
   
3. If the "Area" sign is what truly matters, then why is the final sign a "Maximum 40 Ends" instead of the incoming speed limit, since this isn't a neighbourhood speed area? Why does the initial 40km/h not end? Why does the 30km/h not end?
   

We also get silly situations like this, where the "Area" ends and them resumes on either side of an intersection



So I get the point about signage clutter (which I hate too), but I think North America's reliance on signs to spell out the rules combined with a growing number of exceptions to the baseline rules creates even more clutter, and frankly, distractions in places where we often need to be paying attention. It seems like the ideals of simplicity, readability, and intuitability of the original sign designers has been lost. But I guess nothing can be done about that if we want a compromise between lower only certain street limits but not entirely rebuilding the streets.